“The money was never a problem. I went to Rongtian Capital for investment and bypassed all the usual mess in the entertainment industry. We’ll have official backing, too, so publicity won’t be an issue.”
Once they’d finished discussing Su Zhi’s situation, she brought the conversation back to Loophole.
She needed a few days to think over the script. More importantly, she planned to invest in the production, so she wanted to ask about its finances first.
But You Xin answered with complete confidence that there was nothing to worry about.
Rongtian Capital was one of the biggest investors in Great Xia, and the project had official backing. It all looked like a sure thing.
[After your addition to the production is announced, an investor will pull out. The project will struggle to secure replacement funding in the short term, leaving a shortfall of roughly 60 million yuan. After repaying his old debts, You Xin currently has assets worth 70 million yuan, of which he could liquidate around 60 million within two months.]
To be fair, You Xin had sounded perfectly reasonable. But Su Zhi had a cheat.
The System didn’t say how You Xin planned to fill the 60-million-yuan gap. It did, however, lay out the assets he had at his disposal.
He was ready to stake everything on the project. You Xin had done something similar before—and lost. He’d ended up deep in debt, then spent years making terrible movies before finally turning his luck around with Battle of Ningcheng. That film let him pay off his debts and save several tens of millions.
“Your wife spent ten years scraping by with you. Now that things are finally looking up, aren’t you worried I might flop?”
Su Zhi didn’t bother sparing You Xin’s feelings. She called him out for wanting to gamble his fortune all over again.
Being blacklisted for three years had given her a much clearer understanding of how the entertainment industry worked.
Morningstar was one of the three biggest companies in Great Xia’s entertainment industry, and the only one of the three involved in this project.
Su Zhi didn’t know exactly how much Morningstar had invested, but it was probably between 20 and 30 million yuan.
So why would Morningstar’s withdrawal leave a funding gap of around 60 million?
It was simple. Besides Morningstar, several other entertainment investment companies had joined the Loophole project. Their combined investment was probably around 60 million yuan.
No one was going to risk offending Morningstar—a behemoth—to support an actor who’d been blacklisted for three years.
Could one of Morningstar’s competitors step in? Not anytime soon.
The three giants of the entertainment industry weren’t outright enemies. They were more like complements to one another.
Su Zhi had just ended her contract with Morningstar on bad terms. For another company to take over Loophole and cast her so soon afterward would be a blatant provocation.
That wasn’t even the main issue. Su Zhi had been blacklisted for three years. No one could say for sure that she’d make a successful comeback—not even Morningstar. And unlike Morningstar, the other companies had no urgent need for top-tier talent. They could afford to wait and see.
In short, besides You Xin, no one was willing to be the first to take the plunge.
Success was fleeting, but hard times revealed who your true friends were. With so few people believing in Su Zhi, You Xin still had faith in her abilities—and was even willing to stake everything on her.
“The favor would be too big. I don’t want to owe you that much, and I don’t need to. I’ll cover Loophole’s funding gap myself. I’ve got 100 million yuan in reserve. That should be enough. I doubt this drama will cost more than 300 million.”
Su Zhi didn’t give You Xin a chance to argue. She simply told him how much she could put in. It wasn’t that she had so much faith in him. She had faith in herself.
If I believe I can do it and I have the money, why not invest and make more? If I lose, the System will catch me. I won’t lose everything, so there’s nothing to worry about.
“What? Where did you get that kind of money?”
You Xin stared at her, stunned.
He knew Su Zhi’s background. She was an orphan with no one to rely on. That was a big part of why Morningstar had dared to cheat her.
No one would stand up for Su Zhi or support her. She was just an ordinary person with no power or connections.
And now she was talking about 100 million yuan.
That wasn’t the kind of money an orphan could simply pull out of thin air. Heck, even plenty of billionaires would struggle to produce 100 million in cash at a moment’s notice.
“I just want to take back what’s mine. If they can’t make room for me, I’ll create my own stage. I’ll do things my way—and flatten them along the way.”
As she spoke, Su Zhi didn’t look at You Xin. She took out her phone and opened the Weibo account that was hers in name only. It had seven million followers, but in practice, it didn’t belong to her.
“Don’t worry about finding no kindred spirits ahead. Who in the world won’t know your name?”
She’d written that herself when her manager had asked what she wanted in her bio. She’d only stumbled into the entertainment industry by accident, but she’d still dreamed of making a name for herself. She didn’t need her name in the history books. She just wanted to reach the top and be able to say, “Who else?”
A faint smile tugged at Su Zhi’s lips.
Get revenge on my former company? No. The truly strong don’t waste their time challenging anyone. All I have to do is keep moving forward.
A comeback wasn’t about beating someone else. A comeback done for the sake of defeating someone wasn’t much of a goal at all. Su Zhi only wanted to surpass the person she’d been three years ago—and even that was just the starting line.
She opened her private Weibo account, submitted her verification materials, and changed the line in her profile.
“I came, I saw, and I will bear the loneliness of the summit alone.”
“My Yanyan’s been saying things like that lately, too,” You Xin said softly.
Su Zhi looked up in silence, then called over a server. “Are you sure you don’t have a sixteen-pound king crab?”
“Can we please let the sixteen-pound king crab thing go?”
At the mention of the crab, You Xin’s face twisted like he’d eaten something rotten.
“Did you ever buy one or not?”
Su Zhi turned to look at him. Yes, she was still hung up on the sixteen-pound king crab. It wasn’t that she’d never eaten king crab before. She just hadn’t gotten to eat that particular sixteen-pound one.
“Ahem. Let’s get back to the script.”
You Xin quickly changed the subject.
