Chapter 52: From now on, Southeast Asian crime genre male leads have a face to match the name!!!

The movie officially begins.

First comes a large conference hall. A middle-aged woman in a suit wearing an earpiece stands on stage, and her voice rings out:

"In 1955, there was a quiz show in the country of Ser. From a single ser-cent to a hundred million ser-cents in trivia, the audience could place bets based on the answers. Due to technological limitations at the time, nationwide simultaneous broadcasting was impossible. Thus, some people exploited the time delay to manipulate so-called insider information and adjust the odds. Using this as a model, the mathematician Mahaguton proposed the famous Guton Formula to maximize betting profits. You might think you are gambling against the house, but your true opponents are mathematical masters like xxx, xxx, xx, and xxxx..."

Along with her speech, corresponding pictures and content appear on the screen behind her.

"She's showing me this right out of the gate?"

"Anyone who doesn't know would think they were watching an educational film!"

"This vibe is too strong, it totally feels like a government-mandated assignment film."

Pre-emptively biased against the movie and expecting it to fail, Shang Shi started complaining even before the main feature began.

Right now, everything he looked at pissed him off! Everything felt wrong!

He had come purely to pick bones.

His expectations dropped even lower accordingly.

Soon, the middle-aged woman's speech concluded, introducing the protagonist of the film:

"His name is Pan Sheng, a computer master's graduate from Huajing University of Technology and a cybersecurity expert. He exploited a vulnerability in the Dianzhi Fund's business system, batch-inserting code to deposit a single cent into over eighty thousand accounts. That year, he had just turned twenty. Even a genius programmer like him can be deceived, and even end up working to the death for overseas scam syndicates."

"What I am about to tell you next is the real insider information."

"A very mediocre opening," Shang Shi evaluated. He loathed these kinds of guided openings; they lacked any technical ingenuity.

As the middle-aged woman's voice faded, music swelled, and the opening credits flashed like a zoetrope through shots filled with gambling chips, roulette wheels, poker cards, banknotes, armed police, hideouts, raids, captures, and arrests.

Shang Shi raised an eyebrow: The soundtrack and cinematography here were somewhat interesting, but not by much.

Subsequently, the camera cut to Pan Sheng, played by Li Yang, the protagonist of the film. The entire movie seemed to enter another world.

——

Introducing the protagonist, Pan Sheng.

Pan Sheng attends a promotion convention.

Full of confidence, only to be ambushed and have the promotion snatched away by a rich second-generation heir.

He drops his employee badge and quits on the spot.

He opens his computer, cuts into the backend program, plants a Trojan horse, and various comical expressions appear on the promotion convention's screen.

He walks out of the company building and leaves in style.

"Firefly," a scam compound disguised under the skin of a "Singaporean gaming company," also reveals a corner of its mysterious veil.

At this point, ripples of surprise had already sounded throughout the theater hall.

Li Yang's acting was quite good, surprisingly good, even!

Furthermore, the movie's pacing was exceptionally brilliant. In just a few minutes, there wasn't a single wasted line or a single wasted shot; it not only clearly explained the sequence of events but also established Pan Sheng's character.

Shang Shi felt as though something was amiss. He muttered to himself, "Let's keep watching, let's keep watching."

Next, with a cut of the camera, Pan Sheng appeared on a plane heading abroad.

"A-Cai," the second-in-command of the scam compound, played by Qi Hao, made his appearance. Wearing glasses, hair tied back in a bun, and a blue shirt, he gave off the vibe of an educated scumbag.

"Excuse me, could the new colleagues joining Firefly please raise your hands?"

A forest of hands went up inside the cabin.

"Let me introduce myself. My name is An Junchai, from the New Sea Line—"

Pan Sheng interrupted: "Aren't you from Hunan Province?"

A-Cai explained: "I was indeed born in Tanzhou, but I went to the New Sea Line with my family when I was six."

Pan Sheng: "Oh, I'm from Liancheng. I thought we were fellow hometown folks."

A-Cai: "How did you know about me? Mind reading?"

Someone nearby laughed: "Why don't you read my mind too?"

Pan Sheng glanced at him: "Your name is Ma Rong, and you're a Taurus."

Then, without stopping, he pointed at the people in the cabin, calling them out one by one: "Wang Xiaochuan, Zhu Liyu, Lu Xing—"

A-Cai smiled and asked: "Did you hack the airline's website?"

"There's no need for that!" Pan Sheng replied bluntly. "I just had to hack your phone."

——

A-Cai's expression stiffened for a moment before he forced a restrained smile and praised, "Talent."

The brief confrontation ended.

They landed.

A-Cai used an excuse to confiscate everyone's passports.

Pan Sheng and the others who had been scammed walked out of the airport, curiously gazing at the exotic scenery: the armed police at the airport, architectural styles completely different from home, women soliciting customers along the streets, tropical plants...

Pan Sheng was on the phone with his mother, lagging behind the group.

The others excitedly walked into a narrow alley, where several burly men holding baseball bats suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

Hearing the screams, Pan Sheng grew alert.

A-Cai realized an accident had occurred and turned back to pursue them. Realizing something was wrong, Pan Sheng turned tail and fled in a panic.

——

The sudden shift brought the danger lurking beneath the water to the surface, abruptly shattering the illusion of harmony.

The audience's hearts in the theater leaped into their throats. Immersed in the plot, they couldn't help but feel a wave of worry for Pan Sheng.

——

The people who had been scammed alongside Pan Sheng were already fitted with black hoods.

Pan Sheng ran frantically, crashing head-on into a passerby on an electric scooter, picking himself up, and continuing to run.

He frequently looked back; his pursuers were vicious and relentless, hot on his heels.

He ran to a street corner.

"Bang!"

A-Cai lunged out, gripping a wooden stool, and smashed it fiercely onto Pan Sheng's head.

Pan Sheng collapsed to the ground.

A-Cai squatted down, patted Pan Sheng's face, and taunted playfully:

"I have two phones! Trying to act smart!"

Shortly after, a van drove slowly down the road, traversing winding mountain roads and entering a compound with Thai characters written on the gate frame.

——

Shang Shi was already too shocked to speak.

Wait, was this really something directed by Cheng Cheng?

If this had been a work directed by Zhang Zhuofeng, Grandmaster Gong, or Zhou Mian, he might have called it standard and competent, but Cheng Cheng?

No way, right?

The pacing was tense and thrilling, the characters' intelligence was online, and the actors' performances were full of substance. Not to mention how several shots completely highlighted the dramatic tension of the plot!

It was textbook filmmaking narrative technique!

Shang Shi felt his brain trembling! The unreasonableness of the world ambushed him at this very moment!

As for the ordinary audience, they weren't overthinking things like he was.

They wouldn't analyze the movie from the perspectives of pacing, cinematography, or narrative technique. After watching this sequence, only a single thought echoed in their minds:

Pan Sheng had been captured. What would happen next? Would he face inhuman torture?

The subsequent plot had already sparked their intense interest!

——

Pan Sheng and the others were brought into the compound.

Their hoods were removed.

Pan Sheng raised his head, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings.

Behind them stood numerous thugs monitoring their every move.

Before them stood private militias armed to the teeth.

"Beat them again!"

The camera angle swept from low to high.

Cheng Cheng made his entrance!

Holding an ice pop, he kicked A-Cai and appeared on screen.

With his entrance, gasps erupted across the theater.

Cries of "Holy shit" rang out continuously.

Cheng Cheng's image on screen at this moment featured slightly curly hair, casually swept back, wearing a pair of glasses, dressed in a Southeast Asian-style short-sleeved shirt, and holding an ice pop. He looked like a leisurely youth enjoying a moment of coolness in the scorching sun.

Shang Shi instantly fell into self-doubt: Handsome guy, who the hell are you?!

Cheng Cheng's appearance had once been analyzed by many beauty bloggers, and the consensus conclusion was: Cheng Cheng's handsomeness was purely manufactured by marketing. Looking at his facial features alone, he didn't count as top-tier in the domestic entertainment industry at all, and even had many glaring flaws.

Yet at this moment, under the harsh lens of the big screen, Cheng Cheng's visage was practically three-hundred-and-sixty-degrees of flawless handsomeness!

His facial features were exquisite and three-dimensional, his eyes deep and bright, his eyebrows thick and powerful, his nose high and elegant, his lips pressed into a thin line, and his jawline sharply chiseled. Even under the unforgiving lens of the cinema screen, there was not a single flaw!

Had he gotten plastic surgery?

——

"You all make a living with your brains. If you break them, are you going to do the work?" Cheng Cheng looked at the deceived group before him and said with a smile, "Sorry, everyone, let me apologize on his behalf first. My surname is Lu, and I'm the manager here. From now on, everyone will be working for me. Thanks for your cooperation, alright!"

"I'll cooperate with your dog-ass mother, I want to go home," one of them chimed in first.

The others grew clamorous as well:

"I want to go home!"

"I want to go home!"

Thugs wielding baseball bats instantly rushed forward, pinning them to the ground and beating them.

amidst the chaos, Cheng Cheng took a pistol from Li Yang's hand, covered one ear with one hand, and fired a shot into the sky with the other. Without even looking, he handed the gun back to Li Yang behind him, pointed at the people being beaten on the ground, and said:

"Help them up. We're all coworkers~"

"The things you want, you can't get them outside, but you can get them with me—and very quickly, too~"

Countless audience members were dumbfounded!

Shang Shi was dumbfounded!

He was too shocked to be shocked anymore!

Not only did Cheng Cheng become handsome? His acting skills had gotten bloody well better too?!

Did this person really play by Cheng Cheng?

This is killing me!

Just from this segment alone, Cheng Cheng played a villainous boss way too damn convincingly! That casual, indifferent, and willful attitude made him the very embodiment of a scammer.

Especially the shot of him covering his ear and firing a shot into the sky—it was explosive-level handsome!

Moreover, his handsomeness didn't detract from his portrayal of the character in the slightest; his handsomeness was heart-subduing handsomeness! It was handsomeness with full-throttle aura!

This kind of handsomeness was, in itself, a form of persuasion!

Coupled with his height, which was nearly ten centimeters taller than the other characters, the visual shock made him look like a lion patrolling its territory. Just standing there casually, his character's charisma burst forth!

——

Meanwhile, in another theater in a different city.

A female netizen who had also reluctantly come to watch *No More Bets* had already involuntarily opened her phone and started taking frantic pictures of Cheng Cheng.

She was an author on a major domestic female-oriented web novel platform, currently serializing a crime-themed novel where the male protagonist's persona was the boss of an active criminal syndicate in Southeast Asia.

Themes like this were immensely popular on her platform.

At this moment, her eyes were filled with shock. Cheng Cheng was handsome! Unprecedentedly handsome! But beneath his handsome exterior, she had captured the ferocity, madness, and wildness of this character hidden beneath the lines, the cinematography, and the costume design.

This was precisely what struck a chord with her!

Unable to help herself, she took a photo and posted it in her reader group, typing five or six exclamation points in a row:

"Sisters, Cheng Cheng is literally the exact image of the male lead in my book!!!!!!!"

"From now on, Southeast Asian crime-genre male leads have a face!!!"