After Defying the System, I Became a Genius Director

That afternoon, Li Xingyu received the script Shao Yichen had sent him.

Seeing the chat window appear at the top of WeChat, his first reaction was—Shao Yichen had upgraded her profile picture?

Upon closer inspection, he discovered that not only had her profile picture been upgraded, but her nickname had changed too. The previously solitary “Lose” character in her profile picture now had a huge exclamation mark added after it, and her nickname had changed from “Lose All Hundred Thousand” to “Lose All Million.”

Li Xingyu: …Senior Sister’s ambitions are becoming increasingly grand.

However, Li Xingyu had always refrained from commenting unnecessarily on others and wouldn’t concern himself with matters unrelated to him. Therefore, he merely made this small observation before shifting his attention to the script Shao Yichen had sent.

Opening the scanned PDF, the familiar crooked handwriting, resembling a dog’s scrawl, appeared before his eyes. Yet he remained completely unperturbed as he immersed himself in reading, even mentally applying a beautifying filter to Shao Yichen’s handwriting—it actually looks quite pleasing once you get used to it, he thought.

Clearly, after yesterday’s 1.88 million yuan offensive, Li Xingyu had essentially become an unfeeling “approve-everything-Shao-Yichen-says” bot. No matter what twisted logic this Senior Sister presented to him, he would do his utmost to distort her words into something correct.

An hour later.

Li Xingyu closed the PDF and rubbed his temples with a frown.

During this hour, his understanding of film scripts had suffered comprehensive devastation, and his “Perfect Senior Sister Filter” showed signs of cracking. The only reason this filter remained merely cracked rather than completely shattered was because the 1.88 million had been transferred just yesterday.

The extended reading time was partly because the script had indeed grown longer, expanding from a dozen PDF pages to several dozen.

But the other reason was… the script was incredibly difficult to comprehend.

Chaotic!

Utterly chaotic!

This was Li Xingyu’s first impression after finishing the script.

In the previous film “The Last Wish,” he had already experienced Shao Yichen’s peculiar scriptwriting habits—no action directions, no emotional cues, no internal monologues, no scene descriptions. Actor interpretation was left entirely to chance.

At that time, he had overcome these difficulties with his powerful comprehension abilities and had subtly hinted to Shao Yichen that if she planned to write another script, she might want to address these issues, since not every actor would have the patience to meticulously dissect a script.

He had assumed that when writing a second script, with the experience of the first one behind her, Shao Yichen would make some improvements in this regard.

Unexpectedly, not only had she failed to improve, she had actually made things worse.

Specifically—she now even omitted concrete descriptions of props!

“Empty medicine bottle,” “water glass,” “book,” “diary”…

These items were mentioned in the script but with absolutely no details about what they actually were.

What kind of medicine was in the bottle? Was there something unusual about the water glass? What was the title of the book? What exactly was written in the diary?

None of this information appeared anywhere in Shao Yichen’s script!

This was simply unreasonable.

He was an actor, not a puzzle enthusiast, nor did he have any interest in treating the script like a mystery novel…

At least the previous film had mentioned the content of the social media post and that the document the protagonist saw was a death notice!

Imagine if the previous script had completely omitted these details—Li Xingyu would never have understood why the male lead treated the female lead as a ghost after checking his phone, nor comprehended why the male lead understood his own identity after reading a “document”…

How could anyone act in such circumstances?

Yet now, Li Xingyu faced precisely this situation.

He sighed, feeling that the task was quite thorny. But he could perfectly imagine what answers he would get if he took these questions to Shao Yichen.

“Just perform according to your own understanding,” “Trust your interpretation, it’ll be fine,” “This actually can be approached from any angle, just choose one you like”… He had already experienced these kinds of answers during the one-week filming process before!

Sure enough, when Li Xingyu tentatively asked a question, he received exactly the response he had anticipated.

[Morning Starlight]: Senior Sister, regarding the “empty medicine bottle” in the script, what specific medicine is it?

[Lose All Million]: Didn’t we agree last time that you’d just call me Shao Yichen? Being called “Senior Sister” makes me a bit uncomfortable.

[Lose All Million]: As for the medicine, you can interpret it according to your own understanding.

[Morning Starlight]: Alright, Shao Yichen Senior Sister. Does this mean the character Yuan You has some physical illness? Or perhaps a psychological condition?

[Lose All Million]: It’s just Shao Yichen.

[Lose All Million]: Whether there’s an illness, and what type of illness it might be—all these interpretations are possible. Choose whichever you prefer.

Li Xingyu: …

Just as expected.

Sometimes he even felt that this Senior Sister set such high film payments precisely to prevent actors from voicing objections when faced with her peculiar habits…

Li Xingyu sighed, thinking that fortunately finals week had passed, it was now summer vacation, and he had plenty of time to study this script.

Just now he had skimmed through the script, and although he completely failed to understand the mystery and conspiracy elements, he did grasp the basic plot.

The film was set in a high school campus.

A police officer investigates a jumping incident at a certain middle school. The police department had already classified the case as an “accidental fall,” and the deceased’s family had no objections. However, the officer felt there were suspicious points in the investigation and decided to visit the scene of the incident—the school—one last time before publicly announcing the investigation results.

While checking the classroom, the police officer encounters a middle school student named Yuan You, who claims to be a friend and classmate of the deceased. He insists that the deceased couldn’t possibly have jumped and urges the officer to reinvestigate. This confirms the officer’s doubts, so he begins a new round of interviews. When speaking with the deceased’s father, sister, classmates, and homeroom teacher, he discovers that all of them had potential motives and insufficient alibis.

At this point, the officer finds an empty medicine bottle in the deceased’s classroom, but it was discovered at Yuan You’s desk. Looking further, he finds a diary with a combination lock in Yuan You’s desk drawer. After some hesitation, he damages the lock and opens the diary. After reading through the diary, his expression noticeably changes. Then, after checking some message on his phone, he suddenly seems to understand something and rushes to the rooftop, where he finds Yuan You about to jump. He rushes toward Yuan You—

And that’s where the story ends.

As for whether the deceased’s death was an accident, suicide, or homicide? If it wasn’t suicide or an accident, then who was the murderer? What had been in the empty medicine bottle? What was written in the diary? What was the content of the message on the phone?

The script mentioned none of these things!

Li Xingyu finished reading feeling completely bewildered.

He sighed and exited the PDF interface.

Well, as an actor who had already worked with Shao Yichen once, he deeply understood this director’s eccentricities. You could fail to understand her work, but expecting her to personally explain her work was even more unacceptable to her than misinterpreting it…

Li Xingyu pinched the bridge of his nose and decided to print out the script and go through the logic from beginning to end one more time.

Senior Sister—no, Director Shao Yichen—had placed such trust in him; he couldn’t possibly disappoint her.

❀⋆｡°✿☆❀✿°｡⋆❀

At this moment, Shao Yichen had no idea what kind of confusion her hastily written script had caused Li Xingyu.

Even if she had known, she would have seen it as a successful small step in her money-losing plan.

She was currently at a photo studio, taking graduation photos for her graduation and degree certificates.

Indeed, since her rebirth into this world in May, she had spent a month making a film, and another half month had passed since the film’s release. Now it was already the end of June. For her as a third-year graduate student, it was graduation season.

Thanks to the original owner’s early completion of graduation requirements, she didn’t need to worry about how to handle the graduation project. However, even with everything prepared for graduation, graduation photos still needed to be taken. She didn’t want to create problems for the original owner at this point; otherwise, after she lost money and left, the original owner would discover she didn’t even have a graduation certificate or degree certificate. Three years of education would have been wasted, and Shao Yichen wouldn’t do something that harmed others without benefiting herself.

While taking her graduation photos, she was still thinking about matters related to the film.

She had already found the lead actors; the remaining supporting roles could be filled with extras. Equipment could be purchased with money. All things considered, the more urgent matter now was finding an art director and a cinematographer.

Especially a cinematographer.

That’s right, Shao Yichen had finally started planning to expand the film crew!

Of course, if she had to handle it herself and continue her shaky camera journey, it might still work. But on one hand, carrying a camera was indeed tiring; on the other hand, although she had deliberately done it to make the film lose money, hearing countless netizens unanimously commenting on her shaky camerawork was still hurtful.

Even when losing money, one had to maintain some dignity!

She needed to shift the blame for the shaky camera to someone else!

Thus, in her search for a cinematographer, Shao Yichen had already posted recruitment notices on job platforms—no experience required, no educational qualifications needed, standard nine-to-five working hours, and the highest possible salary. Even after deducting social insurance and housing fund, the weekly take-home pay would be 10,000 yuan. The conditions couldn’t be more generous.

However, for some reason, nobody applied.

No matter how hard she thought about it, Shao Yichen couldn’t understand why nobody came for such excellent conditions.

She certainly didn’t realize that precisely because of the conditions that anyone could meet and the salary that far exceeded industry standards, those who saw this notice on recruitment platforms generally assumed it was a scammer’s money-making scheme… Some people even thought privately, “This scam isn’t even trying to be convincing; at least make the conditions seem realistic.”

When your conditions are this ridiculously good, do you really think anyone would be foolish enough to believe it?!

So, having been arbitrarily labeled a fool by others, Shao Yichen waited and waited but couldn’t attract a single cinematographer applicant. With no knowledge of the film industry and no connections, she could only continue waiting…

This troubled her so much that even while at the photo studio taking graduation photos, as she waited for her physical ID-sized and passport-sized photos after the shoot, her mind was still filled with thoughts about recruiting a cinematographer.

Just as she was pondering this, suddenly, a commotion in the photo studio interrupted her thoughts.

“What kind of photographer are you? This looks nothing like what I asked for!”

Shao Yichen was startled by the loud voice and looked up to find a young man shouting angrily at one of the studio employees who appeared to be responsible for taking photos. The employee kept his head down without saying a word, while the studio manager was apologizing.

“This is my wedding photography, how could you take pictures like this?!”

Author’s Note:

First update today! There will be another update tonight!

The female lead’s dedicated cinematographer and art director are about to appear!

Shao Yichen: ? Why does the film crew seem to be becoming more and more formal

Coming back to fix an error~

Coming back to fix another error… accidentally wrote “suicide” don’t scold me don’t scold me boohoo