Literary Master: Starting with Refusing to Be a Child Star

Chapter 95 The Beginning of the Dream

Chapter 94 The Beginning of the Dream

It's been a month since "The Long Season" finished airing, but its popularity seems to be stuck at some point where it won't fade away.

The Douban rating slowly rose from 9.6 to 9.7 seventeen days after the finale.

With over 750,000 ratings, surpassing the final number of ratings for "The Hidden Corner," it has become the highest-rated and most-rated work in the history of iQiyi's Mist Theater and even the entire history of domestic suspense dramas. The pinned long review in the Douban short review section is titled "After this drama, there are two kinds of domestic web dramas: 'The Long Season' and others," and it has received over 100,000 likes.

Another comment that was repeatedly forwarded contained only one sentence: "The rise of Chinese dramas is no longer just a slogan."

Luo Jinnian saw this comment during a self-study period at school.

He looked up and saw several quadratic function problems left by his math teacher on the blackboard, the chalk writing crooked and messy.

Gu Yanxi glanced at him from the side, "What are you laughing at?"

"I haven't heard of any domestic works rising up for three seconds. The constant talk of rising up is like doing sit-ups."

Gu Yanxi stared at him for two seconds, then moved her gaze from his face to his phone in his desk drawer. "Reading online comments again?"

Luo Jinnian didn't reply, put her phone in the drawer, and opened her math textbook.

Gu Yanxi snorted and stopped asking. Chu Qingning peeked over from the back row: "What are you talking about?" Gu Yanxi didn't even turn his head: "Your brother's fiddling with weird stuff again." Chu Qingning poked the back of his head: "Don't use your phone during class. It'll affect your studies." Luo Jinnian turned and glanced at her. Although Chu Qingning's voice was soft, her attitude was firm.

As the younger brother, Luo Jinnian naturally obeyed and said "yes".

Once outside the school, the lingering heat burned far more fiercely than the discussions in the classroom.

After finishing their special on "The Long Season," the TV station produced an extended version titled "From 'The Hidden Corner' to 'The Long Season': A Two-Year Evolution of Domestic Suspense Dramas." The program featured film critics analyzing the director's narrative techniques, the cinematographer's visual language, and the screenwriter's dialogue skills. One critic made a statement that made Luo Jinnian cringe: "The script for 'Early Spring Tea' is the pinnacle of domestic suspense screenwriting." He skipped this part, not daring to listen further; constantly praising him to the point of exhaustion was truly humiliating.

After finishing my meal and washing the dishes, I returned to my desk and opened the forum. The discussion thread for "The Long Season" had already reached over two thousand pages, with dozens of new replies every day.

They analyzed frame by frame the significance of Gong Biao's smile before the car overturned, and discussed that the final shot of Wang Xiang lying in the taxi was the greatest three minutes of a domestic drama in the past decade.

Some people even compared "The Long Season" and "The Hidden Corner" and posted an analysis post of more than 10,000 words titled "The Universe of Early Spring Tea: Everyone is Trapped in Time".

The post analyzes the common themes in all of Early Spring Tea's works: Zhang Dongsheng is trapped in marriage, Zhu Chaoyang is trapped in lies, Wang Xiang is trapped on the day he lost his son, and Gong Biao is trapped in an opportunity that will never come.

"Early Spring Tea" is never just about suspense, but also about the situation where an era and an individual intersect.

This post was reposted on several platforms and garnered over a million views.

When Meng Zhaoming called, his tone carried an excitement rarely seen in a veteran publisher. "Guess how many copies of the original novel 'The Long Season' have sold?" Luo Jinnian said he didn't know, so Meng Zhaoming gave a number: the first print run was 500,000, and it went through three reprints, bringing the total sales to over 800,000. "It's still going up. The publisher said that this month's bestseller list for literature is number one, 'The Long Season,' and number two is 'The Hidden Corner.' This time, we're competing against ourselves." The sound of pages turning came from the other end of the line, and then Jia Bei's voice picked up the conversation: "The reader letters are piled up on the table, all asking when 'Duku' will publish a special issue on the scripts of 'The Long Season.'"

Luo Jinnian thought for a moment, "Then let's make a special episode, put the complete script in it, and add some behind-the-scenes photos and director interviews."

Jiabei is all set. Arrange for adding more pages. "So, how about the pricing?" There was a two-second silence on Luo Jinnian's end. Finally, Director Qin called and made the decision: "Make a special feature, add more pages, no price increase."

Everything went smoothly, but one thing happened that Luo Jinnian hadn't expected.

The TV series "The Long Season" popularized the term "Northeast Renaissance," a term spontaneously coined by netizens after watching the show.

They said the show allowed people to rediscover that forgotten place, those laid-off workers, those abandoned factories, and those trapped in the 1990s.

"The Long Season is not a suspense drama, but an anthem of the times in Northeast China."

"Wang Xiang is not just one person, but a generation."

One sensitive media outlet even wrote an in-depth report titled "After 'The Long Season,' Northeast China is no longer a 'background'."

The report interviewed university scholars, sociology researchers, and writers from Northeast China, discussing how the drama has added a sense of humanity, pain, and dignity to the Northeast beyond its previous stereotype of "comedic sketches." Lao Yan forwarded the article to his WeChat Moments: "I've been acting for twenty years, and this is the first time I feel like I've participated in a major project of our time."

Luo Jinnian thought about it and it seemed to be true.

The industry has also felt the lingering effects. Wang He called to say that the sponsorship for the fourth season of the Mist Theater had doubled compared to expectations, with GG Entertainment specifically requesting projects with "the same quality as 'The Long Season'." Director Qin accepted an interview, and when asked about his upcoming plans, he said, "I'm preparing a new drama, also written by Zao Chun De Cha, called 'The Silent Truth'." That same evening, Luo Jinnian's phone was bombarded with messages. Lao Yan sent a voice message saying he had seen the interview and asked, "Brother, have you written another masterpiece?" Gu Yanxi sent a question mark. Meng Zhaoming asked if excerpts from the script of "The Silent Truth" could be serialized in advance in "Story Club".

Luo Jinnian was extremely busy dealing with problems.

The city lights outside the window had already come on. Luo Jinnian drew the curtains, sat back down at the table, and opened the notebook he had been flipping through until the edges were frayed. He had already written several pages of the outline for "The Silent Truth," and this notebook was even more oppressive and desperate than "The Long Season."

A man sacrificed his life to unearth a long-buried injustice with his blood. Luo Jinnian didn't immediately start writing; instead, he flipped through the notebook, reading each page of his notes.

My phone vibrated again. Gu Yanxi sent me a message: "Guess what I'm looking at?"

Luo Jinnian replied, "What?"

"Home Alone."

It really is time to act in this movie. Luo Jinnian looked out the window. This is the first movie he has encountered since he transmigrated here.

The beginning of a dream.