The More Tragic I Act, the Stronger I Get — My Fans Beg Me to Stop Killing Off My Roles

The shoot wrapped, and Director Wang personally walked Jiang Ci to the soundstage entrance.

She gripped his hand tightly, with a surprising force,

completely unlike the perfunctory business handshake from before.

“Teacher Jiang, thank you!”

Her sincerity was practically overflowing.

“This collaboration is the craziest gamble of my career!” 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

She looked at Jiang Ci’s face, which had quickly returned to a placid calm after the shoot, and declared, “I guarantee this ad will become a phenomenon!”

Jiang Ci nodded politely.

Whether it became a phenomenon or not didn’t concern him.

What mattered was the endorsement fee—so long as it arrived on time.

Beside him, Sun Zhou watched the client team so excited they nearly danced with joy,

then glanced back at the unflappable artist next to him, and still felt an intense sense of unreality.

Back in the entourage van, Sun Zhou finally couldn’t hold it in.

He asked Jiang Ci in a low voice.

“Bro, about this ad… are we really okay?”

“I feel like Director Wang and her team are a little… off?”

Jiang Ci leaned back in his seat and rested his eyes.

“If the client is satisfied, that’s the only normal thing.”

Sun Zhou remained uneasy; he pulled out his phone and found the work memo Lin Wan had sent earlier.

“Brother, there’s one more thing.”

“The contract requires that, to cooperate with the brand’s first wave of preheat, we need to post one Weibo today.”

Sun Zhou read the memo’s requirements.

“The copy must tag the brand’s official account, and include your smiling selfie.”

Jiang Ci’s eyes slowly opened.

He picked up his phone and turned on the front camera.

Suddenly Jiang Ci spoke.

“Turn off the lights.”

Sun Zhou blinked, “Huh?”

“The lights in the car, turn them off.”

Though puzzled, Sun Zhou obediently pressed the switch.

The van’s interior darkened instantly,

only the neon glow from the city outside poured in, casting flickering light across his face.

Jiang Ci raised his phone again.

He didn’t deliberately think about anything happy.

His mind drifted back to the shoot that afternoon, to Director Wang’s instructions that bordered on the perverse.

He didn’t fuss over angles, he simply lifted the phone casually, fully immersed in the bad ending mood.

Then he pressed the shutter.

“Click.”

A photo was frozen.

Sun Zhou instinctively scooted closer to take a look.

One glance and his whole body stiffened.

In the photo, light and shadow were mottled.

Half of Jiang Ci’s face melted into deep shadow.

The other half was outlined clearly by the neon from outside the window.

On that face was a “smile” that defied description.

It wasn’t happiness, nor warmth.

It was an utter shattering, heartbreakingly beautiful.

Sun Zhou sucked in a breath.

A sense of dread washed over him in an instant.

“Bro… this… if we post this, something big will happen, right?”

Jiang Ci felt nothing wrong at all.

Isn’t this exactly the vibe from the daytime ad shoot?

The client liked it then.

With the most plainspoken style, he composed a Weibo post.

“Wrap. @Lang Feng official Weibo.”

He attached that freshly taken selfie, a photo capable of making any living person want to break along with it.

Click, send.

The Weibo success notification flashed across the screen.

Jiang Ci tossed the phone aside, closed his eyes, and continued his unfinished “resting business.”

He didn’t know that at the exact moment the Weibo went live, a storm on the other end of the internet was quietly brewing.

The first to fall were Jiang Ci’s die-hard fans.

“Ahhhh! New fresh Ci-ge!!”

“No way! That smile! I can’t handle this smile!!”

“Wrap? What wrap? Did he just finish filming?”

Fans who had been silent for ages instantly erupted.

They analyzed the blurry selfie frame by frame.

“Look at this light! Half in brightness, half in darkness!”

“Waaah… this is him! This is the General Gu we know! That BE aura straight from his bones, I love it so much!!!”

Under the fervent interpretation and mass sharing by true fans, curious onlookers were pulled in.

“Who is this? Are male stars’ selfies supposed to be so story-driven now?”

“I don’t know him, but that smile makes my heart ache, I feel like crying for no reason.”

Driven by fans’ momentum and bystanders’ curiosity, a brand-new tag quietly crawled onto the tail of the trending list.

#JiangCiHeartbreakSmile#

…

At the same time, the public relations department at Lang Feng menswear was tense as if readying for battle.

The PR director’s call hit Director Wang’s phone almost immediately.

His voice couldn’t hide panic.

“Director Wang! There’s trouble! Jiang Ci’s preheat Weibo is trending!”

On the other end, Director Wang was holding her coffee, buoyant.

She raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t trending good? That means we picked the right person.”

“No, Director Wang!” the PR director nearly sobbed, “You have to see the tag! #JiangCiHeartbreakSmile#! Our theme is ‘Embrace the Sunshine’!”

The smile at the corner of Director Wang’s mouth paused slightly.

She set down her coffee and opened Weibo.

When she saw the tag and then clicked in to see Jiang Ci’s face—shattered and heartwrenchingly beautiful amid the light and shadow—

instead of anger, her eyes gleamed even more fiercely than they had in the studio.

“Director Wang? Are you still there? Should we issue an immediate PR takedown for the tag?”

“Or ask the artist to delete and repost a different photo?” the panicked voice pleaded.

Director Wang didn’t answer.

She murmured in a near-dreamlike tone.

“A genius…”

“Such a genius…”

PR director: “???”

The next second, Director Wang’s voice came through the receiver, clear and decisive.

“Don’t do anything!”

“No! Not only do nothing, but ramp this up!”

“Contact media channels, buy some accounts, push this tag up! Praise it!”

“Praise it exactly as netizens are doing! Praise this unique ‘narrative’ and ‘high-end aura’!”

The PR director was completely stunned.

Director Wang gave him no time to react and continued issuing orders.

“Official account! Immediately! Repost Jiang Ci’s Weibo!”

“For copy…” Director Wang stared at the photo on her phone, inspiration exploding, “Write this—This is the embrace for those who strive.”

She hung up.

Silence fell across the PR department.

Everyone stared at their director as if she had lost her mind.

The director wiped cold sweat from his forehead, gritted his teeth, and shouted.

“Do as Director Wang says!!”

Minutes later,

propelled by capital’s force, the strangely themed tag #JiangCiHeartbreakSmile# stormed into Weibo’s top ten!

Lang Feng’s official repost completely detonated the topic.

…

In the capital, at the Spark Media office.

Lin Wan had just finished a video meeting and habitually opened Weibo.

When she saw that familiar name on the trending list, her blood pressure spiked.

Jiang Ci again!

She clicked and saw that selfie that could be called “memorial portrait style,” accompanied by the three big characters “Heartbreak Smile” that stabbed at her eyes.

“Nonsense!”

She immediately called Sun Zhou, her tone hostile.

“What happened?! Who let him post this? Don’t you know this endorsement’s theme is healing smiles?!”

On the other end, Sun Zhou’s voice was choked and fragmented as if he might cry.

“Sis Wan… this… it’s not Ci-ge’s fault…”

Then, in a jumbled but terrified tone, Sun Zhou recounted everything that had happened that afternoon in the studio, in full.

From Jiang Ci being unable to force a smile, to the cinematographer’s meltdown, to Director Wang’s earth-shattering “reverse marketing” theory, and finally that eerie “Bad Ending Aesthetics” ad shoot.

Lin Wan listened, phone in hand, her expression shifting from anger to disbelief to utter incredulity.

When Sun Zhou finished the whole “divine development,” she fell into a long silence.

Silence filled both ends of the line.

Sun Zhou could even hear his own heart pounding.

It’s over.

Sister Wan must be speechless with fury.

Just as Sun Zhou braced for a storm of wrath,

the other side erupted in a peal of unrestrained laughter.

“Hahahahahahaha!”

Lin Wan laughed until she trembled.

She finally realized.

Jiang Ci’s once-in-a-century “abnormal” constitution, in this equally abnormal era,

had unexpectedly achieved a nearly perfect chemical reaction with a client who was a “madman”!