Chapter 101: Retribution Arrives

It was awkward enough to film intimate scenes with a beautiful woman. In the first take, Yan Xu had enjoyed himself, but by the second take it was his turn to pay back.

It was a scene set inside a car. At the start, the camera was outside, slowly moving from the front glass to the driver’s side window. The moment meant to be captured showed Yan Xu in exquisite delight, savouring Guanzhilin lying between his legs while she performed her mouthwork.

The shot itself was simple. All Guanzhilin needed to do was lower her body and kneel across Yan Xu’s thighs, and when the camera moved to the side, slowly rise, making a little motion with her tongue as if licking away residue from her lips.

Yan Xu’s part was just to relax fully against the seat, let his face show traces of satisfaction, and now and then let out a low murmur.

It was merely a straightforward shot, and yet it marked the beginning of Guanzhilin’s tormenting revenge on Yan Xu.

She was a woman of fierce will; otherwise she would not have married at twenty against her family’s opposition and then divorced six months later. For what he had just done to her—whether deliberate or not—she would never let him walk away with a free advantage.

So Yan Xu’s pain arrived all at once. As he leaned in the car seat and her body had only just settled there, the filming began, and he felt a surge of pain in his thigh. His face instantly twisted into something grim: his brows knotted, his eyes shut tight, his mouth open, and a rough cry of “Ah!” rose from his throat.

Though her body blocked his sight, Yan Xu knew all too well that behind it a small hand was twisting and pinching the inner side of his thigh. Yet the shooting had already started, and he could not call a halt. He was paying for his earlier move.

Fortunately the moment was brief. As the camera moved, Guanzhilin slowly lifted herself up and gave the required reaction. That scene ended there, but at the same time, when she stood, the hidden hand tightened suddenly, and Yan Xu nearly shouted outright.

“Yan, your expression just now was extraordinary. No wonder you’re the best newcomer. If you keep this up, you could even be a film emperor,” Pan Hengsheng said as he came over. Yan Xu had hardly opened his mouth before Pan added that from his perspective his expressions were spot-on, and even the final moment captured exactly the look of a man pushed to his limit.

Looking from Pan to Guanzhilin, who wore a smug expression, Yan Xu could not speak his heart. Whatever this ‘pleasure’ was, it had all come from pain. He was certain that deep in his inner thigh there would now be one purple bruise beside another. Even this kind of teasing was not always delightful.

The filming itself proceeded smoothly, but for a long stretch afterward Guanzhilin never gave Yan Xu a kindly look. He offered all kinds of excuses, his tongue running dry with explanations, and even splurged again on an extravagant dinner at Jidishi to make his peace. Only then did she, in words at least, reluctantly forgive his “innocent mistake.”

Although Yan Xu kept busy filming and refused all interviews, none of that kept his name out of the papers.

Police Story’s final box office finally landed: a bit over twenty-eight million, more than two million higher than the earlier historical figure.

Maybe that was because its release date had been shifted from December into the summer season; maybe it was the influence of Yan Xu’s role as the scriptwriter.

For Police Story itself, that number was not a dramatic leap. Though it trailed Aces Go Places by three million, it ranked second among all films released this year, and even stood within the top three in Hong Kong box-office history.

For Chen Long, although he also appeared in Aces Go Places, that was still a Sanmao-branded, star-power film at heart. This was Police Story that truly became his own. It became the highest-grossing film of his own work, more than double what Flying Dragon, Fierce Detective had earned.

Police Story brought back Chen Long’s former glory and fueled Weihe’s rise, and it also gave Zhou Huimin a small burst of momentum. Her album sales, which had been drifting down, suddenly rose a little.

As for Lin Qingxia, since she had come to Hong Kong she had never found the right film identity, and this film was no exception. Reactions to her were mixed.

Yan Xu, with those lofty twenty-eight million in receipts, found his reputation as a top-tier screenwriter even more firmly established.

Of course, this alone did not keep Yan Xu permanently in the spotlight pages. Before Tan Yonglin’s Hung Hom concert, he released a new record, led by the song he had written for him: Red Sun.

It was an absolutely majestic, rousing anthem. The moment it was released, it was sung through every street and alley, and took first place on every music chart it entered. Yan Xu, who wrote both lyrics and melody, gained sudden prominence; labels like “talented prodigy” and “genius” were suddenly pinned to him.

Riding that momentum, Dragon Clan Records released its third disc, also the second band they had put forward.

Although this Beyond album, Farewell Ideals, never reached the later classic status of Glorious Years, it was still a notable first record for the band. With Dragon Clan’s heavy promotion, sales crossed ten thousand in just a few days, and both tracks—Old Footprints and Farewell Ideals—entered Hong Kong radio charts at seventeenth and twenty-second. For a new band, that was a very good result.

At this pace, breaking Gold in the short term would be easy—perhaps even Platinum. Among the newcomers of that period, it was an excellent achievement.

Though this could not be compared with Tai Chi’s first album, Tai Chi’s debut had been strong from the start, and only with Yan Xu’s golden touch in songwriting did such results become so outstanding.

This far surpassed what they had originally been able to do. That album had originally been self-financed; both its quality and follow-up promotion were less than ideal, and its outcome had been so bleak they could not even recover the capital.

It should be remembered that Beyond’s first several albums sold poorly, almost to the point of losing their chance to release anything at all.

Only with Secret Police, that double-platinum record, did things improve somewhat. Real growth came with the album Beyond IV. That release was also double-platinum, and became Beyond’s best-selling album.