Chapter 167 167 The Other Two

Chapter 167: The Other Two Categories

After Lu Xu took home the Contention Award for Best Actor, there was no shortage of praise for him, but some went to great lengths to undermine the legitimacy of his win.

How did they try to prove it? By insinuating that it was merely the Contention Award committee's choice, that other awards might have different standards, or that the Contention Award was simply trying to innovate this year.

Everyone knew it was nonsense, but nonsense still manages to piss people off.

Today, however, the announcement of the Golden Flame Award nominations served as a slap in the face to those who claimed the Contention Award lacked prestige.

The Golden Flame Award's Best Actor nominations were almost identical to those of the Contention Award. Though the two juries weren’t identical, both were composed of highly respected figures in the industry.

Even if Lu Xu hadn’t won the Contention Award, his presence on the nomination list alone was proof of his chops.

"So strong!"

"Lu Xu, the ultimate powerhouse—top dog of the year!"

"If he wins the Golden Flame Award after the Contention Award, I feel like in a few years, we might see Lu Xu snag a lifetime achievement award."

"+1. It’s only been a few years since Verse disbanded, and Lu Xu has already achieved so much."

Though online discourse about whether Lu Xu would be nominated for this year’s Golden Flame Award blew up—largely due to his massive popularity—industry folks saw right through it. While the Contention Award and the Golden Flame Award had their differences, their picks hardly ever strayed far apart.

In terms of judging criteria, the two awards emphasized different aspects, but at their core, both existed to honor high-quality films. If there were too many outstanding films in a given year, the selections might vary more noticeably.

The problem was, truly high-quality films were a handful at best.

With such a limited pool to choose from, nominations kept circling back to the same handful of actors.

Beyond that, though the industry was reluctant to admit it, the acting bar had dropped hard compared to a decade ago.

In the past, neither the Contention Award nor the Golden Flame Award played it safe—or perhaps there was an unspoken agreement to favor established actors. But now, the judges were bending over backward to recognize promising young talent. After all, everyone knew that relying solely on veteran actors was unsustainable in the long run.

Young actors needed to be nurtured to retain young audiences.

Yet, despite the judges’ best efforts, truly skilled young actors were hard to come by. Some performers hailed by fans as "talented" couldn’t even scrape together a nomination in the eyes of the judges.

Balancing the awards’ authority and fairness with the pursuit of young talent was a near-hopeless balancing act.

This was precisely why Sang Yuan pushed hard for Lu Xu to win this year’s Contention Award for Best Actor.

Clearly, Lu Xu was that rare young actor who was already the full package.

If the industry went digging for fresh talent but then cheaped out on giving them their due when they finally emerged—what was the point of nurturing them in the first place?

Was it just to make them twiddle their thumbs forever?

Moreover, in Sang Yuan’s view, Lu Xu’s victory would only inspire more young actors—the Starlight Awards were proof of that.

First, Lu Xu was nominated for both Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor, then he won. And after his win, Shao Yao and Zheng Xiao started breaking through.

There might not be a direct causal link, but Sang Yuan preferred to see it as a good omen.

If there was a first, there would surely be a second and a third.

...

The Golden Flame Award nominations were no shocker, given that the Contention Award nominations had paved the way. Lu Xu’s nomination was essentially a no-brainer.

The only thing people talked about was the competition between Lu Xu and Hang Xiaguang.

Having already secured a win at the Contention Award, the rivalry continued at the Golden Flame Awards—could Lu Xu pull off another win this time?

This suspense lingered from the moment the Golden Flame Award nominations were announced until the day of the ceremony.

The Golden Flame Award committee was even more cheeky than the Contention Award's—if seating arrangements were any indication, Lu Xu wasn’t seated with the *Reversal City* crew, nor was Hang Xiaguang with his own team. Instead, the two were placed side by side.

Apart from them, the other three nominees, including Ren Ningyi and Pei Han, didn’t receive the same treatment.

Ren Ningyi and Pei Han were seated one row ahead, and before the ceremony began, Ren Ningyi turned around several times as if amused by the situation.

Lu Xu: "..."

He had walked the red carpet slightly later than Hang Xiaguang. Upon entering the venue and finding his seat, he was momentarily taken aback to see Hang Xiaguang beside him.

He even hesitated for half a minute.

"Sit down, relax," Hang Xiaguang said with a laugh. "I don’t bite."

"Don’t believe him—he does," Ren Ningyi chimed in, turning around with a grin. "I can testify. He ate someone in *The Demon’s Crown*."

Lu Xu played along with sudden understanding and put on an exaggerated look of fear.

*The Demon’s Crown* was a classic suspense horror flick where Hang Xiaguang played a cannibal. His portrayal made such a deep impression on audiences that even after he took on numerous heroic roles, fans who had seen *The Demon’s Crown* always half-expected him to pull out a knife and start dissecting someone at any moment.

Despite sitting side by side as each other’s biggest rivals, the atmosphere between Lu Xu and Hang Xiaguang wasn’t as tense as outsiders might have assumed.

With the committee arranging things this way, cameras kept cutting to them. Most of the time, they appeared solemn, looking straight ahead, occasionally exchanging a few words—never stiff, never fake-friendly.

"All that waiting for nothing."

"Pfft, what were they hoping to capture? Lu Xu getting salty or Hang Xiaguang scowling? Let’s not forget—the Golden Flame Awards differ from the Contention Awards. The latter had four Best Actor nominees, but the Golden Flame Awards have five."

"Wow wow wow! That’s right! Just realized our boy is a leading man now!"

"Just getting nominated is huge!"

Lu Xu had Hang Xiaguang's WeChat after the latter mentioned wanting to collaborate. However, since they weren’t close, he wasn’t sure he meant it. Now, seated together, they had a chance to talk more.

Though not familiar, going through two nominations together naturally brought them closer.

"Maybe not just twice," Hang Xiaguang remarked with a smile. "The Critics' Award hasn’t been announced yet."

Objectively speaking, among the three major film awards, the Critics' Award wasn't as prestigious as the Contention and Golden Flame Awards. Yet for actors, achieving the triple crown—winning all three—was a lifelong aspiration.

In that context, even the least influential Critics' Award still mattered.

Throughout Chinese cinema history, only two actors had ever won all three major awards—one sweeping them in a single year, the other across different years.

Hang Xiaguang currently held both the Contention and Golden Flame Awards, leaving only the Critics' Award out of reach.

The reason he hadn’t won it? Critics said his acting was too technical, not natural enough.

He'd gone to drama school, and hadn’t been exceptionally gifted in his youth, working his way up over years of roles. That part was true. Yet he couldn’t understand—wasn’t years of refinement just as valid as natural talent?

However, like him, many male actors in the industry are missing one award here or there, with only a few achieving a full set.

Hang Xiaguang believes that, given this year's circumstances, he and Lu Xu are almost certain to both be nominated again.

While their chances are highest for the Golden Flame Award, the Critics' Award is less certain. Although critics seem to favor Lu Xu, the Critics' Award might spring a surprise winner to distinguish itself from the more traditional Golden Flame and Contention Awards.

In other words, the Critics' Award prides itself on being unconventional, while he is a traditional actor.

...

As speculated before the ceremony, the Golden Flame Award's Best Actor was between Hang Xiaguang and Lu Xu—a conclusion fans figured out by carefully analyzing the screen time the two received during the broadcast.

"...This is exactly why they were seated together!"

"Hilarious how, for every winner, there's a loser. The Golden Flame Award organizers just don’t care about the other guy, huh?"

In the end, Hang Xiaguang walked away with the award.

What really confused fans was that, despite Hang Xiaguang being the winner, the cameraman focused most of the screen time on Lu Xu when the result was announced.

"Who actually won here?!"

"I bet the cameraman, just like me, wanted to capture Lu Xu’s heartbreakingly beautiful crying expression. Tsk tsk, that's cold."

"Want to see his heartbreakingly beautiful crying expression? Just watch *The Path of Bones*—guaranteed non-stop tears."

Lu Xu himself didn’t mind the Golden Flame Award organizers' arrangement. After the ceremony, he gave relaxed interviews and even mentioned plans to collaborate with Hang Xiaguang.

This was confirmed by Hang Xiaguang himself. When asked by reporters about his plans after winning, he expressed his desire to work on a film with Lu Xu.

Reporters interviewed all the nominees and found one thing in common—everyone wanted to collaborate with Lu Xu at least once.

The reasons? Beyond unspoken considerations like commercial potential, most of the four nominees had already worked in pairs before.

After all, the circle of established veteran actors is limited—some have collaborated as far back as the late '80s, and Ren Ningyi and Pei Han teamed up a few years ago.

Lu Xu, however, is a total newcomer.

...

Hang Xiaguang’s prediction wasn’t wrong. Half a month later, he and Lu Xu found themselves seated together again at the Critics' Award ceremony.

The Critics' Award nominations didn’t overlap much with the Golden Flame and Contention Awards. This time, neither Ren Ningyi nor Pei Han attended, and the award went neither to Lu Xu nor Hang Xiaguang but to the lead actor of a relatively obscure film.

Lu Xu and Hang Xiaguang had to go home without trophies.

However, after the Critics' Award nominations were announced, Lu Xu became one of the rare actors in the industry to earn nominations for all three major awards with a single film. The nominations for these awards are like working through an equation—each year, around ten actors are nominated for Best Actor, but only one or two manage to be nominated for all three.

Still, Lu Xu profited greatly.

Setting aside the direct financial benefits of nominations, he received several high-quality scripts from Hang Xiaguang, Ren Ningyi, and others—scripts that rarely make it to most actors and are reserved for a select few.

The scripts in Hang Xiaguang and Ren Ningyi’s hands were projects where they had considerable creative input.

Had Lu Xu not connected with them via the nominations, they might not have been willing to share these scripts with him.

Quality scripts are rare commodities, as every actor knows.

To some extent, once an actor reaches a certain level of skill, pushing beyond becomes challenging. At that point, what drives an actor to unlock greater potential is inevitably a higher-quality script.

What leaves actors with iconic performances is always a similarly legendary script.

After some deliberation, Lu Xu finally settled on a commercial film—a full-fledged blockbuster he planned to co-star in with Li Yan.

This marked Lu Xu’s first venture into big-budget Hollywood-style filmmaking since entering the film industry.