"Big Bird, are you really going to go be an extra?" the fatty asked, watching Li Boda pack his luggage.
"Wrong, I'm going to be an actor! I'm going to be a star," Li Boda corrected cheerfully.
"Get real, an actor and a star. You'll just be an extra in Hengdian at best. But we've studied civil engineering for a few years—if you go off to be an extra, hasn't this university education gone to waste?"
"Look at you talking as if I went to a construction site, this university education wouldn't have gone to waste. Fatty, let me ask you about yourself—in these few years of university, how much have you actually learned? How much have you mastered?" Li Boda retorted.
"..." The fatty offered a sheepish smile. He had a point. Just like Li Boda, in all these years of university, he hadn't learned a damn thing; all he did day in and day out was play. The only time he cracked open a book was right before exams. If you asked him what he had learned, he really hadn't picked up a single thing.
It wasn't just Li Boda and the fatty, either; more than ninety percent of the students in the entire university were like this.
Take their dorm, for example. Out of all those people, in the end only the two of them were still sleeping in the room. The rest had practically all gone out to rent places with their girlfriends.
Studying? In this third-rate university, that concept simply didn't exist.
Time flew, and in the blink of an eye, three months had passed.
Li Boda had been running as an extra the entire time!
Every day he was either playing a corpse or acting as background decoration.
He was either a nameless passerby beaten to death, or a random vendor.
Forget about having a role with lines; he didn't even have a single role where his face was clearly visible on camera.
There was zero progress—he was in the exact same boat as Zhang San, that random extra who got beaten to death in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer.
The most crucial part was that after three months of working as an extra, he hadn't dreamed a single extra-related dream.
It was as if that dream he'd had while playing an extra in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer was nothing more than a coincidence.
Li Boda had even wondered if it was because the productions he acted in as an extra afterwards hadn't wrapped up filming yet, or hadn't aired.
After all, that Zhang San from The Smiling, Proud Wanderer had only appeared in his dreams after The Smiling, Proud Wanderer was broadcast on television.
Yet, that didn't seem to be the case either. Over the past three months, Li Boda had worked as an extra on so many different crews, and occasionally one of them actually aired on TV, but he still didn't dream. He still didn't dream of an extra's lifetime.
This made Li Boda increasingly suspect that he was really just overthinking it, and that this wasn't any kind of Golden Finger at all.
However, the sword and palm techniques he had learned inside the dream of that extra Zhang San were still practiced by Li Boda to the point where he possessed a genuine feel for them.
Over the past three months, whenever he had free time outside of working as an extra, Li Boda would practice his sword and palm techniques.
Although he hadn't cultivated any inner force or genuine Qi like in the dream, this set of sword and palm techniques genuinely had some substance to it.
Even though he had only practiced for three months, compared to people who had been training for two or three years, he wasn't behind at all.
In fact, the sword techniques Li Boda practiced were even flashier and more deceptive, almost like magic tricks. This was an inherent characteristic of the Hengshan Sword Technique itself. Li Boda even felt that if he were to spar with others, he could effortlessly kill some of these so-called martial artists.
With sword and palm techniques under his belt, Li Boda could be considered to have a specialized skill.
As an actor—well, an extra actor—having a specialized skill meant he could firmly establish himself in the extra circles.
If a person had no special skills whatsoever, then working as an extra meant they could only ever be an extra, endlessly playing various corpses, nameless passersby, and minor soldiers.
But if you happened to have a special skill at that moment—even if it was just being exceptionally ugly—you would get far more opportunities than everyone else.
Of course, that kind of opportunity only meant you could land special extra roles. While other extras made twenty or thirty bucks a pop, you could rely on a shockingly ugly face to secure a special extra role and pocket a hundred or even two or three hundred yuan for a gig.
Naturally, being extremely ugly was a talent, something you were born with.
More people possessed specialized skills similar to Li Boda's: knowing a little bit of martial arts.
Especially nowadays, most television dramas being filmed were costume and wuxia dramas. Therefore, a greater number of actors who knew martial arts were needed.
Although there were indeed quite a few people who knew martial arts coming to work as extras these days, compared to the massive wuxia drama market, the number of such martial arts practitioners was still relatively small.
Thus, Li Boda naturally managed to secure quite a few extra opportunities by virtue of his Hengshan Sword Technique.
Take right now, for example.
Li Boda was dressed in a dark gray period costume, holding a fork in his hand, and shouting along with a crowd as he charged forward.
Wu Jian, standing ahead of Li Boda's group, gave a wave of his hand.
Li Boda and the people around him let out miserable cries of "ah," tumbling to the ground together in a heap.
"Cut!"
Hearing the word "cut," Li Boda and the others climbed up from the ground.
Li Boda twirled the wooden fork—painted with black lacquer—in his hand, feeling rather bored.
The main thing was that he had been in Hengdian for so long without getting what he wanted.
He had always wanted to acquire the memories of a person's lifetime just like before, thereby mastering legendary skills, such as some kind of martial arts.
Yet, ever since coming to Hengdian, he had simply been working as an extra, continuously running as an extra.
Right now, he was even playing a lackey for the Iron Fork Gang.
For a role like this, even if he really did dream and got the memories of this character's lifetime, what then? He would probably just be able to twirl that iron fork a bit more stylishly?
Of course, whether or not it was actually an Iron Fork Gang lackey didn't really matter.
What mattered was whether Li Boda could dream and see the lifetime of this character while running as an extra in a Jin Yong drama this time.
The lifetime of the character Li Boda had dreamed of previously was from the Jin Yong drama The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, so could he also dream of a character's lifetime this time in Ode to Gallantry, which was likewise a Jin Yong drama?
Right now, the thing Li Boda wanted most was to figure out whether he actually had a cheat or not!
After such a long time with zero movement, Li Boda couldn't help but doubt whether he truly possessed a cheat.
Perhaps that previous dream really was just a dream after all, and everything was merely a coincidence—he had completely been overthinking it.
Yet, at the same time, Li Boda refused to admit this.
So during this period, he had tried every possible method, constantly pondering and experimenting, attempting to figure out the pattern of his Golden Finger.
Unfortunately, up to now, he hadn't found a damn thing.