The More Tragic I Act, the Stronger I Get — My Fans Beg Me to Stop Killing Off My Roles-Chapter 208: The Director’s Lost It—He Wants Tragedy on Top of Tragedy!
The next day.
The atmosphere on set was even more solemn than the day before.
The aftershock of yesterday’s brutal emotional storm still lingered.
Everyone subconsciously stepped more lightly, and their voices were kept low.
Jiang Ci was still fixed to the Divine Tree, maintaining that near-death, humiliating pose.
The makeup artist was touching up the dried blood on his face, moving so gently it was almost painless.
Jiang Ci closed his eyes, motionless.
“Action!”
At Zhang Mouyi’s command, the set fell into absolute silence.
The huge green screen from yesterday had already been removed.
The camera refocused on the base of the Divine Tree.
A Li had vanished.
That worldly girl, full of human warmth—passionate and awkward—had been completely swallowed by time and space.
In her place, only a black figure remained.
Su Qingying had once again changed into the intricate black Priestess Robe; her Ling Xi stood silently where A Li had disappeared.
She slowly lowered the hand that had just pushed away the rival in love.
Her back was perfectly straight.
But within that upright posture, there was an enormous loneliness, as if the entire world had abandoned her.
A spirit who had guarded for a thousand years and was unable to keep anything.
After a moment, she moved.
She turned, and step by step approached the Divine Tree that imprisoned Ye Chen.
Her footsteps were light; the hem of the black robe brushed the ground without stirring up a speck of dust.
She walked across the scattered debris on the ground.
Across the lingering traces of demonic power left by Chi Jie.
And across the patch of earth where A Li had knelt, soaked with tears.
Each step tread upon the ruins of a fate.
Jiang Ci could feel her approach.
That uniquely chill aura of a lost soul made a faint shiver run across his skin.
Of course he was not afraid.
He was an actor, simply sensing the most precise signal transmitted by his co-star.
Su Qingying stopped in front of him.
She lifted her head and looked at the half-demon pinned to the tree by three arrows.
Her Ye Chen.
She reached out her hand.
The same hand that had just shoved the rival into the time rift now moved with a reverent piety, as if to touch Ye Chen’s face.
Just like a thousand years ago, on countless afternoons, she had done.
Her fingertips trembled slightly in the air.
Cold, and warm.
Dead soul, and living being.
Only a breath apart.
Jiang Ci could even feel the faint breeze caused by those icy fingertips brushing his cheek.
At the very moment before contact.
Her hand froze.
She remembered.
She was a spirit.
He was a living half-demon.
Her touch would only bring him endless deathly chill, hastening his end.
She was here to save him.
Not to kill him.
The hand suspended in midair trembled violently.
Finally, one knuckle after another curled in, forming a powerless fist that she drew back in despair.
Couldn’t grab.
Couldn’t hold anything.
[Ping! Heartbreak Value +12 (Source: Camera Assistant Xiao Fei)]
A faint notification popped up on Jiang Ci’s consciousness panel.
There’s even a KPI for this?
He muttered to himself.
This Best Actress co-star’s performance was so subtle it soaked into everything.
Even a single withdrawal could tighten a bystander’s chest.
Looking at Jiang Ci, the feigned indifference on Su Qingying’s face finally cracked.
After a thousand words, it condensed into a single, barely audible sigh.
There were no lines in that sigh.
But everyone watching through the monitor read the subtext clearly.
“Stay alive.”
At that moment.
“Whoosh—”
Under the director’s order, the massive wind machine kicked in without warning.
A gale swept across the entire set.
It lifted Su Qingying’s wide black sleeves, sent her waterfall hair flying.
Her figure wavered in the wind, as if about to be blown away entirely.
The wind also tugged at the tattered red robe on Jiang Ci.
Red fabric and black hems intertwined in the gusts, wildly fluttering.
They brushed and were then cruelly torn apart again.
Entangled.
Yet starkly separated.
The image was devastatingly beautiful.
Like an ink-and-blood painting splattered with despair.
Behind the monitor, Zhang Mouyi leaned forward again, almost pressed against the screen.
Beautiful.
Too beautiful.
This was what he wanted: the pinnacle of Bad Ending Aesthetics that belonged to Eastern myth!
The wind stopped.
Su Qingying turned away, back to Ye Chen.
Her gaze swept over the ruined ground and fixed on a spot.
There lay a bow, quietly.
It was the Lingxi Bow that A Li had left behind when swallowed by the time rift.
She walked over slowly and bent to pick it up.
This was a scripted, highly symbolic shot.
A past-life lover, with the weapon left by a present-life rival, guarding the man they both loved.
Fate at this moment forged a cruel closed loop.
Holding the bow that still carried A Li’s trace, Su Qingying closed her eyes.
The set fell utterly silent.
A clear tear slipped from the corner of her squeezed-shut eye and traced down her pale, bloodless cheek, finally dropping onto the black robe and spreading a small dark stain.
This was Ling Xi’s only tear.
The last tear she would shed for Ye Chen, for A Li, and for her own absurd thousand years.
After letting this tear fall.
She would no longer be the woman bound by jealousy and love and hate.
She would be the decisive killer, the legendary shaman who suppressed the entire demon army with her soul.
Su Qingying suddenly opened her eyes.
The last shred of mortal vulnerability had vanished.
Only the absolute lucid cruelty of a deity remained.
She turned to face the direction Chi Jie had left.
She drew the bow.
Nocked an arrow.
Although the quiver was empty of real arrows.
Her movements were full of force.
As if any second now, an arrow formed from witch power would tear through the air and slay every demon.
“Good!”
“Push to wide! Extreme wide!”
Zhang Mouyi’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie, unable to hide his excitement.
The crane camera slowly rose.
The shot pulled farther and farther away.
In the frame.
The enormous Divine Tree dominated the composition.
On its trunk, the red-clad half-demon pinned there had shrunk to a small, blurry red mark.
Under the vast tree, the black figure with the long bow was a mere dot of ink.
An overwhelming sense of loneliness strangled everyone’s throat in an instant.
The monitor froze on that image.
So beautiful it broke the heart.
So tragic it made one gasp for air.
The assistant director watched with reddened eyes, about to remind Zhang Mouyi to call “Cut.”
But when he glanced at Zhang Mouyi, he saw an unfamiliar expression on the director’s face.
A kind of possessed, frenzied look.
Zhang Mouyi did not call “Cut.”
He stared intently at the image on the monitor that could already be deified.
In his head, a thought bolder and crazier than any before detonated without warning.
Not enough.
Still not enough!
This loneliness was only visual.
What he wanted was resonance of the soul!
Two souls separated by time and life-and-death, in this moment, to touch—one last and only time!
He wanted to add a scene.
A scene that did not exist in the script.
