The More Tragic I Act, the Stronger I Get — My Fans Beg Me to Stop Killing Off My Roles-Chapter 64: Breaking Out of the Cocoon—Becoming a Butterfly?

Liu Guodong's words sounded like a threat, but Jiang Ci couldn't help feeling that Old Liu was more like... handing him a knife.

He had dissected all of Xia Meng's weaknesses and laid them bare for him to see.

Then he told him, go ahead, see what kind of "work of art" you can carve with this blade of yours.

After leaving Liu Guodong's office, Jiang Ci returned to the empty rehearsal hall.

He didn't start warming up immediately. Instead, he stood in place, digesting the information he had just received.

"Taking full responsibility, huh..."

He muttered to himself.

That wasn't particularly difficult.

After all, to continuously harvest Heartbreak Value, he needed to keep the target in a "broken" but not completely "scrapped" state.

In a sense, his goal and Liu Guodong's were aligned.

He was still thinking when the door to the rehearsal hall was gently pushed open.

Xia Meng walked in.

Her face was even paler than yesterday, with no trace of color on her lips.

She walked alone to the farthest corner, took the script from her bag, and began reading her lines in a low voice.

Her eyes were vacant and lost.

Just as Jiang Ci was examining her with a gaze assessing "KPI," Xia Meng seemed to sense something and slowly raised her head.

Their eyes met in the air.

Xia Meng's body trembled involuntarily.

She put down the script, stood up, and walked step by step towards Jiang Ci.

Her steps were slow and hesitant.

Finally, she stopped about three steps away from Jiang Ci.

Jiang Ci looked at her, waiting for her to speak.

He thought she would question him, would be angry.

However, Xia Meng just bit her lip hard, looking at him with a gaze of sickly dependence.

...

At 1:30 PM, the rehearsal officially began.

The atmosphere in the rehearsal hall was so oppressive it was suffocating.

Everyone had arrived, forming a semicircle, with a large empty space in the middle.

Liu Guodong stood at the front, arms crossed.

He glanced at his watch and announced in an indisputable tone.

"Today, we're rehearsing the most intense confrontation scene between Ma Lu and Ming Ming in the rain."

His sharp gaze swept across the room.

"If you can't perform it well, no one is leaving."

The rain argument is the emotional climax of the entire play *Rhinoceros in Love*.

Ma Lu's obsession, Ming Ming's fear, the desperate collision and inability to communicate between the two, all converge in this scene.

This scene places extreme demands on the actors' emotional explosiveness and control.

To have the current Xia Meng perform this scene?

Everyone's gaze instinctively turned towards Xia Meng in the corner.

She stood there, body stiff.

"Xia Meng, Jiang Ci, take your positions!"

Liu Guodong's voice rang out.

Xia Meng's body trembled violently.

She raised her head, looking at Jiang Ci with pleading eyes.

Jiang Ci gave her an unreadable look and walked to the center of the space first.

Xia Meng took a deep breath, shuffled her feet, and walked to stand opposite him.

"Begin!"

At Liu Guodong's command.

"Do you love me?"

Jiang Ci delivered the first line. He was in excellent form, instantly capturing Ma Lu's naive yet obsessive questioning perfectly.

The pressure instantly shifted to Xia Meng.

"..."

Xia Meng opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

The moment she tried to get into Ming Ming's character, to summon that feeling of fear and resistance, the images of yesterday's breakdown flooded her mind.

The shame of having all her pretenses stripped away.

That feeling of losing control made her whole body go cold.

Technique and emotion were completely separated.

"Say something!" Jiang Ci's performance continued. He stepped closer, his emotions building layer by layer.

"I..." Xia Meng finally squeezed out one word.

She wanted to step back, but her body wouldn't move.

"Cut!"

Liu Guodong finally couldn't hold back, roaring impatiently.

"Xia Meng! What are you doing! Where are your lines? Your reaction?"

Xia Meng flinched at his roar, her face turning even paler.

The classmates watching were terrified, not daring to breathe too loudly.

Liu Guodong paced back and forth irritably.

Finally, he raised his head, his eyes fixed intently on Jiang Ci.

The meaning in his gaze was clear.

You caused this trouble, you fix it!

All the pressure, at this moment, shifted entirely onto Jiang Ci.

Feeling that gaze that seemed almost capable of burning through him, Jiang Ci sighed inwardly.

He no longer followed the script, but suddenly broke off the performance.

The entire rhythm of the rehearsal hall was disrupted by his action.

Ignoring Liu Guodong's murderous glare, Jiang Ci walked straight up to Xia Meng.

In an almost calm tone, he asked a question completely unrelated to the plot.

"When you were little, were you very afraid of making mistakes?"

This question, without warning, pierced through the long-sealed door to Xia Meng's heart.

Xia Meng trembled violently all over.

She jerked her head up, glaring at him fiercely, not uttering a word.

That look seemed to say: How dare you!

Jiang Ci completely ignored her anger.

Looking into her eyes, he continued in that same unemotional, narrative tone, speaking slowly:

"Because every time you made a mistake, what you got wasn't comfort, but harsher criticism."

"They told you, mistakes aren't allowed on stage, actors shouldn't have too much emotion."

"They told you, tears are cheap, losing control is shameful, being unprofessional means having no value."

Each of his words tore away the layers of disguise she had wrapped around herself.

Jiang Ci didn't use any acting techniques. He simply combined the information Liu Guodong had revealed with his own observations,

Calmly, recounting her repressed childhood trauma.

It once again precisely struck the softest, most painful place in Xia Meng's heart.

"So you learned to hide yourself away."

"You turned yourself into a precise machine, making no mistakes, always calm, always correct."

"You thought this way, you could earn their approval."

Jiang Ci's voice kept cutting into her heart.

"But..."

He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice further.

"Were you really happy?"

*Boom—*

Xia Meng's psychological defenses completely crumbled.

Tears, like a breached dam, surged out uncontrollably.

But this time, she didn't collapse to the ground like yesterday.

The grievances and resentment that had been pent up for twenty years, with nowhere to vent, found an outlet at this moment!

She fiercely channeled this intense emotion into the character of "Ming Ming"!

"I love you! I don't care!"

That voice was filled with unprecedented vitality, and a desperate sense of throwing caution to the wind!

"I don't care what you think! I don't care what others think! I just love you!"

She wasn't shouting at Ma Lu.

She was declaring war against her parents who had forced her, against that cold, theoretical world!

Liu Guodong was trembling with excitement. His thermos cup clattered to the ground, but he didn't even notice.

The members of the drama group were stunned.

Was this... breaking free from the cocoon and becoming a butterfly?

Immediately, the system's prompt sounded in Jiang Ci's mind.

[Ding! Heartbreak Value detected from Xia Meng +233!]

[Current Heartbreak Value balance: 767]

[Ding! Life span increased by 20 days!]

[Remaining life span: 141 days 8 hours...]

The performance ended.

Xia Meng's body trembled violently from exhaustion, tears still streaming down her face.

But her eyes were no longer empty and vacant.

Instead, they were astonishingly clear, like the sky after a rain.

She raised those eyes, washed clean by tears, and looked at the man before her who had pushed her into the abyss and then given her new life.

After a long time, she relaxed her hands and said softly:

"Thank you..."