The cara locked tightly onto the drawn bow.
A cold, emotionless command from Zhang Mouyi ca through the loudspeaker.
“Release!”
The order was given.
Su Qingying let go.
The prop arrow scread through the air with a piercing whoosh.
Not a hair’s breadth off course.
“Pop!”
The blood pack concealed on Jiang Ci’s shoulder burst on cue!
Crimson liquid spurted out, instantly soaking the red costu.
The trendous force pinned him firmly against the Divine Tree behind him.
That impact was not acting.
To achieve the utmost realism, the prop arrow’s force had been deliberately increased.
Jiang Ci’s back hit the rough trunk hard, producing a dull thud that made teeth ache.
His whole body convulsed violently, his torso sliding down the trunk half an inch.
At the sa mont,
a few scattered notification sounds rang in Jiang Ci’s head.
[Ping! Heartbreak Value 8 (source: costu assistant Xiaoya)]
[Ping! Heartbreak Value 11 (source: props master Xiaoqin)]
[Heartbreak Value 5 (source: clapper loader...)]
Trickle after trickle, hardly anything significant.
Not even a fraction of what Zhao Yingfei had contributed during his performance of The Farewell My Concubine.
Jiang Ci felt calm inside.
That was normal.
Pure physical tornt produces a visual shock far greater than emotional resonance.
The audience would think it was tragic, not heartbreaking.
This was rely an appetizer.
The real feast had not arrived yet.
Silence on the set was deathly.
Everyone was stunned by the brutality and realism of the scene.
Zhang Mouyi’s voice ca over the walkie-talkie again, frighteningly composed.
“Second arrow, third arrow!”
“Do not break the emotion! One take, one cut!”
Those words hit every crew mber hard.
They hit Su Qingying even harder.
Her controlled “A Li” did not pause at all.
That command was Chi Jie’s order.
chanically, she reached into the quiver on her back and drew the second arrow.
Nocked it.
Drew the bow.
The motion was smooth and rciless.
In the hollow, un-Su Qingying eyes, there was only that red figure nailed to the tree.
By the monitors,
Wen Nian’s smile vanished the mont the second arrow was placed on the string.
She did not understand the subtle techniques of acting.
But she felt sothing.
A pressure beyond her comprehension.
It made her deeply uncomfortable.
It could not be calculated or controlled; it was full of unpredictable loss of control.
Just like Jiang Ci and Su Qingying at this mont.
The second arrow left the string.
Another muffled impact.
The shaft pierced through the other side of Jiang Ci’s shoulder with pinpoint accuracy.
Blood exploded again.
Two arrows, symtrical left and right, ford an utterly humiliating posture, fastening him to the Divine Tree.
Exactly like when Ling Xi sealed him a thousand years ago.
No, this was even crueller than that.
A sealing is imprisonnt.
This was torture unto death.
“Ugh…”
Jiang Ci, cooperating with that enormous force, let out a muffled groan held tight in his throat.
“That is not Ling Xi, it is A Li.”
After delivering that line, Jiang Ci’s head fell weakly.
Stray hair covered his eyes, leaving only a jawline sared with blood yet stubborn to the extre.
Zhang Mouyi watched, holding his arms while observing the scene; Luo Yu shivered all over.
His mind still replayed his previous, near-mad performance.
He had thought he had played Chi Jie’s hatred to the hilt.
Now he watched the figure on the monitor, nailed to the tree and refusing even a single cry of pain.
He suddenly realized,
his own “madness” on stage looked pitifully thin before this fated, irrepressible tragedy.
In the scene,
Su Qingying’s hand reached for the last arrow.
She drew it out.
Slowly, she nocked it on the bowstring.
This ti, she pulled the bow much more slowly than before.
The cara gave her a tight facial close-up.
The face of “A Li” still wore a puppet-like numbness.
Yet the arrow tip, under everyone’s gaze, moved slowly.
Finally, it aid at Jiang Ci again.
Aid at the center of the barely visible crack embroidered in the red costu over his chest with the finest silver thread.
The location of the demon core crack.
This was Chi Jie’s final instruction.
He wanted A Li to personally shatter Ye Chen’s last vestige of life.
Behind the monitors, Zhang Mouyi stared at Su Qingying.
At that mont,
he caught an incredibly subtle, barely perceptible motion.
Su Qingying’s arm holding the bowstring showed a faint tremor, utterly inconsistent with a “controlled” state...
A tremble.
It was so small that without a high-definition close-up, it would have been invisible.
It ca from the depths of the soul: a resistance.
A Li’s remaining consciousness using its last strength to fight the invasion of demonic power.
She was crying out.
Begging.
No.
Don’t kill him.
Zhang Mouyi behind the monitor began shaking uncontrollably.
A masterstroke!
This was the pinnacle of Su Qingying’s empathy with the character, the ultimate manifestation of top-tier acting!
She did not act “struggling.”
She enacted the dying embers after the struggle had failed.
And this planted the deepest, most painful seed for the emotional explosion to co!
“Release…”
Zhang Mouyi squeezed the word out through his teeth in a breathy whisper.
As if he feared making a louder sound would disturb the actors’ state.
In the end,
that tremor was ruthlessly suppressed by the demonic power.
Her arm returned to absolute stillness.
Su Qingying let go.
The third arrow shot straight for Ye Chen’s demon core.
At the exact mont the arrow left the string,
a soft snap.
The crimson magatama prop on Su Qingying’s brow, the core of her demonic power, shattered without warning.
It split in two and fell to the ground.
Ti was pressed into slow motion at that instant.
The broken magatama.
The arrow flying toward the heart.
Su Qingying’s once hollow, scattered eyes.
Chaos withdrew rapidly.
Clarity, laced with boundless terror, flooded in!
Her consciousness returned.
She saw clearly.
She saw the arrow leaving the string.
She saw the arrow’s trajectory.
She saw, even more clearly, the figure nailed to the tree with two arrows, blood-soaked, about to have his heart pierced by her own hand—Ye Chen.
Boom!
Zhang Mouyi sprang up from his director’s chair!
He shoved the equipnt in front of him aside and stared at the monitor, at that face filled with horror and despair.
He grabbed the walkie-talkie and barked into it.
“She’s breaking free!”
“Yes! Yes!!”
“All cara positions! All cara positions on her!!”
“Qingying!!”
Zhang Mouyi’s voice distorted with excitent, a manic, fanatical fervor.
“From now on, the stage is yours alone!”
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