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 ng'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 imdiately. 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 ng 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 ng seed to sense sothing and slowly raised her head.
Their eyes t in the air.
Xia ng'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 ng 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 argunt 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 extre demands on the actors' emotional explosiveness and control.
To have the current Xia ng perform this scene?
Everyone's gaze instinctively turned towards Xia ng in the corner.
She stood there, body stiff.
"Xia ng, Jiang Ci, take your positions!"
Liu Guodong's voice rang out.
Xia ng'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 ng took a deep breath, shuffled her feet, and walked to stand opposite him.
"Begin!"
At Liu Guodong's command.
"Do you love ?"
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 ng.
"..."
Xia ng opened her mouth, but no sound ca out.
The mont 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 sha 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 sothing!" Jiang Ci's performance continued. He stepped closer, his emotions building layer by layer.
"I..." Xia ng 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 ng! What are you doing! Where are your lines? Your reaction?"
Xia ng 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 aning in his gaze was clear.
You caused this trouble, you fix it!
All the pressure, at this mont, shifted entirely onto Jiang Ci.
Feeling that gaze that seed 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 ng.
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 ng's heart.
Xia ng trembled violently all over.
She jerked her head up, glaring at him fiercely, not uttering a word.
That look seed to say: How dare you!
Jiang Ci completely ignored her anger.
Looking into her eyes, he continued in that sa unemotional, narrative tone, speaking slowly:
"Because every ti 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 shaful, being unprofessional ans 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 ng'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 ng's psychological defenses completely crumbled.
Tears, like a breached dam, surged out uncontrollably.
But this ti, she didn't collapse to the ground like yesterday.
The grievances and resentnt that had been pent up for twenty years, with nowhere to vent, found an outlet at this mont!
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 excitent. His thermos cup clattered to the ground, but he didn't even notice.
The mbers of the drama group were stunned.
Was this... breaking free from the cocoon and becoming a butterfly?
Imdiately, the system's prompt sounded in Jiang Ci's mind.
[Ding! Heartbreak Value detected from Xia ng 233!]
[Current Heartbreak Value balance: 767]
[Ding! Life span increased by 20 days!]
[Remaining life span: 141 days 8 hours...]
The performance ended.
Xia ng'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 ti, she relaxed her hands and said softly:
"Thank you..."
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