Chapter 387: Who on Earth Uses a Scalpel to Eat Steak?
Where was the promised “healing”?
Does the Publicity Team have some kind of misunderstanding about “touching the nation”?
This is clearly “horrifying the nation”!
As the words fell, a blade flashed.
“Ugh—”
Someone in the back row made a dry retching sound of physical discomfort.
Jiang Ci covered his forehead in despair. It’s over. This isn’t “a big reveal right in your face,” this is “execution right in your face.”
He instinctively glanced sideways at his mother beside him.
Chu Hong sat there, her back ramrod straight.
The theater was dimly lit, yet her eyes were shockingly bright.
Faced with her son’s “psychopathic serial killer” appearance on the screen, she didn’t even furrow her brows.
“Mom…” Jiang Ci leaned over guiltily, lowering his voice to explain, “Um, this is artistic license. That meat is synthetic…”
Chu Hong turned her head and swept a glance at him.
The calmness in that look made Jiang Ci’s heart race with panic.
“Good knife skills.” Chu Hong withdrew her gaze,
staring at Shen Qingyuan’s technique of slicing through skin and flesh on the screen, her tone flat. “Like slaughtering a chicken. Quite efficient.”
Jiang Ci: ”…”
Is this something a biological mother should say?
Before Jiang Ci could recover from his mother’s “dry humor,”
the plot on screen took a sharp turn, a sense of oppression crashing over the audience.
Zhao Zhen’s “Wang Dachui” made his entrance.
A thoroughbred mad dog.
He didn’t need lines; he just needed to stand there.
His gaze, hungry and vicious like a wolf, fixed on the prisoner, was enough to make people’s legs go weak.
Next was Chen Mo’s “Mr. Kobayashi.”
The sound of an abacus.
Before this, no one could have imagined that the crisp sound of an abacus could be more terrifying than gunfire.
He sat in the blood-stained interrogation room, expressionlessly flicking the abacus beads.
Every number he spat out represented the conversion price of a human life.
“One bullet costs seven cents. Cremation requires one yuan and twenty cents.”
Chen Mo pushed up his glasses, his voice cold. “The cost-effectiveness is too low. I recommend live burial. Saves money.”
“All villains.”
Someone muttered in the darkness.
The entire theater’s atmosphere had dropped to rock bottom.
The audience had been tricked—they came to cry, to be healed by that “nation’s good son,”
but instead felt like they’d been locked in a mental asylum full of lunatics.
This psychological gap was gradually turning fear into anger.
“What is this acting! It’s so oppressive!”
“How could Jiang Ci take on such a role?”
“Traitor! Pervert! It makes me sick just looking at it!”
Curses began to rise from various corners of the theater.
Li Li had initially tried to defend her idol a couple of times,
but as the plot progressed, she too fell silent.
She turned her head, looking at Jiang Ci, who was curled up beside her,
her eyes filled with strangeness and terror.
This sense of dissonance was too strong.
Sitting beside her was clearly that neighborly older brother who would sneak her apples.
But the elegant demon on the screen, with the same face, was doing the cruelest things.
Which one was the real Jiang Ci?
The plot arrived at the famous “cake scene.”
He Xiaoping’s Gu Wanbai, carrying a birthday cake she made herself, pushed open the door of the Shen Mansion with a heart full of joy.
Greeting her was a room full of Japanese officers and traitor compradors.
And sitting at the head of the table, with a mocking look, was Shen Qingyuan.
That despair, from brimming with anticipation to plummeting into an icy abyss, was portrayed by He Xiaoping with utter perfection.
“Well, well, Miss Gu.” Shen Qingyuan swirled his red wine glass, looking at her as if she were garbage. “That shabby smell, don’t stink up my distinguished guests.”
“Scumbag!”
Li Li, furious, slammed the crushed popcorn bucket onto the floor,
her eyes rimmed red. “How could Ci-ge be like this! Gu Wanbai loved him so much!”
On screen, Shen Qingyuan took the cake, casually scooped a large piece, and threw it on the floor.
A wolfhound pounced on it.
“A beast like this is also worthy of tasting the craftsmanship of the Gu family’s eldest lady.”
Shen Qingyuan said with a smile, in fluent Japanese, to the Japanese officer beside him.
That smile was as blinding as could be.
“Slap!”
A viewer angrily slapped the armrest.
“Can I get a refund for this movie? I don’t want to watch anymore. It’s too suffocating!”
“To climb the social ladder, he becomes a dog for the Japanese, even humiliating his childhood sweetheart. Is he even human?”
Overwhelming malice surged like a tide, threatening to drown Jiang Ci, who was shrinking in his seat.
Just then.
[Ding!]
[Heartbreak Value +188 detected.]
[Source: Chu Hong.]
Jiang Ci was stunned.
He turned to look at his mother.
Amidst the chaotic clamor of curses, Chu Hong still sat straight.
Only, the hand resting on her knee had, at some point, clenched tightly.
She was staring intently at the screen.
There, Shen Qingyuan had his back to everyone. The wine glass in his hand had been crushed by him.
Crimson wine mixed with blood from his palm dripped down between his fingers, splashing onto the floor into shocking splatters of blood.
The camera gave an extremely quick, extremely concealed close-up—
It was Shen Qingyuan’s trembling eyelashes and the flash of pain that flickered in the depths of his eyes.
Everyone else was cursing him as a dog, a traitor, heartless and unjust.
Only Chu Hong saw that bleeding hand.
“Does it hurt?”
Chu Hong suddenly asked a seemingly random question. Her voice was very soft, drowned out by the surrounding noise.
Jiang Ci’s heart clenched. “Mom, what did you say?”
Chu Hong didn’t answer.
She slowly loosened her fist, her gaze becoming somewhat distant.
“Well acted.” Chu Hong said quietly. “Acted so convincingly.”
At that moment, Jiang Ci suddenly understood where his mother’s +188 Heartbreak Value came from.
She wasn’t heartbroken for Gu Wanbai.
She was aching for that “Shen Qingyuan” who had to wear a mask, trampling his beloved into the mud to protect her.
Even more, she was aching for her son, who had to understand this kind of extreme pain to be able to portray such a role.
The atmosphere in the theater had become unbearably oppressive. Some viewers were already getting up to leave.
“Let’s go, let’s go. Watching this raises my blood pressure.” A middle-aged man grumbled as he stood up.
On the screen, the shot didn’t linger long on Shen Qingyuan’s back as he crushed the glass.
The scene cut to an even more suffocating setting.
A dimly lit church.
He Xiaoping’s Gu Wanbai, wearing a pure white wedding dress.
Standing opposite her was a simple, honest-looking fat merchant, his face beaming with joy.
“This… she’s getting married?” Li Li’s sobs choked off.
“She’s not waiting for Ci… for Shen Qingyuan anymore?”
No one answered her.
The Priest was conducting the inquiry when, at that moment, the wooden church door was pushed open a crack.
Gu Wanbai’s body stiffened.
The camera locked onto her face, capturing the subtle tremors of her muscles.
That struggle—wanting to look back but being nailed in place by despair—was transmitted through the big screen to every viewer.
“Look back! Hurry up and look back!” a female viewer couldn’t help but shout out.
However, Gu Wanbai did not.
A scalding tear slid from the corner of her tightly closed eye. She opened her eyes,
and towards the man before her who could offer her stability, she pulled out a perfect smile.
“I do.”
Three words, nailed fiercely into the hearts of all the viewers.
“Damn it!” The middle-aged man who had been about to leave sat back down, punching the armrest.
“Is the male lead dead? Just watching his woman marry someone else?!”
The camera seemed to have heard his roar.
It turned, panning to the very last row of the church.
In the shadows, the man in the gray trench coat, his hat brim pulled extremely low—who else could it be but Shen Qingyuan?
He had been there the whole time.
When the words “I do” reached him, a hint of relaxation escaped his tense body.
But when he raised his hand, the audience clearly saw
his hand was trembling violently.
He turned and, against the light, amidst the flurry of congratulatory applause, pushed the door open and left alone.
Dead silence filled the theater.
Everyone was stunned by this wordless farewell.
Anger began to recede, replaced by an indescribable sadness and confusion.
On screen, the wedding ended.
Gu Wanbai, soul lost, walked past the last row and, as if guided by a ghost, stopped.
On the seat where Shen Qingyuan had sat lay half of an old theater ticket, worn yellow from handling.
When she picked it up and saw the play written on it, it was as if her soul had been sucked out.
Holding that half of a small ticket, she silently crouched down, buried her face in her knees, her shoulders shaking violently.
At that moment, the theater erupted into a chorus of sobs.
“Wuwuwu… it’s too tragic… why did they end up like this…”
Li Li was already crying too hard to form complete sentences.
Even Chu Hong beside Jiang Ci quietly pulled a tissue from her pocket and gently dabbed the corner of her eye.
Afterwards, on screen, the scene cut to a late night.
Shen Qingyuan sat alone in the empty living room. The music score that had been knocked over was scattered on the floor.
He didn’t call a Servant. Instead, he crouched down himself, picking up the sheets one by one.
His movements were eerily slow.
He wasn’t just picking them up; he was sorting them.
He held each sheet of music in his hand, examining it, his fingers gently stroking the notes on it.
“Is he crazy? Acting out picking up some stupid paper for so long?”
The middle-aged man who had just been crying complained impatiently again, his emotions so complex he desperately needed an outlet.
However.
Just then.
From a corner, an old man who had been silent the whole time suddenly let out a sharp, urgent gasp.
“That’s not right…”
The old man’s voice trembled, especially clear in the slightly quieter moment.
“Those aren’t musical notes…” The old man stared intently at the music score magnified in the close-up on the screen. “Length, interval, pause…”
The surrounding viewers, drawn by the old man’s odd behavior, looked over.
They saw the old man gripping the armrest, his lips quivering.
“That’s… Morse code!”
“He’s using the music score to transmit intelligence!!”