Chapter 396: The Self-Cultivation of a Corpse and Fifty Yuan Tuition Fees
Night had fallen, and the rain was gradually letting up.
The film crew quickly cleared out the abandoned textile factory and moved in a grand procession to the “Golden Rose” nightclub.
This place was truly first-rate.
The moment they stepped inside, the fermented smells of tobacco and alcohol assaulted their nostrils.
In pursuit of that raw, visceral sense of realism, Gu Zhiyuan didn’t use background actors. He rented out the entire venue, effectively “hiring” the guys who usually watched over the place and the hostesses who worked the tables along with it.
“Positions, everyone! You ladies over there, stop spitting those melon seed shells on the floor! We’re making a movie here, not having a tea party!”
Gu Zhiyuan was shouting through a megaphone, his voice already hoarse and cracking.
However, the scene was pure chaos.
The real-life dancers and thugs weren’t having any of it.
They sat in the booths, legs crossed, watching the man in the ill-fitting suit in the middle of the dance floor as if he were a circus monkey.
The scene “Chen San Teaches Acting” had already been cut three times.
According to the script, these people were supposed to show a kind of “ignorant contempt” towards Chen San.
But right now, what they were showing was “the joy of watching an idiot.”
“Cut!”
Gu Zhiyuan rolled the script into a tube and smacked it hard against the monitor. “Wrong! The emotion is wrong! You’re supposed to be mocking him, not watching a comedy skit!”
In one of the booths, a head hostess with big, permed waves “pfft” spat out a melon seed shell and rolled her eyes. “Director, you can’t blame us for this. Look at his pathetic state, and he’s going to teach us how to act?”
“Tell him to go wash the grease off his face in the bathroom first. It’s disgusting to look at.”
A wave of raucous laughter erupted around them.
“Yeah, who is this uncle anyway? Is he not right in the head?”
The crew members on site looked grim. Lin Wan was about to get up to intervene when a hand pressed down on her shoulder.
On the monitor, the “Chen San” who had been hanging his head low the whole time, moved.
Jiang Ci had not left his role.
With his messy, bird’s nest hair and a placating smile plastered on his face, he casually swiped a handful of peanuts from a nearby table.
Tossing them into his mouth one by one, he sauntered unsteadily to the center of the dance floor.
“Sister, you can’t say that.”
Jiang Ci chewed on the peanuts. “This acting business, it’s just like your games of finger-guessing and keeping clients company while drinking. It’s a skilled trade.”
“It’s all about the setup, the development, the turn, the conclusion… it’s about… what’s that word again? Ah, right, a sense of belief.”
The head hostess was momentarily taken aback by his overly familiar manner, then sneered. “Oh ho, a ‘sense of belief’? Then why don’t you put on a show for us?”
“Do it well, and sister will buy you a drink tonight.”
“Forget the drink, it’s bad for the liver.”
Jiang Ci casually wiped the peanut dust from his hands onto his clothes, but the light in his eyes suddenly sharpened and focused.
“Since all you bosses want to see, I’ll make a fool of myself.”
“I don’t have any other skills. I’ll just teach you all how to act… ‘dead’.”
“Dead?” The head hostess laughed. “Isn’t that just lying down?”
“That’s called sleeping, not dying.”
Jiang Ci raised a finger. “There are a thousand ways to die. Let’s start with a lively one—a heroic death!”
Before his words even finished.
Jiang Ci made rapid, exaggerated sound effects with his mouth: “Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! The Japs are coming to the village! Charge!”
Immediately after, his body began to convulse wildly.
His left foot tripped over his right, his hands clawed frantically at the air, his facial features twisted into a knot, his tongue stuck out long.
Finally, with a soft “splat,” he went limp and collapsed to the floor.
“Hahahahaha!”
The entire place erupted in laughter.
The head hostess laughed so hard she slapped her thigh, tears streaming from her eyes. “Oh my god, what the hell is this?”
“It looks like! It really looks like a circus monkey!”
Gu Zhiyuan frowned, wanting to call cut. This was too over-the-top, not the texture he wanted at all.
But Jiang Ci on the floor didn’t give him the chance.
He got up as if nothing had happened, patted the dust off his backside, his face still wearing that playful grin. “Lively, right? That’s called a ‘TV death,’ just for fun.”
“Next, I’ll give you folks something a bit more advanced—death by starvation.”
The laughter subsided slightly.
Everyone watched this eccentric man, curious to see what other tricks he had up his sleeve.
Jiang Ci slowly crouched down.
He curled himself into a tiny ball.
His hands began to claw at the empty air, his fingers stiff, spasming.
He grabbed a handful of non-existent “food,” trembling as he shoved it into his mouth.
“Huff… huff…”
Panting sounds came from his throat.
His cheeks rapidly hollowed out.
The surrounding laughter vanished.
The melon seeds in the head hostess’s hand stopped halfway to her mouth.
She looked at the person on the floor, and for some reason, a wave of uncomfortable chill suddenly rose in her heart.
That feeling reminded her of the stray dog back in her hometown that had starved to death by the roadside during a famine year.
It was so real it was nauseating.
Just as everyone held their breath, Jiang Ci suddenly stopped moving.
He still maintained that curled-up posture.
But the “vital energy” about him seemed to have been drained dry in an instant, as if by a pump.
Dead?
Someone instinctively leaned forward to look.
“This is called a ‘physical death.’”
Jiang Ci suddenly sat up straight, his voice turning cold.
All traces of playfulness had completely vanished from his face.
Revealing the pair of bottomless eyes beneath.
He looked around.
His gaze swept over those heavily made-up faces, over those souls rolling in the dust of the mundane world.
“The last kind.”
“Is called ‘the death of a nobody.’ No guns, no cannons, and no one knows. Just like… the dust on the ground.”
The rotating disco ball cast mottled spots of light, dizzying to the eyes.
Jiang Ci stood.
Then, without any preparatory movement.
He fell straight backward.
Thud!
The sound of the back of his head hitting the wooden floor heavily.
He just lay there.
The camera zoomed in.
A close-up focused on Jiang Ci’s face.
His eyes were wide open, staring straight up at the rotating, colored disco ball on the ceiling.
There had been light in those eyes, focused on a certain point.
But in that very second.
His pupils began to dilate.
That light, with an extremely subtle tremor of the eye muscles, gradually “went out.”
At that moment, what lay in the center of the dance floor was no longer Jiang Ci, nor was it Chen San.
It was a corpse.
A chill shot up from the soles of their feet straight to the crown of their heads.
The melon seeds in the head hostess’s hand “clattered” as they all spilled onto the floor.
She stood up, trembling, instinctively wanting to reach out and check Jiang Ci’s breathing.
Because the aura of death was so strong it gave her a delusion:
A murder had just happened here.
Someone had really died.
Chen Yi, standing at the front of the crowd, felt her eyes instantly redden.
She covered her mouth, not daring to make a sound.
What she saw wasn’t acting skill.
It was a kindred spirit.
It was the terror of struggling in the mire for a lifetime, only to vanish without a sound in the end.
Gu Zhiyuan forgot to call cut.
Everyone forgot they were filming.
That shudder rising from their feet rendered them immobile.
A full minute passed.
The “corpse” on the floor suddenly heaved its chest violently.
“Whew—”
Jiang Ci sucked in a huge gulp of air.
He sat up with a kip-up, rubbing the back of his head while grimacing in pain.
“Ouch, damn, this floor is really hard. Almost gave me a concussion.”
The eerie atmosphere dissipated.
Jiang Ci stretched out his grubby hand towards the girls who hadn’t yet snapped out of it.
“So? What do you think, bosses?”
Jiang Ci raised an eyebrow, a sly glint in his eyes. “Believe I have acting chops now? I’ll make this lesson cheap for you. Fifty bucks tuition per person, not too much, right?”
The background actors stood there dumbstruck, their eyes still holding remnants of the earlier fright.
The head hostess opened her mouth, but no words came out for a long time.
“Too expensive?”
Jiang Ci pouted. “Fine, thirty then. Can’t go any lower. My head’s still buzzing.”
Right at that moment.
From the shadows in the corner came the sound of high heels tapping against the floor.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The rhythm was steady, the aura formidable.
A middle-aged woman in a beige trench coat and sunglasses walked out.
She took off her sunglasses, revealing a pair of eyes that had seen it all—sharp, shrewd, and penetrating.
It was a face often seen in art films—the veteran actress, Song Mei.
The character she played in the film was precisely the renowned director “Sister Juan,” who discovered Chen San and changed his life.
Song Mei stopped at the edge of the dance floor, took out a stack of red banknotes from her handbag, and slapped them down on the table with a crisp sound.
The sound cut through the nightclub’s din.
“This money, I’ll pay.”