Chapter 90 My acting addiction is acting up
As soon as the car drove out of the Marshal's Mansion, Xie Xun realized something was wrong.
It was clearly raining, but the raindrops suddenly stopped mid-air, then flowed upwards in unison. A cigarette vendor on the roadside had just lit a match when the flame "poof"ed and disappeared...
Even more bizarrely, all the pedestrians maintained stiff smiles, their movements repeating themselves like marionettes.
Is this a time-travel scenario? Or are these all actions of NPCs?
For some reason, Xie Xun suddenly remembered that in this world, it seemed possible to wash one's hair while standing upside down.
"Don't worry about it,"
Fu Qinghuai played with Xie Xun's hair, laughing nonchalantly, "This crappy place needs to be rewound three or four times a day."
As the car passed the clock tower, Xie Xun watched in disbelief as the hour hand spun wildly counterclockwise.
"Close your eyes,"
Fu Qinghuai suddenly pulled him into his arms, his military jacket completely covering him, and said in a deep voice, "It needs to be reset."
In an instant, the entire street began to distort and melt, and the buildings collapsed and deformed like wax figures.
When Xie Xun opened his eyes again and stepped out of his arms, the view outside the window had transformed into a bustling market under the blazing sun, with vendors' cries rising and falling, as if the rainy alley had never existed.
"Lieutenant, stop the car."
After saying that, Fu Qinghuai casually took a string of candied hawthorns from the vendor outside the window and handed it to Xie Xun, saying, "You'll get used to it. Anyway, it will turn back to normal at the appointed time."
The adjutant tossed a few coins out the car window without batting an eye, clearly used to it.
Xie Xun, biting into a candied hawthorn, looked at the ever-changing street scenes outside the car window and suddenly understood why Fu Qinghuai was so obsessed with the real world.
Anyone trapped in this kind of glitch-like place for a hundred years would go insane.
Xie Xun suddenly asked him, "Do you read these things every day?"
"I've been watching it for a hundred years."
Fu Qinghuai bent down, took a bite of the candied hawthorn that he had just bitten, and chuckled, "So I've come across something new..."
His gaze swept over Xie Xun's face. "I'm really reluctant to part with him."
Just then, the wheels suddenly ran over a puddle of rainwater flowing upstream, and Xie Xun was jolted into his arms. The loose hem of his shirt slipped down his shoulder, revealing the fair skin beneath.
Xie Xun steadied himself in his arms, but instead of getting up, he looked up at him from that position.
"A hundred years... staring at these rewinding scenes every day?"
"Isn't that right?"
Fu Qinghuai pulled him closer to his lap, rubbing his chin against the top of his head, and said in a wronged tone, "In the first ten years, I counted how many resets there were, but later I got too lazy to count."
He twirled a strand of the person's soft hair with his fingers, "Until today, a little beauty suddenly fell from the sky—"
Why was Liu Wanning sucked in?
Xie Xun suddenly interrupted his sob story and asked directly, "Does this have anything to do with you?"
The air in the carriage suddenly froze, and even the adjutant couldn't help but narrow his eyes, secretly observing through the rearview mirror.
Fu Qinghuai's expression changed slightly, but he quickly put on his usual carefree, roguish smile again.
"What, you think I'm the one who did this?"
He grabbed Xie Xun by the back of the neck, forcing him to look up, and laughed arrogantly, "If I could just grab anyone and bring them in, I would have filled the room with live people to play with long ago. Why would I need to chase after a little beauty like you?"
Xie Xun slapped his hand away, a mocking smile appearing in his fox-like eyes.
"Chasing after every living person he sees? So Commander Fu isn't picky about food at all."
He added with a sneer, his words dripping with mockery, "It seems that this century of solitude has really taken a toll on you."
Fu Qinghuai suddenly grabbed his mischievous hand, a dark fire igniting in his eyes.
"If I weren't picky, I would have fucked you so hard you couldn't get out of bed the moment we met."
"Neuropathy."
These blunt words made Xie Xun's ears turn slightly red, but he could also sense that Fu Qinghuai was deliberately changing the subject.
He stopped asking questions and let Fu Qinghuai lead him around the city.
A black car travels through an inverted street scene.
Fu Qinghuai first took him to a silk shop and insisted on taking his measurements to make clothes, saying that the Suzhou embroidery masters there had superb skills.
Xie Xun let him do as he pleased, and then he saw the old master craftsman, like an NPC whose command had been triggered, pick up a ruler to measure his dimensions, but was glared at by Fu Qinghuai and turned back.
Then, he pressed the person down in front of the dressing mirror, snatched the measuring tape, and wrapped it around the person's waist.
"Two feet one inch."
Fu Qinghuai deliberately tightened the ruler by half an inch, pressed against Xie Xun's back, and laughed, "Your waist is so slender, no wonder you sing female roles."
Xie Xun stomped on his foot, "Let go once you've measured it."
What's the rush?
Fu Qinghuai took the opportunity to pinch Xie Xun's side, his voice close to Xie Xun's ear, ambiguous and sticky, "We haven't measured the length of the pants yet."
Xie Xun didn't push him away again, wanting to see what the mirror spirit was planning to do next.
This person claimed to be helping him find someone, but in reality, he was taking him around the city, clearly trying to find a way to take him shopping.
"This fabric suits you."
Fu Qinghuai held up a piece of peach-colored satin on his shoulder, a long-lost, vibrant smile on his handsome face.
Xie Xun caught a glimpse of the newsboy walking past the window for the third time and suddenly understood.
This person has been trapped in the same old routine for too long. When he finally catches a new face, he can't wait to make up for all the streets he hasn't visited in a century.
Anyway, he's not in a hurry, so what's wrong with playing along?
What's more, this kind of time-traveling spectacle is quite novel and even more fun than a theme park.
After ordering his clothes, he was taken to a teahouse to watch a play.
On stage, an artist was singing "Qinhuai Scenery" while holding a sanxian (a three-stringed plucked instrument). When he sang "Jasmine Blossoms," he suddenly stopped, his eyes strangely turning backward. He rewound and sang the same song three or four times.
Fu Qinghuai continued peeling sunflower seeds expressionlessly, pushing the mountain of kernels over.
Just as Xie Xun picked up a melon seed and popped it into his mouth, the lanterns along the entire street suddenly started flashing wildly.
The storyteller's voice kept repeating at the beginning of the story, and the tea drinkers froze on the spot, holding their teacups, their eyes all turning to them, and a strange upward curve slowly appeared on their lips!
Hot tea dripped from their stiff fingers, soaking the front of their blue shirts with a dark water stain.
Even so, they maintained stiff smiles, their necks making clicking sounds, and their heads turned a full ninety degrees.
"Close your eyes."
Fu Tinghan suddenly pulled the person into his arms, using his military jacket to shield them from the strange gazes, his voice unusually tense.
The moment Xie Xun closed his eyes, he heard the sound of porcelain shattering.
When I opened my eyes again, the teahouse had become a dilapidated City God Temple. On the cobweb-covered offering table sat the same dish of melon seeds, the angle of which hadn't changed.
"I'm about to get into acting."
Fu Qinghuai pulled him up, stepped over the threshold, and noticed two theater tickets had appeared between his fingers. "Hurry up, we need to sneak into the theater troupe before the show starts."
Xie Xun frowned, but only the Mirror Spirit Fu Qinghuai understood the rules of this world.
He suppressed his panic and decided to take things one step at a time, no matter what he encountered.
Outside the temple, the sounds of singing drifted over, and hundreds of paper effigies were applying makeup to the empty stage, their faces smeared with rouge as if they had just drunk blood.
Suddenly, a paper figure wearing boots turned its head and gave them a sinister smile with lips dotted with vermilion:
"The star has arrived?"
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