Chapter 42
His fingers slid quickly across the screen, but he couldn't help but curl his lips into a small, slightly silly smile, and even the roots of his ears were faintly tinged with a blush.
The drama "The Long Ballad" has premiered. In just two episodes, Lu Xiao's portrayal of Shen Yan, a young general burdened with blood feuds and enduring hardship, has stirred up far more ripples than expected, like a stone thrown into a lake.
On social media platforms, the hashtags "Shen Yan's killer gaze" and "Lu Xiao's acting skills" have skyrocketed in popularity, almost breaking through the charts. Comments are filled with exclamations of amazement: "Who is this newcomer actor? His eye acting is incredible!"
"The moment Chen Yan drew his sword, I was gone!"
"Such nuanced acting skills, a promising future!"
With just a slight sweep of her divine sense, Zhuohua sent a torrent of praise into her calm heart.
In her hundreds of thousands of years in the divine realm, she had seen the brilliance of the starry sky and experienced the bloody battles between gods and demons. The hustle and bustle and adoration of the mortal world should have been a distant and blurry scene for her, like watching a fire from across the river.
But at this moment, seeing Lu Xiao's expression—clearly overjoyed yet forcibly suppressing it, only daring to secretly browse comments in a corner—a soft, unprecedented feeling gently brushed against her long-dormant soul.
She stood up, the hem of her indigo Taoist robe brushing the ground, and walked silently behind Lu Xiao. He was so engrossed in watching her that he didn't even notice her approach until Zhuo Hua's cold voice rang out above him, startling him so much that his shoulders trembled slightly.
"What are you looking at so intently?"
Her voice wasn't loud, but it had a peculiar penetrating power that easily drowned out the surrounding noise.
Lu Xiao jerked his head up, nearly dropping his phone. He quickly turned off the screen and hid it behind his back, his movements so swift they seemed almost comical. A blush instantly spread from his ears to his cheeks. He cleared his throat, trying to regain his usual composure: "I...I wasn't looking at anything, just...just scrolling around."
His eyes darted around for a moment, but he couldn't resist the small, eager excitement he felt to share. He lowered his voice, his voice tinged with a touch of shy honesty: "It's the reviews for 'Chang Ge'... The audience was so enthusiastic, I'm a little... well, flattered."
He paused, then quickly added, as if trying to convince himself and explaining to her, "It's all thanks to the audience's love and support; we still need to keep working hard."
Zhuohua didn't speak, but simply gazed at him quietly. In those eyes that had once overlooked the millennia-long vicissitudes of the divine realm and seen through the illusions of countless gods and demons, Lu Xiao's current appearance was clearly reflected: his young face was vivid with excitement and shyness, his bright eyes were filled with the starlight of being recognized, and there was also that clarity and humility etched into his bones, which had not been washed away by the sudden wave.
This vitality, this "true self" that could be maintained even under the impact of immense joy, is like a faint but continuous light, quietly projecting into her divine realm that has been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years.
She nodded slightly, her tone calm and even, yet carrying a barely perceptible gentleness: "Yes, you acted well." She paused, then added, "Chen Yan, very good."
Those few simple words instantly made Lu Xiao's eyes light up with an astonishing brilliance. He grinned, revealing a radiant smile that was completely unreserved, casting aside all pretense of composure and leaving only pure joy.
"Action!"
On the set of "Dark Night Lantern," the atmosphere instantly became tense. Zhuo Hua, who plays Qingwei, a Taoist successor, and Lu Xiao, who plays Moyan, the lantern bearer, are currently following a strange clue and have arrived at an abandoned mortuary.
The scene was eerie, with the dilapidated coffin and white banners carefully arranged by the prop team rustling under the blower, and the air filled with a specially made "rotten dust" smell.
Zhuohua stood before several fragments of decaying coffin wood, her indigo Taoist robe appearing particularly solemn in the deliberately cast, deep blue overhead light. She lowered her gaze, her eyes falling on several deep, haphazard scratches etched into the wood grain on the inside of the coffin. The camera zoomed in, focusing on her sharply defined jawline and her deep, unfathomable eyes.
“It’s not a zombie.” Her voice wasn’t loud, but it clearly pierced through the eerie background sound effects, carrying a chilling insight into the truth. “It’s a human.” The three words were resolute.
The camera shifts to Mo Yan, played by Lu Xiao. The prop lantern in his hand emits a dim, flickering light, illuminating the fleeting surprise and subsequent seriousness on his face. His fingers, holding the lantern, unconsciously tighten, his knuckles turning slightly white.
He looked up at Zhuohua, his Adam's apple bobbing, before speaking in a deep voice, each word carrying the unique alertness and questioning of the Lantern Bearer: "A person? Daoist Qingwei, how do you know?"
Zhuohua did not answer immediately. She stretched out her right hand, the wide sleeve slipping down naturally to reveal a section of her fair wrist. Her index and middle fingers were joined together, the tips seemingly surrounded by a faint light that was difficult to see with the naked eye. With an ancient and mysterious trajectory, she slowly traced the scratch marks on the coffin fragments in mid-air.
It was as if invisible talismans were coalescing in the air. Her movements were fluid and precise, carrying an inhuman sense of rhythm, an instinct honed over countless years.
“The claw marks are of varying depths and in a chaotic direction,” the faint light at her fingertips flickered as she spoke, “the marks from the knuckles are traces of a struggle for survival, not the stiffening force of a zombie.”
Her explanation was concise and powerful, her gaze sharp as a knife as she swept over the engravings: "Here, resentment lingers and does not dissipate; what is trapped here is a living soul, not a dead one."
"Cut! Great! That's a good take!" The director's excited voice broke the tense atmosphere on set. The lighting technician began adjusting the lighting, preparing for the next shot.
The faint light at Zhuohua's fingertips vanished instantly, and the aura of a Taoist master who had just exuded insight into illusions and mastered profound mysteries dissipated like the tide, transforming her back into the composed actress. She turned around, her gaze habitually searching for that figure in the crowd.
Lu Xiao was standing on the outer edge, still holding the prop lantern in his hand. Unlike the other actors, he didn't immediately go to rest or drink water. Instead, he frowned slightly, his lips moving silently as he repeated the last line that belonged to Mo Yan over and over again: "The resentment is condensed and does not dissipate... a living soul... not a dead spirit..." His expression was focused, with an almost pious sense of polishing, as if he wanted to chew up, swallow, and then spit out the weight and emotion of each word until they became a part of him.
Zhuohua didn't go over to disturb him. She just watched quietly as he carved out a peaceful corner for himself in the noisy film set, immersing himself completely in the world of "Moyan".
This unwavering focus, this almost demanding refinement of her skills, was like an invisible string, gently stirring her tranquil heart once again.
In her divine life, her power came from her bloodline, her divine nature, and the laws of heaven and earth, but never from this kind of painstaking, mortal-like accumulation. This "clumsy" effort gave her a strange sense of awe.
The night was as dark as ink, seeping into every corner of the hotel room where the film crew was staying. The city lights outside the window appeared as distant, blurry spots of light. Zhuohua sat leaning against the headboard, holding a thick, ancient book in her hands, its pages yellowed and exuding the scent of time.
The soft light of the reading lamp illuminated her serene profile, her long eyelashes casting a small fan-shaped shadow beneath her eyes. The room was warmly heated, creating a cozy and tranquil atmosphere.
Suddenly, a deliberately lowered voice, filled with obvious confusion and repeated attempts, stubbornly penetrated the silence from the direction of the sofa.
“…For you, a thousand times over…” Lu Xiao’s voice was a little hoarse, obviously he had been practicing for a long time. He sat cross-legged on the carpet, with his back to the bed, wearing only simple cotton pajamas, his hair was a little messy from his own rubbing.
On the low table in front of him lay a well-worn script, next to a voice recorder. He read it once, paused, frowned, shook his head, and then changed to a lower, more subdued tone: "For you... a thousand times over..." Still unsatisfied, he scratched his hair in frustration, his shoulders slumping.
Zhuohua lifted her gaze from the pages of the book and silently fell on his somewhat thin yet stubborn back.
“Hua Hua,” Lu Xiao suddenly turned his head without warning. The light illuminated the bloodshot eyes that were red from exhaustion, but more than that, it revealed an almost stubborn, earnest search for answers. He looked at her, his brows furrowed, with the unique confusion and longing of an actor facing crucial lines.
"What must Mo Yan be feeling right now with the line 'For you, a thousand times over'? Is it despair? Is it a desperate gamble? Or... something deeper? I feel like I can't quite grasp that point... How should I pronounce it to make it have soul?"
His eyes were clear and focused, filled with complete trust and reliance, looking straight into Zhuohua's eyes.
"For you, a thousand times over..."
These seven simple words, like an invisible key, unexpectedly and forcefully pierced a corner of Zhuohua's heart that had been sealed by millennia of ice! Her heart clenched sharply, followed by a strange and sharp throbbing pain.
soul?
She fought tirelessly for the survival of the divine realm, unleashing divine power like a cascading galaxy, while her generals fell like rain. Did she ever ask about the "soul"? Sacrifice and protection on the battlefield between gods and demons were her duty, an instinct imprinted in her divine bones, grand yet cold.
This vow made by a mortal, born of deep affection, carried such specific and subtle pain, such reckless determination, such humble yet immense power, crashing heavily against her heart, which had been dormant for hundreds of thousands of years!
The ice made a faint, almost inaudible cracking sound. A strange, scalding warmth, carrying a long-lost sour taste, quietly seeped from the cracks, instantly spreading to every part of her body. Her fingers, gripping the book pages, tightened almost imperceptibly, her fingertips turning slightly white.
She looked into his bloodshot yet still stubborn eyes, and at his dry, chapped lips from repeated practice. After a few seconds of silence, she closed the ancient book in her hands, her voice lower than usual, with a strange hoarseness, as if suppressing some surging emotion: "There's no need to think about the 'soul'."
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