comedy
The name "Lu Yan" was like a pebble thrown into stagnant water, creating cold and complex ripples in Jiang Mo's heart. The man she once regarded as an older brother, who withdrew all resources when she needed support the most and took half of her team to start his own business, was now tied to "Mingyan Capital" and parachuted in as the CEO of Xingyao Brokerage.
This is far more than just a workplace reunion. It's a precise and vicious attack. Shen Huaiming not only understands her weaknesses in her career but also knows her old emotional wounds. He sent the person who knows her best and knows exactly how to hurt her.
Jiang Mo stood in front of the island counter, watching the bowl of porridge gradually lose its heat, and suddenly lost all appetite. She poured the porridge back into the thermos, tightened the lid, and moved slowly and mechanically. She needed some time to process this information and rebuild her inner defenses.
The second day of filming resumed with the theme "Artificial Intelligence and Creative Industries." To lighten the mood of the inspection day, the production team arranged a lighthearted segment where guests tried using AI to randomly generate scripts and then improvise.
Jiang Mo arrived at the lab on time. She wore a warm orange oversized sweater paired with simple jeans, and a perfectly timed smile on her face, as if the person who had been troubled by the name "Lu Yan" the night before was just an illusion. She even took the initiative to make a little joke with Researcher Zhou about AI aesthetics, which made several staff members around her laugh.
However, when her eyes briefly met Shen Zhiyan's in mid-air, she caught a fleeting look of scrutiny behind his glasses. His "facial recognition system" always seemed to accurately capture the subtle nuances beneath her emotional mask.
In the improvisation segment, Jiang Mo drew a sci-fi romance scene generated by AI, with extremely chaotic logic. She read it only once and then recited it almost word for word. During her performance, she used an exaggerated and somewhat absurd comedic style to perfectly portray the incoherent and sentimental lines. She even added a few impromptu gestures, perfectly hitting the self-contradictory humor of the script itself.
The audience erupted in laughter, even the director couldn't help but chuckle off-camera. After the performance, Researcher Zhou, wiping away tears of laughter, said to Shen Zhiyan beside him, "Miss Jiang's reaction was absolutely brilliant! She turned the ordinary into the extraordinary! Her comedic talent is off the charts!"
Shen Zhiyan didn't laugh. He looked at Jiang Mo, who had relaxed from her performance and still had a self-deprecating smile on her lips, and suddenly spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but it clearly reached her ears:
"By exploiting highly contextual dislocations and logical paradoxes, absurdity is deliberately created and amplified, thereby transforming potential embarrassment and criticism into laughter from the audience. This is an efficient emotional defense mechanism that can quickly establish a psychological safety zone under specific social pressures."
The laboratory fell silent for a moment. Everyone was stunned, including Jiang Mo.
He used a set of cold social psychology and communication terminology to precisely dissect her "comedic talent".
Jiang Mo's smile faded. She turned around to face Shen Zhiyan directly, raised an eyebrow, and asked, "So, Dr. Shen, according to your analysis, I should have cried my eyes out over that rubbish script just now to be considered a genuine expression of emotion?"
“No.” Shen Zhiyan pushed up his glasses, his tone still calm, but with an unprecedented focus. “Your strategy choice is highly optimized. I’m just analyzing the cognitive model behind it.” He paused, then added, as if stating an objective fact, “This ability to transform negative stimuli into positive outputs is… impressive.”
He spoke the last two words somewhat awkwardly, as if he wasn't used to using such words that carried a subjective sense of praise.
Researcher Zhou quickly tried to smooth things over: "Oh dear, Professor Shen just likes to use data to support his points. Ms. Jiang, please don't mind him, he's just praising you in a roundabout way!"
Xiao Chen muttered to himself, "Teacher Shen once said that my presentations sounded like 'unfiltered noise'..."
Looking at Shen Zhiyan's earnest academic discussion, Jiang Mo's initial displeasure vanished, replaced by a slight urge to laugh. She tilted her head, a hint of provocation in her voice: "Dr. Shen's analysis is so thorough, why don't you give it a try? I'll teach you; I guarantee it'll be much more fun than your 'facial motion coding system'."
Shen Zhiyan was clearly stunned, as if he had never considered this possibility before. He opened his mouth, but in the end only uttered two stiff words: "No."
During the lunch break, everyone chatted in the rest area. Researcher Zhou was still savoring the impromptu performance from that morning, and said to Jiang Mo with a smile, "Ms. Jiang, that little bit you just did would definitely be a huge hit in a theater. Did you study comedy before?"
“I learned it all by myself.” Jiang Mo poked at the salad on her plate with her fork, her tone light. “Life is bitter enough as it is, you have to find some sweetness to eat. If you tell disgusting things as jokes, they won’t be so disgusting.”
She spoke casually, but Xiao Chen was somewhat moved and couldn't help but interject, "Miss Jiang, you are so optimistic."
“It’s not optimism,” Jiang Mo corrected him, a smile playing on her lips but her eyes clear, “it’s the instinct to survive.”
At this moment, Shen Zhiyan, who had been silently browsing the tablet, suddenly spoke up without looking up, as if adding a data point: "Xiao Chen, send me a copy of the campus art festival video in the encrypted folder on your computer, numbered U7."
Xiao Chen exclaimed "Huh?", then seemed to remember something, her face flushed red, and she stammered, "Teacher Shen... that... that video..."
Researcher Zhou asked curiously, "What video? Does Professor Shen have a dark past?"
Shen Zhiyan then raised his head, his expression unchanged: "It's not a dark history. It's a recording of the play 'Love on a Cosmic Scale' that the Physics Department participated in during the campus arts festival in our junior year. I was responsible for writing some of the lines that involved spacetime curvature."
Everyone was stunned, including Jiang Mo. She couldn't imagine Shen Zhiyan standing on the stage reciting his lines.
Under Shen Zhiyan's calm yet intense gaze, Xiao Chen had no choice but to obediently search for the video. Researcher Zhou burst into even louder laughter: "My God! Professor Shen, you have this kind of history? I have to see it!"
Jiang Mo looked at Shen Zhiyan. He remained expressionless, but the familiar slight blush on his earlobes reappeared. She suddenly understood that his bringing up this matter might not have been unintentional. He was responding to her "provocation" that morning in an extremely clumsy way, showing her a fragment of Shen Zhiyan from the "past," a fragment she had never known before, existing beyond cold data.
The day's recording ended in an unprecedentedly relaxed atmosphere. Although the shadow cast by "Lu Yan" still lingered, Jiang Mo felt as if a new strength had been injected into her heart. A feeling of being understood, even awkwardly "responded" to.
As she finished work, she passed by Shen Zhiyan's workstation; he was intently watching the screen. She stopped and whispered, "Thank you."
Shen Zhiyan looked up at her, somewhat puzzled.
"Thank you for your 'survival instinct' theory, and..." she smiled, "...your 'Love on a Cosmic Scale'."
Shen Zhiyan paused for a moment, then awkwardly pushed up his glasses, looked away, and hummed in response.
That evening, Jiang Mo received a video clip of the play that Xiao Chen had secretly sent her. The picture was blurry and the sound was noisy. On stage, Shen Zhiyan was wearing an ill-fitting suit and black-rimmed glasses, earnestly reciting lines about "singularity" and "light cone." Although he was inexplicably clumsy and awkward, he had a strangely earnest charm.
As she was looking at it, Linda called, her voice grave:
"MoMo, Lu Yan has made his move. He's released information saying that back in the 'Floating Life' crew, you not only acted like a diva and refused to act, but also... you even tried to seduce the lead actor, but he, as your agent, forcibly suppressed it. Now several partners are asking me if it's true."
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