late at night.
4th floor, A8, Luming Villa.
A dim chandelier was lit in the leisure tea room. Under the chandelier, Jiang Que, who was sitting at a round table, stopped typing on the keyboard and stroked the side of his neck to relax it.
The filming of movies and TV shows slowed down his writing progress a lot, but fortunately, the story had already taken shape in his mind, and as long as he wrote according to the established outline, there would not be much deviation.
However, tonight he did not follow the outline completely. Instead, he made some adjustments to the outline - he laid the groundwork for a love line for the protagonist.
This has never happened in his previous books.
His lack of romantic experience had always left him with a dearth of inspiration. While he had tried writing before, his inability to deeply empathize with others led to his work being somewhat superficial, often bland and unsatisfactory. Over time, he gave up on the urge and settled on a clear niche for himself: the plot-driven genre.
However, today, everything has quietly changed.
The days spent with Song Yecheng seemed to have lit up some kind of new buff for him, causing his heart to often be filled with lingering emotions. So as soon as he had the idea of adding a love line, endless inspiration flowed into his mind like a spring.
Art really comes from life.
Jiang Que thought with emotion.
As he sighed, his eyes inadvertently swept across the lower right corner of the screen:
23:15
It’s so late?
Jiang Que was genuinely surprised. He had been immersed in the creative atmosphere brought about by the new inspiration and hadn't realized that time had passed so quickly.
At this moment, as the concept of time came back to life, the body responded immediately. The stomach suddenly "gurgled" softly, as if quietly complaining to the owner for mistreating it.
Jiang Que couldn't help laughing. Although the meal he and Song Yecheng had together could be considered dinner, it wasn't even five o'clock yet. Six or seven hours had passed by now, and he had almost digested it.
Thinking about it, he stood up and stretched, without turning off the computer, he turned around and walked towards the stairs, intending to go downstairs to cook some noodles to fill his stomach.
However, when he went down to the second floor, he hesitated for a moment, because he suddenly remembered that Song Yecheng seemed to have said before he left that he would bring back midnight snacks.
It’s quite late now. Isn’t he done with his work yet?
Or... ask him when he'll be back? I might as well not bring any midnight snacks. There's still plenty of tomato and beef brisket leftover from this afternoon. It should be delicious with a couple of bowls of noodles.
Having made up his mind, Jiang Que immediately took out his cell phone and called Song Yecheng.
The beeping sound of "waiting to be picked up" soon rang out. Jiang Que put his hand close to his ear and continued to walk slowly downstairs. Unexpectedly, he had just taken two steps when he suddenly heard a faint ring tone coming from behind.
Jiang Que paused, turned around and looked towards the second floor, and found that the sound actually came from the direction of the study.
Didn’t you bring your cell phone?
Jiang Que wondered.
But did Song Yecheng go to the study before going out?
It seems... not?
But he couldn't remember it clearly, so he could only blink in confusion, turn around and go up again.
As he stepped into the corridor, the source of the ringing sound became clearer and clearer. Jiang Que hung up the phone and walked straight to the study.
The sliding door of the study was half open. He reached out and gently pushed it to the side, and the door slid aside lightly.
There was no light on in the room. The dense bamboo forest outside the glass wall was cast into messy silhouettes by the moonlight, swaying like water waves, outlining a window grille-like outline in the room.
Jiang Que looked up and found that the desktop computer on the table was turned on, and in the faint blue light emitted by the display screen... a human face was reflected.
Jiang Que was almost startled, then said with a smile, "You're back? Why didn't you tell me?"
Song Yecheng, who was sitting in front of the computer, seemed to be in a trance, looking down at the screen of the mobile phone on the table which had just gone off. It was not until Jiang Que walked closer that he tilted his head slightly and looked at him.
The moment their eyes met, Jiang Que's heart suddenly skipped a beat. Song Yecheng's expression clearly showed nothing unusual, but for some reason, he inexplicably saw a hint of helplessness in his eyes.
Jiang Que didn't know where this feeling came from, and he forced a smile, almost at a loss: "What's wrong with you?"
As he spoke, he caught a glimpse of the computer screen next to him and found that there was a window open on it. Although the picture was still, judging from the progress bar at the bottom, it should be a video recording.
Seeing the timer in the upper left corner of the screen and the faint hood of the car below, he quickly realized: "Is this... a dashcam?"
This time Song Yecheng did not remain silent, but responded in a dull voice: "Yeah."
"Whose?"
Although there is more than one car in Song Yecheng's garage, none of the cars has the same color as the hood of the car in the video.
"Tang Yao's." Song Yecheng said.
His behavior at the moment was really abnormal, and the special action of checking the recorder, which was like collecting evidence, suddenly made Jiang Que nervous: "Did something happen to her?"
Hearing this question, Song Yecheng turned to look at him again. The complex emotions in his eyes were so intense that even Jiang Que, who was always good at reading people's expressions, couldn't accurately decipher the meaning. However, his tone remained calm: "No, this was recorded on the set of 'Heaven Will Snow'."
When he said this, his eyes were fixed on Jiang Que, with a look of inquiry mixed with confusion, as if he was trying to find something on that face.
However, Jiang Que just nodded, not quite understanding: "Then why are you watching this?"
He did not react to the "Tian Jiang Xue crew" and did not show any abnormality towards the scenes in the video. It was as if he was just a pure bystander, curious about an anecdote that had nothing to do with him.
This made Song Yecheng's confusion even more intense.
He asked, as if testing and also seeking confirmation: "Can't you tell where this is?"
Where is this?
This question confused Jiang Que, because Song Yecheng had already said that this was recorded on the set, so the location should obviously be the set, but he asked this question again now. Could it be that he was asking about the specific location where the recorder was filming?
Jiang Que turned his puzzled gaze back to the screen.
The video was paused at this moment, and the scene it presented was nothing special. It looked like just a place similar to a garage. If there was any difference, it was that there were some large and medium-sized equipment piled up in the open space not far in front of the car, and Jiang Que recognized those equipment - they were the wire ropes and martial arts equipment commonly used by the martial arts team of ancient costume dramas.
"Is it... an equipment warehouse?" Jiang Que asked tentatively.
He didn't need to hesitate so much, but the video was obviously shot late at night, and the lights in the warehouse were not on. With only the dim moonlight shining through, he could only make out this much.
More importantly, he really couldn't figure out what Song Yecheng wanted him to see. Warehouses like this for storing equipment were not uncommon in the crew. Even if he recognized it, he still didn't understand what was worth looking at.
Song Yecheng stared closely at every subtle change in his expression. His heart seemed to be tossing back and forth between ice and fire, experiencing unprecedented confusion and struggle.
It’s going to snow, the crew, the warehouse.
These key words put together are no longer even hints, but rather explicit statements. However, Jiang Que still looks completely confused, which makes him almost doubt whether everything he heard and saw tonight really happened.
Of course it really happened.
Every word Tang Yao said tonight and every frame he saw with his own eyes were so vivid, shocking and confusing him like a thunderclap, leaving him speechless when faced with the conclusion given by Tang Yao. He could only be like a broken piece of wood, unable to find any room for defense.
Their meeting actually ended at around eight o'clock, but he mechanically drove the car home, parked it in the garage, and then sat alone in the car for a long, long time.
He went over in his mind every word Jiang Que had said and every thing he had done in the past six months, trying to find any clues that might lead to a turnaround and a reasonable explanation for everything he learned tonight.
But no.
The more I revisit the memories, the more doubts I have, and it even backfires, adding new weight to the evidence.
However, even so, he still refused to face reality.
Although he was holding the USB flash drive containing the "ironclad evidence", he was reluctant to push the door and get out of the car. He was like a stubborn contradiction. On the one hand, he stubbornly refused to believe everything he learned tonight, but on the other hand, he could not find any reason to support this blind trust.
Yes, no matter how much evidence there was, he still didn't want to believe it was true.
But he just didn't have the courage to go to Jiang Que to verify it.
Because the last bit of rationality left in his heart told him that his unreasonable and illogical trust was nothing but self-deception.
It was just like Fang Zhi who spent all his money in exchange for the "magic lamp". He said that he did not believe in ghosts and gods, but he was pursuing the most absurd miracle. Even when he stood in the final court of judgment, he was easily shaken by the words of the fortune teller.
So in the end, even though he pushed open the door and got out of the car in the increasingly thin air of the closed compartment, he still couldn't walk up to the fourth floor holding the USB flash drive that was as hot as a soldering iron. Instead, he exhausted all his impulses halfway and sat quietly in the study alone.
He knew it was an escape.
But even if I could escape for just one more second, it would be good.
So he got what he wanted, and he quietly escaped for three hours, more than ten thousand seconds, until the phone rang, until Jiang Que pushed the door and walked into the room. He finally realized that what was coming would come, and he could no longer escape -
At this moment, facing Jiang Que's confused answer mixed with a hint of uneasiness, his hesitation was actually much stronger than Jiang Que's, because no matter whether he relied on his intuition or the accurate judgment of facial expressions developed from years of studying acting, he could not find any trace of pretense on Jiang Que's face.
Jiang Que was really at a loss.
This is completely contrary to known facts.
Such a contradictory situation was almost beyond his comprehension, so much so that his usually well-organized brain seemed to be entangled, and he couldn't find any ideas to analyze or explain it for a long time.
So after staring at Jiang Que for a long time, he was forced to give up thinking, blinked and lowered his eyes, and then, under Jiang Que's gaze, he reached out his hand, reached for the keyboard, and "clicked" hit the space bar.
Jiang Que immediately turned his head and saw that although the image on the screen still seemed to be still, the timer in the upper left corner had started ticking - the video had resumed playing.
At this moment, Jiang Que's doubts had actually reached their peak. Although he still didn't understand what had happened, Song Yecheng's extremely abnormal behavior had already given him an ominous premonition.
With a sense of uneasiness and anxiety, he stared at the incomprehensible image on the screen without blinking, trying to find any clues to explain the current situation.
However, as time passed, the picture did not change at all. If it were not for the timer still ticking, one would almost think it was paused again.
The few minutes seemed so long.
Just when Jiang Que felt that he was about to lose his concentration——
Suddenly, the screen lit up.
Jiang Que couldn't help but be stunned for a moment, and then quickly realized that the lights in the warehouse were turned on.
Although the light was very dim, it instantly illuminated the area in front of him. When the originally blurry scenery became clear, Jiang Que's mind suddenly paused, because he suddenly had a strange illusion:
Why does this place... look a little familiar?
However, before he could think further, the next thing that appeared in the picture attracted his full attention——
It was the only thing moving in the entire warehouse at that moment, a figure that had just entered the camera's field of view from the distant side.
That was obviously the person who turned on the light just now, but his current location was not covered by the light. Jiang Que stared at the figure as it approached little by little, and could only roughly judge from its shape that it should be a young man.
As the man continued to approach, his body outline became clearer and clearer. Jiang Que looked at the way he walked and gradually, for no reason, felt a sense of indescribable weirdness.
Ten meters, eight meters, six meters...
The man was getting closer.
Gradually approaching the edge of the shadow.
Finally, when he crossed the boundary between light and darkness and his entire face was completely exposed to the light, Jiang Que suddenly opened his eyes wide, and then the blood in his body seemed to freeze, and layer after layer of goose bumps spread from the pores all over his body!
That face—
It was actually his own face? !
Jiang Que almost suspected that he was dreaming. He blinked desperately to confirm it. His breathing became a little faster and faster. Even his brain began to feel dizzy due to lack of oxygen.
How could this be possible?!
He stared at the man in disbelief, as if he wanted to stare the man out of the screen alive. However, the man on the screen did not pause for a moment because of his surprise. He walked to a place not far in front of the car and headed towards the pile of wire rope equipment.
He had a mask hanging on the side of his ear that was about to fall off, and seemed to be holding a few tools in his hand. He walked straight to the winch used for wire rope suspension, squatted down and put the tools aside, pulled out a long line of steel wire wrapped around the axle, then opened the box cover at the base, picked up the tools beside him and operated them inside.
After finishing, he seemed to want to confirm something, and turned the axle back and forth with his hands. Seeing that it was firmly stuck, he seemed to be finally satisfied and wrapped the wire back around the axle.
Looking at this series of actions with obvious purposes, Jiang Que couldn't help but understand what was going on. It was only then that he finally noticed the specific time in the upper left corner of the screen.
2020-01-09 22:06:35
That was exactly the day before his "City and Field Chronicles" released the chapter "Falling into the Water While Filming"!
Jiang Que's head exploded.
He finally realized where Song Yecheng's abnormal behavior today came from, and finally realized the meaning of the sentence "You can't tell where this is."
However, at this moment, his mind was filled with only astonishment and confusion. The intense fear tore him between "doubting the video" and "doubting himself", and for a moment he could not find any way out.
The study fell into deathly silence.
For a long time, Jiang Que stood there motionless like a frozen stone statue.
Not until the person on the screen had left, until the lights in the warehouse went out again, until the video finished playing and automatically jumped, did he finally wake up as if from a nightmare, and looked at Song Yecheng in panic and bewilderment.
"No..." He argued anxiously and incoherently, his voice trembling so much that he could barely form a sentence, "That's not... I didn't..."
Song Yecheng did not refute, but just looked at him intently, with a trace of humble desire still in his heart, hoping to hear a life-saving explanation from him that could overturn all the evidence.
For example... he went to the crew to check in advance because he knew that the equipment would malfunction.
Even though this reason couldn't stand up to scrutiny and couldn't explain why he confidently wrote the prophecy about "falling into the water while filming" the day after he touched the equipment, as long as he said so, Song Yecheng was willing to listen to the blind favoritism in his heart and choose to believe it out of blindness.
However, Jiang Que had no idea how to explain it. Even he himself was still immersed in disbelief and astonishment. He was speechless for a long time, and finally squeezed out only one sentence: "I have never... never been to the crew of "Heaven Will Snow"..."
Hearing this, Song Yecheng's eyes changed slightly.
As if some hope had suddenly been dashed, a hint of helplessness and sadness appeared in his voice: "But you have been there."
Yes, he has been.
When Song Yecheng first watched the video, his first reaction was to deny it, denying the authenticity of the video and denying that the person in the video was Jiang Que.
Because he refused to accept the facts, he desperately listed all the possibilities, and even did not hesitate to give the video all kinds of unrealistic conspiracy theories. For example, the shooting location of the video was not the crew's warehouse at all, but a scene with a similar layout. For example, the face in the video was not the original one, but was replaced later, or even a disguise, a stand-in, or twins.
However, he has been involved in the film industry for nearly twenty years and is familiar with all the methods of video post-production. His method of judging whether a video has been edited or modified is not even inferior to any professional appraisal.
Whether he looked at the video with his naked eyes or analyzed it with the help of technical software, the result was the same: it was clearly the original file, without even a trace of editing.
As for all the other speculations, they all ultimately boil down to the same question: whether Jiang Que had ever been to the crew.
If he had never been to the set, even if he had only been absent on that day, then he would have the most perfect alibi and all accusations would be self-defeating.
It is not that difficult to prove this.
Because not just anyone can enter and exit the crew. The more famous the crew is, the stricter the rules are. For a top-level production like "The Snow Will Fall", if you want to move around in the crew, you either have to hold a relevant position or at least be led in by an authorized staff member.
Thinking of this, Song Yecheng quickly thought of one thing -
At that time, the martial arts team of "Heaven Will Snow" was introduced by He Jingsheng, and he was familiar with Jiang Que. If Jiang Que had really joined the crew, he would undoubtedly be the most likely person to know about it.
So, Song Yecheng called He Jingsheng in front of Tang Yao. He didn't mention the video recording, but only asked him if he knew whether Jiang Que had been to the crew of "The Snow King".
And the answer he got was: Yes.
He Jingsheng told him that Jiang Que had asked him to help him join the crew on the grounds that he "wanted to meet his idol", and for He Jingsheng, this was just a matter of making a phone call, so it was done in minutes. He even drove to Jiang Que's house to pick him up and send him to the airport that day.
And that day was January 9th.
It was obvious that this phone call was the final confirmation, but until that moment, Song Yecheng still did not give up hope.
He even thought in a half-hearted way: What if Jiang Que just went to the airport that day but didn't board the plane, or what if he got off the plane but didn't go to the crew?
So, like a blind man who refuses to give up until he hits a wall, he first contacted his contacts at the airport to verify Jiang Que's takeoff and landing schedule for the day, then contacted the crew assistant who was responsible for picking him up at the airport that day, and finally got the final answer -
Jiang Que did arrive at the crew on January 9th.
This answer made him unable to react for a long time after he hung up the phone, and made him unable to make any excuses in front of Tang Yao's worried eyes who had watched the whole process. It made him fall into an unsolvable struggle in the next few hours, and also made him feel powerless and depressed at this moment when facing Jiang Que's denial.
"But you've been there," he heard his voice grow hoarse, "and that day, it was He Jingsheng who personally took you to the airport."
Jiang Que was completely stunned by this sentence, as if he didn't understand it: "Wha...what?"
Then, as if frightened by something, he shook his head reflexively: "Impossible, how is it possible... He's talking nonsense! That day... That day..."
As he spoke, he didn't know what he was thinking about. He suddenly turned around and rushed towards the door with an unsteady step. In his haste, he even knocked over the pen holder on the table with a "click", and the pens scatter all over the floor.
Song Yecheng was shocked and didn't care about anything else. He quickly stood up and followed.
Following him all the way out of the study and into the guest bedroom, he saw Jiang Que rushing to the wardrobe and frantically pulling out the few clothes he had. Then he took out a thick notebook from somewhere and knelt on the ground to frantically search through it.
The sound of pages rustling was rapid and urgent. Song Yecheng walked a little closer and found that it seemed to be a diary, which was filled with dense handwriting.
Jiang Que said nothing as he just kept searching. Finally, he stopped at a certain place and quickly glanced through the two pages before and after. Then, he suddenly froze there as if he had been poured with a basin of cold water.
Song Yecheng didn't know what he saw, but he only found that his face was pale. He was about to step forward, but unexpectedly, just as he took a step, Jiang Que trembled slightly as if he was frightened, tilted his head and blurted out: "Don't come over!"
Song Yecheng paused for a moment.
Jiang Que didn't even look at him, but just stared at his feet. When he found that the feet didn't get any closer, he seemed to get a little temporary sense of security. He slowly moved back to sit, hugged his knees, and curled himself up into a ball.
"It's not me..." He shook his head nervously and muttered, more like talking to himself than explaining, "I haven't... I haven't been there..."
Although he was still denying it, it sounded so weak because he couldn't produce any evidence and could only repeat his excuses over and over again in vain.
Song Yecheng looked at the curled up figure and listened to the trembling murmur, and suddenly an almost identical scene on the cliff that he first saw many years ago appeared in his mind.
Although the figure in front of him is no longer as young as he was back then, his shivered and fragile posture still makes it easy for people to feel the scars all over his body.
Song Yecheng felt a sudden pang of pain in his heart.
In an instant, his desire to settle the matter peacefully and move on from this reached its peak. He even felt a little regretful for bringing this evidence back and cutting it open in front of the two of them.
Finally, his steps moved.
Although Jiang Que had already said "Don't come over", he still walked over and squatted down.
"Jiang Que," he raised his hand and held Jiang Que's hand that was hugging his knee. He didn't want to care about the truth or reason anymore. "Let's just stop thinking about it, okay?"
Yes, if finding an explanation that could overturn the evidence was the result he wanted most, then even if he couldn't find it now, he didn't want to delve into it further or ask for any so-called explanation.
However, Jiang Que did not feel any better after hearing this. Instead, after a brief moment of shock, he slowly pulled his hand out of Song Yecheng's palm as if he had realized some reality.
He hugged his knees again, looking down at the ground, and said very softly, "...You don't believe it, right? You also think I did it, right?"
No, it's not.
Song Yecheng shouted silently.
It was precisely because he never believed that it was Jiang Que who did it that he was forced into such a difficult situation by the irrefutable evidence.
Jiang Que slowly raised his head in his silence. Song Yecheng then realized that his eyes were red as if they were about to bleed, and his expression was so sad that it was heartbreaking: "But how could I...how could I possibly hurt you?"
The moment the choked words fell from his eyes, hot tears poured out and hit the back of Song Yecheng's hand, burning his heart so much that his heart trembled violently, and in an instant his eyes were red.
On one side was the evidence that all ways out were cut off, and on the other side was the desperate prayer of his lover. He felt that he had never experienced such an agonizing moment, as if his heart, liver, spleen and lungs were being torn apart and he was in excruciating pain.
And that torment in Jiang Que's eyes was undoubtedly a silent verdict, which made him finally chuckle with a heart as ashen, almost sadly, and close his eyes dejectedly.
"No one will believe me," he raised his hands and covered his forehead tightly, feeling waves of exploding pain invading his mind, "No one, no one will believe..."
The pain made him tremble like a spasm, and the feeling of suffocation that followed brought him a sudden dizziness. There was a fierce buzzing in his ears, which was long and sharp, as if it was going to drill into his brain.
Song Yecheng listened to the intermittent voice and noticed the trembling of his hands. Suddenly, he felt something was wrong: "Jiang Que?"
However, Jiang Que seemed to hear nothing. He closed his eyes tightly and frowned, as if he was trapped in a dark and endless nightmare.
Countless images, both true and false, began to flash and collide wildly in his mind, giving him a splitting headache and dizziness, as if another soul was trying to invade his body and squeeze him out of this shell alive.
"call……"
"call……"
The sound of rapid gasps for breath replaced the messy words.
"Jiang Que..."
Song Yecheng's cries became vague, distant, and chaotic, and were gradually drowned out by the severe tinnitus, isolating him from his fragmented consciousness.
The sharp noise almost broke my eardrums.
Chaotic memories twist and tear.
Finally, when all the noises came to an abrupt end, he felt a black screen before his eyes, and fell backwards, unable to hold on.
"Jiang Que?!"
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