Chapter 96
With the help of the costume and makeup team, Lu Zixi hid the explosive tubes in his clothes. To ensure safety, he weighed them carefully and found that each tube was empty.
But he still felt a little uneasy, and he couldn't explain why. The pile of explosives next to him was reduced in quantity. He had watched the test burning effect before, and it was the same as fireworks. In theory, it shouldn't be threatening at all.
Lu Zixi could feel Yan Yunzhen's concerned eyes on him. He made an OK gesture to the director, indicating that filming could begin. He put his other hand behind his back and gave Yan Yunzhen a thumbs up.
Seeing this, Zhou He also raised his hand and gestured "321", counting down three numbers, and the filming began.
The winter night is very cold, and the icy wind is like a knife, sliding across the cheeks.
The bustling metropolis that once accommodated tens of millions of people became empty due to the arrival of New Year's Eve.
There are almost no vehicles on the overpass under the shopping mall. It is like a crawling steel dragon, winding through the sky above the city, with thousands of lights dotted around it.
Chased by the police, Mr. X, who had appeared respectable in public, was now in a miserable state, wrapped in a tattered military coat and with his hair as disheveled as dead grass.
He grinned, his canine teeth were as sharp as a poisonous snake's fangs, and his eyes flashed with a gleam of excitement.
"Respected Mr. X." Gao Feng slowly raised his gun in Mr. X's direction. His face was dusty from the previous explosion, but his jawline remained firm, his chin slightly raised. He said in a deep voice, "I am Gao Feng, Captain of the Criminal Police Brigade. I declare you under arrest."
After so many days of fighting wits and courage, this is the first time they meet.
"Me? Arrested?" Mr. X repeated nervously, then suddenly burst into laughter. "Mr. Policeman, what did I do wrong?"
"I had an unfortunate childhood," he said in an aria-like voice, as if he were writing a great tragedy that had nothing to do with him. "Because of my birth, I lost my mother; because of an ordinary neighborhood dispute, my father was murdered; later I learned that the murderer was a 'psychopath' who escaped punishment from the law."
"I grew up like a weed in the countryside, and I had a similarly unfortunate childhood." Seeing the man across from him didn't respond, Mr. X continued, "That year, I was admitted to university with excellent grades, but my place was taken by someone else. I waited an entire anxious summer, only to receive news that I had failed the entrance exam."
"I packed my bags and went out to work, only to be scammed by a pyramid scheme. I kindly rescued a drowning child, only to be blackmailed by the child's parents. You all say my work only reflects the evil side of human nature, that I created such disgusting plots for the sake of topics and attention, but no one knows that all of this is true."
"What you see is my current respectability and my current brilliance. What you don't see is how I wrote day and night, using the streetlights and industrial water from the construction site. What you don't see is that I revised the plot and polished the lines for the chief screenwriter. I wrote the entire movie script, but in the end, my name was not on it." Mr. X became more and more excited as he spoke, and the veins on his neck popped out. "Okay, all this can be nothing, it's all in the past, but do you know how desperate I was when I found out I had a terminal illness? The doctor told me that it was the substandard river water discharged in my childhood and the excessive formaldehyde in the low-rent housing that eventually led to the cancer. I hate it, I really hate it! Why me? Why me? I want those people to feel the same pain as me!"
"Mr. Police Officer, please tell me why I can't take revenge? Is this the fairness and justice you want to uphold?"
The crazy roar was swept away by the night wind and disappeared into the boundless night, but Gao Feng's gun was still held steadily.
"Yes, this is the fairness and justice I want to uphold," he said calmly.
"Your first bomb is a photosensitive bomb controlled by a thermometer. Once the first valve is remotely opened, it will explode once the temperature reaches a certain threshold," Gao Feng said. "So you want to use this bomb to avenge the man who killed your father. He's now a boilerman. But did you know that he happened to be on a different shift that day, and the boilerman who took his place was an ordinary worker. He had done nothing wrong, yet he would die in your vengeance."
"Your second bomb is a spirit level bomb. If it's tilted beyond a certain angle, it will explode. You managed to plant it in the child's Trojan horse as revenge against the family who took your place at university and now live happily." Gao Feng continued, "Even if your logic says that family deserved death, they live in densely packed commercial housing. If there were an explosion, the load-bearing walls would collapse, resulting in countless casualties. If it caused a fire, the consequences would be even more disastrous. You planted four bombs in total. Have you ever considered these issues?"
A drop of cold sweat slid down Mr. X's temple.
"My predictions cannot be wrong." He repeated in a low voice, "No one can escape my arrangements, no one!"
Mr. X suddenly turned to Gao Feng and said, "It's you! You're the variable! You figured out all my plans!"
"Life isn't a novel. Accidents happen every second. No one will be your puppet." Gao Feng stepped forward and said firmly, "I'm a police officer. Saving even one innocent person is justice for me, and I will do my utmost to achieve it."
Mr. X's voice became a little hysterical: "You gave them fairness and justice, but when I need you, who will give me fairness and justice?"
Unexpectedly, Gao Feng said without hesitation: "I will give it to you."
Mr. X was stunned.
"You are suspected of endangering public safety and should be punished by law. However, as long as those people from back then are still within the prosecution period, I will thoroughly investigate them on your behalf." Gao Feng looked him straight in the eyes, his gaze blazing like the sun. "Mr. X, please plead guilty and accept your punishment. If you voluntarily let me cuff your wrists, I will inform my superiors that you have surrendered yourself, and perhaps your sentence will be reduced."
"No...no." Mr. X took a few steps back, a strange and twisted smile on his face, "You don't understand."
Gao Feng thought he had misinterpreted his meaning and said anxiously, "I know you don't want to hurt anyone. They all think you're lurking in the big city to cause mass casualties. But I know this commercial building isn't finished yet, and there's no one here right now. Because of the Lunar New Year holiday, there's been a serious population loss. Choosing this place means you don't want to drag innocent people into this. I took the initiative to come find you because I want to give you a chance..."
"No." Mr. X shook his head. "Perhaps you have deduced all my decisions, and your other guesses about me are correct, but you don't know what I really want to do at this moment."
Gao Feng frowned and stopped approaching for a moment.
"Did you miss something?" Mr. X twirled his fingers in his ears, prompting him to think and recall what he had said before. "The first thing I said was..."
I lost my mother when I was born.
Gao Feng's eyes widened instantly.
The clock struck midnight, and brilliant fireworks bloomed on the LED screen. Mr. X laughed out loud and pulled the fuse on his body hard.
He was standing at a certain distance from Gao Feng. The small dose of explosives tied to his body could not hurt others but could only kill himself. In addition, people instinctively resist explosions, so he believed that Gao Feng could not stop him from committing suicide.
But he was wrong.
A second before midnight, Gao Feng had already reacted and flew towards him.
His hand was firmly on the fuse.
————
Lu Zixi originally thought that the filming was over here.
His hands dropped naturally, and just as he was about to stand up when the director called "cut", he heard a deafening explosion next to his ears.
He felt like he was stuck in a sponge and couldn't hear anything. The fire from the explosion dazzled his eyes and made them burst into tears. It took three or four seconds before he heard the entire crew screaming and running for their lives.
Then I belatedly felt the sticky blood on my body.
"Yan Yunzhen!"
Lu Zixi wanted to shout, but his throat felt hoarse as if it was filled with cigarette ash. The crew members all gathered around him, and medical staff were ready to take action in case of an emergency. Someone called 120 for help.
The shock wave came from the pile of explosives used to create the effect. No one knew why the explosives, which had been precisely proportioned and had eliminated any safety hazards, could produce such a strong impact from such a distance.
"It's okay, don't be afraid, don't be afraid..." Yan Yunzhen hugged Lu Zixi tightly in his arms and touched his hair, "I'm fine."
"Don't force yourself," Lu Zixi felt himself trembling all over, and immediately hugged him, not caring if anyone would see him. "The more you force yourself, the more scared I get... I beg you to scream in pain..."
"Then I won't force it." Yan Yunzhen smiled, breathing a little hard, "It really hurts."
The medical staff were in place quickly. Fortunately, Yuanhong was wealthy and the props they prepared were made of real materials. Yan Yunzhen did not skimp on the filming effect and wore a full set of heavy riot gear, which played a protective role to a certain extent.
Lu Zixi was still confused all the way to the hospital until he was surrounded by reporters waiting outside the hospital.
"We are not accepting interviews right now." Song Yang, who had rushed over after hearing the news, was frantically trying to get people out. "Please give the person involved time to calm down..."
Lu Zixi sat on the corridor outside the hospital, and the painful emotions finally broke through the barrier of paralysis. He grabbed his hair and truly felt what it was like to feel heart-wrenching pain.
He simply couldn't imagine what kind of mentality Yan Yunzhen had to keep himself alive when he fell off a cliff and was mistakenly believed to be unable to come back.
If something really happened to Yan Yunzhen this time, he felt that he would completely collapse.
Falling off a cliff...
He thought about the past over and over again, and finally remembered the red envelope that saved his life when he fell off the cliff.
After many days, he finally opened the red envelope group that he hadn't entered for a long time.
The author has something to say: [Highlight leave request]
There might be no updates tomorrow! Our advisor suddenly moved up the deadline for submitting the proposal. We originally agreed on the 10th, but now they're pushing me on the 8th. I'm going crazy... I haven't finished it yet, and I have to wait until the 9th... If I still have energy after finishing the proposal, I'll write some more!
Then some little angels asked if it was almost over or something... According to my outline, there's still quite a bit to go, so don't worry, it won't be that fast, hahaha. The extra chapters are pretty long, as I'm used to. Currently, there's confirmed to be one about the youngest and his rather awful host. I'm still thinking about the main characters, like the past life extra chapters. For example, do you want to see the extra chapters that follow the premise of this story, or the if-context extra chapters? (The if-context is assuming Lu Zixi didn't black out, and Yan Yunzhen was with him in his past life, and they didn't get reborn afterward, and it's the movie star and the movie star's daily love life. The extra chapter set in this story is that they weren't together in their past life, had a naive and ambiguous relationship in high school, but ultimately missed each other.)
Feel free to tell me what extra chapters you'd like to see, and I'll write about the ones that strike my fancy.
By the way, I want to shout out to everyone to check out my column and pre-collections! If you like it, please bookmark it! Scroll to the bottom and you'll find several pre-collections that are in the process of being incubated! There's also a danmei novel in the column that's being revised and prepared for update, so you can check it out too!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
