Chapter 16
The plane climbed steadily to cruising altitude. The sea of clouds outside the window looked like solidified white waves. Liu Yifan put on her eye mask and adjusted her seat to a comfortable angle, but her heart was far from as calm as she appeared.
With his eyes closed in the darkness, the lights of the laboratory, Zhou Ping'an's calm profile, Zhao Feng's expression of astonishment and understanding, and the conversation in the old corridor, all played back clearly in his mind frame by frame like a movie film.
She forced herself to get into work mode and began to calmly analyze and archive all the information she had just obtained, just like she was dealing with a complex character analysis report.
"It covered an entire wall. From my sophomore year until graduation."
Information Point: This confirms Zhou Ping'an's long-term, intense history of "one-way gaze." This isn't a fleeting infatuation, but a persistent, almost paranoid aesthetic focus.
Character Analysis (Bao Si's Perspective): King You of Zhou's obsession with Bao Si wasn't a sudden impulse, but rather a long-standing, focused, and distorted obsession. This obsession may not stem from lust, but from his self-construction and projection of a "perfect symbol."
——Actor’s Note: When performing, you can emphasize Bao Si’s indifference to this “gaze” because she may have long been accustomed to it, or even seen through its nature.
"You are more real now. But you were more dreamy when you were 16."
Information Point: The target (Zhou Ping'an) has a temporal binary understanding of beauty. He breaks down "Liu Yifan" into two parts: a "historical symbol" and a "real entity," each endowed with distinct qualities (dreamlike/real).
Character Analysis (from King You of Zhou's perspective): Perhaps what King You of Zhou pursued wasn't the living Bao Si, but rather a "symbol" he imagined, one that embodied his ultimate aesthetic ideal. The real Bao Si was merely the carrier of this symbol. When the carrier and the symbol diverge (growth, change), it likely triggered inner conflict and reflection.
——Actor’s Notes: Need to show Baosi’s passivity as a “carrier” and her possible indifference and alienation towards the meaning of her own “symbol”.
"As for the other young girls? What does that have to do with me?"
Information Point: The target object demonstrates strong focus and exclusivity. Its aesthetic system is highly closed and self-consistent, refusing to accept alternatives or external interference.
Character Analysis (from King You's perspective): This demonstrates the irrational nature of his behavior. The beacon-lighting trick wasn't intended to please anyone else; its entire purpose was directed solely at Bao Si. This was an extreme, unshareable focus, and an extreme, reckless self-absorption.
——Actor’s Notes: This line accurately captures the arrogance and paranoia of King You of Zhou—the world exists only to confirm my will, and the existence of others is meaningless if it is irrelevant to my goals.
After this analysis, Liu Yifan's mood gradually calmed down, and he even felt a hint of cold excitement.
Yes, that's right.
Everything Zhou Ping'an says and does can be perfectly interpreted within a deeply self-absorbed, highly closed aesthetic-power system. His devotion, his paranoia, his comparisons, his exclusivity... all of this, at its core, is the unquestionable implementation of his own will.
What he wants is "what he wants", not "what everyone wants".
He was completing "his work" rather than creating "commodities for the market."
He was satisfying "his aesthetic ideal" rather than engaging in "emotional communication."
The phrase "What does it have to do with me?" is the ultimate declaration of this system: the center of his world is only his goal. Everything else is nothing.
This conclusion gave Liu Yifan a sense of security. It relegated Zhou Ping'an to the position of a "research subject," a complex prototype of "King You of Zhou" ripe for analysis. She had successfully interpreted all the emotionally suggestive moments that had made her heart flutter.
She let out a sigh, and her tense nerves slowly relaxed.
The danger alarm seemed to have been lifted. That momentary panic was probably simply a professional actor's oversensitivity to the complexities of human nature. She had successfully used her professional armor to firmly lock away those vague, disturbing emotions within a framework of rational analysis.
She no longer considered whether the words "What does it have to do with me?" might conceal a clumsy affirmation of "uniqueness." She refused to think in that direction; that thought itself was more dangerous than facing a paranoid "King You of Zhou."
The plane bumped slightly as it passed through a bank of clouds.
Liu Yifan pulled down her eye mask. The sunlight outside the window was glaring. She replanned her upcoming itinerary and the key points of communication with Lin Na, and her mood gradually became more stable and focused.
She is an actor whose job is to understand and shape the character, not to get caught up in an emotional game where truth and falsehood are difficult to distinguish and the risks are unknown.
Now she felt she had a firm grip on the steering wheel again.
The studio was filled with a thick, inextricable anxiety. The bitterness of coffee blended with the faint heat of electronic devices, creating a suffocating atmosphere. On the whiteboard, phrases like "power's gaze," "existential emptiness," and "the futility of rebellion" were repeatedly written and fiercely crossed out, as if in an endless battle with oneself. Crumpled papers lay scattered across the floor, each piece bearing the vestiges of rejected inspiration.
Lin Na stood before the whiteboard, her arms folded, her nails unconsciously digging into the skin of her arms, leaving shallow indentations. Her gaze was fixed on the words, as if she wanted to see through them. Chen Feng slumped on the sofa in the corner, his tie slouched to one side, his glasses pushed up to his forehead, revealing bloodshot eyes. He stared at a nonexistent spot on the ceiling, his lips moving silently like a scholar in a trance.
When the door was gently pushed open, the slight sound of the hinges seemed particularly harsh in the dead silence.
Liu Yifan walked in, looking tired and exhausted, but his eyes were surprisingly bright, like two pieces of obsidian soaked in a cold spring, emitting some complex and indescribable light.
She closed the door behind her, shutting out the outside world. The oppressive atmosphere inside made her frown slightly, but it quickly relaxed, replaced by an almost deliberate calm. She walked to the center of the room and casually placed her handbag on the table piled with documents. Her movements seemed calm, but her fingertips tightened slightly.
"I'm back." Her voice was a little hoarse, but she tried to maintain a steady tone, as if she had just completed an ordinary business trip.
Lin Na and Chen Feng woke up from their respective immersion states almost at the same time, and cast their eyes on her in unison, with the eagerness and scrutiny of a drowning man seeing a piece of driftwood.
"How was it?" Chen Feng jumped up from the sofa first, not even having time to adjust his glasses. He spoke rapidly, "Did you meet him? Did you get anything useful out of him? Have you made any breakthroughs in your understanding of King You of Zhou?"
Liu Yifan didn't answer immediately. She walked to the water dispenser, poured herself a glass, and drank slowly. The warm water flowed down her throat, seeming to relax her tense nerves a little. She turned around, leaned back against the edge of the table, glanced at her two companions, and began to recount her trip to Rongcheng in as objective and coherent a manner as possible.
She described the slightly run-down industrial park, a stark contrast to her imagination, and emphasized the stark contrast between Zhou Pingan, the luxury car, and the surroundings. She mentioned Zhao Feng, the enthusiastic and quick-witted lab director, and his casual revelation of a university dorm covered in posters.
She recounted Zhou Ping'an's astonishing calmness in facing these past events, as if she were telling someone else's story. She also mentioned the laboratory filled with sophisticated instruments and calm rationality, and Zhou Ping'an's pure, almost reverent focus when explaining the technology.
Her words were logically clear, focused, and even had a hint of calmness as if she was reporting on work. She tried hard to shape Zhou Ping'an into a perfect "research subject" - a "King You of Zhou" sample who was extremely self-centered, goal-driven, and had emotional patterns different from ordinary people.
However, when she spoke at the end and mentioned Zhou Ping'an's words in an unquestionable tone, "As for the other young girls? What does that have to do with me?", although Liu Yifan tried her best to control herself, there was an extremely faint, almost imperceptible tremor in her voice.
She quickly covered it up with a cough, and immediately extended the sentence to a character analysis of King You of Zhou's "extreme self-centeredness" and "exclusive paranoia", trying to wrap it up with professional armor.
Chen Feng listened intently, nodding and jotting down notes in his notebook, his face lit with the excitement of sudden enlightenment. He clearly accepted Liu Yifan's "technical" interpretation and reveled in the joy of obtaining crucial material. "Exclusive paranoia! Extreme ego! Right, right, right! That's right! This is the psychological foundation that supports the kind of madness that underpins 'Beacon Fire Playing Tricks on the Princes'! Yifan, you've gained so much from this trip!"
Lin Na, on the other hand, didn't interrupt or ask questions throughout. She simply listened quietly, her arms still folded across her chest, but her previous anxiety and tension seemed to have quietly dissipated, replaced by a deep, almost frozen concentration.
She saw the glimmer of complacency in the depths of Liu Yifan's eyes, which he himself might not even have noticed - it was the sense of accomplishment that came from successfully approaching the goal and obtaining exclusive information, and even mixed with a hint of secret satisfaction at being treated so specially.
She also saw the deeper emotions that were suppressed by rationality - when repeating "covering the whole wall" and "what does it have to do with me", the momentary contraction of Liu Yifan's pupils, and the unconscious movement of his fingertips stroking the wall of the cup, did not escape Lin Na's eyes.
What worried Lin Na the most was the subconscious fear that Liu Yifan himself felt, the underlying fear—the instinctive fear of being swallowed by some vast, invisible force, of losing control of his own boundaries. This fear, Liu Yifan cleverly disguised as professional anxiety about the difficulty of grasping the role, was a source of anxiety.
When Liu Yifan said, "What do they have to do with me?" and tried to deconstruct it using academic language, Lin Na's lips moved slightly, but in the end, no sound came out.
An extremely complex emotion slowly emerged on her face - there was reluctance, as if watching a precious piece of porcelain sliding to the edge of danger; there was deep sympathy, understanding the difficulty of walking the tightrope between huge temptation and huge risk; but more of it was a kind of understanding that was almost compassionate.
She saw that Liu Yifan was trying to use all the tools of reason to build a dam for herself, to resist the already leaking emotional torrent of Zhou Ping'an. Her calm and objective "report" was itself the strongest possible cry for help, and also the most powerless form of self-hypnosis.
Lin Na said nothing. She knew that any rebuke or consolation would be futile, and might even backfire. This was Liu Yifan's own choice, and it was the necessary tempering for the role of Bao Si. Some flames must be traversed personally to forge true gold.
She just looked at Liu Yifan deeply, her gaze was so heavy that it seemed to carry thousands of words, but in the end it just turned into a silent sigh and blended into the stagnant air of the studio.
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