The atmosphere felt heavy under Sister Qi’s low pressure, acting like a silent urge. Hua Yanqiu quickly dried her hair and walked over.
The food was still hot. Since everyone shared the habit of not speaking during meals, they ate at a steady, quiet pace. The entire process was hushed.
It was only after breakfast that Hua Yanqiu spoke up: “Coming to see me so early in the morning… is it to run lines with me?”
Her tone shifted upward slightly, a faint smile playing at the corners of her mouth, appearing extremely teasing.
Shen Manyu pursed her lips, her fingertips instinctively pressing down on the script laid out on the table.
Her memory wasn’t poor. Having read the script once, she could recount many of the words and phrases one by one without having to look back at the pages.
It was just that…
“Does Old Director Chu intend to go offshore to film pornography? With the scale of this script, how could it possibly pass censorship?”
The way Shen Manyu spoke—her slightly troubled posture and her furrowed brows—clearly pleased Hua Yanqiu.
Hua Yanqiu walked over to her and gently pulled the script from beneath her hand.
Shen Manyu was caught off guard. Her initial instinct was to hide the content from her, and she subconsciously pressed down on the pages.
Hua Yanqiu applied a bit more force. The smooth surface of the script slid past Shen Manyu’s fingertips. Because the movement wasn’t fast, there was no painful friction—only a faint, fleeting coolness.
She didn’t sit down. Standing beside Shen Manyu and leaning against the table, she flipped open the script: “This play was never intended for release in Mainland China to begin with.”
“Director Chu’s script is different from the commercial dramas currently popular on the market. From the very start, his goal wasn’t to make money.”
She was standing too close, and coupled with her slightly aggressive movements, Shen Manyu could clearly feel a faint sense of pressure—even though they weren’t pressed against each other.
Furthermore, because she was sitting, she had to look up at Hua Yanqiu. Being physically lower created an inevitable psychological sense of insecurity.
Is this Hua Yanqiu’s revenge? Revenge for yesterday, when Shen Manyu had forced her to retreat step by step until her defenses crumbled.
Thinking of this, even the suppressed emotions Shen Manyu felt eased slightly. Her lips curled into a silent smile.
How childish.
It was a complete reversal of yesterday’s events. Today, their roles were swapped. Yesterday she had held the initiative, but today, a recovered Hua Yanqiu held the upper hand.
Hua Yanqiu leaned down slightly, her eyes fixed on Shen Manyu’s face without blinking. She asked softly: “Have you finished the script? What kind of story do you think this script is telling?”
There was a hint of testing in her words. Shen Manyu heard it and understood it perfectly.
Hua Yanqiu had reached her current status by winning nearly every major domestic film and television award; she was only a step away from a “Grand Slam” of the top three honors.
No matter how polite or courteous she appeared on the surface, she possessed an undeniable pride within her specialized field.
Mo Cheng had told Shen Manyu earlier that if possible, she should ask Hua Yanqiu for guidance—ideally, to have Hua Yanqiu mentor her.
As an established senior in the industry, Hua Yanqiu’s guidance was something ordinary people could only dream of.
Hua Yanqiu might appreciate Shen Manyu’s looks, but that didn’t mean she would lower her standards or be so blinded by beauty that she would take an unmotivated or unintelligent “wooden block” under her wing.
She is testing me.
Shen Manyu had guessed about seventy to eighty percent of her thoughts. She wasn’t at all annoyed by Hua Yanqiu’s probing.
If she truly were useless, someone like Hua Yanqiu teaching her would be a waste—she might not even be able to follow the rhythm, let alone understand the instruction.
But Shen Manyu was not useless.
In her previous life, before she was blacklisted by the company, they had invested heavily in hiring famous teachers to guide her. Even during the ten years she was sidelined, she never spent a single day giving up on her passion for acting.
Toward the end, when her contract was about to expire, the company tried to recoup their past investment by frantically assigning her scripts.
Regardless of whether the scripts were good or bad, the directors who worked with her—while extremely dissatisfied with her habit of juggling multiple filming schedules—expressed unanimous affirmation for her acting skills.
“The wealthy young lady and the enemy general in the play stand on opposite national sides; given the historical background, they are destined to have no happy ending. The tragic tone is set from the very beginning; they are merely small pebbles destined to be thoroughly crushed by the rolling torrents of fate.”
Shen Manyu gave a brief summary, then continued: “The young lady is a most ordinary person, completely powerless against the backdrop of war. In these chaotic times, human lives are as cheap as ants. She is as tiny as dust, unable to even protect herself.”
“She loathes invaders like the female general, yet she must act like a beautiful dodder flower—able only to take root upon the general, absorbing her nutrients and depending on her to survive.”
“And in the play, it is precisely by relying on the general’s status and protection that she is able to survive one calamity after another.”
“The young lady is an innocent, a commoner with no power, the most typical kind of victim in a war-torn world.”
“She doesn’t even have any grand ideals, let alone foresight. She is selfish; she doesn’t understand things like national righteousness or the interdependence of states. In modern terms, she is a sophisticated egoist.”
“Although the general’s desire for her causes her great distress, being able to profit from it to secure a stable life for herself and her family is all she pursues.”
“As for the fate of other commoners still struggling in the war, that is entirely outside her scope of concern.”
As Shen Manyu spoke, she watched Hua Yanqiu’s expression. Seeing her nod slightly, her heart felt a bit more at ease, and the rare spark of nervousness from being tested began to fade.
She organized her thoughts and continued: “The female general, as an invader, sympathizes with the fate of these innocent people. she also begins to doubt her own country’s actions—the way they carry out invasions under the righteous banner of ‘offering aid’.”
“But she is a soldier, and a soldier’s duty is to obey. In the face of national duty and professional responsibility, her private feelings are not worth mentioning.”
“Even if she feels sympathy, she can do nothing. Her insignificant pity only causes her to sink into a quagmire of pain from which she cannot escape.”
“So later, through day after day of psychological torture, she resolutely abandons her conscience and mercy.”
“By becoming bloodier, more cruel, and more ruthless than her colleagues, she actually finds a long-lost peace of mind.”
“But isn’t that contradictory?” Hua Yanqiu’s eyes tilted up slightly as she suddenly questioned: “A sophisticated egoist who, in the end, gives up the very life she was willing to trade her precious body for, just to stop a bloody massacre aimed at innocent civilians and the rebel army.”
“And a mass-murdering executioner, who should be cruel, cold, and heartless, yet—knowing full well the young lady wants to kill her—personally hands her the leverage to defend herself, a weapon that ultimately leads to her own total destruction.”