Seeing his reaction, Fu Yanzong smiled and casually patted the young man’s flushed cheek with the back of his hand. “Snap out of it.”
The distinct knuckles brought a fleeting coolness to the cheek. The young man kept his head lowered, his long lashes casting faint shadows beneath his eyes. His back stiffened slightly, and his fingers gripped the strap of his backpack until they turned pale with tension.
Fu Yanzong paid no attention to these details. He released his hand and, in a rare moment of kindness, turned to the receptionist. “Let him in. No need to make things difficult for a kid.”
He hadn’t caught their entire conversation, but words like “scholarship” and “college entrance exam” had stood out clearly enough.
Dongyu Building had long established a fund to sponsor outstanding students from impoverished backgrounds, allowing them to join headquarters directly after graduation. It was a win-win arrangement, nothing that needed to feel so awkward.
But the young man shook his head and said softly, “Thank you, Mr. Fu, but I really don’t need it.”
He lifted his eyes to meet Fu Yanzong’s, his voice slender yet steady. “Missing the college entrance exam was my own problem. If Dongyu truly has no policy allowing even a slight delay on repaying the scholarship, I’ll settle it within the deadline as soon as possible.”
He spoke with such sincerity that even the receptionist chimed in unbidden. “If your grades were that good before, why skip the exam? I can’t imagine anything more important than the college entrance exam at your age.”
The young man said nothing, merely gazing at him quietly. The emotions in his eyes were like mist scattered by the wind—indistinct and hazy.
Fu Yanzong gave him a few appraising looks but said nothing more. He didn’t wait for a reply and strode directly into the lounge area.
His figure vanished into the revolving door, leaving only the spring sunlight to spill quietly across the space before Song Linyu.
His phone buzzed unexpectedly with a notification. Song Linyu glanced at the message on his lock screen, and his expression gradually turned icy and brooding.
“Linyu-ge, are you okay? Did those punks corner you that day because of me, making you miss the exam?”
“I got into the Film Academy… Will you come to Shenlan? We’ll see each other again, right?”
“How’s things with your family? Is Auntie doing okay?”
The messages kept coming, one after another, but Song Linyu ignored them completely.
…
On the thirty-second floor of Dongyu Building, the conference room door remained firmly shut. Song Wen’s voice filtered faintly through the thick glass, low and commanding.
Fu Yanzong lounged on a sofa in the lounge area, cradling a cup of coffee the receptionist had brought him. His gaze drifted idly out the window. Shenlan’s sky had been cleansed to brilliant clarity by the spring rain, and the faint scent of white magnolias seemed to waft in from afar, tickling his nostrils.
He took a sip of the coffee, and at that moment, the conference room door swung open behind him. Footsteps echoed steadily. Fu Yanzong felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to meet a serene, kindly face.
“Little Yan, you’re here.” Song Wen circled around and settled on the adjacent sofa, leaning forward slightly in a posture that invited conversation. “Any troubles lately? I heard your old assistant sold your personal information.”
Fu Yanzong smiled. “Nothing gets past you, Uncle Song.”
“I can’t keep tabs on you all the time. You just need to be more careful with the people around you.” Song Wen spread his hands in open frankness, embodying the stance of a tolerant, caring elder.
“Out with it, then. What’s the matter this time?”
“I’ve been off my game lately. Not really in the mood to act.” Fu Yanzong set down his coffee cup and replied flatly.
“Not even Director Jiang Ming’s film? Little Yan, you can pass on other gigs, but not this one. If you bow out, his only other pick is Chen Youning. Three Quarters is aimed straight at the Palme d’Or. We can’t let it go to Zhizhen.”
“Chen Youning might not be up to it.” Fu Yanzong shot back quickly. “Isn’t Jiang Ming known for being picky?”
“Exactly why your involvement proves its worth. Yanzong, your parents and I are all businessmen. Profit is in our blood—nothing matters more. If Dongyu wants to expand into film, we need your star power.”
Song Wen tilted his head back, as though lost in recollection, as he delivered these words.
As expected, the mention of his parents plunged Fu Yanzong into a prolonged silence. After a long moment, he lowered his eyes and regarded Song Wen quietly before nodding slowly.
/
Three months later, summer descended on Shenlan right on schedule. No matter where one went, the air clung with humid, sticky heat, as if a downpour were imminent.
In the dim room, the atmosphere felt claustrophobic and perilous.
Fu Yanzong pinned the other actor against him, one hand clamped around the back of his neck. His thumb tightened slowly, as if intent on claiming complete control. Eyes lowered, his gaze was dark and assessing, like a predator sizing up its quarry.
Liang Jingyan tilted his head back slightly, his breathing ragged. His spine pressed desperately against the edge of the bed, as though he were prey on the verge of being shredded. Fu Yanzong straightened to kneel astride him, the hem of his shirt riding up to reveal the low-slung waistband of his jeans and a tantalizing strip of waistline. He exuded danger, terror—and undeniable magnetism.
After a beat, Fu Yanzong let out a faint smile and murmured, “Run.”
The line drifted lightly, but his tone held genuine coaxing allure.
Liang Jingyan’s throat bobbed, a sheen of sweat beading on his forehead. He knew the cameras were rolling, yet his instincts screamed flight. For a heart-stopping moment, he couldn’t tell where the scene ended and reality began.
Fu Yanzong’s eyes were too real, zeroing in on every vulnerability. Even knowing it was all performance, it still sent his heart racing.
The director didn’t call cut.
Fu Yanzong leaned down, planting his palm on the bedsheet. His knuckles, sharply defined, clenched slowly, caging the other man completely. His breath ghosted over the man’s neck like a beast leaning in, coiled to pounce.
What should have been a charged, teasing near-sex scene took on an undercurrent of sheer horror—a suffocating dominance that evoked a crime scene, laying the characters’ true natures bare.
Liang Jingyan felt like he was dying—
…
“Cut!”
The director finally called it. The set fell silent for an instant, as if plunged into the depths of a vacuum-sealed lake, every sound suspended. Then the clamor of staff adjustments and stifled gasps rose gradually, hauling the actors back to the present.
Fu Yanzong paused for half a beat before pushing himself up and withdrawing his hand. He closed his eyes briefly, as if severing his connection to the role.
Yet he didn’t rise. He simply sat on the edge of the bed, staring with icy detachment at the bloodstained splotch on the concrete floor.
Liang Jingyan gripped the bed’s edge and hauled himself upright, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath as if emerging from strangulation. He pressed a hand to his chest, trembling belatedly, and murmured in awe, “Brother Fu, you really scared me there. Li Gu—this role only fits you perfectly.”
It wasn’t flattery.
From age and aura to looks and mannerisms, Fu Yanzong overlapped terrifyingly with the man from the story, utterly saturated by illness, despair, and deceit. That was precisely the effect Director Jiang Ming had demanded, overriding Fu Yanzong’s repeated refusals to cast him as the lead.
“Shut up.”
Jiang Ming shot him a cold glare from behind the camera, his voice a hushed growl, as if wary of disturbing something fragile.
Liang Jingyan realized his mistake and quickly clasped his hands in a apologetic bow.
In Jiang Ming’s crews, it was absolute method acting from day one. Every actor was addressed solely by their character’s name.
Fu Yanzong’s award-winning debut had been a Jiang Ming film, and the director’s pursuit of authenticity was extreme and unyielding. That obsession had drawn him to the inexperienced Fu Yanzong for the lead role from the start.
He demanded total immersion.
Jiang Ming staunchly believed that a character truly came alive not through mimicry, but when the actor was devoured—mind and body—by the role, right up to the point of “death.”
“Only when you die can the role live,” he had told Fu Yanzong. “Audiences don’t want to see Fu Yanzong playing Li Gu, or even your face. They want Li Gu alive—vividly, utterly alive on screen, alive in their minds. And for Li Gu to live, you have to die. Fu Yanzong must cease to exist.”
In Jiang Ming’s philosophy, the actor was merely a vessel, a shell borrowed by the character. True performance wasn’t about technique; it was total surrender, offering up one’s soul as sacrifice so the role could take command.
“You have to let Li Gu devour you,” Jiang Ming had whispered. “Devour your posture, your emotions, every ingrained reaction. Wake up inside Li Gu’s body, open your eyes in confusion, and realize you’re no longer Fu Yanzong—you’re Li Gu, breathing, yearning.”
It was a perilous form of immersion, one where the boundaries between reality and fiction blurred perilously. Jiang Ming’s films were always like this: his actors didn’t “act”—they endured, were tormented to the brink of collapse, and emerged remade.
Fu Yanzong would either become the role or be destroyed by it.
That was the very allure that had drawn him to the production in the first place.
Back then, the first time Fu Yanzong stood beneath the lights, only one thought had filled his mind.
—He could become anyone.
Anyone but Fu Yanzong.
…
Silence. Utter silence.
Jiang Ming cleared the room of all the staff because he knew exactly what state Fu Yanzong was in right now. Lust had been stirred in him by Li Gu’s sexual addiction, and endless malice had been forced out by his murderous nature, yet he could only disguise his true self. Pain, despair, cruelty… all those negative emotions were drawing Fu Yanzong closer to the protagonist on the mirror’s side, making it impossible for him to pull himself away.
…It felt like someone was talking to him.
In the silent room, any sound stood out sharply. Fu Yanzong stayed quiet for a long moment before glancing sideways, his eyes darkening beneath the strands of his hair.
It was the intern assistant he’d hired during the earlier interviews. The man approached with cautious care, offering a towel in a fawning manner. “Brother Fu, you’ve worked hard. Here, use this.”
“…”
“Why are you shaking?”
Fu Yanzong spoke without warning.
He fixed his gaze on the unwelcome intruder, whose eyes darted away nervously. There was no color in Fu Yanzong’s pale face, and the malice in his eyes gleamed wet and cold, like a beautiful serpent slithering up from the depths of the earth. It sent chills down the spine.
The stifling air seemed to cool in an instant. The assistant’s fingertips trembled uncontrollably, and the phone hidden in his sleeve clattered to the floor. Its screen lit up, revealing an album filled with countless stolen photos of Fu Yanzong.
With a thud, he dropped to his knees on instinct, his throat clenched so tight that no sound came out.
The scene terrified him.
Fu Yanzong let out a scornful chuckle. He kicked the phone deep under the nearby wardrobe, his voice flat and emotionless as he commanded, “Get out.”
The man scrambled away on all fours.
That assistant had joined during the interviews, with a spotless resume and an impressive background—practically perfect.
On the day of the interview, Fu Yanzong had leaned back in his chair, twirling a pen as he eyed the self-recommendations from him and another candidate. He tilted his head in puzzlement.
“Song Linyu—”
He read the name from the nearly blank form in a casual drawl, then tapped the pen tip toward the young man standing off to the side, beckoning him closer.
Song Linyu was still wearing that faded T-shirt of his—clean and neat, but betraying a hint of poverty. His expression had changed, though. Unlike the nervous, shy boy Fu Yanzong had seen under Dongyu’s building that day, he now carried a sickly pallor, cold and detached, utterly bloodless.
“Why apply for an assistant job with no experience?”
Fu Yanzong cocked his head with a smile. “Short on cash? But I remember you saying you still owed Dongyu that loan.”
“I’m very short on cash.”
Unlike the other applicants, Song Linyu sank into a half-crouch in front of him, positioning himself so that the seated Fu Yanzong could easily look down on him. Then he lifted his head, a pale stubbornness overflowing in his eyes. “I’m desperately short on cash right now. Your agent said the assistant job doesn’t require experience—just that you like the person. So I came.”
“And why do you think you’d be to my liking?”
Fu Yanzong laughed outright, reaching out lightly to brush Song Linyu’s bloodless cheek. He gazed at him innocently. “Because you’re good-looking? But you don’t know how to do anything.”
“Because I like you.”
Song Linyu raised his face, flecks of gloom swirling in his eyes.
He spoke word by word, like a medieval vassal swearing fealty to his lord. “Because I like you—whether as a character or as a person—so I’m willing to do anything for you.”
The answer caught him off guard.
Fu Yanzong withdrew his hand and jabbed the pen tip against the blank page, pondering for a moment before drawling slowly, “Like me? Plenty of people like me. I could fish countless heartfelt essays out of the trash bin right next to you. Your ‘like’ means nothing to me and holds no value.”
And so Song Linyu simply watched him quietly—watched as he wrote “approved” on the other form, watched his competitor leave in high spirits.
In that moment, Song Linyu suddenly lowered his eyes, hiding whatever unreadable emotion flickered there.
Then Fu Yanzong hooked his chin up with the pen tip.
“Whoa.”
After a beat of silence, Fu Yanzong smiled in admiration. “What a beautiful expression. Jealousy, anger, burning ambition.”
“I’ve suddenly decided to give you both a trial period. After all, that look on your face when you say you’re willing to do anything for me… it intrigues me.”
Fu Yanzong leaned in slightly, peering into Song Linyu’s eyes with a half-smile.
He parted his lips slowly. “Say it again. Just like before.”
The ink-black ballpoint pen dug painfully into his jaw, but Song Linyu seemed oblivious to the smudging ink. He lifted his gaze, utterly earnest, and repeated his words with the exact same tone.
…
His thoughts snapped back.
The door, which had just been shut, creaked open softly before closing again.
As time dragged on, the humid, cloying air grew unbearably oppressive. In the dank underground room, it felt like a swarm of spine-tingling waves could rise up at any second.
Fu Yanzong let out an irritated tsk.
“Do you know why Jiang Ming had them leave?”
He raised his hand and clamped down with pinpoint accuracy on the face drawing near his own.
“Because I need to handle some… unsavory desires myself.”
The sweltering heat of the rainy season left the young man’s pale skin slick and damp, making it feel especially slippery in his grasp—like some custom-made release toy designed just for Fu Yanzong.
Fu Yanzong tightened his grip at the thumb’s base, leisurely appraising the face before him: eyelids lowered, perfectly obedient.
“So, what’s your reason for coming over?”
He curved his eyes in a smile, drawing out the last syllable as he repeated himself carelessly. “Give me a reasonable explanation, Song Linyu.”
“…Otherwise, I’ll easily start thinking you want to help me deal with my lust, too.”
