Under the thick night, a beautiful two-story villa stood in the desolate suburbs. A road passed in front of its door, and in the distance were mountains, forests, and ponds. There were no cars, no people. Everything was eerily quiet.
Suddenly, a chilling sound came from the villa.
Riiip~
Riiip~
It sounded like something was being torn apart, accompanied by the sound of liquid splashing. A moment later, manic laughter erupted from inside. Through the window glass, several distorted and bizarre black shadows were faintly visible.
After daybreak, two cars and several people appeared in front of the villa. They unloaded some filming equipment from the vehicles, looking like a rudimentary production team. After that, another group of people arrived—men and women, young and attractive.
“Hey! Hey! What are you standing around for? Newbies have no sense of initiative! Follow me, all of you!”
The one shouting was a middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap. He was of average height, with a sturdy build. His torso was relatively short, but his limbs were very long, a proportion that gave him an inherently bizarre look.
A short-haired woman among the newcomers frowned. “Is this the anomaly?”
A young man with peach blossom eyes replied, “Of course. Everyone within this area is, except for us. Let’s go in. Don’t lose your identity.”
“Hmph. Trying to act like the boss already? I won’t submit to your orders,” a cool-looking guy in a black jacket said.
Peach Blossom Eyes: “I don’t babysit idiots.”
Cool Boy: “Moron.”
Neither could stand the other. They traded insults and walked ahead.
A long-haired woman sighed. This time, seven people had entered: four men and three women. Including herself, three were from the Security Administration Bureau.
They were all from the Bureau, but not from the same branch, nor the same team.
The three came from three different city bureaus, and none were captains.
The other two had entered by accident. Only she had entered intentionally, having accepted a mission.
With how quickly this contaminated zone had selected people, by the time the Bureau dispatched a squad to the designated area, only she had successfully gotten in.
Of the seven people, three were from the Bureau. The other four were ordinary people who were completely unaware of the situation.
“Let’s go,” she said to the other four.
The shouting middle-aged man stood his ground, watching them. As they passed him, Peach Blossom Eyes stopped. After a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “Are you married?”
Middle-aged man: “?”
Peach Blossom Eyes looked him up and down, his expression growing more disdainful with each glance. “Forget it. Don’t answer that. Even if you were willing, I couldn’t stomach it.”
Middle-aged man: “??”
“Tch.” Cool Boy sneered, looking at him like he was an idiot. “The Weirdo Marriage Proposer. His reputation precedes him. Impressive.”
Peach Blossom Eyes chose to take the sarcasm as a compliment. “Thanks. I do what I can.”
“You shortcut-seeking wretch! A crooked path! Tempering the spirit through constant peril is the true path to strength!”
Seeing the middle-aged man about to lose his temper, the two promptly shut up and walked inside. After all, no one could afford the price of losing their identity.
The identity given to them by this contaminated zone was: Cast Members.
Entering the villa, they found seven or eight people busy at work—moving tables, setting up machines, arranging the set.
The man with a full beard was the Director. The one who had called them in was the Assistant Director. The Director was searching for the right camera angle. Seeing them enter, he nodded with satisfaction. “Good. As expected, the actors who best fit the roles. Miss Bai has excellent taste.”
Besides these people, who were clearly from the production team, four others were sitting to the side, unmoving. A blank sheet of white paper lay in front of each of them.
The Assistant Director brought over the scripts and distributed them. Only a single page, with very little content. Everyone only received their own specific plot points.
It seemed those four were also actors hired by the crew.
While everyone was looking down at their scripts, another person walked in. The moment he entered, everyone’s eyes lit up.
“Hello, everyone. I’m here to be an extra.” The newcomer was Xu Xiye. His gaze quickly swept around the room before settling on the bearded face. He knew this one was the Director. “Director, I’m sorry I’m late.”
He’d never been to this area, and it was far from the city center, so it had taken some time.
The bearded Director was easygoing. He waved Xu Xiye over. “It’s fine. No rush. Filming hasn’t officially started yet. An extra, right? I know. Come, come, have a seat. Take a look at your script. It’s very easy to act.”
Xu Xiye was beckoned over. He’d noticed upon entering that several people were standing or sitting in a corner of the living room—handsome men and beautiful women of all styles.
Was this the level of visual quality in the entertainment industry?
So high.
It instantly set them apart from the Director’s group.
But why were they all outsiders?
He’d heard the entertainment industry was a high-pressure job. Outsiders were so fragile. Could they handle it? He knew some fans could be crazy.
He thought of the outsiders he knew, his disciple Little Wang. Their emotions were too easily affected, their stress tolerance poor. They didn’t even like to release pressure through late-night crawling. Perfectly good people, and they just went insane. Just when there was hope for their mental issues, they inexplicably blew up along with their company.
Though he’d only known them for a few days, thinking of them, of his 200 bucks, he still felt a pang of regret.
But he’d never seen these people on TV or online. They were probably either bottom-tier or hadn’t debuted yet. Once they appeared in the public eye, facing all sorts of pressure, there’d be a lot of mental illness.
Xu Xiye couldn’t help but sneak another glance at the group, hesitating whether to ask for their contact info later.
He’d see.
The Director handed him his script. It was also a single sheet of paper. What kind of script would an extra need? It was nearly empty, just two brief lines:
[Passerby passing through the world of the main characters.]
[Your name is Lu Ren, a young man renting a room in the villa. One rainy night, a group of people moved in. You often see them everywhere.]
[T/N: “路人” (Lù Rén) literally means “passerby” or “extra”]
Just background decoration. Xu Xiye understood this.
This was perfect! 200 for a day like this was much easier than bringing Little Wang along.
“Well? Can you act it?” the Director asked.
Xu Xiye had confidence, and he really wanted the job. To show the Director his determination, he nodded firmly. “I can act.”
“Good. Very simple. Just treat yourself as an ordinary tenant. When we film, I’ll tell you where to stand and what to do.”
“Mm-hmm.” Xu Xiye nodded repeatedly, quite happy, but also a little uneasy.
It was probably because he’d experienced the shock of being excited for head fees one day, only for the head fees and his wages to vanish the next. So even knowing this job paid daily, he was still somewhat traumatized.
He hesitated for a moment, then still asked, “Director… the pay is definitely daily, right?”
The Director assured him, “Daily. Extras are always paid daily. We’ll go with what we agreed on. Don’t you worry about that.”
Xu Xiye was indeed much more relieved.
There were five extras including him. A middle-aged man and woman played a married couple who ran the villa, offering long-term, short-term, and daily rentals. They were the Boss and the Landlady.
Two other young people, a man and a woman, played a couple. They were also tenants like him, just there to fill out the background. Their identities didn’t require any more detail.
Xu Xiye blended in, and his remaining worries settled.
He was a newbie in an unfamiliar field, so he’d been a bit nervous at first. But now it was fine. Even though they were actors, they were all just ordinary workers. Nothing different.
“Do any of you know what the Director is filming?” Xu Xiye asked curiously.
“Don’t know.”
“Does it matter?”
“Probably some trash film.”
“I heard it’s a horror ghost film, shot right in this villa.”
“Horror ghost film?” Everyone looked at the Girlfriend who had spoken, Xu Xiye included.
The Girlfriend nodded. “Mm.”
Someone asked, “What’s so scary about ghost films?”
…
The air fell silent. For a moment, no one could answer the question.
Xu Xiye was stumped too. He knew about ghosts. Ghosts were things people made up. People became ghosts after they died. They were often seen in movies and TV shows, not much different from people. Maybe just an extra life in the setting. But everyone knew that nothing remained after death, so ghosts didn’t exist in reality.
What made ghost films scary?
What was horror?
Xu Xiye thought for a moment and ventured a guess: “Could it be… they were poor as dirt when alive, and still poor as dirt after they die?”
“Hss~” Everyone gasped sharply.
Xu Xiye actually thought that wasn’t so bad. To him, poverty wasn’t the scariest thing. The scariest thing was working for free—happily waiting for your wages, only to end up with empty hands.
Never mind, forget it. It was a good thing their kind were emotionally stable. When something happened, they knew to find ways to fix it as best they could. If it were some outsiders, they’d definitely have a breakdown and cry.
Xu Xiye thought to himself.
The extras sat on the inner side of the living room. The outsiders, who were to play the main characters, sat near the windows. From the moment Xu Xiye had entered, he’d been a frequent topic of discussion.
“Someone this good-looking came to be an extra?”
“Tch. You think we’re actually here to act? Why care about looks?”
“I think he looks great too. A very unique kind of handsome. How could someone like this be an extra? Could he be the pollution source you mentioned? That’s definitely not an ordinary setup.”
“Someone should at least try to hide their gaze. Their intentions are totally obvious.”
“Why should I hide them? I’m definitely going to propose to him.”
Silence fell upon the group at these words.
The long-haired woman glanced at him several times, her mind clearly working. Finally, she couldn’t help but ask, “Xie Lincheng, do you really believe marrying an anomaly can get you a formal identity in the Inner World?”
Xie Lincheng was Peach Blossom Eyes, known as the “Weirdo Marriage Proposer.” He’d even ask a passing anomalous dog if it was married or not.
Xie Lincheng: “I don’t know. So far, no anomaly has agreed to marry me. But I won’t give up.”
The long-haired woman was speechless. Seeing his persistence, she’d thought he might know something others didn’t.
Cool Boy interrupted coldly, “Enough. Marriage Proposer, I advise you not to target him.”
Xie Lincheng: “Why?”
Cool Boy: “Intuition.”
Both Xie Lincheng and the long-haired woman’s expressions turned significantly more serious. Lou Hao was an Intuition-Type ability user. Everyone had intuition, but only Lou Hao had ever qualified as an ability user in this field.
If it were just the usual rejection and humiliation, given Lou Hao’s disdain for Xie Lincheng, he would not only not warn him, but would probably stand aside and mock him mercilessly. Since he’d said this, the consequences had to be severe.
Could it be… he really was the pollution source?
Just as they fell quiet, a voice suddenly spoke up from beside them: “Why is your script blank?”
“No, it’s not. Whoa! Yours is the one that’s blank!”
There truly wasn’t much content on their scripts. Aside from basic identity setup, there was only a single line: due to a torrential downpour making travel impossible, they had gathered in the villa to wait out the storm. Beyond that, they knew nothing—not the genre, not the story.
The only notable point was that the character names were exactly identical to their real names.
The importance of identity in the Inner World went without saying. Therefore, names were similarly important.
What would happen when a character’s name was the same as one’s own?
Perhaps, as the filming time lengthened, they would forget themselves and gradually become the characters in the script. Or perhaps the characters’ personalities would increasingly influence their own, ultimately driving them to do something irreversible.
No one knew yet. With this little information, they also couldn’t deduce any clues related to the pollution source.
Because the script problem was so simple, and most of the paper was blank to begin with, they hadn’t immediately noticed that the contents were visible only to themselves.
Xie Lincheng pulled the folded paper from his pocket. Unfolding it, he noticed it had no creases at all. He carefully felt it with his fingers, exchanged glances with the other two, and said uncertainly, “Human skin paper?”
“Correct.” Lou Hao had never handled human skin paper, but his intuition told him Xie Lincheng’s statement was right.
The three exchanged papers to examine them and confirmed that, indeed, no matter what they did, they couldn’t see anyone else’s content.
Even knowing what they held was human skin paper, the three from the Bureau only frowned slightly, nowhere near the point of horrified refusal to touch it. The others were different.
Except for the short-haired woman, the moment they heard Lou Hao’s confirmation, the other three instantly threw the items in their hands onto the table at top speed, their faces a mix of terror and disgust. The guy with light brown hair even jumped up, banging his knee on the table corner. He yelped in surprise, and every anomalous gaze turned toward them.
The guy froze. He hadn’t thought this place was that scary. The so-called anomalies looked just like people. Until he was pinned down by those stares.
Emotionless, inorganic cold stares. Chilling gazes like those of the dead. Stares as if from a wild beast. Whatever the kind, they all made his spine crawl and his hair stand on end.
Xu Xiye: As expected, shrieking is always an outsider’s hobby.
Xu Xiye simply watched, without disgust or blame, but also without any fondness.
Of course, he had no idea that, with him leading the way, a mere gaze had caused the guy to feel all this. He only knew that this particular outsider was definitely the most emotionally unstable one.
The type who could later be developed into a client.
