Xu Xiye took out his own script and looked it over.
[An Extra Just Passing Through the Protagonists’ Worlds.]
[Your name is Lu Ren, a young man renting a room in the villa. One stormy night, a group of people moves into the villa. You frequently spot them in various places.]
[Because you’re always being accidentally bumped into, your elusive nature makes you an object of suspicion.]
[But, heaven and earth can attest, you are just an extra. Your name is Lu Ren.]
So that’s how it was.
The elusive me.
Xu Xiye mused thoughtfully.
On the other side of the darkness, the entire table sat in silence.
For Lou Hao and the others, this was a Contaminated Zone. Anything human-like but not quite human was an Anomaly, no different from a ghost in essence. Saying they’d entered a haunted house wasn’t wrong. But hearing this from Bai Luwei, a female ghost herself, felt… jarringly misplaced.
Whether ghost or Anomaly, whether they showed malice or not, the group remained on guard. They wouldn’t believe her entirely. Bai Luwei’s words couldn’t frighten them.
Lou Hao sat leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed, watching Bai Luwei with sardonic amusement, waiting to see what else she could say.
Wen Danning asked: “If you knew this villa was wrong, why come in?”
Bai Luwei: “The rain outside is so heavy, it’s impossible to leave. I can’t spend the night outside. Plus, who knows if something even more terrifying might be lurking out there.”
Wen Danning: “Alright. What do you think we should do then?”
Bai Luwei lowered her head, seeming embarrassed: “Actually… maybe I’m just overthinking it. Maybe the villa was renovated without my knowledge. You all shouldn’t dwell on my words. How could ghosts exist in this world?”
Lou Hao: “Whether ghosts exist or not, tell us what you know.”
Lou Hao: “Long story short.”
Bai Luwei: “…”
Wen Danning interjected: “You think there are ghosts here. Besides the villa being abandoned, there must be other reasons?”
Bai Luwei’s gaze swept across everyone’s faces. She deliberately lowered her voice into a mysterious tone: “For some unknown reason, no one ever managed this villa before. Lots of stray cats and dogs would visit it.”
“One night, during a downpour just like this, someone drove to the villa to take shelter from the rain. The villa was pitch black, reeking with awful smells and covered in cobwebs. But the rain was too heavy to leave, so the person decided to find a clean room to rest for the night.”
“Searching from the first to the second floor, door after door was pushed open. Creak. The grating sound echoed through the gloomy, silent villa. A flashlight beam swept in. This room was much cleaner and tidier than the others. Yet—”
“When the flashlight beam swept over the bed… a woman in red lay there, utterly still.”
“It was clean here because someone had tidied it up. Just as he was about to leave, the beam of light swept past, and he saw the woman’s face was facing him. The face was a mangled mess of blood and flesh, smashed into a pulp.”
“What was even more chilling was that the woman wasn’t wearing red clothing at all. Rather, the skin covering her body had been completely peeled away.”
“Rrrrip~”
“Rrrrip~”
“From then on, that sound could often be heard deep in the villa at night, accompanied by splattering blood.”
BOOM.
A lightning flash illuminated Bai Luwei’s face.
“AHH—”
A terrified scream erupted in the darkness. “Crash!” “Bang!” Someone panicked and stumbled back, toppling over chair and all.
“What’s wrong? What happened? The power tripped, it won’t be fixed tonight.”
“Who’s that? What happened?”
“Who’s yelling so rudely at dinnertime?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming. I brought you all some candles.”
These voices—some questioning, some complaining—didn’t come from the Outsiders. They came from the Boss, the Landlady, and the Boyfriend and Girlfriend. Xu Xiye, hearing the commotion, also blended in with a scripted line.
Seeing the Boyfriend and Girlfriend rush over to gawk, he hurried over too. Yes, that’s exactly what an extra does. When there’s excitement, you go check it out.
He’d thought the scream might have come from the puppy, but looking over, he saw it wasn’t. It was a man with a buzz cut and a stud earring in his left ear.
The man’s face was pale, mouth agape, lips trembling, looking utterly terrified.
An idea struck Xu Xiye, and he easily connected to the man’s line of sight. Looking through his eyes, he thought—what the heck? There was absolutely nothing there.
Oh, right. This is acting. Almost forgot.
The Landlady had already lit a few candles and set them on the main cast’s table. Xie Lincheng grabbed Zhou Cao by the back of his collar and hauled him up. Zhou Cao frantically clutched Xie Lincheng’s fingers, staring in horror at Bai Luwei. “Her… h-her face…”
Bai Luwei touched her own face, looking innocent. “What about my face? Did my story scare you into hallucinating?”
Her face was flawless, skin fair and smooth. Nothing wrong at all.
The expressions on the others’ faces varied, but none were good.
Xie Lincheng smiled and said: “He probably ate something that went to his brain. Sorry, sorry to disturb everyone.”
Landlady: “Oh, as long as it’s nothing serious. You all keep eating, take your time.”
The implication was for the bystanders to disperse, leaving the main cast to eat. Xu Xiye had no choice but to leave.
His own table was still laden with plenty of unfinished food. He went right back to eating.
This job included room and board, and the food was rich. He really liked it.
He wasn’t a picky eater; he ate whatever was given. Food was just meant for tasting different flavors and filling the stomach, nothing to be fussy about.
Xu Xiye sometimes felt he hadn’t grown up by eating this kind of food, but he’d never eaten anything else either.
Could it be he ate air?
Sometimes, he felt the air was particularly rich in certain places. Like here, like his former company. He felt comfortable soaking in it, but he couldn’t eat it; it would be over-nutrition.
Xu Xiye tried opening his mouth and taking a bite of air. Hm, didn’t feel a thing.
That probably wasn’t the way. Maybe it just went into his stomach on its own when it was ready to be consumed.
Over on the Outsiders’ side, no one had expected that Zhou Cao—who had always seemed so quiet, so individualistic—would be the first to witness an Anomalous Phenomenon.
Xie Lincheng patted his shoulder, gave him a couple of perfunctory words of comfort, then resumed the previous topic.
“According to what you’re saying, the villa should have just one skinned female ghost, no? Why say everyone else is a ghost too?”
Bai Luwei stared fixedly at him. “What does a skinned woman want most? A nice new skin, of course. So how does she get that human skin?”
“By luring them in, naturally, and then finding the chance to peel their skin off, one by one.”
“Do you think people who’ve been skinned can survive in one piece?”
Xie Lincheng: “Hard to say. To me, they don’t look like they’ve been skinned.”
Bai Luwei: “Ghosts can deceive people. What we see might not be their true forms. And all these fine fish and dishes—who knows what they really are?”
“Haha, but all this is just legends and guesses, of course,” Bai Luwei looked at them with a terrifying glint in her eyes. “You guys shouldn’t take it seriously.”
“It’s getting late. We’ve been exhausted all day. Why don’t we head back and rest for now? Qingqing, I’m a bit scared. Can I share a room with you?”
Su Qing’s expression tightened. She reflexively refused: “No. I’m not used to sharing with strangers.”
Bai Luwei said, disappointed: “Alright. It seems you really have forgotten me completely.”
She claimed to be scared, yet was the first to walk alone into the darkness and head upstairs.
The moment Bai Luwei left, Zhou Cao’s rigid body slumped. Pale-faced, he said: “I saw it just now! Her face was a wreck! It wasn’t a hallucination!”
Xie Lincheng said dismissively: “Yeah, got it. We’re filming a ghost movie. Seeing stuff like this is normal.”
He looked off into the distance at the Director, who was still filming them, feeling this Contaminated Zone was truly strange.
Why did the Director never yell “Cut”?
Why was every take they did a “one-take”?
What did being filmed versus not being filmed signify?
Wen Danning: “Can we discuss this here? Or should we go up to a room?”
Zhuo Heng: “Earlier, in the car, I found I couldn’t speak about things outside the script’s plot or characters.”
But now he could say this, meaning that restriction was gone.
Wen Danning: “Bai Luwei was in your car back then? Must have been that you couldn’t speak in front of her.”
Zhuo Heng nodded.
Xie Lincheng: “But the Director is still filming. Logically, we shouldn’t be allowed to. I can’t shake the feeling that filming isn’t just filming. Filming signifies something more.”
The group fell silent. Su Qing glanced at everyone and said softly: “Before I paint a picture, I consider two aspects. One is the visual presentation of the painting. The other is the inner meaning it’s meant to express. If we must say what filming signifies, it’s definitely the surface, what we outwardly present.”
Wen Danning mused: “If there’s something presented, then there’s something that cannot be presented. Once we expose those things under the camera lens…”
She didn’t finish, but everyone understood the implication.
Lou Hao snorted coldly: “My gut feeling was right. Besides the Director’s rigged machines, there are eyes hiding everywhere around us. Hmph, I’ll root them out sooner or later!”
Zhuo Heng scratched his head, looking from one person to another. He hadn’t quite followed and could only ask: “So… what exactly counts as something that cannot be presented?”
Wen Danning: “Character setting. That’s why the script can only be read by oneself.”
Xie Lincheng said with a smile: “Seems like we all have secrets. And none of us are exactly good people. Oh, and the secrets are connected to that female ghost.”
Lou Hao: “Cut the chatter. Why not just name the Pollution Source? Hmph, it has to be Bai Luwei.”
Xie Lincheng: “I admit it’s highly probable, but jumping to conclusions like that is too reckless.”
Lou Hao: “Is my conclusion the same as yours?”
Wen Danning stopped their argument. “Even if Bai Luwei is the Pollution Source, an A-Rank Pollution Source that’s so easily identified is bound to be exceptionally hard to kill. I think we should talk to the others, look for clues outside the script. The protagonist in the script isn’t someone you can just kill on a whim.”
While they were discussing this, Xu Xiye was already preparing to head upstairs to his room.
He found this drama extremely boring. Nothing but talking, talking, talking. Good thing he wasn’t the Investor.
He’d originally wanted to watch the female ghost collect her debts, but now it turned out to be skin-peeling.
Is that supposed to be very scary?
Boring.
He was already on the stairs when he suddenly heard them mention a Pollution Source. What was that about again?
Right. Outsiders called the first person to catch the madness disease within a certain area the Pollution Source.
No way.
He left his number for future prospects. Why was someone already going crazy now?
