Su Jianglou finished speaking and brushed off his eldest brother’s hand, continuing forward on his own.
His eldest brother’s voice sounded in his ear again. He said, “Jianglou, calm down.”
Calm down about what?
He was very calm.
His eldest brother had said that acting like this would scare Xiao Mu, so he hadn’t planned to go in.
Wait, Xiao Mu… No, it was Xibao.
Xiao Mu…
Xibao…
Xiao Mu…
Xibao…
Just as his whole body leaped into the air and was about to touch the third-floor window, Su Jianglou’s body suddenly lost its support, plummeting instantly.
Su Wuzi, who had been waiting right below, caught him.
Su Xuanxiao looked at his youngest brother, who had completely lost consciousness again, and mused, “Wuzi, do you think Jianglou’s like this because you hit him too hard, or some other reason?”
He hadn’t missed the fight between his two younger brothers at sea earlier.
Including how Wuzi had chosen to clash head-on with the rampaging Jianglou to stop him, then directly knocked him into the sea.
Su Wuzi placed Su Jianglou on the lawn, refusing to take the blame. “I think it’s some other reason.”
Su Xuanxiao nodded, accepting his younger brother’s conclusion, then analyzed, “He does have some issues.”
When they became weirds, Jianglou had still been a child of around ten years old.
Compared to Xiao Xi, he was a big kid.
But compared to the powerful weird world, at that age back then, for him to hold onto his final thoughts and obsessions without being assimilated by the weird world into the lowest kind of weird without self-awareness—that had already taken all his effort.
Later, the world they were born into fused with the weird world, trapping them in chaotic world fissures. The times of blur and clarity drove people mad.
For Su Xuanxiao, who had the most mature mindset at the time, he had plenty of reasons to convince himself not to sink into that chaotic gray mist.
For example: He didn’t want to become a puddle of ‘meat’ again. He wanted to become a ‘person’.
Or: He seemed to have lost a younger brother.
Or even: As the eldest brother, if he broke first, it would be too embarrassing.
But for Su Jianglou, he didn’t have so many thoughts. He just instinctively felt that letting the gray mist completely invade his mind would be a very annoying thing.
Yet that gray mist was so tempting. If he wasn’t careful, it would devour even the scraps of those disgusting memories in his mind.
He couldn’t control his urge to compromise with the gray mist. In his wavering thoughts, he could only cling to the only bright spot in his memories like a lifeline.
Over and over, he thought about it.
Until finally, when they had the power to leave that place, he could only remember that he wanted a younger brother.
“These years, I’ve always suspected he had some mental issues. This must be a stress response—his mind can’t accept it, so he’s temporarily lost consciousness,” Su Xuanxiao concluded. “But finding a reliable psychologist here is really difficult.”
With that, he suggested, “Wuzi, how about putting him in your dungeon?”
Su Wuzi refused. “You want to actually drive him insane?”
Turning ‘I’ve always suspected he has mental issues’ into ‘he definitely has mental issues.’
Non-professionals shouldn’t make random suggestions.
Su Xuanxiao spread his hands. “Then what do we do?”
They couldn’t keep Jianglou from seeing Xiao Xi forever.
Jianglou wouldn’t agree once he snapped out of it.
In the end, before his younger brother could answer, he made the decision. “We can only desensitize him.”
Su Ximu woke up another morning and lazily stretched, then reached out to grab the calendar on the desk.
This was one of the employee perks the associate director had given them to celebrate the great ratings on the show’s premiere day.
He held the calendar in front of himself and counted the days on his fingers.
Only three days left until the circled date.
Three days later would be the trainees’ first advancement grand performance.
At that time, the trainees would leave the island together and be transported to Tanzhong City’s largest open-air stadium.
The production team had booked it out, installing voting devices in the audience seats ahead of time, turning it into the venue for the trainees’ grand performance.
It was brutal: On the day the grand performance ended, right there on the open-air stadium stage, out of the 91 trainees, 51 would be eliminated on the spot.
More than half.
As the dorm supervisor responsible for the trainees’ daily life, all Su Ximu could do was pay even more attention to their health in these few days.
Like supervising them to keep healthy schedules.
Like keeping a medicine kit stocked in the dorm.
Like, when they were too busy with no time, helping them pick up special stage props.
As Instructor Bai Bo had said, each trainee might want different blades. They could go to the warehouse to collect them themselves.
Su Ximu figured Instructor Bai must have accidentally mixed in some local dialect while speaking Mandarin, mistakenly saying “props” as “blades.”
Incidentally, as a crew staff member, he had also gotten a few free grand performance tickets.
After washing up, Su Ximu looked at the five tickets in front of him and sat on a small stool to message ‘Eldest Brother.’
【Eldest Brother, the production team gave me a few staff tickets. Three days from now at 8 PM, Tonight’s Big Star is holding a grand performance at the Central Stadium. Do you want to come watch?】
【If you don’t have time, Eldest Brother, you can give the tickets to your business partner’s kids. They’re really good seats up front. The associate director said in the work group that the first episode’s ratings were great, and the grand performance tickets sold out fast—they’re all gone now.】
After sending those two, he thought for a moment and added: 【Is Third Brother done with his work? If not, should I ask if he wants to come to the grand performance?】
This message carried a palpable nervousness even through the screen.
Fortunately, Eldest Brother replied quickly.
【Eldest Brother: Sure, Jianglou and I will go. I told him you quit your job—don’t worry, he’s not mad.】
Huh?
‘Third Brother’ knew?
【Xiao Xi: Then I’ll call Third Brother~】
Su Xuanxiao looked at the message and replied: 【He’s not free to take calls right now. He’s busy.】
Su Ximu immediately showed understanding. People in their ambitious phase were all super busy, of course.
【Eldest Brother: You’re right. He’s busy contributing bricks and tiles to city construction.】
Contributing bricks and tiles?
Su Ximu’s thoughts wandered as he couldn’t help pondering the connection between tourism groups and city construction.
Tannan City outskirts:
Unlike the suburbs in Su Ximu’s common-sense impression—someone who hadn’t left the city since arriving in this world—Tannan City’s outskirts had no highways, no rail lines. There were only wild weirds like homeless ghosts from a chaotic burial mound.
Any horror movie scene from the human world could find a similar shadow here.
Further ahead was an area even those wild weirds didn’t dare enter easily, shrouded in gray mist with no visible end.
Long ago, the Tanzhong Five Cities had been areas shrouded in gray mist like this.
At this moment, Su Jianglou sat at the boundary between the gray mist and the ‘chaotic burial mound,’ breathing in the familiar air and pondering some things.
First off, Xiao Mu was Xibao. Right? Yes.
No wonder he never wanted to hurt him.
Wait… what had he just been thinking?
Oh, Xiao Mu was Xibao.
Wait again, who was Xiao Mu?
Hiss…
Xiao Mu was the puppet doll he had found!
So, Xibao = puppet doll?
Su Jianglou raised his index finger, strands of black mist surging from his fingertip, sketching a simple drawing in front of him.
His child self, holding child Xibao’s hand.
Xibao had grown up now—how could he forget? Xibao grown up looked just like he had as a child. Yet he had only thought himself lucky to find a puppet doll that resembled Xibao.
“Will Xibao blame me?!” Su Jianglou suddenly stood up, oddly empathizing with his eldest and second brothers, who had strongly opposed him building a new dungeon before.
His emotions surged, power roiling, and he actually pushed the gray mist back half a meter.
Such destructive power on Bizarre Island would probably sink the whole thing.
Time was vague at the gray mist boundary. Su Jianglou used to hate it here, but later he got used to it, and it even helped him calm down a bit.
By the time Su Xuanxiao arrived and dragged him out from inside, three days had passed.
The grand performance started at 8 PM, but whether trainees or production staff, they all arrived at the Central Stadium while the sky was still dim with dawn.
The backstage was hectic. With nothing much to do for the moment, Su Ximu simply helped out backstage, assisting the trainees in checking their props.
Special effects makeup, skin wax, ball-joint puppets…
These were all things he had fetched from the warehouse in his spare time for the trainees who asked for his help.
The warehouse grandpa was very responsible too, carefully verifying the long list with him, then checking with the associate director. Once the associate director approved giving him the props, he quickly found them all and even used a cart to transport them right under the dorm building.
Backstage, not only was Su Ximu meticulously checking props, the trainees kept their eyes glued to the pile no matter what they were doing.
They hadn’t used these props during rehearsals, only sneaking practices back in the dorms.
Just in case those weird instructors saw them and came up with some twisted ideas.
If they analyzed all five dances for the grand performance from a special effects makeup angle.
The bleeding ballerina underfoot could be seen as having blood packs stuffed in her shoes beforehand.
The joint-pierced human puppet could use strong glue to stick ropes to the joints, creating the illusion of ropes piercing through.
For the limb-twisting clown, the posable joint puppet came in handy. Trainees just needed to bind the puppet to themselves and cover it with clothes. For key moves, they could retract their arms into the sleeves, letting the puppet perform.
The wingless swan and the 360-degree back-glance boy were even simpler. One hid their arms the whole time, the other drew a towel-twisting neck rotation effect on their neck.
Everything fell into place.
And under Rao Fei’s strong suppression after he became the group bully these past two days, the internal competition stirred up by the instructors was ruthlessly stamped out among the trainees.
Ensuring no situation where all trainees honestly did special effects, only for a traitor to suddenly jump out with 30% authenticity—minimal self-damage but high scores to safely advance.
Everyone started from the same level playing field. The rest…
Was up to luck!
While checking props, Su Ximu suddenly felt an intense, impossible-to-ignore gaze from a backstage corner fixed on him.
He instinctively turned his head but saw nothing.
He thought it might be an illusion, but a few minutes later, he felt that intense gaze again.
This time, he didn’t turn. Instead, he casually walked to the makeup table and used the mirror to observe behind him.
Again, a blurry black shadow flashed by.
A highly likely guess formed in Su Ximu’s mind. He stood up and jogged to Blue 242 Leader, whom he trusted a lot, whispering, “Blue 242 Leader, let’s go tell the associate director quick. There’s… a pervert in the backstage?”
He had originally meant to say sasaeng fan, but since he hadn’t paid much attention to the entertainment industry before, the word wouldn’t come, so he settled for something similar: “You know, the kind that might steal trainees’ personal clothes…”
“His movements were fast, but I still saw clearly—the black clothes he used to cover his face were Wang Xingxing’s performance outfit!”
Blue 242 glanced toward the back upon hearing this, his tone casual. “A pervert, huh…”
