A real killer playing a villain; the guy surnamed Zhen in Detective, run!

Lu Yuan once again became that awkward extra who couldn't even stand properly.

"Teacher Xu, you've done a great job, so great!" He rubbed his hands together. "I was just taking this on haphazardly, please forgive me."

Xu Changlin looked him up and down, a smile still on his face.

Lu Yuan bent down, scooped Lao Liu up from the ground, tucked him into his arms, and retreated behind the pile of cardboard boxes.

Back in the director's area, Su Qinghan had already changed to a new pen and was drawing on the storyboard.

"Director Su."

"Um."

"Who taught this child?"

"My final round of pressure just now used a combination of continuous spatial encroachment and overwhelming speaking speed. I used this tactic against Chen Qiming in 'Dark River,' and he lasted four sentences. I used it against Fang Zhongxin in 'The Hunt,' and Mr. Fang lasted two and a half sentences."

He paused for a moment, then said, "This kid didn't give us a single word."

Su Qinghan did not look up.

"It's not that he didn't let me in, it's that he cut in from behind." Xu Changlin's voice dropped half a octave. "His method of controlling his breathing isn't the abdominal breathing technique from the academy; he locks the diaphragm's output at the muscle level, and the frequency of his vocal cord vibration is completely synchronized with his gait. This kind of thing..."

He rubbed his chin.

"Either they have undergone long-term training with top acting masters, or they are deeply method actors who constantly push themselves into the extreme emotions of the characters and rely on physiological modifications to maintain their state."

Su Qinghan picked up her coffee cup and took a sip.

"Teacher Xu is overthinking it."

"I've seen the footage you sent me before." Xu Changlin shook his head. "In that segment on the variety show, he switched from a ruthless bandit back to an ordinary person in just one second. Without extremely strong psychological boundary management, a person would be split in two by that kind of switching speed."

Su Qinghan didn't argue. She pointed her coffee cup to the corner of the shed, "See for yourself."

Xu Changlin turned his head.

Lu Yuan squatted behind the pile of cardboard boxes, with Lao Liu lying on his knees, rubbing the cat's chin with his thumb.

"I'm not going to look at the script for now." Xu Changlin put the script on Su Qinghan's desk. "I want to observe how he deals with the character's lingering effects after work."

Su Qinghan tapped the tip of her pen on one of the storyboard panels, but said nothing.

Xu Changlin walked around to the lighting equipment area and stood at the back. The angle was just right so that he could see the logistics area twelve meters away through the gaps in the panel.

His envisioned scene: Lu Yuan finds a quiet corner, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and uses meditation or emotional anchoring to detach "Shen Yibai" from his body. Standard procedure for top-tier method actors.

In fact, Lu Yuan was standing in front of Sister Jiao, the logistics lady, with four empty mineral water bottles in his left hand and his right hand on his hip.

"Sister Jiao, these four bottles cost two cents each on the market, so that's eight cents. The cost of your rice is at most five cents plus electricity. I'll pay you eight cents, and you'll make a killing."

Sister Jiao rested the rice scoop on the edge of the bucket and glanced at him sideways.

"Xiao Lu, you already had one serving at noon today."

"That portion was provided by the production crew; this portion is an extra meal for Lao Liu."

Jiao Jie glanced down at the sixth cat in his arms. The little orange cat tilted its head, its two front paws resting on Lu Yuan's forearm, with bits of cat treat still stuck to its mouth, and handed him a rice container.

Lu Yuan deftly arranged the four bottles on the logistics table and took the disposable lunch box.

Behind the sunshade, Xu Changlin's brows furrowed into a knot.

Lu Yuan sat down. He placed the lunchbox on the cardboard box for Lao Liu, who buried his head in his food. Lu Yuan unscrewed the thermos and drained the water. A few goji berry residues, which had been soaking for who knows how long, were at the bottom of the thermos. He picked them out with his little finger and flicked them onto the ground.

He pulled a sealed bag out of the inside pocket of his windbreaker; it contained about half a bag of goji berries.

I opened the sealed bag, stuck my fingers in, picked up a few grains, counted them, and tossed them into the cup.

He paused his finger at the bag opening, looked down at the remaining amount in the bag, and then looked at the five grains already in the cup.

They've stopped.

Pinch the sealed bag closed and tuck it back into the inner pocket. Five pills; today's ration is five pills.

A very complex expression appeared on Xu Changlin's face.

"Teacher Xu?"

The sound came from behind. Xu Changlin's assistant, Xiao Zhong, walked over with a cup of freshly brewed latte. When he saw his boss peeking out from behind the sunshade, he almost spilled his coffee.

The three-time Golden Horse Award winner, a living fossil of the domestic acting world, is currently intently watching a young man counting goji berries twelve meters away through the gap in the sunshade.

Xu Changlin ignored him. His mind was racing.

It must be physical subsidence, absolutely physical subsidence!!!

The core of the character Shen Yibai is an extreme desire for control and elitist arrogance. Prolonged immersion in this high concentration of dark emotions is devastating to an actor's mental health. There are precedents in the industry—Heath Ledger's Joker and Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur.

This child is using reverse anchoring.

Through extreme, mundane acts—collecting bottles to exchange for food, counting goji berries, and meticulously calculating poverty down to the last single one—he forcibly pulls himself back into the bottom-tier coordinate system of the character "Lu Yuan," using the roughest survival texture to neutralize Shen Yibai's mental toxicity.

What a genius!

Xu Changlin looked away and straightened his back.

"Xiao Zhong, pour out my coffee."

Xiao Zhong: "...Huh?"

"Don't send me those foreign gadgets anymore. Use a thermos."

---

Xu Changlin pulled over a plastic stool and sat down next to Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan carefully picked up a goji berry that had slipped from the sealed bag onto the table with his index finger. He blew on it twice—there was quite a bit of dust on the cardboard box. After blowing, he tossed it into his cup.

Six pills now. I'm making an exception for today.

"Lu Yuan".

"Teacher Xu."

Xu Changlin rested his hands on his knees and cut straight to the point without rambling.

"In that rehearsal, in the last line, 'It's just that I allow you to see it,' you paused after the fourth character. A normal flow of emotion is delivered in one breath, but you insisted on pausing there, leaving a breath, and then ending the second half of the sentence with a lower pitch."

Lu Yuan chewed on a goji berry that had inexplicably appeared in his mouth and mumbled an "Mmm."

"This technique is called 'emotional delay' in academia. Meyerhold's biomechanical training system includes a similar breathing interception technique. Are you following Stanislavski's approach or have an expressionist background? Have you undergone systematic training in micro-expression control in private?"