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

In Shanghai, Su Qinghan's studio was sparsely decorated. Gray cement walls and a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf crammed with storyboards and soundtracks from various countries sat atop a 65-inch professional monitor. The curtains were drawn tight; the only light source in the room was that screen.

Su Qinghan had been sitting in this chair for four hours.

The monitor played unedited footage from the detective show "Who's the Murderer" on a loop. The camera was shaky, and the recording studio audio was mixed with the background noise from the air conditioner and the staff's chatter.

Su Qinghan dragged the progress bar back to the same node. The thirty-first time.

In the scene, the warehouse's iron door is pushed open, and three beams of flashlight light sweep in. The young man in the corner shifts his body to the left, his back pressed against a wooden crate.

0.25 times faster.

Her gaze was fixed on Lu Yuan's right hand. The movement of his thumb gliding across the left side of the gun was impossible to detect at normal speed; only when slowed down four times could the complete trajectory be seen. The position of the caress was precise to the millimeter, without any deviation.

Su Qinghan once filmed a movie about drug enforcement. For that movie, she trained with the Yunnan border armed police for forty days. She had seen how real gun owners disarmed their weapons no less than a thousand times.

The extra on the screen moved more cleanly than any armed police officer she had ever seen.

"Director Su."

Assistant director Lin Yue pushed open the door and came in, holding a cup of Americano. She had worked under Su Qinghan for three years and was already used to the female director's crazy work pace.

Why are we going to keep rehashing the NPC material from a variety show for so long?

"Come here." Su Qinghan didn't turn around.

Lin Yue put the coffee on the corner of the table and leaned closer to the monitor.

Su Qinghan rewound the screen and paused it. The frame was frozen on the moment Lu Yuan looked up at the three guests.

"Look into his eyes."

Lin Yue took a look. It was a young man who was indeed quite good-looking, with a calm expression that wasn't exactly fierce, but... made him look uncomfortable.

"It's pretty intimidating," Lin Yue commented objectively, "but you're a variety show NPC, so being able to scare the guests is enough. This guy was lucky; he happened to be there when He Rihuo wasn't in good form..."

"Shut up."

Lin Yue swallowed the second half of his sentence.

Su Qinghan pressed play. The video continued at 0.25x speed, and the scene shifted to a gambling game, where Lu Yuan sat in the dealer's seat, cutting the cards with one hand.

She paused, rewound two seconds, and resumed playback. Then she paused again, rewound again, and repeated this five times.

"Did you see it clearly?"

Lin Yue honestly shook his head: "It's too fast, even slow motion can't keep up."

"I'm not asking you to look at your hands. Look at your face."

Su Qinghan fixed the frame on the moment the cards were cut. Lu Yuan's expression, to be precise, was expressionless. His eyes were focused on a spot on the ceiling, his pupils did not contract, and his facial muscles were completely still.

"These are facial features of someone who is distracted," Su Qinghan said in a low voice, "completely unconscious. His cerebral cortex wasn't involved at all when he was doing that manual work."

She stood up, walked to the bookshelf, pulled out a thick folder, flipped to a page, and tossed it in front of Lin Yue.

The folder contained dozens of screenshots, all stills and audition photos of top-tier male actors in China, categorized by role type. The "Villain/High-IQ Criminal" section was densely packed with twelve faces. Next to each face were annotations in red pen by Su Qinghan.

Lin Yue glanced at the annotations.

Zhou Dainian – “Deliberate. He wanted to have ‘I’m a bad person’ engraved on his forehead.”

Fang Jiming – “He’s technically skilled, but deep down he’s a good person, and that can’t be hidden.”

Jiang Wenhan – “The eyes are right, but the body is wrong. The posture is too loose; someone who hasn’t experienced real violence wouldn’t stand like that.”

Twelve people, twelve reasons for veto, and not a single one passed.

This is a record of the villain casting for Su Qinghan's movie "Black Gold," which she has been preparing for two years.

The story revolves around a highly intelligent criminal hidden deep within the financial system. On the surface, he is a refined and gentle fund manager, but in reality, he is the mastermind behind the entire illicit financial chain.

This character needs to switch seamlessly between "harmless" and "lethal" without the audience even noticing.

I auditioned for more than half a year. I auditioned for dozens of roles.

Su Qinghan didn't take any of them.

The production company has started pressing for results, and the investors' patience is visibly wearing thin. At last week's project meeting, the producer slammed his fist on the table in front of a dozen people, demanding, "Director Su, what kind of actor do you want?"

Su Qinghan did not answer at the time.

She couldn't explain it either.

All she knew was that she was waiting for something. Something that couldn't be quantified using casting standards.

Su Qinghan walked back to the monitor and dragged the progress bar to the scene where Lu Yuan finished work and greeted the cameraman with his thermos.

The young man in the picture casually waved to the photographer, "Thanks for your hard work, bro." One second he was an arms dealer exuding coldness from his eyes, and the next he became a neighbor who was mooching off the neighbor's WiFi.

There was no transition.

There is no switching cost between the two states, and both states are true.

Su Qinghan stared at that face, her fingers unconsciously tightening around the armrest of the chair.

Having seen tens of thousands of faces since entering the industry, she believes her judgment on acting has reached a certain limit.

But the person on the screen shattered her framework of judgment.

Because he is not within the scope of performance.

"Director Su, if you think this guy is interesting, I can contact him," Lin Yue tentatively suggested. "But to be honest, a mere extra in a vertical store, without even an agent, if we really put him in the pool of candidates for 'Black Gold,' what will the investors think..."

"Who said it was an alternative?"

Su Qinghan opened the drawer and took out the list of villain candidates. Twelve names were printed on the A3 paper, each of which had been crossed out in red pen.

She picked up a pen and wrote two words in the blank space at the bottom of the list.

Lu Yuan.

"Director Su, let me remind you, 'Black Gold' has an investment of 120 million yuan. There is no precedent in China for using amateurs to carry the main role in a crime film of this scale."

"Haven't I done enough things that had no precedent?"

Lin Yue fell silent. When Su Qinghan won the Golden Rooster Award for Best Director at the age of twenty-five, the jury also said there was no precedent for it.

Su Qinghan put down her pen, picked up her phone, and scrolled to producer Chen Tong's WeChat.

Type, delete. Type again, delete again.

She stared at the chat box for ten seconds, then finally sent a message:

"Help me investigate someone. Lu Yuan, an extra at Hengdian World Studios. I need all the information I can find about him, the faster the better."

After sending the message, she placed her phone face down on the table and leaned back in her chair.