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

It was two in the morning. Su Qinghan leaned back on the sofa in her studio, with the documents Chen Tong had just sent her in front of her—the results of her thorough background check on Lu Yuan.

Clean and tidy.

He had worked as an extra in the vertical store for three years and had two bank cards under his name. The total transaction amount barely reached the local minimum living allowance.

It was clean, a blank sheet of paper. There was no Jeet Kune Do school registration form, no membership record from a Texas Hold'em offline club.

But this became the most bizarre point of contention. At first, she had considered whether this person had secretly studied under a seasoned master of martial arts or had worked in underground boxing rings, but all of that was proven wrong. Without any systematic training, he simply overwhelmed a mature performance style with his physical abilities alone.

Undeniably, this transcends the dimension of skill. It's called instinct, or monster.

The phone number is dialed and connected.

"Qinghan, are you crazy?" Chen Tong's voice on the other end of the phone betrayed her frustration from staying up all night. "A 120 million yuan scheme! The villainous second lead takes up a third of the film's dramatic tension! You want me to use a bit player who only makes 200 yuan a day with a lunchbox?"

He rattled off seven ironclad rules.

It lacks box office appeal.

There is no fan base to support it.

I have zero experience with feature films.

The investors will never sign.

Risk control measures are very difficult to compromise on when it comes to guarantees for film and television completion.

The publicity department cannot find the publicity coordinates.

The cinemas are not getting enough leverage in scheduling their films.

These are inherent flaws that big-budget commercial productions cannot avoid.

After listening, Su Qinghan tucked her long hair behind her ear and replied with a few words.

"Buy plane tickets tomorrow and take people to Hengdian to see for themselves. If they don't think it's good enough, I'll hand over the casting rights. You can find anyone you want for the second male lead in 'Black Gold,' I won't waste any time."

There was a ten-second silence at both ends of the phone call.

Chen Tong ultimately didn't want to completely sever ties with this industry cash cow. He compromised: "Fine! If this kid can't handle things, this matter is over and done with."

......

Seven o'clock in the morning.

The morning mist hadn't yet dissipated over the vertical shop. Lu Yuan zipped up his windbreaker to his collarbone, while Lao Liu's orange head rested on his chin.

I went to the South Gate Outcast Distribution Center.

We went to the old street entrance.

I asked about the group leader's post at Gate 3 of the film and television city.

The results were surprisingly consistent. The group leaders looked at him like he was a plague god, waving their hands and avoiding him. One hot-tempered man was about to start cursing, but when he met the man's eyes, he swallowed the rest of his words and turned to pull down the iron gate.

It must be admitted that Brother Wang, the local bully, was highly efficient in enforcing his blockade order. Overnight, the vast ecosystem of extras in the film studio was completely shut down, leaving him with no quota even for a corpse that lay still for four hours and received a boxed meal.

Social class oppression has always been cruel.

Lu Yuan walked to a convenience store on the street, bought a shriveled vegetable bun, and broke it in half. He fed one half into his jacket collar, and chewed the rest himself.

If he couldn't play a corpse, he'd sell his physical labor. He strolled into a temporary market for migrant workers. Here, scraps of paper were scattered everywhere: dispatch orders, night shift logistics sorting. He picked out a piece of handwritten paper: warehouse handling, 150 yuan a day, start work at 8 am tomorrow.

Write down the contact number.

The sixth dog yawned in his arms, its front paws restlessly tugging at the zipper. Lu Yuan tucked it deeper into his pocket.

Next came personal time. The scrap metal recycling station was only two stops away from the labor market, with mountains of scrap metal piled up everywhere.

One hundred meters away, an inconspicuous gray van was parked behind the green belt.

Jiang Yan was biting her fingers. She had been working for hours, her high-powered lenses gripping the target's back intently.

This person's lifeline was cut off by the entire industry. An ordinary person would have been frantic, desperately seeking connections, or packing their bags and leaving. But Lu Yuan's heart rate remained steady, and his pace didn't falter even by half a beat.

According to criminal profiling models, this is a silent period preceding the eruption of antisocial personality disorder. He is constructing a dangerous chain of revenge.

Through the telescope's field of view, Lu Yuan was parked in the scrap copper and iron area.

The selection process was extremely demanding. A section of rusted hollow copper tube was extracted from the bottom of the industrial waste; a half-finger-length copper core wire was then cut off; and finally, a windproof lighter piezoelectric ceramic component and a dry cell battery were found in the broken basin.

Material selection and molding. It cost a total of five yuan.

His movements were fluid and effortless. His position was perfectly aligned, his back blocking the radiation from the only security camera in the junkyard.

Jiang Yan pressed the walkie-talkie, and the back teeth clashed.

"Calling headquarters. The target has purchased metal pipes, electronic jumpers, detonation pulse generators, and DC power supplies. Preliminary procurement of special directional blasting devices is underway. Repeat, suspected of IED assembly. Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team, all personnel immediately deployed, standby distance reduced to three kilometers."

After leaving the scrap yard, Lu Yuan walked along the main street to People's Park.

He found a worn-out bench and sat down. He took out a utility knife with a grayed-out blade and spread the scraps on his knees.

Jiang Yan crouched down and approached the bushes twenty meters away.

The only sounds in the miniature monitoring headset are the wind and the metallic scraping noise.

Lu Yuan was cutting a copper pipe. His left hand pressed down on the pipe, while his right hand pushed the blade. His movements were incredibly precise; his technique of peeling away the outer layer was comparable to microsurgery. He relied solely on wrist strength to find the fatigue point in the metal.

Jiang Yan knelt on one knee, disengaging the safety from her sidearm. Several black cars from the bomb disposal squad were concealed at a street corner, with SWAT officers standing by with riot shields. Over the radio, the captain's request was tense: "Captain Jiang! Confirmed as a trigger-activated high-explosive mine? Authorized for a sniper to take her down at long range? Over!"

Beside the bench.

Lu Yuan disconnected the wire, wrapped the piezoelectric block connector tightly around the positive terminal of the battery, and connected the other end to a copper tube as a counterweight. He unpacked the white cloth bag, took out a pheasant feather he had picked up by the roadside, and smoothly inserted it into the gap of the copper tube.

Push the dry cell battery clips up.

"Click".

Jiang Yan drew her gun, started moving, and leaped over the bushes.

Suddenly, under the influence of gravity and the eccentric torque of the micro-motor, the rusty copper tube began to vibrate irregularly at high frequency. The pheasant at the top flapped its feathers wildly in all directions.

The little orange cat emerged from Lu Yuan's oversized clothes, its hind legs dragging the splint, its front paws excitedly patting the feather that was fluttering up and down.

Lu Yuan leaned back, his eyelids lowered, watching the little furball dance wildly, a sense of tranquility in his eyes as he drifted along with the current.

Jiang Yan forcibly retracted her right leg mid-air.

He plunged headfirst into a pile of fallen leaves. His leather boots came to a stop just outside the blind spot of Lu Yuan's perimeter security perimeter.

The fully armed captain was still yelling through the headset: "Captain Jiang! Has the target been activated? Give me the kill order! Repeat! Give me the kill order!"

Jiang Yan lay prone in the mud, her scalp tingling as if she'd been electrocuted. Her fingernails dug into the mud, and she pressed the call button.

"All clear. Return the way you came."

"What's going on, Captain Jiang? What kind of chemical weapons did he deploy?"

"...a fully automatic cat toy with a follow-up counterweight."

The channel was deathly silent.

On the bench, Lu Yuan glanced slightly at the bushes not far away. He looked away and poked the sixth brother's soft belly with his finger.

This cat is too energetic; it always manages to attract unwanted attention and cause people to wrestle nearby, making so much noise that he doesn't even have a chance to daydream in the morning.