Amateur talent show? Top mentors are my students.

Before the official filming began, the props team pushed a metal box into the set.

Inside the box were two training pistols with a matte finish.

The barrel has been modified to be compatible with blank cartridges and is already loaded with ammunition. It is only responsible for simulating the firing, sparks, and recoil.

The person in charge of the firearms carefully checked the locking status and trigger travel of each one, then engaged the safety and handed them to He Xu and Jonathan.

"Here you take the gun, the safety is on." The firearms instructor handed the gun to He Xu. "Before we start filming, I'll yell 'Load,' you pull the slide, and then the safety is off. After we're done filming, I'll yell 'Clean up,' you remove the magazine, pull the slide to eject the empty cartridges, and then the safety is off."

He Xu took the gun. It felt slightly newer than the guns used in the training camp, but the weight distribution was similar.

He pulled the slide to confirm that it was repositioning smoothly, and then tucked the gun back into the holster on his waist.

"Ready?" Mike's voice came from the side. "Let's go straight to shooting this scene."

He Xu went up to the second-floor iron frame and stood back in the starting position.

Carter's voice came from the monitor: "On your marks—The Piece, Scene 47, Shot 1. Action."

The clapperboard fell.

He Xu cut out from the edge of the iron frame, his boots making a crisp sound as he stepped on the iron stairs, his whole body drawing a clear and distinct trajectory in the dim industrial light.

The muzzle of his gun remained pointed at the pre-set target—Jonathan—as he moved.

Jonathan ran in from the entrance on the other side of the set, the sound of his leather boots on the concrete floor conveying an unwavering determination.

The two met in the central shelving area, their eyes locking onto each other in the instant the light shone through.

Jonathan fired the first shot.

A muffled thud—the sound of a blank round was lower than that of a live round, but the explosive sensation still reverberated in the relatively enclosed indoor space, bouncing off the metal frame and back again.

He Xu anticipated the direction, dodged to the side, and simultaneously raised his gun to return fire.

Gunshots rang out intermittently in the warehouse setting, the sound of blank rounds echoing back and forth between the iron frames, creating a metallic boom.

After firing the third bullet, He Xu did a forward roll, using the momentum to get closer to Jonathan's defensive range.

As he rolled, his right hand returned the gun to its holster and instead gripped the hilt of the knife at his waist.

He drew his sword, unsheathed it, and the tip of the blade traced an arc of light outwards. The whole process was faster than he had practiced. So fast that when Jonathan made his parry, the tip of the blade was already half an inch ahead of his predicted position.

With a "clang," the prop knife grazed the opponent's forearm guard, the force was restrained, but the sound was clear enough.

Taking advantage of that brief moment of opening, He Xu lowered his body, his knees almost touching the ground. At the same time, he turned the knife in his hand from the outside in, and the tip of the knife precisely wedged into the gap between Jonathan's gun and his wrist, flicking and pressing.

The training gun slipped from Jonathan's hand, tumbled in the air, and slammed to the ground with a thud.

Without pausing, He Xu used the momentum of the downward pressure to roll to the side.

He rolled over a fallen oil drum, and as he got up, he drew another spare gun from his waist—raised it horizontally, and pointed it in Jonathan's direction.

The planned actions end here.

The set was silent for about two seconds.

Then Carter's voice came from the direction of the monitor: "...Pass."

He Xu stood still, gun still in his hand. His breathing was heavier than usual, but his heartbeat was already slowing down.

He lowered the gun, turned off the safety, and then glanced in Mike's direction.

Mike was standing next to the control panel, not saying a word, but He Xu saw him clapping with both hands.

Jonathan picked up the gun that had been knocked out of his hand from the ground and dusted it off: "When you just slid the tip of the knife across the gun, I almost thought you were going to cut my finger."

He Xu sheathed the knife at his waist and flexed his fingers holding it: "I held back a bit beforehand, so I didn't touch it."

"I know you didn't run into him," Jonathan said, putting his gun back in its holster, "but he still gave me quite a hard time."

After this main shot, the film crew didn't immediately disperse.

Carter peeked out from behind the monitor and began making arrangements as usual: "We have enough footage for the main shot. But there are still a few details to fill in—He Xu, I plan to shoot your knife-changing action from two different camera angles, and go through a close-up sequence."

He Xu handed the gun back to the firearms team and stood still. While the staff adjusted the camera position, he looked down and moved his fingers that were holding the knife. His knuckles were slightly sore, but it didn't bother him.

For the next two hours, he spent almost all his time repeating the same set of movements—drawing the knife, turning his wrist, switching hands, cutting in, and sheathing the knife.

Each movement was broken down into smaller units: close-ups of the hands, medium shots of the upper body's trajectory, and long shots of the overall movement.

The camera's track slid back and forth around him, like a snake circling its prey.

He Xu has gotten used to this rhythm—the end of the main shot is not the end; the disassembled fragments are what truly constitute the texture of the image.

On the third day, he took additional photos from another angle, climbing over the second-floor railing.

He was suspended in mid-air by wires and moved back and forth six times. After each landing, Carter would watch the replay and say, "Let's do one more take. The landing momentum wasn't smooth enough just now."

He Xu did not refute, turned around and walked back to the starting point, then climbed back up to the second floor.

On the evening of the fourth day, he added a set of slow-motion close-quarters combat footage—the trajectory of the blade cutting through the air needed to be captured by a high-speed camera, and his movements were required to be two-thirds slower than normal, while maintaining Langdon's unique sharpness.

He Xu tried four times before Carter was satisfied.

On the morning of the fifth day, he filmed additional footage of changing magazines with one hand after being injured.

The scene was only two seconds long in the script, but it took more than an hour to film because his hands had to complete four steps in the same shot: disengaging the safety, ejecting the magazine, inserting a new magazine, and loading the gun, while his face could not show any obvious changes in expression.

On the sixth day, he went through all the reshot footage again to perform technical compositing, confirming that every frame of footage could be seamlessly integrated with the previous main shots.

It was already dark when we finished work.

Carter watched the final playback on the monitor, then took off one earphone and said something that brought a sigh of relief to the entire set: "We have all the footage for this scene; we can move on."

The staff began packing up the equipment and props in the set, and some people started discussing the new shooting plans after the location change tomorrow.

He Xu stood at the edge of the set, watching the lights on the iron frame go out one by one. The dust and sweat on his dark gray tactical uniform had dried and soaked several times under the set lights.

He bent down and stretched his shoulders, then grabbed his coat and headed toward the dressing room.

The reshoots over several days left his back muscles even tighter than usual after filming wrapped.

He had gotten used to that soreness, just as he had gotten used to repeating the same action over and over again in front of the camera until he no longer needed to think about it.

But this habit is about to end—he is about to have his last performance.