Film and Television: The Villain's Life Begins with Joy of Life

Stars hang low over the plains, the moon is veiled in mist.

The night was quiet and beautiful, unsuitable for murder, yet it couldn't stop murder.

In the shadows of Kyoto's streets, where the moonlight couldn't reach, a pair of eyes flashed by.

"Lin Gong...South of the city..."

Zhou Cheng thought to himself.

Lin Gong was destined to die.

His decision to take action personally was not due to any old grudge against Lin Gong, nor was it to stand up for Fan Xian. He wanted Lin Gong dead simply because Lin Gong was perfectly suited to die at this time.

Emperor Qing now has long harbored the intention to wage war against Northern Qi, but he lacks a plausible pretext.

The war between Nanqing and Beiqi is one of the most important turning points in the early stages of "Joy of Life".

He can take this opportunity to do many things.

In the original storyline, after Lin Gong was killed by Wu Zhu, Chen Pingping, in order to exonerate Fan Xian and to cater to Emperor Qing's intention to start a war, pinned the blame for Lin Gong's death on Si Gu Jian.

He then formally declared war on Northern Qi, citing Northern Qi's instigation of Si Gu Jian, the spies planted in the capital, and the assassination of important officials of Qing.

It was inevitable that the Qing Kingdom would go to war with the Northern Qi Kingdom.

Emperor Qing could find many excuses to start a war, such as a lost soldier or a lost mule, anything would do.

But none of these things carry as much weight as the death of Lin Xiang's son.

Only if Lin Gong dies and more people are involved can he take advantage of the chaos to carry out his plan, gain a legitimate reason to leave the capital, establish contact with other grandmasters, and make the most thorough preparations for the system mission.

Thinking of this, Zhou Cheng swayed, but instead of heading south of the city, he flew straight towards the Royal Villa in the east of the city.

He is not good at tracking.

Even if we follow the route Lin Gong took out of the city, we might not be able to find him.

Lin Gong isn't stupid; he'll definitely hide his tracks once he leaves the city.

There are very few experts in the capital who are skilled in tracking, and Wang Qinian, who is by Fan Xian's side, is one of the best.

However, he didn't seek out Wang Qinian because he knew that there was a super expert in the capital who was even more skilled at tracking than Wang Qinian.

It didn't take long for Zhou Cheng to arrive near the Royal Villa.

He did not enter the villa, but instead leaped lightly and landed on the top of an ancient locust tree that was several meters tall.

He stood on a branch about two fingers thick, with his hands behind his back, quietly gazing into the courtyard.

The moonlight, as white as frost, blanketed the courtyard of the villa.

Not long after, he saw a dark figure climb over the wall from inside the courtyard.

The movement was as light as a falling leaf, landing without making a sound.

The dark figure had spotted him early on and was heading straight for him.

"You've arrived."

Zhou Cheng floated down from the treetop and landed in front of the dark figure.

"I am coming."

"Have you made a decision?"

"no."

The figure, dressed in a black outfit with a black blindfold, answered without hesitation.

Who else could this be but Wu Zhu, whom I parted ways with in Danzhou?

Even though he had changed his mask, Wu Zhu still recognized him immediately.

Zhou Cheng put his hands behind his back, his tone natural and familiar:

"Fan Xian is still a bit weak. He hasn't experienced severe pain, so he hesitates and is not decisive enough when doing things."

Wu Zhu remained silent for a moment.

"I don't want Fan Xian to go through those things." His voice was flat. "The Fan Xian we know now is just fine."

Zhou Cheng looked at him, his eyebrows slightly raised beneath the mask.

"It's good that he's alive. But can you guarantee he'll survive every time?" He paused. "What if someone sends an even stronger assassin to kill Fan Xian?"

Wu Zhu fell silent.

After a moment, he spoke, his voice still flat:

"I am acting on Miss's orders to protect Fan Xian. Anyone who tries to kill Fan Xian, I will kill them."

"But Fan Xian doesn't want to kill Lin Gong."

Zhou Cheng said calmly.

"You haven't shown yourself yet, but you should know his decision. One is Ye Qingmei's order, the other is Fan Xian's wish. What will you choose?"

Upon hearing Zhou Cheng's words, Wu Zhu's face suddenly twitched.

The convulsions were obvious, as if some program had malfunctioned. He stood there, motionless, his "eyes" under the black cloth faintly gleaming, as if they too were experiencing some kind of intense conflict.

After a few breaths, he calmed down.

"I have no idea."

Zhou Cheng looked at him,

"I wonder if Fan Xian ever told you to do what you want to do."

Wu Zhu paused for a moment.

"have."

"So what do you want to do?"

"Kill Lin Gong."

Zhou Cheng clapped his hands.

"That's right. As long as Lin Gong lives, Fan Xian won't be safe. If you do wrong things and don't pay the price, no one will be afraid or respectful! Today it's Lin Gong, tomorrow it might be Wang Gong, and the day after tomorrow it might be Liu Gong. They don't need to succeed every time; as long as they succeed just once, Fan Xian will be dead."

He stared at Wu Zhu, speaking slowly and deliberately:

"You should understand that what you want to do is not wrong, neither for you nor for Fan Xian."

Wu Zhu remained silent for a moment.

Then he spoke, his voice still flat, yet carrying a certain keen insight:

"Analyzing your words, I can conclude that you want to kill Lin Gong. Killing someone should be easy for someone with your abilities. Why did you specifically come to wait for me?"

Zhou Cheng chuckled softly:

"Killing someone is easy, but finding someone is troublesome. I only know that Lin Gong left the city from the south. My intelligence network isn't powerful enough to keep an eye on a group of experts outside the city."

He paused for a moment, then said, "With your abilities, tracking Lin Gong would be a piece of cake. We also have the same goal, so I came."

Zhou Cheng looked at Wu Zhu.

Wu Zhu is a highly intelligent bio-mechanical robot from the "Temple". He perceives information from the outside world by collecting data through various sensors - spectrum, heat source, smell, vibration and so on.

His tracking ability is akin to a game-changer compared to humans.

Wang Qinian's tracking skills were already unparalleled, but compared to Wu Zhu's olfactory sensors, it was like children playing house.

Wu Zhu nodded.

He didn't say anything more, turned around, and sped off towards the south of the city.

Zhou Cheng followed with his hands behind his back.

.......

The gates to the south of the city were already locked.

The guards on the city gate tower yawned, and the dim lanterns swayed in the breeze, casting flickering shadows.

Two figures flew over the city wall like ghosts, without alerting anyone.

The guards didn't see anything at all, they just felt a night breeze blowing by, bringing a slight chill.

Wu Zhu took the lead and did not hesitate at all when faced with any fork in the road.

His steps were steady and quick, like a precisely operating machine.

Zhou Cheng simply followed behind at a leisurely pace, maintaining a distance of about ten zhang.

Soon, after passing through a small path, Zhou Cheng slightly twitched his nose.

Even without consciously trying to distinguish it, he could clearly smell a strong stench of blood.

Wu Zhu continued his pursuit without stopping.

Zhou Cheng took a few steps around the road and glanced at the bushes by the roadside.

Deep within the tangled weeds, three corpses dressed in coarse cloth lay sprawled out, each with a clean cut on its throat, the blood already congealed and blackened.

There were also carts and vegetable baskets lying haphazardly among the weeds.

Judging from his appearance, he should be a vegetable vendor in the city.

Zhou Cheng glanced at him only once before continuing to chase after Wu Zhu's retreating figure.

Murder to silence witnesses is all too common for members of the royal family.

He saw it so often that he became so indifferent to it that he no longer felt any emotional reaction.

Putting everything else aside, let's just talk about that crazy woman, Li Yunrui.

Over the years, apart from the most trusted personal female official who remained unchanged, the other palace maids and guards have been replaced countless times.

He still didn't care.

On the contrary, I feel that such a bad woman makes me kick harder...

Along the way, besides the vegetable vendors, Zhou Cheng also encountered several other unlucky people.

The body was hastily dumped by the roadside, at most covered by some weeds, its death gruesome.

The speed of a grandmaster's feet is incomparable to that of an ordinary horse.

Although Lin Gong and his group had left most of the night earlier, the two of them still caught up with them in less than an hour.

At this time, the sky was just before dawn, and it was the darkest moment of the night.

Lin Gong and his party had traveled all night and were now entering a three-courtyard house to rest.

To conceal their tracks, they also led all their horses into the yard.

Of course, this courtyard was not a base that Lin Gong and his group had prepared in advance. Rather, they simply decided it was suitable, went directly to the house, wiped out the family of more than ten people, and took over the place.

At this moment, in the main courtyard, Lin Gong stood with his hands behind his back, listening to his subordinates' report.

"Sir, the side room has been vacated," a guard said, bowing.

Lin Gong nodded, his gaze sweeping over the tightly closed doors in the courtyard. Through the paper windows, the outlines of corpses lying inside were vaguely visible.

"It's almost dawn." He yawned. "We've traveled all night, so let's rest here for two hours. Feed the horses, and we'll continue our journey after daybreak."

The surrounding guards all clasped their hands in greeting.

Lin Gong raised his chin slightly, his expression indifferent.

He wasn't actually in a hurry to get going.

In his view, he was the Crown Prince's man, and killing Fan Xian was no big deal.

If the Crown Prince hadn't insisted that he leave the capital to avoid trouble, he wouldn't have left the capital at all.

Even his decision to leave Beijing overnight was seen as making a mountain out of a molehill.

His entire journey here was simply to demonstrate his stance to the Crown Prince.

Why would he rest here? He wasn't afraid of anyone catching up with him.

They even secretly hoped that Fan Xian would get the news and track them down.

He had one rank 8 expert, three rank 7 experts, and more than a dozen rank 6 experts skilled in combined formation attacks. When he captured Cheng Jushu, he didn't even use this entire lineup.

Unless a master of the ninth rank or above attacks, whoever comes will die.

There are only two or three ninth-rank officials in the capital city, so how could they possibly hunt down and kill Lin Xiang's son all night just for Fan Xian?

He has always been in a very relaxed state of mind.

He didn't care if people saw him on the street. The reason he silenced them was simply out of habit.

"Sir, the room is ready!"

A guard came from the backyard and bowed to report.

Lin Gong nodded and was about to walk towards the backyard—

"Knock knock knock".

Suddenly someone knocked on the courtyard gate.

The sound was slow and deliberate, striking three times, which seemed particularly abrupt in the quiet night before dawn.

Lin Gong's brows furrowed sharply.

All the guards around him instantly drew their swords, their cold gleam flickering in the torchlight, and the atmosphere suddenly became tense.

Lin Gong gave a wink to the guard beside him.

The guard, holding a torch in one hand and a knife in the other, cautiously approached the gate. He gently pried open the bolt with the tip of his knife, then suddenly pulled the gate open.

The flickering firelight shone outwards, revealing two figures to everyone.

A "blind man".

A "monkey".

The blind man, blindfolded, stood expressionless in front of the door, clutching a dark iron hoe. The monkey, meanwhile, stood lazily on the steps outside, arms crossed.

Lin Gong frowned and glanced at the two of them.

"Who are you? How did you know I was here?"

Wu Zhu didn't answer his question, but simply tilted his head slightly and asked in a flat voice:

"Lin Gong?"

One of Lin Gong's guards, holding a torch, immediately flew into a rage:

"How dare you! You address the Second Young Master by his given name!"

Wu Zhu ignored him, only nodding as if to confirm.

Facing Lin Gong: "Everything has its beginning and end. If you want to kill Fan Xian, then I will kill you."

Lin Gong paused for a moment upon hearing Fan Xian's name, then let out a cold laugh:

"Were you sent by Fan Xian? Never mind, no need to ask. Kill them."

The surrounding guards immediately swarmed forward, drawing their swords and slashing!

Then--

Wu Zhu made a move.

His speed surpassed the limits of human vision, transforming him into a true phantom in the night. Before the guards' swords could fall, his iron spike had already pierced the throat of the first man.

There were no screams.

There was only a muffled "plop" sound, as if a water sac had been punctured.

The guard stared wide-eyed, clutching his neck in disbelief as blood gushed from between his fingers, and collapsed to the ground.

Wu Zhu did not stop.

His figure weaved through the crowd, leaving a trail of afterimages behind him.

The dark iron shovel in his hand transformed into the scythe of death; with each swing, a person would fall.

Rank 6? Death.

Rank 7? Death.

That eighth-rank expert also didn't last a single round; his protective aura was shattered with a single touch, and the iron spike pierced his heart.

He looked down at the bloody hole in his chest, his face filled with disbelief, and then collapsed to the ground.

Blood meandered along the bluestone slab, gleaming with an eerie red light in the firelight.

Zhou Cheng crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame, watching the scene with great interest.

Wu Zhu's strength remains as stable as ever.

Lin Gong's pupils had long since shrunk to slits.

He couldn't sense any fluctuations of true energy from Wu Zhu, but the speed, strength, and reaction of the person in front of him were more terrifying than any martial artist he had ever seen!

That's not the speed a human should have.

That's a ghost.

Lin Gong instinctively wanted to escape.

He had just taken a step when a guard's corpse flew across and landed with a thud in front of him, blocking his path.

The torch fell to the ground, its flames flickering and casting shifting shadows on his face. Under the threat of death, Lin Gong's eyes were bloodshot, and the veins on his forehead throbbed.

His gaze swept frantically around him. The ground was littered with corpses and blood, and the "blind man" was walking towards him step by step.

Then, his gaze fell on the courtyard gate.

There, the man wearing the monkey mask was leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed, looking like he was watching a good show.

Lin Gong seemed to have grasped at the last straw.

He didn't believe that the person wearing the monkey-face mask was a master like "Blind Man".

One monster like that is enough. No matter how confident Lin Gong was, he didn't think he deserved to have two peerless masters come to kill him.

If we can catch this spectator, we might be able to blackmail the "blind man"!

He suddenly drew his sword, and with a flash, he thrust it towards Zhou Cheng!

"Hey! I've been taken for a fool."

Zhou Cheng chuckled lightly, seeing right through Lin Gong's thoughts.

He admitted that his strength was indeed a step below Wu Zhu's, but being slightly inferior to Wu Zhu did not mean that Lin Gong could easily take advantage of him.

Lin Gong thrust his sword forward, the blade shrouded in a chilling killing intent, aiming straight for the throat!

Zhou Cheng was too lazy to even move.

He simply raised his hand and grabbed something casually.

"clang!"

He grabbed the sword directly into his hand.

Then he clenched his fingers, and with a crisp "crack," the steel longsword in his hand was crushed into pieces like a brittle biscuit!

Lin Gong's pupils contracted sharply. Before he could react, Zhou Cheng slapped him across the chest with his palm!

"Bang!"

Lin Gong was sent flying backward like a kite with a broken string, crashing hard into the screen wall in the courtyard!

"Boom—!"

The screen wall collapsed with a roar, and bricks and stones rained down, burying Lin Gong in the ruins.

Lin Gong coughed up blood, his internal organs felt like they were shattered, and the pain almost made him faint.

He lay sprawled among the rubble, struggling to get up, but he couldn't muster any strength.

"No...don't kill me..."

He mustered his last strength, his voice hoarse and trembling, like a dying dog.

"I am the son of the Prime Minister! A disciple of the Crown Prince!" he gasped, "Whatever you want... I can give you!"

Wu Zhu walked up to him, and Tie Zhu slightly raised his iron halberd.

At this moment, Zhou Cheng reached out and stopped him.

Wu Zhu tilted his head slightly, his gaze seemingly casting a questioning look from beneath the black cloth.

Zhou Cheng didn't explain, but simply walked up to Lin Gong and squatted down.

"Lin Gong, oh Lin Gong," his voice was leisurely, with a hint of amusement, "you're really stupid. Don't you understand now? Talking about being the prime minister or the crown prince will only make your death come faster. The only way you might have a chance of survival is to say that you are Fan Xian's second brother-in-law."

Lin Gong clutched his chest, and upon hearing this, a desperate desire to survive ignited in his eyes.

"No, that's right..." he said hurriedly, "I'm Fan Xian's second brother-in-law! We're all...we're all on the same side!"

Zhou Cheng nodded. "One of our own? That's right."

He paused, his tone carrying a hint of reminiscence.

"Speaking of which, we've even had a meal together before."

Lin Gong was taken aback.

Have we eaten together?

He frantically searched his memory, trying to recall when he had ever dined with such an expert.

I searched my memory thoroughly, but couldn't recall anything.

But Zhou Cheng's words gave him hope. Since they had eaten together, they must have a relationship, so...

"Are you wondering who I am?" Zhou Cheng asked casually. "Are you wondering when we had dinner together?"

Lin Gong nodded subconsciously.

"It won't hurt to tell you."

Zhou Cheng took two steps forward, turned his back to Wu Zhu, faced Lin Gong, and slowly squatted down.

Then, he reached out and gently lifted the mask halfway up.

The torchlight flickered on the ground, and even though Lin Gong could only see half of it, he could immediately tell that it was an excessively young face.

He held his breath; the outline of that half-face gave him a strange sense of familiarity.

The mask continued upwards.

tip of the nose.

Eyebrows and eyes.

Then--

He saw it clearly.

Lin Gong's eyes widened suddenly, his pupils contracted to the size of pinpoints, and his face was filled with disbelief.

That is--

Zhou Cheng pulled off his mask in that instant.

At the same time, he gathered a stream of true energy at his fingertips and slashed it across Lin Gong's throat.

He slit Lin Gong's throat, rendering him speechless, yet not dead for the time being.

Lin Gong's eyes widened, and he instinctively covered his neck with both hands. Blood gushed from between his fingers, and he made a "hoarse" sound in his throat, trying to say something, but he couldn't utter a single word.

Zhou Cheng stood up and looked down at him.

"I'm too shy to show my face, so I'm sorry, but now you can only die."

[Negative emotions from Lin Gong +999!]

Hearing the notification sound in his ear, Zhou Cheng was quite satisfied.

He picked up a sword from the side and weighed it in his hand.

Then he tilted his head, as if recalling something.

"What are the characteristics of Si Gu Jian's swordsmanship?"

He muttered to himself as he stabbed Lin Gong several times.

After a few more sword strikes, Lin Gong's struggling movements became weaker and weaker.

When the notification sound in his ear dropped to single digits, he casually threw the sword, pinning Lin Gong to the ground.

The sword pierced through his chest and deeply embedded itself in the bluestone slab beneath him.

Zhou Cheng brought up the panel and glanced at it. Very good, Lin Gong had contributed a total of one and a half emotional points to him.

Just for that reason alone, the night's journey wasn't in vain.

Wu Zhu stood aside, watching all of this.

He didn't understand why Zhou Cheng wanted to torture the other person. In his simple logic, killing was killing, and what difference did it make if it was faster or slower?

However, with Lin Gong dead, his goal was achieved.

At this moment, Zhou Cheng glanced around the courtyard, turned to Wu Zhu, and said:

"It's unacceptable for Lin Gong to die here quietly." He paused. "You should go and get the forensic experts to come and 'clean up' the mess."

Wu Zhu thought about it and agreed.

He didn't say anything, just shook the blood off the iron shovel, turned around and disappeared into the night.

Zhou Cheng stood there, watching him leave.

After Wu Zhu had gone far away, he chuckled.

He bent down, picked up a sword from the corpse at his feet, and found a relatively intact wall nearby.

He examined the wall for a moment, then picked up his sword and, with neat, printed handwriting, carved out the inscription stroke by stroke:

"The murderer is Fan Xian of the Sinan Marquis's Mansion."