Back on set, the close-up shot of Yin Xueqing being teased by the young man had just been cut after one take, and they were preparing for a second round.
The camera setup for this shot was simple enough, but the lighting was the tricky part -Li Shan’s thoughtful silence made it clear he wasn’t satisfied. Sure enough, a few seconds later, he called over Old Fu and asked for adjustments.
Lighting is a meticulous and complex endeavor, and once changes are called for, it’s not something that can be wrapped up anytime soon.
The whole crew could only stand by and wait. Once idle, gossipy minds started stirring -openly or discreetly, dozens of eyes kept darting toward Shang Lu and Shang Shao, who were standing together.
“Why is Director Shang here?”
“I heard he’s been frozen up in the Himalayas for months – wonder what he’s been shooting?”
“Pfft, him with Mr. Ke’s crew, an all-Cannes lineup – why would we need to worry?”
“I’ve heard, though, that his set is even harder to work on than Director Li’s.”
“Director Shang and Mr. Shang are… hey?”
Only after saying it out loud did someone realize, “They’re both named Shang?”
To be fair, Shang Lu and Shang Shao didn’t look much alike in terms of demeanor or features, but they were brothers after all – and even though their individual features didn’t match when taken apart, once they moved and came alive, subtle details gave off a sense of familiarity.
“Huh… isn’t there, like, a bit of déjà vu?”
“Hey, Jiajun, you’re from Hong Kong – do you know what their relationship is?”
“Ah? What you say?” The guy called Jiajun spread his hands with an innocent look, dragging out his Hong Kong-accented Mandarin. “Me, just a salted fish from Quarry Bay – how I gonna know some deep-water bay mansion’s young master?”
Everyone burst out laughing.
Shang Lu’s background was an open secret in the entertainment industry. Though he’d never confirmed it outright, everyone assumed he was the second young master of Hong Kong’s Shang family. Following that line of thought, Shang Shao standing beside him suddenly had a very intriguing identity.
“Could he be the eldest young master?” someone blurted out.
“No way, absolutely not!” Hongkonger Jiajun, after all, had read decades of Hong Kong tabloids: “The eldest young master doesn’t go near women – and the reason is…”
He glanced around and lowered his voice. “He can’t get it up!”
“Can’t get what up?”
Jiajun slapped him, “Hey! You don’t even know that!” Then, crisp and clear, syllable by syllable: “He. Can’t. Perform!”
“Whoa!” The whole circle gasped in unison, stunned.
The news was too shocking. For a moment, everyone felt a wave of sympathy. “Sure, we don’t have hundreds of billions, but hey – when you think about it, that’s pretty fair.”
“You nuts? You’re comparing your junk to hundreds of billions?”
The crew came from all corners of the country – some highbrow, some lowbrow, lively and unbridled, with no taboos. Once they got into this kind of talk, they didn’t care who was listening. Everyone was laughing so hard they could barely hold their cigarettes. With all this distraction, no one remembered to care about Shang Shao’s real identity anymore.
“Come to think of it, it’s obviously not that Shang. Just think about it – Director Shang’s older brother is the heir. With a conglomerate that big, he probably can’t even get through all his meetings, let alone have the time to stick around here for a month or more. Out in the middle of nowhere – that kind of hardship isn’t something a crown prince would put up with.”
The others all nodded in agreement.
Half an hour later, the lighting was finally adjusted, and the set returned to shooting.
In the frame, the gathered young men – their legs in dark blue jeans – became a blurry background, with only Yin Xueqing’s upturned face in sharp focus. Obscured by the bodies, the light dimmed, leaving just a sliver of skylight falling across Yin Xueqing’s face, illuminating the lower half of it.
Usually, the eyes are the window to emotion, and with this kind of chiaroscuro lighting, the light would typically be placed across the actor’s brow and eyes, to ensure their performance comes through clearly and completely via their gaze. But in this scene, the light flickered and shifted with the swaying movements of the young men’s bodies, sliding from Ying Yin’s hidden eyes down to her lips.
This was a classic subjective shot – through the young men’s perspective, her lips were full, rosy, parting and closing as they spoke flirtatious, ingratiating words. But if the audience paid close attention, they would notice the trembling of those lips, and the stiffness beneath the forced smile.
The rest of her face remained veiled in shadow, but the performance never let up. One could find traces of fear and quick-witted desperation in Ying Yin’s eyes – only, buried in the darkness, these details were easily overlooked by the audience. Just as those young men’s eyes never truly took in Ying Yin’s own.
Yin Xueqing, a living, breathing person, had been reduced – objectified.
Shang Lu watched the monitor without blinking, stunned by the explosive energy Ying Yin was unleashing in front of the lens. It was clearly a quiet, desperate scene – but evidently, Ying Yin’s energy was like the deep sea, silently drowning everyone in its wake.
When Li Shan called “Cut,” the four young supporting actors instinctively took a step back in unison, as if trying to give the oxygen back to Ying Yin.
Ying Yin knelt in the snow until Junyi trotted up to her; only then did she push herself up on the snow-covered ground.
“I’m fine,” she said softly, brushing the snow off her palms and taking the hot water bottle.
Though her heart was still stifled and erratic – like a marble trapped in a dark room – the very first second she came to her senses after emerging from the scene, she lifted her eyes and cast her gaze through the bustling crowd.
The crew was busy with their work, and no one noticed that beneath the director’s tent, a man was quietly clapping. A white cigarette holder dangled between his fingers, smoke curling around him, blurring his calm, composed features.
Ying Yin’s cheeks flushed slightly. She wanted to run over, but the thought of Shang Lu standing there with his imposing presence made her pause.
That subtle shift didn’t escape Shang Shao’s notice.
He lightly tapped the ash off his cigarette and said to Shang Lu, “Go step away for a bit.”
Shang Lu: “?”
Shang Shao shot him a glance. “You’re scaring her. She doesn’t dare come over.”
Shang Lu: “…”
A true man knows when to yield. Biting his tongue and swallowing his pride, he clenched his fists and walked off with a face full of unspoken curses.
Only then did Ying Yin run over with the hot water bottle, throwing herself into Shang Shao’s arms in full view of everyone.
“Are you alright?” Shang Shao wrapped one arm around her, while the other hand – still holding the cigarette – gently brushed her face. Her cheeks were cold and hot at once, soft as frost powder.
Ying Yin pressed her lips together and shook her head.
Shang Shao smiled, coaxing her like a child. “You were amazing today. Was it because Lulu was here?”
“What does he have to do with anything…” Ying Yin mumbled.
“Weren’t you trying to prove something in front of him?” Shang Shao looked down at her, held her gaze for a moment, then naturally tilted his face and pressed a kiss to the corner of her lips.
Ying Yin’s heart tightened – she felt eyes on her from every direction, but she wasn’t afraid anymore.
She protested in a low voice. “I’m out of character now…”
Shang Shao let out a soft laugh and held her tighter.
“Since Lulu’s here, how about we have dinner with him after we wrap up today?”
“He’ll probably be with Director Li.”
“Then we’ll all go together. What’s the schedule for tomorrow?”
Ying Yin had the entire shooting schedule memorized. She counted on her fingers. “In the morning, it’s Miss Bai and Jiang Te’s scene together. I’m on at three in the afternoon… and the day after tomorrow, we wrap!”
Her eyes lit up with surprise and delight, as if she’d suddenly gained something unexpected.
Shang Shao’s gaze lingered on her eyes for a moment. “Which means no early start.”
“Hm?” Ying Yin was briefly puzzled, meeting Shang Shao’s eyes with a dazed look – then seemed to catch on. Her voice dropped nervously. “…I’m going to go get ready for the next take.”
Shang Shao didn’t press her. He let her go back to Junyi.
The next shot was a wide-angle master shot – Yin Xueqing stumbling and running across the frame from right to left, entering through a door and slamming it shut. After that came the interior scenes: close-ups and medium shots capturing her panic and vomiting.
Every time they had to transition to a new scene, the lighting had to be completely redone – another long, tedious process. But that’s just what cinema is. Any grand or beautiful image, when broken down into individual shots and strips, is backed by the filmmakers’ dull, meticulous dedication. Just as dreams are built on neurons, bodies are built on blood vessels.
Shang Lu watched Li Shan directing the crew with methodical precision, and in his mind, it was as if a pencil were connecting dots, lines, and planes – until, with perfect clarity, a Rashomon-style image emerged.
“An elderly director is shooting his final work – a crime film. Then, one of the key supporting actors, originally slated to be murdered in the story, actually dies on set. His spectacular death scene is captured in the camera and cut into the final film. Both the movie itself and the set itself have stories to tell about the character’s death and the actor’s death. The audience steps into the theater like judges resting at the gates of hell – can they piece together the truth from two completely different shoots?”
His phone’s voice assistant simultaneously transcribed his clear, fluent speech into text and saved it to his notes.
“Sounds hard to shoot,” Shang Shao said, coming to stand beside him.
“Yeah – multiple timelines, multiple time-spaces, reality versus the screen, and the mutual interference between the reality within the story and the drama itself.”
“Intertextual narration.”
Shang Lu suddenly saved himself a lot of explaining. He raised an eyebrow. “You, someone who doesn’t watch movies…” He trailed off, then gave an understanding smile. “The script is very demanding. This is just a rough draft – I just happened to think of it, so I jotted it down.”
And he had thousands of such “just jotting it down” entries scattered across his phone and tablet cloud.
Shang Shao nodded. “Let’s have dinner together tonight.”
“Sure.” Shang Lu put away his phone and turned his attention to Ying Yin, who was preparing for her scene nearby.
“Her acting approach is very dangerous. When she was shooting Angela, her character was Ke Yu’s granddaughter – full of resentment toward her grandfather’s identity, so her dialogue and attitude were sharp and caustic, always laced with sarcasm. After we wrapped, I never expected that a role like that would actually require a psychologist. Ke Yu told me that later. Her sense of self is always locked in a fierce tug-of-war with the character, because…”
He paused. “She’s actually a very gentle person, but not self-integrated enough – so she ends up sacrificing herself. Also, she debuted first – acted in films, was trained by directors – and only later did she enroll in film school. Once she was in school, her frequent set commitments clashed with school regulations, so she had no choice but to drop out. So strictly speaking, her acting method and system are purely experiential – self-taught and self-explored. Once you go down the wrong path, it’s very hard to get back to a systematic approach.”
Shang Shao asked calmly, “What are you trying to say?”
“I can’t say anything, and neither can you – it all comes down to her own choices and thoughts. I’m just worried…” Shang Lu hesitated, a rare occurrence. “One day she might not be able to work through it, or she might not be able to get out of character, or she might drift between fiction and reality. So… you know, life and death are only a moment apart, and in that moment, she might be in a daze.”
Shang Shao said nothing. He hadn’t told anyone – not even Shang Lu – that he had already lived through that moment in advance: her daze, his heart-wrenching agony.
Shang Lu thought he might have been too harsh. After a pause, he continued, “We can’t assume that any person will always be rational, objective, and wise – that would be far too unfair to the human species and to billions of individuals. If possible, perhaps the only thing we can do is not step into that daze ourselves.” He stared at Shang Shao, speaking earnestly, “Filmmaking is not about doing something you know is impossible.”
Coming from Shang Lu – a man who had made cinema his lifelong ideal and conviction – these words carried a darkly comedic, absurd feel.
And yet, they were also such a sober truth.
Shang Shao curled his lips briefly. In truth, what Shang Lu said was very similar to what Dr. Shen had told him – how could he not understand? But watching her act brought her such joy, and knowing that someone was now behind her, she stepped in front of the camera each time more resolutely than the last.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“What?” Shang Lu was taken aback.
Before his rational mind could process those words, his heart had already jolted violently, and he grabbed Shang Shao’s arm, gripping it tightly. “What the hell are you talking about? Ready for what?”
Shang Shao didn’t answer him. He simply patted Shang Lu’s hand lightly – the same gesture he had used to comfort Shang Lu and Wen Youyi since childhood, every time something happened.
Because of the superb acting and precise lighting, Ying Yin got through the remaining scenes in one take each. Thanks to her, they wrapped an hour early today. As she came down from her performance in front of the lens, the entire crew burst into applause. The applause went on for a good minute or two, and in that minute or two, Ying Yin took deep breaths, wiped away Yin Xueqing’s tears, stood up from the ground, and smiled as she bowed to each department in turn, returning the applause. “Thank you all for your hard work.”
She returned to the rest tent. Junyi wrung out a hot towel for her, but Ying Yin didn’t take it – she pressed her lips together, shook her hand, and hurried a few steps into the restroom, bracing herself against the sink as she retched. It was a physical aftereffect from the dry-heaving scene she’d just performed. But she’d eaten so little that nothing came up – only the sour bitterness filling her mouth.
After rinsing her mouth and washing her face, she emerged as the sweet and generous Ying Yin once again. She took the hot towel Junyi handed her and pressed it to her face for a while. When she lowered it, Shang Shao was already standing right in front of her, with Shang Lu trailing behind him, wearing an expression of faint impatience.
“So you have that much of a problem with me, huh.” She wrinkled her nose, then preemptively tucked herself into Shang Shao’s arms.
When something delivers itself so automatically, how could Shang Shao refuse to hold her? He embraced her naturally and pressed a light kiss to her moist lips.
Suddenly remembering something, Ying Yin gasped, her eyes widening as she froze in his arms.
Shang Shao thought something was wrong. His brow furrowed with concern. “What’s wrong?”
Ying Yin replied, “…Um… I just… went to the bathroom…”
Shang Lu couldn’t stand it anymore and filled in succinctly. “She threw up.”
Shang Shao: “…”
“I didn’t eat anything! So nothing came out!” Ying Yin raised two fingers together and swore solemnly, pointing to the sky. “And I rinsed my mouth! Five times! No, six!”
But it was too late.
Shang Shao calmly pushed her out of his embrace, tilting his fingers with an air of aristocratic reserve, pointing to the side. “Out. One meter.”
Ying Yin: “…”
Like a wronged little shadow, she kept a one-meter distance from Shang Shao all the way to their dinner destination.
This place used to be a villager’s kitchen-dining room. After Shang Shao rented it, he had it reassigned and turned into Ying Yin’s private canteen. On set, the meal standards for the core creative team and actors were already higher than for the crew, so such special treatment was hardly unreasonable – especially since he was footing the bill himself.
Shang Shao’s people were, of course, well-trained and used to his ways; no matter where they went, they took excellent care of everything. This small team included a housekeeper, a chef, and a nutritionist. They specialized in Cantonese cuisine but were also quite accomplished in Western cooking. As a result, within just a month or so, the shameless Li Shan had made himself a permanent fixture here, showing up for all three meals a day with his leisurely stride, dragging Tiwen along with him under the pretense of having a “justifiable reason” to be there.
Now, as the shoot neared its end, Tiwen and one of the assistant directors had already returned to Ning City to prepare for the supplementary shoots there. Li Shan was still off talking with Old Fu and would arrive later. So for now, the rustic, firewood-scented dining room held only the three of them.
Ying Yin didn’t sit next to Shang Shao. At the long dining table, she sat diagonally across from him – whether deliberately or instinctively, it was hard to tell.
The tableware had already been set out, with napkins laid over the bowls and plates. When Shang Lu touched one, it was still warm – clearly placed there with careful timing to keep off the ash from the fireplace.
He let out a scoff and shook his head. He thought of how he and Ke Yu had holed up in countless remote mountains, desolate wildernesses, and impoverished backwaters over the years – making do with whatever was available, treating it all as creative fieldwork. Never did he expect arrangements like this.
“Jealous,” Shang Lu clicked his tongue, picking up the teapot to pour himself some tea.
Good tea – one whiff told you it was from old trees, ten to twelve years aged, the prime drinking window for Pu’er.
A servant came out, carrying a tray with warm, rolled-up towels for wiping hands. She handed one to each of them in turn, greeting them, “Young master, Second Young Master, Miss Ying.”
While wiping his hands, Shang Shao murmured a few words to her. Then he set down the towel, lifted his gaze, and said to Ying Yin, “Come sit beside me.”
Ying Yin held out for at most two seconds before willingly and happily swapping to the chair next to him.
Shang Shao took her hands in his, unfolded a fresh warm towel, and carefully wiped each of her slender, pale fingers, saying as he did, “They’ve been simmering some yam soup. Have a little first – to warm you up.”
“It was just a habitual gag reflex. I’m fine now – it’s not that serious.”
Shang Shao finished wiping her hands clean, tossed the white towel aside, looked her in the eye, and said very calmly, “Still, drink some. Be good.”
Ying Yin did like soup, though. When the serving arrived, she obediently finished it all.
Why hadn’t Li Shan arrived yet? He must have been held up by something. Meanwhile, the kitchen had brewed some mulled wine, and the fruity, aromatic scent of it drifted out.
Ying Yin’s nose twitched slightly like a little animal’s, completely unaware that this was a sweet trap.
