Zhou Jinnan took a deep breath of the freezing air mixed with the scent of blood.
His chest rose and fell violently, but he forced the pain down.
When pain reached its peak, a person would instead calm down.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, all the turmoil in his eyes had vanished, replaced by a cold composure.
He spat out the half-smoked cigarette in his mouth and ground it into the dirt with the tip of his leather shoe.
“What are you crowding for! Haven't you ever seen an execution before?”
Zhou Jinnan drew the Browning from his waist with his right hand and strode toward the edge of the cordon.
He impatiently shoved several agents aside with the butt of his gun, his face twisted in irritation.
“Get the hell back! If anyone takes another step forward, I'll send them to the afterlife ahead of schedule!”
He turned around, his back to the execution plaza, facing the crowd.
No one could see that his left hand, hidden behind the hem of his leather coat, was clenched so tightly that his fingernails were digging deep into his palm, nearly drawing blood.
In the crowd, Wen Yuchu was squeezed in the middle of her colleagues.
She stared at Zhou Jinnan, her eyes filled with nothing but disappointment and contempt.
Before today, she had still held onto a sliver of hope that this man might have some conscience left deep down.
But now, watching him maintain order at the execution ground with her own eyes, she realized how utterly wrong she had been.
In a corner, Tang Jingran's gaze drifted back and forth between Old Ghost and Zhou Jinnan, his expression too complex to read.
No one knew just how much strength Zhou Jinnan was using just to stand so straight.
“Bang!”
A dull gunshot tore through the oppressive silence of the plaza.
The moment the gunshot echoed, Zhou Jinnan's movements in driving the crowd back did not falter for a single second.
Only a biting cold wind howled past, whipping up the hem of his leather coat.
Leaving everyone with a lonely, resolute back.
“Cut!”
Han Song holstered his gun, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and walked quickly over to Jiang Yue. “How is your acting getting more and more uncanny?”
Jiang Yue was stunned. There was no special reason, really; it was just that he was becoming more and more proficient with his traits.
Li Changming was helped up by his assistant. As he wiped the fake blood from his face with a hot towel, he nodded repeatedly upon hearing this.
“When we locked eyes just now, the emotion in your eyes didn't falter at all. Instead, you dragged me right into the scene. You've made another huge leap forward compared to when we were in 《The Grand Game》.”
Hearing the praise of the two seniors, the coldness on Jiang Yue's face instantly vanished.
He wrapped the military overcoat handed to him by a crew member tightly around himself, rubbed his cold-reddened nose, and joked, “It's all thanks to you two leading the scene, teachers. If they hadn't called cut, I would have pinched my own palm to the point of a workplace injury.”
If he hadn't spent the past few months working out at the gym to build his stamina, the extreme emotional tug-of-war just now, combined with the continuous filming in the freezing weather, would have probably given him low blood sugar.
The subsequent group scenes went smoothly.
At nine that evening, the temperature dropped below freezing, and the crew packed up early, which was rare.
Usually, they would drag it out until the middle of the night.
Fortunately, they had rushed the schedule earlier, taking advantage of the time before the temperature dropped completely to shoot many night scenes in advance.
Today the temperature was too low, so for the safety and health of the actors, Xu Pingqiu waved his hand and let them go early.
Jiang Yue returned to his hotel wrapped in his overcoat.
He took a steaming hot bath, washing away the smell of fake blood and gunpowder, and finally felt alive again.
After sitting down on the sofa, he clicked open the test log sent by Yuantu Technology.
After scanning it, he started a voice conference, directly pointed out the concurrency vulnerability in the data callback interface, and gave them a few parameters to modify.
By the time he finished all this, more than an hour had passed.
Jiang Yue tossed his phone aside and fell fast asleep on the bed.
Over the next few days, the crew was not affected by the temperature drop at all. The filming pace was like it had a motor, getting faster and faster.
The plot progressed to where Zhou Jinnan, in order to gain Lu Cheng's complete trust, successively led his men to raid several outer contact stations.
Although he deliberately let the core figures escape, in the eyes of others, the captain of Squad One of the Secret Service had seemingly become a thorough, blood-stained butcher.
Those who hated him to the bone included not only the families of those captured but also the underground outer group to which Wen Yuchu belonged.
Before filming started, Xu Pingqiu specifically called the two actors, Su Binxuan and Chen Yunjie, to the monitor to go over the scene.
Jiang Yue stood aside holding his thermos cup, listening and nodding, perfectly capturing the essence of spacing out in class.
Xu Pingqiu tapped the table hard with the script. “Listen carefully to this scene! Wen Yuchu's group is setting a dead end, Zhou Jinnan has to break this dead end, and Tang Jingran is watching the situation from the side...”
The clapperboard snapped, and the camera cut to the archives room corridor set.
Wen Yuchu held a stack of files, her fingers gripping them so hard her knuckles turned pale, her gaze fixed on the night sky outside the window.
Tang Jingran slowly walked out of the shadows, stopped beside her, and lowered his voice. “Is there an operation tonight?”
Wen Yuchu's body stiffened. She turned to look at him, her eyes full of vigilance.
Tang Jingran acted as if he didn't see it, pulling out a cloth from his pocket to wipe his glasses. “Juntong received word that the Green Gang seems to have a major move tonight. You're a girl, go home early, don't linger outside.”
This sentence seemed like warm concern, but it was actually entirely coded.
Outsiders only knew that the two had been close recently, seemingly 'dating', and didn't know that they had already confessed their respective identities to each other. The intimate acts were also to cover for each other.
Wen Yuchu naturally didn't think Tang Jingran was saying this out of genuine concern.
Tang Jingran mentioning the “Green Gang” was actually hinting to her: Juntong knew what she was doing tonight, and they had even thought of a scapegoat for her.
Wen Yuchu was silent for a few seconds, then nodded heavily. “Thanks.”
Ever since her group members proposed eliminating Zhou Jinnan, the “number one traitor,” she had been in a dilemma.
Zhou Jinnan's position in the Secret Service was too special. Plus, she vaguely felt that there was an indescribable sense of dissonance about him.
But the members were filled with righteous indignation and could not be stopped.
She reported to her superiors, but because Zhou Jinnan's code name and mission belonged to the highest secrecy level, her request was like a stone sinking into the ocean, receiving no opposing instructions.
In organizational discipline, no opposition meant tacit approval.
She had no choice.
For the comrades who had already sacrificed themselves, Zhou Jinnan had to die tonight.
Watching Wen Yuchu's resolute back as she left, Tang Jingran leaned against the cold wall, his heart churning violently.
Juntong's dogma had always been "interests first." Reason dictated that he should stop this assassination, which was easy to expose, or stand by to avoid being implicated if it failed.
But during this period, watching Wen Yuchu throw herself into her faith regardless of the cost, and looking at the compatriots tortured beyond recognition in the Secret Service, the fire in his heart had long been impossible to suppress.
To hell with putting interests first!
Today, he wanted to stand on the side of pure ideals.
...
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