Chapter 459: Red Blood and White Tofu All Over the Street, This Scene F*cking Hurts! |
“Pfft—!!”
A dull thud.
Master Chen’s hand came down.
Although in that microsecond before it touched Fa Shu’s back,
the old stuntman relied on decades of muscle memory to pull back seventy percent of his strength,
curling his fingers into hooks without actually digging into the flesh.
But the force that penetrated through the body still tore through Fa Shu’s undershirt.
The blood pack hidden beneath the clothes burst on impact.
Fa Shu’s whole body shook violently.
It hurt.
It really hurt.
Although that strike just now wasn’t fatal, Ghost Claw Chen’s knuckles had driven hard into the gaps between his spinal bones.
Fa Shu felt his lower body instantly go numb.
But he didn’t let go.
Not only did he not let go, he used the last bit of strength in his body to cling tightly to Master Chen’s waist.
His face pressed against Master Chen’s mud-spattered pant leg, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
“Go!!”
Fa Shu suddenly raised his head, his expression ferocious as he erupted.
He roared at Little Bean, who was curled up in the corner, having even forgotten how to cry.
“Take the kid and run—!!!”
The sound was shrill.
Those were the lines from the script.
But at this moment, no one felt like this was acting.
Master Chen lowered his head.
His face, covered in blood spatters, made him look especially terrifying.
He stared down at Fa Shu, who was clinging to his thigh, his brows slightly furrowed, not a trace of emotion in his eyes.
“Annoying.”
Master Chen spat out two words coldly.
Then, with a sudden jolt of his abdomen and waist, he whipped his arm outward like a flail.
“Scram.”
It seemed like a casual flick.
But Fa Shu, a burly man weighing at least a hundred fifty pounds, was flung away like a ragdoll.
“Bang—crash, clatter!!”
Fa Shu’s body crashed into a tofu stall by the roadside.
The wooden frame collapsed, the boards shattered.
Fa Shu lay amidst the wreckage, his chest heaving violently, still spewing foam-like “blood” from his mouth.
Bright red blood. Pale white tofu.
The stark visual impact was both tragically beautiful and brutally horrific.
“Old Fa!!!”
A shriek rang out, filled with tears and madness.
It was Aunt Gui.
Watching her neighbor of decades collapse limply over there,
this ordinary market woman, who usually only argued over a few cents for vegetables, went berserk.
Her eyes bloodshot, she no longer cared about technique or strategy.
She only wanted to fight this old monster to the death.
“I’ll kill you!!”
Aunt Gui snatched up the two dropped boning knives from the ground and charged recklessly.
The blade gleamed wildly, full of openings.
But under that reckless, suicidal momentum, she actually forced Master Chen to take half a step back.
Only half a step.
The mockery in Master Chen’s eyes grew thicker.
“Shrew.”
Just as the two knives were about to pierce his chest.
Master Chen moved.
He sidestepped, sliding his foot.
The motion was elegant.
He evaded the blades.
His right index and middle fingers pressed together, the tips lightly grazing across Aunt Gui’s throat.
A gentle wipe.
“Sss—”
The blood pack, precisely controlled by the special effects team, burst open on the side of Aunt Gui’s neck.
A thin stream of blood sprayed out.
Aunt Gui’s movements came to an abrupt halt.
The knives slipped from her hands, clattering onto the flagstones.
She covered her neck with both hands, eyes wide, a gurgling sound escaping her throat.
She opened her mouth as if to speak, but only coughed up mouthfuls of bloody foam.
Then, she collapsed limply.
Falling beside Fa Shu.
“Ah!!!”
The last one, A Jiu, let out a beast-like roar at the sight.
All he had left was the broken half of a waxwood pole.
His hands, which had worked the forge his whole life, were now trembling violently.
Not from fear.
From hatred.
“A life for a life!!”
A Jiu bent his knees slightly, turning himself into a final weapon, and slammed into Master Chen with all his might.
It was a mutual-destruction tactic.
Even if he died, he wanted to tear a piece of flesh off this old monster.
Master Chen stood his ground, unmoving.
He watched A Jiu charging at him and revealed a cruel smile.
“Overreaching.”
Just as A Jiu reached him.
Master Chen raised his hand.
From top to bottom, he slammed it heavily onto A Jiu’s crown.
“Smack!!”
A crisp sound.
A Jiu’s forward momentum came to a dead stop.
In that instant, A Jiu’s eyes filled with blood, his eyeballs bulging.
Then.
“Thud.”
The blacksmith of Flower City fell heavily to his knees.
The sound of his kneecaps hitting the flagstone was enough to make anyone wince.
He knelt before Master Chen, his body rigid, blood oozing from all seven orifices (makeup effect).
Those eyes, burning with fury, did not close until the very last moment.
Death with eternal regret.
The entire set fell silent.
Only the artificial rain machine, which had been switched on at some point,
sprayed a fine mist with a rustling sound.
Rain fell.
Washing away the blood on the ground, converging into faint red streams that snaked towards the drains.
The script’s three top experts.
Three guardian spirits of Kapok Alley.
Wiped out.
Master Chen stood alone in the center of the alley.
The rain soaked his tattered old gown,
which clung tightly to his body, outlining his gaunt yet steel-hard frame.
He slowly raised his hand.
Staring at the streak of scarlet on his fingertips.
It was left over from cutting Aunt Gui’s throat just now.
Master Chen brought his finger to his lips, stuck out his tongue, and lightly licked it.
The action was slow and eerie.
“Ptoo.”
Master Chen spat, his face revealing an expression that was both disgusted and oddly satisfied.
“Too weak...”
He raised his head, his gaze piercing through the curtain of rain into the void.
“Not even enough to fill the gaps between my teeth.”
“Waa—!!!”
A childish cry finally broke the suffocating silence.
In the corner, Little Bean, who was only six years old, completely broke down.
This wasn’t acting.
He was genuinely terrified.
This old grandpa was too scary, the blood on the ground was too red, and those uncles and aunties lying motionless on the ground...
The child’s cries sounded especially helpless and desolate in the rain.
“Cut!!!”
Behind the monitor, Jiang Wen practically bounced out of his chair.
The megaphone in his hand was dented from his grip, his face flushed red.
“Camera! Close-up! Give me a close-up now!!”
The lens quickly zoomed in.
It didn’t focus on the imposing Master Chen.
But pushed in on Fa Shu, lying collapsed in the tofu pile.
Under the close-up.
Fa Shu’s hand hung limply in the muddy water.
The rain beat down on it, washing away the bloodstains bit by bit, but never quite getting them clean.
A kind of sorrow—the fragility of old-world craftsmen, like tofu before violence and tyranny.
“...”
There was no applause on set.
All the staff, even the old lighting technician who had seen it all,
were secretly wiping tears.
This scene was too real.
So real that people forgot it was a movie.
So real that it felt like it was happening in a corner of some parallel universe.
That visceral pain pierced through the monitor screen and stabbed into everyone’s heart.
“Cut...”
Jiang Wen called out.
His voice had lost its earlier fervor.
His gaze cut through the layers of rain and locked onto one person at the edge of the set.
A Jie.
Jiang Ci had been standing there the whole time.
From the moment Fa Shu charged forward, he stood in the shadows, motionless.
The rain plastered his hair to his head, water streaming down his cheeks.
His hand, usually idly stuck in his pants pocket, now hung by his side.
From A Jie’s perspective.
This wasn’t acting.
This was a massacre.
That Fa Shu who always complained about his long hair and insisted on giving him free haircuts;
That Aunt Gui who always scolded him for being lazy but secretly slipped him fish balls;
That Ninth Uncle who taught him blacksmithing, saying a man needs to have backbone...
Right before his eyes.
Were being tortured and killed one by one.
And he, A Jie, could do nothing.
Because the script said that at this moment, A Jie was scared stiff, a coward.
A drop of water traced the corner of his eye.
Impossible to tell if it was rain or tears.