Chapter 514: Mother-Son Cross-Server Chat |
Jiang Ci retreated back to the living room, his mind racing at full speed.
He couldn't let his mom get led astray by that bunch of wild fans.
Rolling up his sleeves, he decided to show off his bright, sunny side.
Walking into the kitchen, Chu Hong was still pressing down on that wildly flopping grass carp.
"Mom, let me kill the fish. You take a break." Jiang Ci grinned wide.
Chu Hong's hand jerked, nearly flinging the fish away.
She backed into the corner of the counter, her right hand instinctively slipping into her pocket,
fingering that "Beijing Morning Sun Psychological Intervention Hotline" business card.
Jiang Ci picked up the kitchen knife. On set, he was used to cutting with a scalpel's precision.
The grass carp struggled violently, its tail slapping the cutting board.
"Slap!"
Fish blood and water splattered everywhere.
The collar of Jiang Ci's black windbreaker and his cheeks were now dotted with several dark red bloodstains.
Jiang Ci didn't care. He figured that's just how messy it was for normal people killing fish.
He turned his head, half his face covered in blood, and gave Chu Hong a gentle smile: "Mom, this fish is pretty lively."
With that, he picked up the scaling knife, lowered his head, and started scraping off the scales one by one.
Chu Hong pressed herself against the wall, her breath caught in her throat.
To this hardcore police widow's wife, the scene before her eyes was the perfect recreation of what the fan group had been preaching as "a high-intelligence villain's daily disguise routine."
Was this killing a fish? This was clearly a serial killer processing a crime scene!
At the dinner table that evening, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense.
The braised grass carp sat right in the middle of the table.
Jiang Ci held his bowl, shoveling big mouthfuls of rice.
"Mom, I saw on the news recently that there's a lot of community scams going around. Did you download the National Anti-Fraud app on your phone?"
Jiang Ci asked casually while picking up a piece of fish with his chopsticks.
Chu Hong didn't respond.
She used the serving chopsticks to pick up a thick slice of stir-fried pork liver, then grabbed a red date, and placed them both in Jiang Ci's bowl.
"Eat more. It'll help replenish your blood." Chu Hong stared at Jiang Ci's pale face, probing as she spoke,
"How's your sleep been while filming over in Taiwan? Any... special hobbies?"
Jiang Ci stopped chewing the pork liver.
He looked up, meeting his mom's scrutinizing gaze.
Damn. This filter was thick enough to stop bullets.
Jiang Ci put down his chopsticks and slid his phone to the center of the dining table.
Unlocked. Screen glowing.
"Mom, have you been reading some crazy gossip online?"
"This is my phone. The password is your birthday. WeChat, browser—check whatever you want."
"If I were some psycho, there'd be traces of it in here." Jiang Ci said, perfectly at ease.
Chu Hong gave him a suspicious glance, then picked up the phone.
She immediately opened the browser search history.
The first search record was starkly clear: "How to tell if an elderly person has been brainwashed by health product pyramid schemes."
The second: "What to do if you find your mom has joined a wild cult? Urgent, waiting online."
Chu Hong's movements froze.
Jiang Ci leaned in to look at the screen.
Mother and son's eyes collided in the air.
Both realized at the same moment that the other was conducting an extremely rigorous "secret background check" on them.
Chu Hong slapped the phone down on the table.
Total surrender.
She turned and walked into the bedroom, emerging a moment later,
clutching a stack of A4 papers she'd printed from the internet.
She slammed the papers heavily in front of Jiang Ci.
They were all blurry paparazzi shots from the *Wasteland* set.
There was Jiang Ci holding a pig's head with one hand, another with him using a scalpel to carve a watermelon,
and the clearest one—just leaked this afternoon—of him on a rainy night, syringe in hand, coldly looking down at a gangster lying sprawled on the ground.
"Look at this yourself!" Chu Hong pointed at the eyes in the photo, completely devoid of human emotion.
"You're telling me a normal person could act like that? The head psychiatrist from the Capital in that group said this is a classic precursor to severe emotional deprivation!"
Jiang Ci looked at the photos.
He knew that right now, no amount of talk about psychological preparation or method acting would get through to his mom.
He needed the nuclear option.
Jiang Ci stood up.
He walked to the center of the living room, cleared his throat.
The next second.
His left hand on his hip, his right hand forming a delicate orchid finger pose, he twisted his waist and belted out a wildly off-key rendition of a traditional duet.
"In the first month of the new year~ah~on the first day~ah~!"
Jiang Ci sang, stepping in a cross-step dance across the living room, his moves flamboyant, his expression ridiculously over-the-top.
"Every household puts up couplets~ah~and this psycho comes to pay respects~ah~!"
Chu Hong stood frozen in place.
She looked at her son, twisting himself into a pretzel, and the filter of "cold-blooded psycho, high-intelligence villain" in her mind—
went "crack"—and shattered into pieces.
Jiang Ci wasn't done yet.
He grabbed a pink throw pillow from the sofa, plopped it on his head like a handkerchief, spun around three times,
and finally struck a ridiculous, frozen pose like a soaring eagle.
"Mom, do I look like a psycho?" Jiang Ci grinned, his expression practically begging for a punch.
Chu Hong looked at this sight.
The corners of her mouth twitched twice.
"Alright, stop making a fool of yourself."
Chu Hong waved her hand with utter disdain, then turned and walked toward the balcony cabinet.
She pulled open the cabinet door, rummaged for a moment, and dragged out a half-person-tall woven plastic bag.
"Since you're not crazy, then get the hell back to work."
Chu Hong tossed the woven bag onto the living room floor. "Take it with you tomorrow."
Jiang Ci let out a sigh of relief.
Being an idiot was truly the cure for all mental exhaustion.
The next morning.
Jiang Ci was dragging his suitcase, just pulling open the door to head downstairs for the airport,
when a light truck emblazoned with "Jitu Cold Chain" pulled up in front of the residential compound.
A driver in uniform jumped out, carrying a shipping manifest, and ran up to Jiang Ci.
"Mr. Jiang, right? There's a cold-chain shipment here for you, destined for the Nankin Harbor set in Taiwan. Please sign to confirm."
Jiang Ci was baffled: "What goods?"
The driver pointed to the back door of the truck:
"Your mother placed an order online late last night. Two hundred catties of specialty medicinal ingredients."
"There's sixty catties of ingredients for Cinnabar Peace Pills, plus one hundred and forty catties of pig brains and lotus seed hearts."
Jiang Ci's hand, holding the pen, froze mid-air.
He looked back up at the second-floor balcony.
Chu Hong was holding a cup of soy milk, waving at him.
Jiang Ci lowered his head and signed his name on the shipping manifest.
This hardcore mom's reverse psychology was absolutely legendary.
After signing, Jiang Ci watched the cold-chain truck close its rear door, start its engine, and drive out of the compound.
He stood there, pulling the brim of his baseball cap down.
This move by his mom—on the surface, it was concern, but in reality, it was a precision mental strike against the entire *Wasteland* crew.
Zheng Baorui wanted an ultra-dark, all-villain, cold, hard style.
If the set was constantly reeking of pig brain calming soup, the mental image was just too beautiful to handle.
Jiang Ci got into a ride-sharing car, heading straight for the airport.
On the way, he pulled out his phone and sent his assistant Sun Zhou a message: "After landing, find a few big iron pots. Get ready to brew some soup."
Two minutes later, Sun Zhou replied: "Bro, did you pick up some variety show? Aren't we filming a crime movie?"
Jiang Ci replied: "Gifted by the Empress Dowager. To nourish the whole crew's brains."
The phone went silent for a long time.
Four hours later, the plane landed at Taipei Songshan Airport.
Jiang Ci didn't take the VIP channel. He blended in with the regular passengers and walked out of the terminal.
Sun Zhou had already driven a low-key entourage van into the underground parking lot to wait.
Getting into the car, Jiang Ci took off his mask.
"Bro, you okay?" Sun Zhou asked while starting the car, watching Jiang Ci through the rearview mirror.
He felt like his boss had gone back home and come back with a weird vibe.
"I'm fine." Jiang Ci leaned back in his seat. "What's the situation with the crew?"
"Director Zheng has lost it." Sun Zhou lowered his voice.
"He locked himself in his room for three days rewriting the script. I heard he completely scrapped all the later plot."
"And Peng Shao has it rough too. Zheng's forcing him to re-block all his scenes."
Jiang Ci nodded.
This kind of obsessive perfectionism from Zheng Baorui was exactly what would make *Wasteland* a classic.
The car sped along, eventually arriving at the Nankin Harbor set.
The moment Jiang Ci stepped out, he was hit by an incredibly pungent smell of blood and motor oil.
This was the "wasteland" aesthetic Zheng Baorui had deliberately crafted.