"You’re the deeply hidden, secretly dark and twisted Crown Prince. Oh, do you know what ’secretly dark’ and ’twisted’ mean?"
Cheng Zhirang probably has some understanding, but not entirely clear.
Mu Qiu enthusiastically explains to him: "’Secretly dark’ means someone who seems like a good-natured person but is actually not.
’Twisted,’ in a broad sense, means a mental illness caused by obsessive love, with strong possessiveness and extreme thinking, leading to exclusion, suicide, or other drastic behavior when the object of affection is threatened."
He nods: "Got it, so I need to play this role? You are the object of my affection?"
"...Ahem, first listen to this story carefully and see if you can accept it—
First, you’re a twisted Crown Prince, representing a tragic beauty. Then you have a crush on your brother’s girlfriend."
Cheng Zhirang’s eyes widened: "...What?"
Mu Qiu said innocently: "You like your brother’s girlfriend, how exciting, dramatic, and full of conflict this is."
He held his forehead: "Keep going."
"Because you’re twisted and can’t help liking the girl next to your brother while watching him approach me. After we get along well, you decide to strong-arm and even incapacitate your brother.
On top of that, you know he has a peculiar taste for cross-dressing, but he keeps this secret well-hidden since this could make his family and the person he likes despise him.
But you’re twisted, so how could you not use this handle? You incapacitate him and imprison him, forcibly dressing him up in the most flamboyant female attire, and force me to meet with him like this... Ah, just imagining this is thrilling."
Cheng Zhirang started to feel the same headache as Shi Yuhuai.
Her ability to concoct such stimulating stories in minutes is undeniably strong, and if she continues, the story might become even more exciting.
So before she could continue the story, he nodded: "This story is indeed... a bit more dramatic than before. Let’s go with this, since we don’t have much time left. We still need to refine the details and other character designs, performances, and setting."
Mu Qiu swallowed the words she was about to say, but looked at him deeply, her gaze was very meaningful.
"Alright, let’s go with this story. Perhaps their story might be even more dramatic than ours, but I believe Brother Cheng, your acting skills can increase the appeal of this story by fifty percent."
After speaking, she enthusiastically said, "Let’s quickly go back and tell Brother Huai this final story. We have to discuss his lines with him."
Cheng Zhirang felt a bit sympathetic toward Shi Yuhuai, but said nothing and let her lead him once more toward the deserted temple.
Once Shi Yuhuai saw someone enter, he pretended to be dead, hanging his head low, hair scattered, he truly looked like he was barely conscious from torment.
"Hi Brother Huai, it’s been a few minutes since we last met. We’ve come up with another story."
"No need at all," Shi Yuhuai said with a wooden expression, "I think you don’t need to consider my feelings, as long as my character doesn’t appear often and has few lines. It’s not too late to tell me once the story is finalized."
Mu Qiu paused: "Then it’s just perfect, the story is finalized."
Shi Yuhuai: "..." Damn, seems like this story is unavoidable.
So Mu Qiu began to narrate:
"This time you’re the pitiful person who lost the girl he liked. You’ve been blessed since childhood, extremely talented, but the only flaw you’re afraid to show is your taste for cross-dressing.
Due to your character’s background, once this taste is exposed, it undoubtedly brings shame to the family, and the girl you finally like would hate you. So you don’t dare reveal it, feeling very insecure. But alas, your brother—this guy here—"
She pointed at Cheng Zhirang: "An acquaintance you met by chance, turns out to be a Crown Prince, and this Crown Prince is a bit twisted, insisting on liking the person you liked so much—of course, that’s me.
Then, this twisted Crown Prince goes mad, secretly finding someone to incapacitate you, imprisoning you here, dressing you in the most flamboyant female attire, threatening that if you resist again, you’ll be paraded like this.
Next, he boldly occupies me, this simple, kind, fragile girl who cannot take care of herself. But I don’t love him, so I cry and make a fuss, trying to escape, angering this big villain. He grabs me and throws me in here.
You, dressed in female attire, suddenly meet me, ashamed and angry. I also believe you’ve been humiliated, and I quarrel with this villain, secretly visit you.
After being discovered to still be in contact with you, the villain gets furious, poisons and mute you. But I’m stubborn, visiting you every day. Until the villain gets some conscience and crisis awareness, admitting this love triangle was entirely his doing, feeling guilty towards me. He even fears he can’t protect me in the future, forcibly seized the throne and became Emperor."
Here, she felt a bit thirsty, found a bottle of water to drink, and continued: "Then I achieve my goals, use his hand to kill you, step on his head, comfortably living the good life."
Shi Yuhuai and Cheng Zhirang were bewildered by this sudden plot twist and its sharp turn.
Cheng Zhirang: "Did you make a mistake in telling, or left out something?"
Shi Yuhuai followed: "Or perhaps just went crazy."
Mu Qiu shrugged: "This is called a reversal. The villain schemed against you and me, the cross-dressing big shot schemed against the villain, leaving a permanent stain of strong-arming, I schemed against both, killed one, kept one, cultivated an Emperor to become the Empress and comfortably lived well, nobody is a good person."
Both opened their mouths, and finally Shi Yuhuai, chained, stubbornly gave a thumbs-up.
"You’re strong."
Being able to create such a story in a short time, she must have watched a lot of melodrama and also pondered over them frequently.
Mu Qiu modestly waved: "This is just a framework, the content needs further refinement. What do you think, Brother Cheng?"
Cheng Zhirang: "It’s dramatic enough, and the reversal is well done. Especially the detail of angering the villain to poison and mute him, is that the design exposing the ambition of the female role?"
"Correct. Actually, in this whole story, the time for me to showcase acting is not much, which is just right, avoiding dragging you down. The focus is on Brother Cheng, that twisted aura might be a bit difficult. Also—"
She tugged on Shi Yuhuai’s dress hem: "Brother Huai, you can act out that expression of shame and anger, right?"
Shi Yuhuai pulled back the dress fabric, dryly spat out two words: "Can’t."
"How can you not, last time when we circled you to grab stickers, didn’t you demonstrate those four words quite well?"
"...That was because you were savagely trying to pull down my pants!"
Mu Qiu gave a meaningful "oh": "So this means, such methods of ’pulling pants’ might need to be used again this time to get you to perform?"