Two flowers bloom, each expressing a different aspect.
Mu Qiu and Cheng Zhirang walked into the fourth house.
The buildings in the old town are all newly renovated, not truly preserved from ancient times.
So they are more for viewing, and occasionally, film crews with limited budgets come here to shoot. Other than that, there isn’t much practical significance.
But the new renovations are nice too; the bluestone floor is as smooth as tiles, and everything else is new, making it look more comfortable.
They stepped over the threshold in sync, carefully observing every brick and tile of this "Qingyin Pavilion."
"There’s a little pond inside, and a tank of water lilies, quite beautiful. There’s even a covered walkway here."
If you say it’s for considering a plot development location, that’s not entirely true. When you really see the place, it’s mostly because you like the environment.
From the cheerful tone, it’s like two people about to get married, with full payment, coming to buy a house. Now the hostess sees a house that satisfies her, so there is more joy in her words.
Cheng Zhirang was amused by his increasingly imaginative scenarios, and played along, saying, "This place is quiet, the environment is good, and it’s big. It’s a great place for keeping a beauty hidden."
"It’s not even about hiding a beauty; you want to hide your rival." She casually said while touching the edge of the water lily tank.
Cheng Zhirang: "I meant you."
"Huh?" Mu Qiu snapped back to reality, "Oh, you mean hiding like that. Well, that’s hiding too. But I think if Brother Huai could be locked in here too, it’d be better. Just imagine, hiding two people in the same place without them knowing about each other.
No, Brother Huai can be aware, making him tremble with the psychological threat and tension of ’the other person might push open the door at any time and find your creepy fetish.’ Tsk tsk tsk, isn’t that perfect for your yandere persona?"
"... You really have a lot of ideas."
Mu Qiu raised her eyebrows at him, about to explore further inside, then suddenly thought of something and earnestly spoke to the camera:
"The cross-dressing fetish is a unique setting in our story, not to say cross-dressing is truly a shameful fetish. Everyone has the freedom to dress as they please, no need to get hung up on this."
But there’s nothing that can be done; there’s so much trolling online. They’ll nitpick anything.
For instance, they used to troll Shi Yuhuai about having a bad relationship with her, Guan Yu for being not pretty but thinking she is, Li Yang for wanting to fall in love, or Shu Ran for pretending to eat less, and Shi Yuhuai for befriending international models as being unpatriotic.
The most ridiculous is trolling Cheng Zhirang for definitely falling for female actors in his previous films, labeling him as an unclean man, yet marketing a Bai Yueguang persona...
In short, anything can be trolled. Like a deaf and blind pea shooter, spraying everything in front of it.
But even with her explanation, there’d still be trolls.
She didn’t say much more, just explained two sentences before being led by Cheng Zhirang to continue exploring in the back.
"The main battleground will be here. Open the window, and there’s the pond, with a broad view, suitable for discussing somewhat unconventional love affairs. Use the environment to create a contrasting backdrop to highlight the suppression."
Unconventional love affairs, Cheng Zhirang found her precise wording amusing.
"I thought the main setting should be in the room next door, dark, without sunlight, which suits my character and your relationship better?"
Mu Qiu seriously refuses to involve their real relationship: "But if Brother Huai could be moved here, surely he’d need to stay in a dark room even more."
"True," Cheng Zhirang agreed on this point too, "That’d work too. Do we need any other characters or go anywhere else?"
"Other places shouldn’t be necessary. As for other characters..."
Mu Qiu thought for a moment and asked, "The director seems to have only mentioned the main characters shouldn’t go out of character?"
He nodded: "It should be. Because the other slightly useful characters are played by our group, they have their character settings, and we can’t have them abandon their own story settings to fit ours."
"Then we’ll improvise, use whoever we encounter when performing, and if we don’t run into anyone, we can just act against the air."
She got a bit tired, leaning by the window, pushed it open, and with her head out, looked outside.
The sun was shining brightly outside, the light flooding in, making the dust particles in the air clearly visible, and the hanging plants and water lilies in the tank were fresh and beautiful.
The person pushing the window also seemed vibrant and beautiful, especially while wearing such lovely clothes, her profile looked great.
Cheng Zhirang quietly requested the following photographer to take a few photos.
Mu Qiu didn’t know what he was doing, just amused herself by observing the window’s construction. Before she could speak, the long-missed electronic voice appeared again.
"Attention all guests! Attention all guests! There is only one hour left to construct the story, please hurry to construct and notify the director.
Those who have completed the story can start rehearsing to adjust. In one hour, everyone must immediately enter the story performance state. To reduce out-of-character occurrences, use this time to rehearse and familiarize in advance!"
From the last episode, this electronic voice got a gender, now it’s a girl’s voice; not only gentle, but with a more personable way of speaking.
Mu Qiu still remembered it was Cheng Zhirang who drew this female electronic voice, turning to tease him, only to find him standing behind a camera taking photos of her.
This made her a bit nervous.
"Brother Cheng."
Cheng Zhirang took a couple of shots and then walked into the camera’s shooting range from behind.
"Let’s go, have a look outside."
She whispered, "Were you just taking photos?"
Cheng Zhirang softly responded, "Yeah, you look great in this outfit. We can print the photos later and put them in an album."
"... Oh."
The two were whispering so privately, it was hard to capture on film, the photographer adjusted the angle slightly and didn’t get them both fully in the shot.
Arriving at the spot where they’d earlier met Guan Yu and the others, they found them still there.
And Shu Ran and the other three had arrived too.
The naïve Li Yang was still squatting in the corner eating liquid nitrogen ice cream, together with Song Weili, biting open the ice cream and puffing breath at each other.
They looked like circus performers.
"Did you hear what was said on the broadcast earlier?"
Shu Ran: "Anyone who isn’t deaf would have heard it."
"Some people’s ears being deaf or not make no difference, right Li Yang?"
Li Yang carelessly removed the ice cream, turned back and asked in confusion, "Huh? What?"
Mu Qiu didn’t reply, just shrugged at Shu Ran: "You see."
Shu Ran: "... Li Yang, how have you not finished eating yet? We need to finalize the story soon and start getting familiar with it."
"Don’t rush, I’m almost done." He stuffed two more bites, making an exaggerated, grimacing face from the cold, while both his mouth and nostrils continued to emit smoke.
It was very comical.
Mu Qiu and Guan Yu immediately pointed at him and laughed.
"Isn’t this some young general sent by a circus troupe to confuse the enemy with silliness?"