The More Tragic I Act, the Stronger I Get — My Fans Beg Me to Stop Killing Off My Roles-Chapter 183: The Loop of Fate is Completed

That "next scene" was a command, and also an invisible switch.

The frozen sorrow in the screening room had not yet dissipated, but the even more brutal second act had already begun.

Everyone's gaze was once again firmly nailed to the center of the stage.

Su Qingying maintained Ling Xi's final, resolute stance, but her fingertips trembled uncontrollably.

The divine aura and innate arrogance that belonged to the legendary shaman were rapidly disintegrating from her being.

What replaced it was a kind of terror and fragility belonging to a modern city dweller.

One moment ago, she was still the witch who judged the divine.

The next moment, all the agony and resolve belonging to Ling Xi vanished from her face.

A complete emptiness and numbness, forcibly injected by an external force, occupied her eyes.

She was no longer Ling Xi, who looked down upon all living beings.

She was A Li.

A pitiful puppet, conscious and aware, yet forced to watch helplessly as she became a tool for murder.

Correspondingly, Jiang Ci's character state also underwent a dramatic switch.

The shock and pain sealed deep within his soul for a thousand years, nailed to the Divine Tree, were rapidly peeling away.

His tense muscles slowly relaxed, his body no longer rigid. A kind of exhaustion and gentleness, the aftermath of surviving a calamity, returned to him.

He "awakened" from the sealed eternal darkness, transforming into Ye Chen from a thousand years later—the one who opened his heart to A Li and let down all his defenses.

His face carried a slight pallor of recent injury recovery and a soft glow of complete trust in the person before him.

Then, he moved.

He took a step towards Su Qingying's direction.

That step was light, landing without a sound, yet it struck heavily on everyone's hearts.

It was the action from the script where Ye Chen, seeing A Li's abnormal state, tries to gently awaken her.

An approach with absolutely no guard up.

In the front row, the investor who had been sitting with his legs crossed, wearing a look of watching a show, was now leaning forward, body taut, gripping the armrests tightly.

Gu Huai's brows were locked into a deep furrow.

He finally understood.

Su Qingying wasn't disjointedly acting two roles.

She was acting two shadows of one person!

Every breath A Li took dragged along the tragic projection of Ling Xi that spanned a thousand years!

This was what Zhang Mouyi wanted, that damn "two sides of one coin"!

The instant Jiang Ci's foot landed.

Su Qingying, that controlled "Puppet A Li," moved abruptly.

Her arm lifted, executing a straight thrusting motion forward.

The movement was swift, clean, precise.

Without a hint of the hesitation a human should have, it pointed directly at Jiang Ci's "heart."

According to the script's setting, that was the location of Ye Chen's demon core.

Jiang Ci's body jolted violently the moment that action appeared.

He staggered, taking two steps back.

He lowered his head, looking at his own chest. His face showed no hatred, not even anger.

Only the kind of agonizing disbelief that comes from being suddenly hurt by the most trusted, the closest person.

And a deeper worry for her.

He painfully uttered that line.

"A Li... wake up..."

"Don't be controlled..."

With his body, he perfectly interpreted the ultimate tenderness and heartbreak of a man who would rather be pierced himself than see his beloved consumed by demonic power.

His performance made Su Qingying's "puppet" act even more cruel.

Su Qingying moved again.

Mechanically, she raised both her arms.

She assumed a posture identical to the one Ling Xi used when drawing the Lingxi Bow in the first scene.

History was repeating.

The tragedy of a thousand years ago was being perfectly replicated a thousand years later, in an even more absurd, even more cruel way.

"Gasp—"

In the screening room, someone couldn't suppress a sharp intake of breath.

That immense, suffocating sense of destiny's cycle, of powerlessness to resist, enveloped the entire space.

This time, it was even more despair-inducing than the last.

Because the last time was hatred.

This time, it was love.

Jiang Ci's body froze completely the moment Su Qingying drew the bow.

He did not turn around.

With his back to her, his silhouette under the imagined lighting appeared incredibly lonely.

Then, everyone saw it.

His straight spine trembled, ever so slightly.

The final lament of a soul that had remained powerful for a thousand years, upon realizing it could never escape the mockery of fate.

In the script, Ye Chen could deal with powerful great demons.

But he was utterly helpless against her bow and arrow aimed at him once more.

Following Su Qingying's illusory "release the bowstring" motion.

Jiang Ci's body lunged forward violently, crossing several steps of distance, finally and heavily "nailing" itself onto that imagined giant tree of the Abyss.

His arms spread wide, his head hanging limply.

That posture, that silhouette nailed to the cross of destiny.

It was exactly the same as the posture from a thousand years ago, when Ling Xi sealed him on the Divine Tree with the Heartstring Arrow.

The closed loop of destiny was complete.

The final second of the performance.

The moment Jiang Ci's movement froze completely.

The stiffness belonging to a puppet vanished instantly from Su Qingying's body.

The demonic power controlling her body disappeared.

A Li's own consciousness reclaimed sovereignty.

She looked at the tragic scene before her, at the lover she had personally "nailed" to death.

Her legs gave way, her whole body losing strength as she collapsed with a "thud," kneeling straight onto the ground.

Her face was filled with boundless terror, remorse, and despair.

Tears flowed silently, in a torrent.

The final image of a two-person tragedy was thus frozen.

One, nailed to an inescapable destiny.

One, kneeling before an irreversible reality.

Inside the screening room, there was complete silence.

An even more absolute silence than after the first performance ended.

Everyone present had their hearts seized fiercely by this continuously unfolding, millennium-spanning tragedy of destiny.

Lin Wan, who had quietly entered at some point and sat in the back corner, had long since clenched her hands resting on her lap into fists, nails digging deep into her palms.

Looking at the two figures on stage, she felt a chill shooting straight from her tailbone to the crown of her head.

Within this solidified air.

A light sound of a chair being moved.

Zhang Mouyi slowly rose from his seat.

He didn't look at anyone, taking steps, one after another, walking to the front of the stage.

Everyone's gaze followed his movement.

He stopped before Jiang Ci and Su Qingying.

Looking at one still maintaining the posture of being nailed, and the other still kneeling on the ground, weeping silently.

His face still showed not a trace of praise.

That stern face was overwhelmingly imposing.

He scanned the entire room, finally letting his gaze fall back on the two actors who had not yet left their roles.

He spoke, breaking this suffocating silence.

His words were clear, ringing with authority, reaching everyone's ears.

"The actors, no problem."

"Now, let's continue discussing the other issues with the script."