Chapter 176 Xinglan

The world in front of him started to twist. The sky spun and Xie Chi fell unconscious.

This was a luxurious mansion owned solely by the movie emperor. Ren Ze and Yan Jing were chatting on the ground floor when a person suddenly arrived.

The man in front of them was tall and burly with a straightforward and handsome face and a calm and introverted temperament. He was a man who made people feel he was safe and trustworthy. Yan Jing jumped in front the moment he saw this man and his face was full of wariness.

“Who is this?” Ren Ze saw that Yan Jing’s reaction was so big and asked in a whisper while covering his mouth.

The man seemed to have heard it. He smiled and introduced himself. “Hello, I am the peak actor Li Hao. I am a pet but I left the organization previously. This is why I didn’t die when Xie Chi realized his wish.”

Ren Ze thought he was here to get revenge and his face became cold. “What do you want?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I just want to see Xie Chi. I have something to say to him.”

Ren Ze still wasn’t at ease. “You said you left the organization previously. Why didn’t Jiang Shuo kill you?”

Li Hao’s face showed a momentary loneliness. He took a deep breath, calmed his mood and answered in a flat tone, “In fact, he wasn’t really a ruthless person. We were all wrong about him.”

Ren Ze and Yan Jing disagreed.

Li Hao requested, “Can I see him? You can rest assured. The movie emperor’s mansion has an anti-assassination system. Anyone who wants to attack the movie emperor will directly trigger the system and there is only a dead end.”

Li Hao searched on his mobile phone. He showed the high-authority information to the two of them and they found Li Hao wasn’t lying.

Ren Ze looked at Yan Jing and asked for Yan Jing’s opinion. Yan Jing nodded at him. The two of them reached an agreement and led Li Hao upstairs to the door of Xie Chi’s office. Yan Jing was afraid to disturb Xie Chi and knocked on the door first, but didn’t hear a response. He thought that Xie Chi had gone home and pushed the door open, only to find Xie Chi lying on the sofa with his eyes tightly closed. He seemed to be asleep but he obviously wasn’t sleeping peacefully.

Li Hao saw this scene. “I can wait outside.”

The air conditioner here was low and there were no blankets. Yan Jing wanted to wake Xie Chi up so he could go home and sleep when he heard Xie Chi whispered, “—Si Nian.”

“Si what?” Yan Jing wondered.

Li Hao heard it clearly and his expression changed. Ren Ze had been paying close attention to Li Hao and he frowned when he saw this.

Yan Jing felt that something was wrong and went forward to wake Xie Chi. However, Xie Chi seemed to have fallen into an endless dream and temporarily couldn’t be woken up. Yan Jing became anxious. They had only left for a while and Xie Chi was like this. He was about to find a way to wake Xie Chi up when Li Hao told him, “Let’s go out. He will be fine.”

Ren Ze wondered, “Why are you so sure?”

Li Hao’s gaze directed at Xie Chi was full of complex emotions. “Si Nian is the name of the demigod 30 years ago.”

Ren Ze and Yan Jing exchanged looks, their faces shocked. Demigod? The one who was undoubtedly the strongest in the app but he was besieged and died?!

“How could Xie Chi call out the demigod’s name?!” Ren Ze was worried about Xie Chi and immediately asked.

Li Hao seemed to recall the demigod’s grandeur back then. His face was mysterious as he looked down and said, “Xie Chi and the demigod are extremely closely related. I originally came here to tell him about this. I didn’t expect him to have already learned it…”

He paused and whispered, “Let’s go out and wait.”

Xie Chi was dreaming. Xie Chi had been having strange dreams for many years.

In the dream, there were the howls of ghosts, people whose faces couldn’t be seen, strangely shaped buildings, blood, corpses and countless horrors. There was also a strange call like an infrasound wave. He couldn’t hear the calls but he knew they were there.

Every time he woke up, he always felt lost. He felt like he had a mission in his heart but he had missed it. This call caused numerous waves in his heart before he entered the app.

Xie Chi only now remembered that he never seemed to have this strange dream again after entering the app. In the past, these dreams were a common thing for him. It now appeared that the place where the dream was calling him to was the app. He had already arrived at the place of the summoning so the dream had achieved its purpose and disappeared.

Xie Chi figured this out once he saw the full picture of his dreams over the years.

The dream was the legendary experience of one person in the app.

The man’s name was Si Nian.

Xie Chi couldn’t see his face clearly. Only his back could be seen but the moment this person appeared, Xie Chi accurately called out his name. Somehow, he was sure that this man was called Si Nian.

Fragments flashed quickly and Xie Chi could even hear the voice of this young man called Si Nian.

Si Nian looked at the supernatural app software spontaneously installed on his phone and smiled. It had finally found him.

On the app, in the center of the scarlet screen, black words were shaking and jumping like the devil’s temptation.

[Do you have any wishes you wish to achieve?]

Si Nian threw himself onto the sofa. He wasn’t in a hurry to enter and instead looked up at the stars and the sky outside the window. He lived on the top floor of a hotel-style apartment building that was several hundred storeys high. This was the place closest to the sky and the stars seemed reachable. Under the boundless night, in the shining galaxy, he seemed extremely small like a grain of sand in a long river.

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Existentialism could never escape the test of nothingness.

He was an orphan and the meaning of life had to be given by himself. Even if he became a successful person in the eyes of society, he still couldn’t get rid of the sense of nihility. He could throw himself into the noise, sink into the impetuousness and go all over the place. However, he never found a face that he was willing to stop for and give infinite meaning to.

Si Nian touched the phone and slowly typed on the wish interface: Split another me to accompany me.

He didn’t trust anyone. He only believed in himself. If one day he was destined to fall in love with someone, that person must only be himself.

Si Nian smiled brilliantly and looked at the cold and lonely Sirius. He said in his heart, ‘You will be called Xinglan.’

Under the immortal stars billions of years old, two lonely and decadent people got together and the long night would come to an end. That night after making the wish, Si Nian got up enthusiastically. He came to his long-abandoned easel and drew Xinglan.

Extremely handsome, extremely withdrawn. Endless will and endless strength.

Si Nian, who was heartless and pessimistic about life and death, encountered the stimulating and turbulent app. He took to it like a duck in water. He overcame obstacles and rose from an unknown newcomer to a New and Sharp Budding Talent. Then he was a new talent, part of the earliest batch of third-tier actors in the app and became the most prosperous third-tier actor.

Si Nian started to feel bored. His wish was worth 5,000 points. Couldn’t he pay it in installments? Si Nian had an idea and his crooked heart started to move.

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30 years ago, the app system wasn’t perfect. Si Nian made appeals and suggestions again and again. He argued nonsense and used pseudo-righteous awe-inspiring arguments before finally getting the app to create the installment system. Since then, he could consume points to let Xinglan come out and accompany him from time to time.

Si Nian originally just wanted to have a suitable playmate. He didn’t expect the relationship to develop uncontrollably in a strange direction that was irreversible. He loved himself so he was bound to love Xinglan. Xinglan was him and he was bound to love himself. Therefore, Xinglan would definitely fall in love with him.

It was a strange logic chain that both of them were caught up in.

Si Nian was young, embarrassed and upset. He chose to escape and didn’t want to see Xinglan. It was only when he thought he had organized his feelings and could continue to be good friends with Xinglan that he released Xinglan.

He was fucked on the first night Xinglan was released.

Si Nian was extremely angry and completely alienated Xinglan. This lasted until the horror movie ‘Silverware Shop’ where Xinglan made two simple men’s rings by himself at the handmade silverware shop, giving him one.

It was a supernatural silverware shop and they were handmade couple rings. People who weren’t in love couldn’t wear them. The moment that the relationship between two people broke, the ring would self-destruct and kill the person whose heart had changed.

This was the blessing of love but also the deepest curse of love.

The ghost boss of the silverware shop was one who was betrayed in love. She opened the shop after her death. This shop was poison for most people and honey for a small number of people. It was sweet.

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Xinglan asked, “Do you dare to wear it?”

He asked, ‘Do you dare to wear it?’

Si Nian wanted to run away. If he wore it then it proved he loved Xinglan. He retreated without any agreement, only to be dragged back by Xinglan into his arms.

Xinglan held Si Nian’s arms. As he spoke, his lips almost touched the corners of Si Nian’s lips. His voice was low as he asked, “You always wanted to love someone. If it can be someone else, why can’t it be me?”

Si Nian avoided his scorching gaze and gritted his teeth. “This is different.”

“Where is it different? I can always understand what you are thinking. Others can’t. I can protect you for a lifetime. Others can’t. Isn’t it the same?”

In his deep obsidian eyes, there were deep reflections of himself as well as paranoia. Si Nian suddenly thought of the scenes where Xinglan was born for him and would die for him.

“How can they be better than me?”

Si Nian was silent as this question filled his heart. Then he was relieved and smiled quietly. He hesitated before slowly putting on the ring. After that, he turned and kissed Xinglan. “They aren’t as good as you.”

At the end of the instance, Si Nian received an orange ring.

Xinglan’s ring was called the Guardian Ring.

His title rose and Si Nian opened his talent, Painter’s Pen. The Painter’s Pen could survey the past and foresee the future.

Time passed by. Si Nian and Xinglan both matured. They were calmer and more rational, but they were also more in love. Si Nian became the movie emperor. He fulfilled his wish but he didn’t want to leave. The app was more exciting and interesting. It was his paradise. He was full of curiosity for the truth of the app and the world.

At the root, perhaps he wanted to know which one was true—existentialism or nihilism? What was at the end of the world?

He stood on top of the mountain. Yet beyond the top of the mountain, was it a bigger mountain or an endless abyss? He was an orphan and this was a question he had been thinking about all his life. He couldn’t know where he came from but he could know where he was going.

He stayed for four or five years.

Si Nian was a painter. In the later stages, the app couldn’t think of what Si Nian lacked. Therefore, it didn’t bother to design items for him. It directly handed over the right to create items to him. Every time he finished a movie, he got a blank piece of paper. He could directly draw the item he needed on the paper.

The quality of the blank paper was determined by the quality of the horror movie that gave the paper. Orange movies gave orange quality blank paper which could be used to draw orange items. It was the same for red movies and so on.

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Si Nian received many blank pieces of paper over the years. Si Nian could be said to have no desires apart from the desire to explore the origin of the world and his love for Xinglan. He unknowingly saved more than half a million points. He also almost glimpsed the secret of the app and this secret was thrilling.

Si Nian started to write a script, trying to silently tell the actors this secret and draw a perfect end to his many years of exploration. The script hadn’t been completed when he had to enter the next movie due to the app’s scheduling rules.

Si Nian thought he would leave with Xinglan after writing the script. Yet in this last peak red movie, his talent suddenly came into play and he foresaw his near future—he would be besieged by the nine peak actors and die here in this movie.

Proofreader: Purichan