[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-the-more-tragic-i-act-the-stronger-i-get-my-fans":3,"chapter-the-more-tragic-i-act-the-stronger-i-get-my-fans-the-more-tragic-i-act-the-stronger-i-get-my-fans-chapter-268":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"english","The More Tragic I Act, the Stronger I Get — My Fans Beg Me to Stop Killing Off My Roles",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1297932,1723,"Chapter 268: Unclaimed Bones","the-more-tragic-i-act-the-stronger-i-get-my-fans-chapter-268",268,"\u003Cp>The filming of \"The Lurker\" did not stop because of Shen Qingyuan's \"death.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The next day, the film set operated as usual, but the oppressive, low-pressure atmosphere in the air was even heavier than the day before.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The plot advanced to one day later.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the early morning of Shanghai's Bund, sunlight filtered through the thin mist, creating a surface appearance of peace and tranquility.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, inside the heavily guarded \"Material Strategic Reserve Department\" building located on the Bund, chaos had long since erupted.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Watanabe's office was filled with swirling cigarette smoke.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Watanabe, portraying Takahashi, had bloodshot eyes and paced neurotically back and forth in the room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The pleasure of executing \"Abyss\" had long since vanished without a trace,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>leaving only an indescribable restlessness and emptiness in his heart.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He needed some music to calm his mind.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The familiar waltz tune began to play again, the same light and melodious melody from yesterday.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, far from calming him, this music only made him more unsettled and anxious.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The pity-filled look in Shen Qingyuan's eyes just before death was deeply imprinted in his mind.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Beside the gramophone, a young adjutant who understood music was idly looking at the blood-stained sheet music on the desk,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>the only piece of evidence brought back from the Paramount Ballroom scene.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As he listened, his body suddenly stiffened.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He picked up the sheet music, his fingers trembling as they traced over the staff lines, his lips moving silently as if reciting something.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The next second, he raised his head, his face filled with horror.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Colonel!\" he cried out involuntarily.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Takahashi glared at him impatiently.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"This... this sheet music...\" the adjutant's voice was distorted with fear,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"It's wrong! Something's terribly wrong! The arrangement of these notes... their pauses and repetitions... this... this is a code!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Morse code!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Takahashi rushed over and snatched the sheet music.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He couldn't read music, but he could understand the world-destroying terror on his adjutant's face.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The scenes from last night instantly exploded in his mind.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before playing the piano, Shen Qingyuan had gathered the sheet music scattered on the floor and arranged it with an almost obsessive-compulsive precision, in exact page order.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At the time, he had thought it was just an eccentricity.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only now did he understand—it was transmitting intelligence!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not only had he killed Shen Qingyuan in front of everyone,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>but he had also personally pressed the play button on the gramophone,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>announcing to the world, through the most elegant and cheerful waltz, the very intelligence that would bury him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The sheer absurdity and humiliation made Takahashi's vision go dark, and he nearly collapsed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Almost simultaneously, a series of urgent alarm sounds came from outside the building,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>followed by one violent explosion after another.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The very ground trembled.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>An actor playing an intelligence officer scrambled into the office,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>his voice choked with tears: \"Report, Colonel! The south city, west city, north city... all of our secret material warehouses... all have been precisely destroyed!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"The Allied bombers... it's like they had eyes!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That waltz, originally intended to humiliate Shen Qingyuan, had become a funeral dirge played in advance for the Japanese army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The tide of the war had completely reversed overnight.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The office fell into silence, with only that gramophone tirelessly continuing to play its cheerful melody.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Takahashi stood frozen in place, his body trembling violently.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Finally, he drew the katana from his waist.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The blade reflected his face, twisted with despair.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before dying, he looked at the sheet music stained with Shen Qingyuan's blood on the desk,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>the last image in his mind being that man's pity-filled gaze.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He died with his eyes wide open.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Cut!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Hou Hsiao-hsien's voice rang out.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In these scenes, Jiang Ci had no lines.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But he wasn't resting with his eyes closed; instead, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Hou Hsiao-hsien, staring at the monitor.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On the screen, Takahashi's desperate roar and the chain explosions of the warehouses\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>seemed like a belated requiem being played for Shen Qingyuan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Ci was witnessing with his own eyes the outcome Shen Qingyuan had bought with his life.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Watanabe, who played Takahashi, had to be supported by his assistant after filming the seppuku scene,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>unable to detach himself from that extreme fear and humiliation for a long time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He looked toward Jiang Ci's location, his expression complicated.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He knew that all the fear in his performance just now\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>stemmed from his imagination of that \"Abyss,\" and that \"Abyss\" was Jiang Ci.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After Hou Hsiao-hsien called \"Cut,\" Watanabe, who played Takahashi, remained unable to get up for a long time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On set, only the prop gramophone was still spinning, emitting a faint friction sound.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This sound seemed to pierce through the barrier of time, overlapping with the earth-shaking sound of gongs and drums that would ring through the streets of Shanghai two days later.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>People flooded the streets, waving flags, their faces radiant with the joy of having survived a catastrophe.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The city, once suppressed, erupted with astonishing vitality at this moment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>People shouted the names of heroes, celebrating the hard-won victory.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was a montage sequence Jiang Ci had strongly suggested Hou Hsiao-hsien add.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Sun-drenched Jinling Road formed the most brutal visual **tear** with the next shot: a dark, damp, unmarked mass grave.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The camera slowly pushed closer.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In a stinking ditch filled with garbage and waste, Shen Qingyuan's corpse lay quietly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That expensive white suit was long soaked through with mud and blood, its original appearance unrecognizable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His body had already begun to decay, flies circling around his once-handsome face.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A passing citizen glanced into the ditch, then spat in disgust.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Pah! Damned traitor! He got off easy!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The cheers of victory drifted faintly from the streets not far away,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>forming the world's most ironic symphony with this silent, putrid place.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On one side, a grand celebration; on the other, the dry bones of a hero.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On one side, glory under the gaze of millions; on the other, forgotten and unattended.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Jiang Ci did not appear in the shot.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Hou Hsiao-hsien behind the monitor, watching this cruel scene on the screen.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Heartbreak Value on his system panel had already begun to refresh densely.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>[From lighting technician assistant Xiao Wang, Heartbreak Value +35]\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>[From props team Sister Chen, Heartbreak Value +41]\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was a more advanced, soul-deep sting.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Heartbreak for the sacrifices of all the nameless heroes of that era.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>With Hou Hsiao-hsien's final hoarse \"Cut!\", the death scenes belonging to Shen Qingyuan in \"The Lurker\" were wrapped.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This director, who was like a tyrant on set, now clenched his fists tightly,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>the veins on the back of his hands bulging, declaring the victory of a creative endeavor.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the others in the film crew felt no joy of completion at all.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Everyone was suffocated by that ending, a huge boulder seeming to block their chests.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He Xiaoping took off her costume and changed back into her own clothes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She walked up to Jiang Ci.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She looked at this man, the one who had personally constructed all the tragedy\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>and then performed the core of that tragedy to its extreme, her heart filled with mixed emotions.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Jiang Ci,\" she began.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"If this film is released, you'll make the entire nation's audience hurt so much they can't sleep.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He wanted to say that what would truly sadden the audience\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>wasn't him, the actor, but rather, in that era,\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>the countless heroes like Shen Qingyuan, who willingly buried themselves in darkness for the dawn.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He was merely a storyteller.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But in the end, he said nothing, only giving a slight nod.\u003C\u002Fp>",1264,"2026-06-05T18:00:08.557Z",1,"novelbin.me","2127c38edb07ff9f347c8cb89d091512895e2f005a15f4a6257e692a292dffb5","the-more-tragic-i-act-the-stronger-i-get-my-fans-chapter-269","the-more-tragic-i-act-the-stronger-i-get-my-fans-chapter-267",366,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthe-more-tragic-i-act-the-stronger-i-get-my-fans-cover.jpg"]