"I think He Li seems a little hostile toward An Ya."
On the second day after filming resumed, Gong Yao whispered to Li Qing, who was holding a box of props on set.
Li Qing gave a quiet "mm" and motioned for him to move out of the way.
Gong Yao turned and followed behind Li Qing. "I thought about it some more afterward. He Li was obviously feeling guilty yesterday. Why would he feel guilty? It could only mean there was something wrong with the coffee."
Li Qing kindly reminded him, "How can you be sure it was An Ya? There were four people in the lounge at the time. It could have been Bai Cha, Meng Tian, or you."
Gong Yao's eyes widened slightly. "So you really knew there was something wrong with the coffee?"
...It seemed Gong Yao's intelligence had finally returned to him after a delay.
Li Qing said, "Yes. I saw it."
His admission was so straightforward that Gong Yao was left at a loss for words.
Li Qing stopped and tilted his head slightly, looking at Gong Yao through his glasses with pale eyes that were perfectly clear.
"-No one ended up drinking that cup of coffee, did they?"
Gong Yao froze for a moment.
Li Qing had already walked away with the box.
An Ya's voice came from the other end of the set. Gong Yao turned to answer her, glanced once more at Li Qing's retreating figure, then turned away to continue filming the next scene.
In this scene, "Gong Yao," whose mental state had already been poor, was diagnosed with depression because of Yu Xiaohe's death five years earlier.
Wearing a loose shirt and trousers, he sat on the bed with his knees drawn to his chest. His slightly long fringe covered his golden left eye, while his black right eye looked melancholy and forlorn.
Despite his tall, imposing frame, he seemed frail and vulnerable at that moment.
The female ghost, Yu Xiaohe, stood at the foot of his bed in a bloodstained white dress and said eerily, "He's already dead... Every one of you... deserves to die..."
A knock suddenly came from outside.
The female ghost, Yu Xiaohe, turned to glance at the door.
The next moment, An Ya pushed the door open and entered, asking with concern, "Yao, why haven't you turned on the lights?"
She flipped the light switch, and Yu Xiaohe was already gone.
An Ya sat beside Gong Yao. After a moment's hesitation, she still chose not to tell him about He Li's death.
"Let's go out for a walk. You haven't left the house in days."
Once the indoor scenes were finished, they moved to the leads' destination-the Family Supermarket.
With problems constantly cropping up on set, the other actors no longer stayed to watch. Whenever they had no scenes to film, they obediently stayed at the hotel. Even Bai Cha had, unusually, refrained from coming to join the fun.
As a result, the only actors-or rather, players-in this scene were Gong Yao and An Ya.
Li Qing followed at the back of the crew, and the King of Hell appeared again.
"More work to add to your tally?" he asked.
The King of Hell chuckled, tacitly admitting it.
Li Qing was a little puzzled. Both players present were high-level players. Whose life was the King of Hell going to take this time?
And with Bai Cha, the player who had twice prevented player casualties, absent, how would Gong Yao and An Ya escape?
That question lingered until filming officially began.
The male and female leads pushed a shopping cart along together in a cozy scene, passing the raw meat section.
A sales clerk was chopping meat when, without warning, the cleaver blade came loose from its handle and flew toward the leads!
The female lead happened to step on a piece of fat in her high heels, slipping and taking the male lead with her, allowing them to dodge the sharp cleaver hurtling down at them.
Having learned from the previous two incidents, Director Li decided to film the shots separately and leave the shot of the flying cleaver until last.
-And when that happened, no one would be in the cleaver's path except the crew member operating the rig that sent it flying.
Li Qing estimated its trajectory... No matter how he looked at it, the crew member operating the prop would not be hurt by the cleaver.
Yet the King of Hell remained delighted, celebrating his new "tally" in advance.
At the call of "Action!", the crew member pulled the cord, flinging the blade outward!
Just then!
The cord, which had been checked countless times beforehand, suddenly detached from the cleaver!
Then the sharp blade flew toward the shelf where Li Qing stood!
The canned fruit on the shelf shattered on impact, but the cleaver did not slow, flying straight toward Li Qing's neck!
His left hand moved slightly. Almost at the same instant the cans shattered, his entire body appeared one unit away from his original coordinates.
To everyone else, he barely seemed to move.
The blade grazed his hair and embedded itself in the shelf behind him.
Li Qing: "..."
Through the large hole smashed in the shelf before him, he exchanged blank stares with the crew members, who had nearly been scared out of their minds.
Li Qing's first reaction was: I was just in a blind spot in Gong Yao and An Ya's livestreams. Good thing no one saw my coordinates suddenly change.
His second reaction was to look up at the King of Hell in the air-
The corners of the King of Hell's mouth had drooped again.
That confirmed it for Li Qing.
"Was I the one you were supposed to take this time?"
The King of Hell nodded listlessly.
"Those actors are too hard to kill. It's difficult for me to take them," he said. "But you're different. You're a crew member."
Li Qing said, "So whenever you can't take an actor, you can only take a crew member to meet your quota?"
Dungeon instance NPCs were being made to die in the players' place, just like that?
This was the first time Li Qing had seen a dungeon instance where the NPCs had it this bad.
This nasty bug had to be fixed.
By now, everyone had recovered enough to rush over and check on Li Qing.
Gong Yao had also gone pale. He grabbed Li Qing and looked him up and down several times before finally breathing a sigh of relief. "As long as you're not hurt."
Li Qing adjusted his glasses. "It's fine. You get used to it."
Gong Yao: "..."
Director Li shouted from a short distance away, "As long as he's all right! Okay, let's film the next scene!"
Gong Yao pressed his lips together in displeasure, but after these past two days, he already knew what Director Li was like. All he could do was follow with a dark expression.
The King of Hell remained beside Li Qing, neither particularly cheerful nor particularly downcast.
Li Qing asked, "You're not done with work today?"
The King of Hell said, "Mm-hmm~"
Why did this King of Hell seem to be getting more and more animated?
The next scene involved Gong Yao having a bout of claustrophobia while alone in an elevator.
Li Qing watched Gong Yao enter the elevator with the cameraman, then slowly turned toward the King of Hell beside him.
Could Gong Yao be his next target?
Meanwhile.
The comments in Gong Yao's livestream were also multiplying like mad:
[In my experience, something is definitely about to happen!]
[Finally! It's finally this guy's turn! Let's see how he gets out of danger without his player abilities and memories!]
[Spread the word! Gong Yao is about to face the most dangerous moment of his life!]
[Ah! No! Hang in there, Lord Gong Yao!]
With no player memories and only a delayed intelligence that occasionally came online, even Li Qing was somewhat eager to see how Gong Yao would handle what came next.
Perhaps he really would get to witness the fall of the player universally acknowledged as the strongest in the Death Instance world.
...Although the King of Hell in this dungeon instance might not have the power to take Gong Yao.
Inside the elevator, Gong Yao suddenly looked up at Li Qing.
He paused, then smiled. "You seem a little excited? I've actually never acted out claustrophobia before, but I'll do my best."
He winked his right eye at Li Qing.
This time, it was Li Qing's turn to be briefly thrown off.
The next moment, the elevator doors suddenly slammed shut!
As everyone on set scrambled in panic, the elevator's floor indicator rapidly climbed until it reached the top floor, the forty-fourth, and stopped.
When the elevator stopped, everyone cautiously and slowly let out the breath they had been holding.
Before they could recover, the numbers on the elevator began plunging at a speed almost too fast to follow!
"Call the emergency number!" Director Li roared. "Stagehand! Li Qing, get to the elevator control room! Hurry!"
Li Qing nodded and ran toward the control room.
At the speed he was running, he probably would not reach the control room in time.
But he could use certain special methods to stop the elevator.
...Though that would count as helping a player cheat.
The elevator was still falling as Li Qing rounded a corner on the way to the control room.
Then he stopped.
At the end of the turn, a girl in a white dress closed the control room door and looked around. Then her eyes met Li Qing's, and her face instantly turned deathly pale.
...It was Yu Xiaohe.
Before you continue