“Cut!”
In the freezing cold, Xu Pingqiu exhaled a puff of white mist as he spoke.
“That was a solid scene!”
The crew members rushed forward holding heavy military overcoats, wrapping Jiang Yue and the others up tightly like zongzi.
The action choreographer leaned in close to Xu Pingqiu and whispered, “Director Xu, you should’ve told me earlier that Jiang Yue has such a great foundation in martial arts.”
Jiang Yue took a towel and wiped the fake blood from his hands. “I just figured it out on my own.”
The choreographer didn't buy it.
Figuring it out on his own? Who could figure out a lethal military hand-to-hand combat style just by messing around?
He was clearly pulling his leg.
Chen Jiaming slowly walked down the stairs holding his thermos. He took a sip of goji berry tea and shook his head at Jiang Yue. “Brother Jiang, you’re being far too modest.”
Han Song also walked over with his jacket draped over his shoulders, ruthlessly exposing him in agreement. “Exactly! You were the craziest actor on set, and now that we’ve cut, you’re still here pretending to be a newbie!”
Jiang Yue pulled his military overcoat tighter. “It’s mainly because Teacher Chen and Brother Han have such strong presence. I just followed my instincts and went with the flow.”
If he hadn't equipped his traits, that high-intensity sequence just now would have sent him straight to orthopedics.
But in everyone else’s eyes, this was pure, god-given talent. Of course, as the one actually using cheats, he would absolutely never admit it.
Xu Pingqiu walked over and patted Jiang Yue on the back.
“You’ve worked hard these past two days. It’s been nothing but high-intensity action scenes. Let’s wrap up early today so everyone can catch their breath. We’re moving to a new filming location in a couple of days, and it’s only going to get more exhausting then.”
Hearing this, Han Song leaned in curiously. “Director Xu, where is our next location?”
Xu Pingqiu didn't keep them in suspense and gave a direct answer.
“Qionzhou.”
...
A few days later, the advance team of 《The Hidden Sentry》 crew packed up and left early.
Xu Pingqiu took several of the core lead actors on a 10:00 AM flight straight to Qionzhou.
This was the first time Jiang Yue had experienced traveling to another city for a shoot since he started acting.
When he was filming 《The Grand Game》 and 《Manhunt》 at the Hengcheng Film and Television Base, almost all the sets could be built locally. They would just shoot from one end of the street to the other and leave once they were done.
Sipping black coffee in the departure lounge, Xu Pingqiu casually explained to the group, “Shanghai’s film park is fine for grand backdrops, but if you want to capture the authentic vibe of the Nanyang arcade streets, you have to go to the Qionzhou film base. Even the peeling plaster on the walls there tells a story.”
Jiang Yue nodded silently.
Relocating for a Republic of China-era drama was still relatively straightforward. Fortunately, the remaining scenes were mostly set in Qionzhou.
If this were a high-fantasy xianxia or wuxia drama, the crew would probably have to drag a massive team all over the country just to shoot on location at famous mountains and rivers.
On second thought, whether he would ever get the chance to act in such grand, larger-than-life scripts in the future was still up in the air. For now, his priority was to play this secret agent role perfectly.
At 2:40 PM, the plane landed smoothly at Qionzhou Airport.
Compared to the damp cold of Shanghai, the weather in Qionzhou was delightfully warm.
Everyone took off their heavy military overcoats and changed into light jackets.
To save time, the crew rented a spacious Coaster minibus.
The five lead actors—Jiang Yue, Chen Jiaming, Han Song, Su Binxuan, and Chen Yunjie—along with Director Xu Pingqiu, boarded the bus one after another with their light luggage, each finding a comfortable spot to slump into.
The high-intensity, back-to-back schedules in Shanghai, combined with the outdoor night shoots in freezing weather, had left everyone thoroughly exhausted.
As the doors closed, the cabin fell silent, save for the faint hum of the air conditioning.
Chen Jiaming unscrewed his thermos, blew on the hot steam, and took slow, deliberate sips.
Han Song put on an eye mask, leaned his head against the window, and prepared to catch up on sleep.
Su Binxuan and Chen Yunjie both put on their headphones and closed their eyes to rest.
Jiang Yue wasn't as relaxed as them. He pulled out a slim laptop from his backpack, powered it on, and put on his blue-light-blocking glasses.
His fingers slid rapidly across the trackpad as he scrolled through screens full of test logs.
A few people on the bus cracked their eyes open to glance at him, but assuming he was just handling emails, they didn't pay much attention.
Just as the bus pulled onto the airport expressway and everyone was drifting off to sleep...
Buzz— Buzz—
The phone in Jiang Yue's pocket began to vibrate.
In the quiet cabin, the sound was exceptionally clear.
Han Song's head slipped down a bit, and his eye mask slid up to his forehead.
Jiang Yue glanced at the email notification popping up in the bottom-right corner of his laptop screen, then pulled out his phone.
The caller ID read: Li Hai, Project Director of Yuantu Technology.
Jiang Yue pressed the answer button, his eyes remaining fixed on the laptop screen.
“Mr. Li, I just received the report. I’m looking at it now.”
“Mr. Jiang! I hope I’m not disturbing you?”
On the other end of the line, Li Hai’s voice carried a mix of anxiety and excitement.
“The technical department ran a test overnight using the modifications you suggested a couple of days ago. The concurrency rate has indeed gone up!”
“But please take a look at the test logs I just sent you. A new issue popped up. In low-light environments, the anchoring of feature points for facial muscle micro-movement capture gets lost, and the false positive rate for deep muscle spasms rebounded to 1.2%.”
Jiang Yue’s fingertips rapidly scrolled through several pages of the data report. His brow furrowed slightly, and his tone became highly professional and decisive.
“I see the logs. It’s an issue with the underlying logic.”
“You nested the preprocessing noise-reduction algorithm too deeply. That's a brute-force optimization.”
“There’s no need for global noise reduction. Just apply high-pass filtering directly to the third layer of the convolutional neural network.”
“Also, tilt the weight of the facial feature bounding box slightly toward the peripheral muscle groups. In particular, widen the parameter thresholds for the orbicularis oculi and zygomaticus major muscles by 0.05.”
As soon as these words came out...
Han Song, who had been about to fall asleep with his eye mask on, froze.
Chen Jiaming, who was tilting his head to drink water, froze with his thermos at his lips and turned to look at Jiang Yue in the back row.
In the front row, Xu Pingqiu, who had been flipping through the call sheets, stopped mid-motion and leaned his ear slightly toward the back.
Su Binxuan and Chen Yunjie went so far as to pull off their headphones, staring blankly at Jiang Yue and the laptop on his lap.
The entire cabin was silent except for Jiang Yue’s calm, authoritative instructions.
“The redundant code still hasn't been fully cleaned up. Break down those infinite loops, otherwise you'll get a memory leak when running it. Have the team rewrite a version tonight based on this logic and email it to me. I'll find some time tomorrow to review the new logs.”
“Got it! With your guidance, I feel much more confident now! Go ahead with your work, and we can keep in touch via WeChat anytime!”
Li Hai hung up the phone.
Jiang Yue put his phone away.
When he looked up, he met five pairs of wide, staring eyes.
Every single one of them was filled with utter confusion and bewilderment.
“What is it?”
Jiang Yue closed his laptop.
Han Song yanked off his eye mask, pointed at Jiang Yue’s phone, and after struggling for words for a long time, managed to squeeze out, “Just now... were you making contact with aliens?”
Chen Jiaming silently capped his thermos, exhaled a long breath, and teased, “Brother Jiang, those terms you just threw around—what-muscle this, convolutional that—which new script are those lines from? They sound harder to crack than the codebooks in 《The Hidden Sentry》.”
Su Binxuan looked completely dazed.
“Brother Jiang, not only are you a great actor, but are you also a medical professor? What on earth is the orbicularis oculi muscle?”
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