"Y-You... how are you awake?"
Zhang Le's voice trembled slightly.
Yang Qi slowly straightened up. "I wasn't too satisfied with my life before, so I tried killing myself with sleeping pills a lot. My body built up a resistance to this kind of stuff."
"Also, when you poured me that Sprite, I drank it into my mouth, but I actually spat it back out into the bowl I was eating from."
The first half of the sentence made Zhang Le curse his bad luck, but the second half made his pores tighten.
"N-No way? Did you already know there was sedative in my Sprite?"
Yang Qi shook his head. "I didn't know, but I had that bit of caution."
"Besides, you asked me if I'd watched any suspense horror movies."
"I really haven't, but I've seen tons of those blogger commentary videos on TikTok."
"So, you can never be too careful when it comes to protecting yourself against others."
Zhang Le fell silent.
After the silence, he suddenly clutched his stomach and burst out laughing. "Alright, alright, I'm done joking with you."
"The truth is, it was all a misunderstanding."
Zhang Le then turned around, walked over to the TV wall in the living room, and picked up a small black camera.
He pulled out the memory card from the camera.
He inserted it into a spare phone.
After that, he found a video on the phone stored in the memory card.
The video started roughly ten minutes before Yang Qi had arrived.
Yang Qi watched the video on the phone.
Zhang Le's explanation echoed in his ears: "The truth is, it was all a misunderstanding."
"Mm... I'm a movie enthusiast."
"I used to have dreams of becoming a director."
"I'm especially into suspense horror movies."
"So, back in college, I made these kinds of micro-films, short videos."
"But unfortunately, they never took off."
"The reason they didn't take off, I figured out, was that the actors' skills just weren't up to par. No matter how they acted, it never came through."
"So, I came up with an idea. Why not just pretend to be a deranged serial killer myself, while the other person is completely clueless? That way, the footage would turn out the best."
"So yeah, that's it. I wasn't really going to do anything to you."
"That was just the script."
Yang Qi stared at the phone video, then looked up at Zhang Le.
Zhang Le had a calm smile on his face, completely unflustered, as if everything he said was true.
"You really are something else. Pulling this on someone like me, who had no idea, you'd give someone a heart attack even if they didn't have one."
Yang Qi seemed to believe Zhang Le, uttering these words.
"Haha, no worries, I always compensate people with money afterward."
Zhang Le chuckled, pulled out his phone, and since he and Yang Qi had already added each other on WeChat earlier, he directly transferred ten thousand yuan to Yang Qi.
"Think of this as your performance fee and mental compensation."
After Yang Qi received the money, he put down his phone.
Then he asked, "If I had drunk the sedative and stayed unconscious, what were you planning to film next in the video?"
Zhang Le said, "I would have kept filming until I made a move on you, but I wouldn't actually do anything. It would stop right there, leaving it to the audience's imagination."
Yang Qi lowered his head and thought for a moment before saying, "This has a bit of a flavor from that movie 'Pancake Man.' Except he was making a film, with fake kidnappings and hidden cameras. You, on the other hand, are doing it for real."
"Next time, don't go crazy for art like this. If someone has a weak heart or a heart condition, you'll be facing a lawsuit."
Zhang Le quickly responded with yes, yes, yes.
Yang Qi let out a breath. "Sigh, after you pulled this on me, I've lost all appetite. Forget it, I think I'll head home, take a shower, and unwind."
Zhang Le repeatedly said okay, okay, okay as he saw Yang Qi out the door. The moment the door closed, he collapsed onto the floor like a pile of mud.
"Thank goodness, thank goodness. Even after coming here, I kept this prepared."
Everything Zhang Le said about wanting to make movies was a lie.
What had just happened was an excuse he had prepared just in case he ran into a situation like Yang Qi's.
But this excuse had only been used three times.
The first time it worked, fooling a stranger.
The second time, it completely failed. He was caught, and all the crimes he had committed were exposed.
As for the third time, that was this time with Yang Qi.
Luckily, it worked again.
And if it hadn't...
He felt like he would have been in deep trouble today.
"Are lab rats all this sharp-minded nowadays?"
"And a resistance to sedatives and sleeping pills? I'm seriously speechless!"
Outside the door.
The moment Zhang Le closed the door.
Yang Qi turned back and stared at the door, his gaze profound, as if he could see through everything.
...
"I never expected it, Jiang Ran. My chance for revenge would come so quickly."
On a plane heading to Europe.
Jin Baiying, with his face, hairstyle, and overall look that had quite a bit of Korean-style handsomeness, was eagerly anticipating his upcoming meeting with Jiang Ran.
He sat by the window, looking out at the blue sky and white clouds. It was as if he was seeing illusions, as every bizarrely shaped cloud outside seemed to look like Jiang Ran—that face that made him feel sick and disgusted.
At this moment, a young man around the same age sitting next to him was counting on his fingers.
Muttering softly to himself, "So that mummy is called Jiang Ran? I'll kill him first. Once he's dead, I'll go find that bastard and take revenge."
This young man was named Zhao Jue.
Jin Baiying and Zhao Jue.
After being eliminated from Hua Country's Alice Apartment, they were randomly sent to different countries' Alice Apartments.
But for some unknown reason, they were now all being transferred early to that small European town—Aisen Town.
It seemed the Far Neighbor live stream game was deliberately setting up a huge trap for Jiang Ran.
...
Naturally, Jiang Ran had no idea what dangerous killing intent would be waiting for him in Aisen Town two weeks later.
Right now, he was busy packing his luggage and other items for the trip abroad.
He packed what needed packing, and bought what needed buying.
Of course, he also needed to do some travel research.
But when he searched online for Aisen Town, the information he could find was scarce. All he got was that it was a small town with beautiful scenery and a long history.
As for the rest, there was very little.
So, travel research wasn't necessary.
He'd figure it out when he got there. Anyway, most of his time there would probably be spent on the apartment's orientation training.
After packing for a while and getting most things ready.
Jiang Ran lay on the bed in his bedroom, scrolling through TikTok.
For people from Hua Country, it seemed like TikTok took up most of their time on their phones.
TikTok had also become the fastest and most convenient software for spreading information.
Soon enough, Jiang Ran scrolled across a piece of news.
It made him sit up immediately.
The news was this.
A serial killing case had occurred in a certain city.
Currently, the number of victims had reached five, all young women.
The reason he was so shocked that he sprang up from the bed was that this certain city was exactly Nancheng City, where he lived.
