Director of a Suspense Film

“Yeah…” Zong Qi looked at him with suspicion, “How did you know?” 

　　The blue shirt man stumbled with his words, only spitting out his username, ‘Village Professor Wang’, after a long time. 

　　Oh, Zong Qi was very familiar with this username. 

　　The professional debunker. He threw a bunch of dirt onto him just a few days ago. 

　　Zong Qi revealed an amiable smile, “So it was you, what a coincidence.” 

　　He didn’t know why, but Professor Wang felt cold daggers being aimed at him at the same time Zong Qi looked at him. 

　　He shivered and by the time he came back to his senses, he found the beautiful young man to have looked away already, “Hello everyone, my codename is Office Worker.” 

　　Godsend let out a fit of uncontrollable laughter. 

　　“What are you laughing about?” Blondie rolled his eyes, “Your big boss here is called Blondie. Anyways, I remember meeting someone called Daddy in the other movie I acted in. We all beat him up right before the movie ended since we won’t be able to remember each other’s face after it did so it was worth it.” 

　　Professor Wang could feel imminent danger but his skin was thick enough and thought, So that small streamer can’t do anything to me? Thus he quickly asked, “What do you mean?” 

　　“Exactly what he said.” The Fixer continued, “After the movie ends, we’ll forget the faces of the actors we acted with.” 

　　“What’s the point of that?” Godsend asked. 

　　“The system likes keeping us actor’s privacy so other than the time of filming, it won’t let your actor identity affect your real life. You’ll understand after this. If you’re really curious, you can go on our forum after filming and login, you’ll find actors like us there.” 

　　The Fixer opened his phone, “There’s no time right now, I’ll send you the address after everything ends.” 

　　“Alright alright, stop chattering.” 

　　Blondie cut them off, “It’s almost 8.50 but someone’s still missing, where are they?” 

　　‘Desolate Village’ had a total of 7 actors, but there were only 6 here including Zong Qi. 

　　They didn’t know who it was but Zong Qi knew very clearly that the only one missing was the C-rank actor he spent 5% of his earnings on. 

　　A row of people stood in the rain until the last 3 minutes on the timer. Only then did they see a black umbrella walking over. 

　　He wore a long raincoat, his appearance plain— the kind you would ignore while walking on the streets. But the deep eyes on his face looked spirited as ever, giving him the vibe of aloofness. 

　　“Crow, C-rank actor.” 

　　He gave a brief introduction and didn’t explain further, only sweeping his gaze through everyone. 

　　How arrogant. 

　　Blondie didn’t say anything but the Fixer attempted to make some conversation. There were very few high ranked actors and only one S-rank actor. There were about 100 A-rank actors and after some calculation, it’d be obvious B and C-rank actors were the most. 

　　 To get to D-rank, all that was needed was one movie. But to get to C-rank, you had to get a C-rank evaluation for at least 3 movies. 

　　It could be said that for every rank you wanted to rise to, the chasm you needed to jump over got larger. 

　　Crow didn’t let spill anything to the people he didn’t know, at most only nodding at some questions. 

　　After trying all the tactics he could, the Fixer could only turn and walk back, pretending like it didn’t bother him. 

　　“Oh right, you guys came because of the hire notice they put out right?” 

　　“Huh? There’s a hire notice? What’s that?” 

　　The new actors all had confusion written clearly on their faces. Zong Qi sneaked a glance at them, quickly changing his expression to match it. 

　　I guess they really don’t know anything about it. 

　　“Don’t worry about it haha, I was just curious.” 

　　Fixer quickly put the topic to an end, not asking anything else related to it. 

　　Horror Film Actor was an overtly simple system. 

　　After the contract had been signed, they would inform their actors to join a movie within a certain period of time. As for what movie it was, who the actors were, or what rank it was, none of them was revealed. 

　　But all of these rules had been broken the other afternoon. 

　　There was a blank piece of hire notice in the Actor System’s channel. Taking a closer look, it was clear that it was an advertisement. 

　　[Director Q: Hiring Actors] 

　　Movie: Desolate Village

　　Actors required: Seven

　　Movie requirements: Unknown, confidential

　　In a matter of seconds, this hiring notice had flipped the entire actors society upside down. 

　　Movie filmings could only be assigned through the system, there was no such thing as voluntary work. But now they could choose if they wanted to film it or not through the hiring notice, it was like a god descending on earth. 

　　About five days ago, every active actor received the message that [Director Q has arrived] 

　　The discussion forum had existed for more than a decade by now, rumours and theories were commonplace there and even information about the Horror Film Director could be found. 

　　It was talked about so much to the extent that the Horror Film Director was like a god in their hearts. 

　　That’s because only S-rank Actors had the qualifications to request an upgrade. 

　　There was only one S-rank Actor known to the public right now and on the day they received this message, the first person that came to mind was the almighty Artist. But everyone that thought that was slapped across their faces. 

　　That was the reason why this hiring notice had attracted the attention of countless actors. 

　　The Beginner Actor Guide had written that only directors could take on the responsibility of leading all actors into a new world. 

　　Although this sentence sounded weird being said like that, there were a lot of talented actors that quickly began forming theories, finally deciding upon the one that made the most sense. 

　　—The Director System must have more permissions compared to the Actor System.

　　As for what permissions they had, that was unknown. But what they did know was that the Director System’s appearance allowed the Actor System to work better too. 

　　What Zong Qi never would have imagined was that the hiring notice he randomly threw out ended up making the Actor society go wild, digging at hints from the text. 

　　What they never must have expected was that this mysterious Director only hired one C-rank, two D-ranks, and four E-rank newbies. 

　　This overly cheap hire made society flip over a second time. 

　　According to their speculations, although the director wasn’t Artist, they should have at least been a high-level actor. It should be natural to hire A-rank and above actors if they wanted to film something. 

　　Though it could be considered a blessing, at least for Fixer, that is. 

　　After he was hired for this, Ouroboros, who belonged to the higher end of the actor society actually contacted him and assigned him a quest. It made Fixer feel an odd sense of accomplishment. 

　　As long as he handed over the entire recording process of the movie, he’d receive ten million in cash and if he found any clues that pointed to the Director System, he’d get another ten million, it was like heaven! 

　　To have such a wonderful award, who could resist the temptation? 

　　As expected of the Ouroboros, generous with their spending. 

　　It’s just a pity that he probably won’t get any information out of these low-rank Actors. But it’s still Director Q’s first hiring notice, shouldn’t there be some hints at least? 

　　The cogs in Fixer’s mind turned and turned. 

　　As everyone was stuck in their thoughts, three minutes quickly passed by. 

　　The system notification went as such: 

　　[Time’s up, ‘Desolate Village’ will now commence] 

　　As if it was following the system’s order, the area around the old bus stand started fogging up, turning their surroundings into a patch of white, nothing to be seen after 5 meters. 

　　Drip… Drip… Drip…

　　As the streetlight creaked awake, a bus deep red to the bus stop soundlessly, stopping right in front of them. 

　　”W-W-What the…” Professor Wang jumped up in fright, “I get scared easily, don’t scare me!” 

　　[May Actors please get on the bus and head to the filming location] 

　　Right after the notification popped up, Crow didn’t say anything before closing his black umbrella and boarding the bus. 

　　Fixer kept his quest on his mind at all times, generously spending time to form a friendly image in front of the newbies, “Don’t be too scared. It’s only the first movie, and usually isn’t too dangerous.” 

　　Zong Qi dig around his bag for a bit before getting on the bus with Xiao Hong on his back.  

　　The interior of the bus was very empty, only housing the six of them and the driver. 

　　After everyone got on the bus, the driver closed the automatic doors and drove away unsteadily. 

　　“If I’m not wrong, this bus should be bringing us to the desolate village for the movie.” 

　　Godsend took a glance out of the bus, noticing that it was going outside the city. 

　　Their gathering location was the outskirts of Jiang Zhou city, they didn’t know what was outside of that

　　“It should be.” 

　　Blondie thought absently, Let’s hope I can get a role that makes sense this time…

　　Both the Director and Actor guide state that movies have three major points, the beginning, rising action and the climax. The first part was the easiest while the last one is the hardest. 

　　Of course, actors needed to actually act when filming a movie so everyone was randomly assigned a character and background information. 

　　They also had different requirements for passing the ‘level’. Not only did they have to completely play out their persona, but they also had [Character Persona] as a counter where the lowest percentage was 1 and the highest was 100. 

　　The higher it was, the more it showed that the actor was getting into character. The lower it was, the more of a failure they were. 

　　There was another important factor to it: The higher their Character Persona was, the higher the chances of survival. This was written in bold red on their Beginner Guide.

　　No matter how much it didn’t make sense, no matter how much it didn’t match their personalities, they could only do one thing— act properly and hang onto the rope that will keep them alive in the horror film. 

　　[Character cards have been placed in your bags, please read them now]

　　[Actors have 10 minutes to read the information about their characters. Act 1 will begin in 10 minutes…] 

　　It’s here! 

　　Everyone tensed up, quickly taking their phones out. 

　　Zong Qi took out his phone too, hiding in the very corner of the bus in case he was going to get a different notification on his Director System. 

　　But just as he was about to look at his phone, he caught something in the corner of his eyes, shocking him into standing still. 

　　He watched the silent Crow raise his hands. 

　　His sleeve had slipped down with gravity. There revealed his pale wrist, with the Ouroboros mark on it. 

The author has something to say: 

I don’t know if people read the last chapter properly but Yu Chenxue isn’t the leader of the Ouroboros group, he’s not even a member. His identity is a little complicated. He has dozens of connections within the National Security Bureau and the good organisations, we’ll see it in future chapters

Although he can’t be considered a good person, he also isn’t a heartless serial killer. I just like these kind of morally grey characters so count this as treating myself.

Of course, if any cuties here have some high expectations for good morals then I recommend you stop here. The chapters haven’t been locked yet so I’ll see you in the next book~