Why, Why, Why

Wilderness Survival was a world-famous outdoor survival blockbuster, known both at home and abroad: it told the story of several researchers who, after their helicopter crashed, fell into an endless forest, and who—under the leadership of the invincible male lead, Brother Bei—spent forty days crossing mountains and valleys before finally being rescued along a river.

Extreme danger, a grueling journey, the rope-bridge effect...

Wasn't this the perfect opportunity to shatter Yi Wan's psychological defenses, interrogate him under pressure, and plant deep in his subconscious the directive "never reveal Chi Jixia's secret"?

Only when his co-star Yi Wan was tormented by this script to the point of total mental collapse could Chi Jixia best exploit the opening and use the "Script Dream Infiltration" System to seize control of Yi Wan's subconscious.

Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Chi Jixia thought he was, without question, an undefeated little genius.

He flipped through the cast list and finally decided to possess the almighty survival god, male lead number one, Brother Bei—while Yi Wan, he tossed into the role of the frail male lead number three.

Male Lead Three was the team's archaeologist, an erudite desk-bound role. But he was lame and weak, and his archaeological knowledge would do absolutely nothing for survival. Chi Jixia believed this forty-day dream ordeal would leave Yi Wan with a rich and rewarding experience.

He smiled faintly, brimming with confidence.

And with the thrill of a good prank.

Plan complete, Chi Jixia got up to brush his teeth and wash his face, only to find Ding Biehan standing in the dormitory doorway. Ding Biehan was staring fixedly into the room, a trace of coldness at the corners of his mouth.

"Where did you get that pot of orchid grass?"

Yi Wan followed Ding Biehan's gaze, a little surprised.

"I picked it up off the side of the road," he said.

As he spoke, Yi Wan ran his fingers over the plant's leaves. He noticed that as he stroked the leaves, Ding Biehan's eyes shifted from wariness, to shock, to a kind of repressed, dark contemplation.

Within that contemplation, a faint anger at having been deceived gradually surfaced, along with an even colder scrutiny.

Yi Wan: ?

He glanced back at his own plant. The bared-fang white blossoms on it were perfectly well behaved, bathing quietly in the moonlight like an eerie yet beautiful smile.

"Yi Wan," Ding Biehan said at that moment, "Brother Liu wants us to go on a weekend show together. An outdoor survival reality show, livestreamed. We'll go together—it'll conveniently settle that misunderstanding trending online too. And Jiang Bei will be there as well."

His tone had shifted from the faintly irritable but genuine voice of a moment ago into something polite, as if he had put on a mask.

"Oh, Jiang Bei." Upon hearing that name, Yi Wan showed no particular reaction.

"As for the business between you and Jiang Bei, Brother Liu wants you two to settle the misunderstanding on the show. He's even prepared a reconciliation script for you both. He's been discussing it with Jiang Bei's manager," Ding Biehan said.

Yi Wan finally knit his brows at this, but in the end he said, "Thank you. I'll talk to Brother Liu tomorrow."

"Mm," Ding Biehan said.

He glanced once more at the orchid grass pot that Yi Wan had been touching, and when he looked back at Yi Wan, a cold smile had already settled on his lips. "Let's hope we work well together on the survival show."

Yi Wan nodded. Freshly washed up, Chi Jixia walked over to the two of them. "Little Ding, stop clinging to Little Yi. It's already eleven."

A sudden nickname. Something this out of character had to be a trap.

As he spoke, he draped an arm around Yi Wan's shoulders and smiled at him with unmistakable meaning. "Let's go. Let's go to bed nice and early tonight."

The door shut in front of Ding Biehan, concealing even that pale, deathly-white flower behind it. But Ding Biehan did not return to his own room. Instead, he leaned against the wall, staring at Yi Wan's door.

After a long while, he gave a cold laugh.

—If it hadn't been for that pot of Fiend Orchid he'd just glimpsed, he would have very nearly been fooled by Yi Wan.

What ignorant passerby? What ignorant passerby kept a Fiend Orchid as a houseplant—let alone st·roked it—and suffered no harm whatsoever?

Fiend Orchid: a vile thing that grew only in places steeped in the deepest darkness and malice, favoring shadow, feeding on fear and ambition. It stirred up a person's ambition, provoked their greed, brought them many benefits afterward—and in return devoured the human soul and blood. It was hard to be born human and have no ambition at all. And wherever there was ambition, the Fiend Orchid could wound and manipulate.

How could a person possibly have no ambition? Unless he were a complete slacker who wanted nothing more than to clock in nine-to-five, punch the clock, and coast through life until death.

How could there possibly exist, in this world, a slacker both thorough and sharp-eyed at once?

And yet Yi Wan had calmly stroked the thing like it was some obedient pet... A monster that ran roughshod over heaven and earth inside an infinite-flow dungeon, and here it lay limp and docile under his hand, as though it had been so thoroughly tormented by him that it no longer even dared to bite or te·mpt him.

He'd been deceived—toy·ed with—by the Yi Wan in that bathroom. So Ding Biehan thought.

That much, he was absolutely certain of. Cool-headed, he swallowed his irritation and began weighing his options.

—Should he use the outdoor survival show as an opportunity to find some way to get rid of him?

He would never let himself be controlled by another. His fate was his own to command, not heaven's.

—But could it actually be done?

That was the question that lingered in Ding Biehan's mind through that silent, eerie night.

Meanwhile, on the other side, An Yelin, having just finished a phone call, returned to the living room and caught sight of Ding Biehan in the hallway, staring at Yi Wan's door with that murderous, icy look in his eyes.

Like a nocturnal beast stalking its prey.

Alarm bells rang in his head; his brows furrowed instantly.

Could it be...

Did Ding Biehan have designs on Yi Wan?

...

At that moment, Yi Wan was basking in warmth from Chi Jixia as summery as the season itself.

"Yi Wan, let's turn in early." After helping Yi Wan make the bed, Chi Jixia sat on the edge of the bed, swinging his legs, smiling at him.

He noticed Yi Wan staring fixedly at some point in the room, brows knit, as if deep in thought.

He was looking at Chi Jixia's schedule.

Chi Jixia frowned.

—Could Yi Wan have figured out he had an ulterior motive?

Yi Wan pulled his gaze back from Chi Jixia's schedule sheet. Though the two matters Ding Biehan had mentioned weighed on his mind, Chi Jixia had a shoot to go to tomorrow afternoon.

Chi Jixia was preparing for his shoot even in his dreams. Brother Liu had told him to think more of his teammates—and as a teammate himself, Yi Wan couldn't bear to hold back someone with real dreams over a matter like this.

"You've got something to do later, don't you," Yi Wan said to Chi Jixia.

Chi Jixia paused, his peach-blossom eyes narrowing, and laughed. "Heh, what could I possibly have to do."

"A performance, isn't there?" Yi Wan said. "I'll turn in early too, so I don't throw off your schedule."

As he lay down, he caught sight of Chi Jixia's expression nearly cracking apart, and he found it a little strange.

Could that be the expression Chi Jixia made when he was touched? Yi Wan wondered silently to himself.

He filed the matter away in the running list of notes he kept in his head, and before closing his eyes, he turned over and smiled at Chi Jixia once more:

"Do a good job. Good luck."

He felt Chi Jixia shudder again.

Chi Jixia really was awfully easy to move with a bit of kindness from others.

Still, that wasn't a bad thing. With someone as easily touched as Chi Jixia around, the team's relationships would stay good, too, and that meant he could keep working peacefully within Iris5 for longer still.

All he wanted was to live safely within the group.

Still—about going on the survival show with Ding Biehan... Yi Wan really did find it a bit troubling.

He had no real experience with outdoor survival. The only two comparable experiences he'd had were placing second in a city-level orienteering competition and a mountain-climbing competition back in middle school.

Maybe he should look up some information over the next few days, so he wouldn't embarrass the team.

And Jiang Bei would be there too.

...

After Yi Wan had sunk into sleep, Chi Jixia looked at his back, wrapped in blankets.

That back ought to have been slender and downy, like some small animal lacking a sense of security. But in Chi Jixia's eyes right now, it looked as imposing as a mountain.

"Never mind," Chi Jixia said to the System. "Who cares what he thinks? Once he's in the System..."

He was the male lead of the dream. And Yi Wan was nothing but a crippled supporting character.

He closed his eyes and used the System's tendrils to drag Yi Wan's consciousness into the dream world along with his own.

Yi Wan's consciousness felt like a ball of cotton—soft, fluffy, a little dim-witted. Tugging at it felt like tugging a rabbit: soft, warm, utterly harmless.

It left Chi Jixia, who'd braced himself for something unfathomable, with the faint sensation of having thrown a punch straight into a pile of cotton.

Though at the very core of that ball of cotton there seemed to be something dark... Chi Jixia only glanced at it briefly before dragging him into his own dream.

...

Yi Wan woke to the sensation of cold wind slapping against his face.

He opened his eyes and found himself at the bottom of a cliff. Besides himself, two other people lay there. Farther off, two blurry figures were discussing something. Farther still lay a stretch of wreckage from a crashed helicopter.

He blinked, and a flood of memories and skills that felt like his and yet not his flashed through his mind.

He was an archaeologist, skilled in the appraisal of calligraphy and paintings and the study of antiquities—a thoroughgoing desk-bound expert. Due to an accident, he had been sickly since childhood, lame in one leg, and sharp-tongued by temperament, never getting along well with the rest of the team.

Because of this, he was sensitive and prone to envy of people who were healthier and more accomplished than himself. Being outdone by even a little was enough to throw his mental balance off, reasonable or not.

Once someone overshadowed him, he would want, with every fiber of his being, to kill the person who had done it—or else sink into a thick fog of self-pity, weary of the world, with thoughts of ending it all.

Yi Wan, having this memory forcibly stuffed into his head by Chi Jixia's golden finger: ?

What did that kind of envy even feel like?

For some reason, he felt this couldn't possibly be a life that belonged to him... Yi Wan thought, somewhat at a loss.

As far as he was concerned, all he wanted was to work peacefully at a research institute, nine to five, making sure the institute never got shut down.

If the institute ever was going to be shut down, well—he might have to resort to a few measures...

—Even deep inside Chi Jixia's borrowed movie world, Yi Wan couldn't force his own nature—that of a slacker with a heart of pure, oblivious darkness—to transform into someone consumed by envy and ambition.

A person can't imitate something they've never seen.

The golden finger, forcibly stuffing things into Yi Wan's head, began to tremble. It seemed it had never encountered an actor with so little capacity for empathy.

And this was an actor whose baseline acting talent was the highest it had ever encountered. So high that his performance and his actual life seemed to have fused into one.

The golden finger gritted its teeth and forced the insertion through regardless.

First it stuffed in the simplest skills and knowledge... but the emotions simply would not go in!

Chi Jixia, meanwhile, was playing the male lead, "Brother Bei," discussing something with the film's female lead, when the System's voice suddenly came through in his mind.

"The world loaded this time seems a bit shaky and unstable. This has never happened before," the System said, somewhat abashed.

"It's fine, just go ahead and run it. First time using dual-performer mode, a little instability is to be expected," Chi Jixia said breezily. "I'll use my masterful acting to get Yi Wan completely absorbed into this world."

—And then utterly crush his inner defenses, planting in him the seed of obedience to himself... no, the seed of protecting his secret!

Chi Jixia was confident he could pull it off.

Yi Wan rubbed his head, utterly baffled, watching as the man and woman who'd woken first and had been talking came walking toward him and the other two. When he saw the handsome young man looking down at him with a pair of peach-blossom eyes, Yi Wan rubbed his head and said, almost reflexively:

"Chi..."

Chi what?

Yi Wan froze, unable to recall the next two syllables.

Watching Yi Wan clutch at his head in confusion, Chi Jixia suddenly felt a flicker of mischief.

Pulled now into Chi Jixia's home turf, Yi Wan looked troubled, soft, dazed.

And a little adorably slow on the uptake.

"It's not Chi," Chi Jixia said, bending down to murmur in Yi Wan's ear. "It's Brother Bei."

Yi Wan's lashes trembled, and at last he said, "Brother Bei."

That "Brother" came out very soft. Nothing at all like the expressionless way Yi Wan had seen through him in the real world.

Chi Jixia felt an inexplicable surge of satisfaction, which he attributed, of course, to the fact that he was, without question, a little genius.

Brother Bei's outdoor survival skills had already loaded into his mind. Chi Jixia was itching to get started.

Tonight, he would torment Little Crip Yi Wan for forty days with the script of Wilderness Survival!

"Good, everyone's awake. I have some unfortunate news. Our helicopter crashed, and the pilot has already died. From now on, we have only one option—rely on ourselves to walk out of this jungle."

With that, he glanced up at the sky and said, practiced and smooth, "Most of what was usable in the helicopter burned up; I've salvaged what I could. The light's still good—let's head into the jungle, find a water source, and look for somewhere we can shelter for now."

As he spoke, he aligned the hour hand of his watch with the sun, fixing their bearing south.

The others followed him into the jungle. Chi Jixia glanced back and saw Yi Wan, head down, struggling to keep up behind them.

This is only the beginning, Chi Jixia thought to himself.

A full forty days of hellish training awaited—he would lead him, hurt him, give Yi Wan the complete experience of outdoor survival!

Unlike a two-and-a-half-hour film, a real transmigrated life would let them feel the full, torturous detail of true wilderness survival!

Thinking of this, Chi Jixia narrowed his peach-blossom eyes, a foxlike smile spreading over his face.

On the first day, Chi Jixia, following the script, used his watch and the growth patterns of plants to determine their heading. He sliced open a hollow plant to catch dew, and found a den abandoned by some animal to shelter in.

He'd been a little worried about whether Yi Wan would stay in character, but it didn't take long before he started hearing a string of questions, one after another.

"Why cut open a hollow plant?"

"Why can the watch tell direction?"

"Why do these two plants look so similar, but the fruit you picked is edible and the fruit I picked isn't?"

"Why is this den one the beast abandoned, and not one the beast might come back to sleep in?"

Even as he asked these things, Yi Wan's expression showed nothing more than a faint crease between his brows, his dark eyes staring straight at him—looking, if anything, rather endearing.

But Chi Jixia still felt a surge of glee rising in him, enough to make him smirk inwardly.

Here it comes!! The nitpicker constitution, assimilated by the story world!

In the original film, Yi Wan's character had been exactly this—a nitpicker who repeatedly questioned the correct survival strategies the male lead offered. Naturally, the male lead, being the reliable, steady big brother of the group, always patiently explained himself, earning the adoring admiration of fans.

The nitpicker, meanwhile, wallowed alone in depression and misery, utterly drained, and came to a tragic end.

Chi Jixia smiled faintly and confidently answered every question Yi Wan posed. Under the admiring gazes of everyone else, and faced with Yi Wan's silent, thoughtful expression, he felt he'd taken one more step toward his goal.

Rain began to fall in the forest; the group huddled in a cave to wait it out. As the System's owner during a joint performance, Chi Jixia could, of course, exit the world at any time, hand his body over to autopilot, and go off to enjoy snacks in the screening room.

While Yi Wan was stuck here feeling every bit of the misery. Ha ha ha ha.

He assigned someone to keep watch and leaned against the cave wall to doze off, about to switch to autopilot, when he saw Yi Wan sitting on the other side, flipping through the notes in his backpack, apparently deep in thought.

Something stirred faintly in Chi Jixia—perhaps because he'd already tormented the man enough for one day. He came closer and, for the first time, stepped outside the script to ask Yi Wan, "What are you looking at?"

"My own archaeology notes," Yi Wan said.

Chi Jixia: "?"

"Something feels strange to me. I clearly remember this knowledge, and yet it feels like there's a layer between me and it," Yi Wan explained. "I thought I'd review it while I can't sleep, so I don't forget it once we're rescued and end up losing my job."

Chi Jixia gave a short laugh. "You sound awfully confident about being rescued."

Yi Wan said, "Maybe it's because losing my job scares me more than dying."

There was a genuine worry on his face that made Chi Jixia want to laugh again—not out of malice this time, but a real urge to laugh.

Chi Jixia studied Yi Wan's profile in the dim moonlight. Even now, his skin was luminously pale.

It was the first time he noticed just how fair Yi Wan's skin really was.

When using the golden finger, Chi Jixia had never bothered to actually learn the skills belonging to the characters whose memories he'd been fed. The lingering aftereffects right after transmigrating were always enough for him to fake his way through the acting.

In real-world filming, the scripts were already written anyway. No director would make him actually perform a high-difficulty dance, or really face off against someone with a gun on a battlefield.

But Yi Wan had none of his own memories, didn't even know this was just a scripted world—so it made sense that he'd want to learn, at least a little.

Chi Jixia felt nothing much about it either way. What skills could Yi Wan's nitpicker male-lead-three role even have? Studying antiques? Appraising calligraphy and brushwork? Analyzing paintings?

None of that had anything to do with him. Even if Yi Wan learned it, it would presumably have nothing to do with him either.

Besides, those questions Yi Wan had been asking all day were surely just the nitpicker character taking over his head—just staying in character, that was all.

That was what Chi Jixia believed.

...

Outside the dream, late at night, under a lamp, holding a yellowed scroll, Bo Jiang sneezed as he read.

Cold rain, cold weather, he thought. No matter how many years passed, the rain outside the window still felt just as cold.

As someone who'd come from ancient times into the present to be a male lead, he had, of course, never heard of the internet meme that a sneeze meant someone was thinking of you.

When he'd slit his own throat, he never once imagined he would be reborn, would come to an era a thousand years later, into the body of a trainee who had signed a twenty-year contract with A.T. Entertainment at the age of thirteen.

Nor, of course, had he ever imagined that the paintings and calligraphy he'd once dashed off so effortlessly would end up enshrined in museums, hailed as prized treasures... Thinking of this, Bo Jiang's brows knit.

This should have been a wonderful thing. And yet Bo Jiang didn't look pleased at all.

"Ding."

"Bo Jiang, this is your schedule for the week. Confirm it, please."

He set down the scroll and went through the list, checking off each item one by one. His manager, Sister Yao, kept chattering on. "Saturday's interview—it wasn't easy to land that spot, but I believe in your ability, big scholar. You're A.T.'s pride and joy, the genius who took the liberal arts top score in the gaokao at sixteen."

Bo Jiang was usually easygoing about accepting work. That saved Sister Yao a lot of trouble.

But this time, he didn't take the bait. He frowned and said, "What exactly is this Friday dinner arrangement about."

Sister Yao said, "That's with President Zhou."

Bo Jiang: "I know. I'm asking why I need to have dinner with him."

Sister Yao said, "He bought a painting of yours before and said he'd like to meet you. Don't you remember? He spent several hundred thousand on you, at the very least, so it got arranged. President Zhou is an upright gentleman. Maintain this relationship well. After your debut, you'll find plenty of use for connections like this."

Bo Jiang went quiet for a long while on the other end of the line. Sister Yao pressed on. "The university called asking when you plan to go back to resume your studies and defend your thesis. I told them, honestly. Haven't you already finished all your credits? Turned in your graduation thesis, even won an award for it... why suddenly say you want to take two years off from school, when you won't even spend the little time left to get your degree?"

Bo Jiang was cold by nature, but his temper was usually easy enough. So Sister Yao had grown a bit careless with him.

But this time, she heard a coldness in his voice she'd never heard before.

"I hired you to be my manager, not to pry into my private affairs," Bo Jiang said coldly. "Finding a new manager would be very easy for me. You should be well aware of that."

Sister Yao was a little startled by his sudden change in attitude.

"And another thing—I'm not going to Friday's dinner," he said coldly. "If 'President Zhou' is unhappy about it, give him his money back."

Bo Jiang hung up the phone. He buried his face in the scroll.

After a long while, he crumpled a sheet of draft paper on his desk into a ball and hurled it savagely into the trash.

...

Chi Jixia and Yi Wan spent a full twenty-five days in Wilderness Survival.

By the twentieth day, Chi Jixia had already had about enough. Although, as the owner of the golden finger, he could return to his own space to rest at any time, or dull his fatigue and aches through perception adjustment along the way, trekking long distances through the wilderness all day long was simply unpleasant.

Yi Wan, meanwhile, remained like an emotionless robot the entire time—trekking by day, reviewing his notes in the cave by night. And his questions only kept multiplying.

Far more than the original nitpicker character in the film had ever asked.

"Why should the raft be bound this way?"

"Why does this vine need to be cut on a slant?"

"Why is this bug poisonous?"

"Why, why, why..."

Chi Jixia was driven nearly to a breakdown by Yi Wan's immersive nitpicking—how was he supposed to know why? Only Brother Bei, the character he was playing, knew why!

At first, he threw himself into it, channeling Brother Bei to answer the questions personally. But as Yi Wan grew ever more argumentative, he could only call up Brother Bei's persona and let it answer Yi Wan's questions for him directly.

He'd meant to torment Yi Wan, and in the end it was he himself who was being tormented. Worse than that, he'd ended up providing Yi Wan, free of charge, with a personal tutor in outdoor survival knowledge...

"At least Yi Wan didn't actually benefit from it either—he suffered through the whole long trek too, and whatever he learned is useless to him," Chi Jixia complained bitterly to the System. "If he'd actually gained something out of this, I really would have lost it!"

The System said, "You're so close to breaking down you've started whining to the System."

Chi Jixia: ...

Starting on the twenty-fifth day, Chi Jixia simply switched over to autopilot and stayed there until the fortieth.

When the rescue helicopter finally arrived, Chi Jixia—back in character as "Brother Bei"—looked at the dawning light of his salvation and let out a breath of relief, tears welling in his eyes.

Finally over! he thought.

This attempt hadn't worked out, but there was always next time. He'd overestimated the endurance of his own body, forgetting that the wilderness punished both of them equally. Next time, he'd definitely pick a world better suited for this kind of mischief.

Chi Jixia waved at the rescue crew; Yi Wan still stood beside him. His clothes had gone filthy, but his eyes remained just as dark and deep as ever, unchanged from before.

"Why should the rescue signal..." he said.

Chi Jixia: ...

Chi Jixia's nitpicker-PTSD was on the verge of flaring up again, but for the sake of the script, he still gave Yi Wan a brief explanation. After finishing, he patted Yi Wan on the shoulder and said, "After everything we've been through, you really ought to thank your Brother Bei."

Yi Wan nodded. "Thank you, Brother Bei."

Chi Jixia felt a little lighter at heart, then suddenly thought, with an odd pang, that once they left this dream, Yi Wan would never call him Brother Bei again.

Nor would he call Yi Wan by his character's name—"Little Bai"—anymore either.

Strange. He actually felt a bit wistful about it.

The movie world's ending theme began to play, and Chi Jixia was about to leave this world that had put him through no end of suffering. But just as his soul began to pull free, he heard another "why."

A "why" from Yi Wan.

"Why do I feel... your name should actually be..."

"Chi Jixia?"

He looked down in terror from midair, and saw Yi Wan's dark, deep eyes staring straight at him.

Not at the body of "Brother Bei" on the ground.

But up at the sky.

Author's Note:

Yi Wan: Just wants to survive, be a slacker, and is naturally, obliviously dark about thinking his teammates are all so talented and kind.

Teammates: ...You are terrifying.

Fiend Orchid: My owner is such a slacker, and he makes me sunbathe all day. *shudders*

The Fiend Orchid, in the hands of Slacker E, can only occasionally vent its frustration by taking a little bite out of him (lol).