I have a persona specifically for acting.

The once globally popular reality show “One Life Survivor” focused on the conflicts between humans and nature, as well as the tensions among people. To emphasize the former, the filming locations were set on resource-scarce islands (the production team intentionally chose places without easily accessible natural resources). To stimulate the latter, an elimination system was established.

Many subsequent survival-themed shows originated from this concept.

To enhance viewer engagement, the production team preferred contestants of equal strength rather than a solo act dominating the stage, which is why they invited Tong Zhao to play the role of the hunter—part of the consideration was to “balance the power.”

While all the other contestants had yet to obtain weapons, the hunter already had a crossbow. If given to a burly man with relevant experience, he might eliminate an entire team by himself. Giving it to a fit female celebrity, however, was seen as more balanced.

The entire production team was quite pleased with this arrangement.

At that moment, Duan Ge, who had just discovered the whereabouts of the other contestants, was descending.

—And she was really going down.

Repeated explosions had left many buildings in Ganan City in disrepair, with frequent missing tiles on the east side or gaping holes on the west, and entire ceilings blown away. Duan Ge climbed down the fire escape, the wind tousling her short hair, as she hummed “Hotel California” leisurely.

Viewers watching this scene momentarily felt as though they were watching an action blockbuster.

She had originally had long hair.

However, after pondering for a while, she couldn’t figure out why she, as an assassin, had grown long hair in the first place. Even if tied back into a manageable ponytail, it could easily become a noticeable weakness in close combat, where being grabbed by the hair would be quite troublesome.

Without hesitation, Duan Ge took a small knife and cut her hair to a neck-length bob.

This action left her fans feeling a chill.

Soon after, they noticed that Tong Zhao had a small face, and her short hairstyle accentuated her delicate features, making their hearts warm again.

Even with a messy haircut, the beautiful sister looked good—especially with her stylish short hair!

Assassins never take the main roads.

Similarly, Duan Ge preferred not to walk the main path.

Her aversion stemmed from her experiences in the apocalypse, where countless eyes lurked in the shadows. Walking the main road was just asking to be ambushed. Thus, viewers watched as she effortlessly navigated between buildings in a straight line, like a wildcat roaming the city, unconcerned with human-made paths—why should a little cat adhere to human social rules?

If this segment of Duan Ge’s actions were cut out, it would make a delightful parkour short video.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Duan Ge landed on a rooftop, bending slightly before leaping to a lower terrace.

From a bird’s-eye view, the height between the buildings looked perilous, a misstep could mean fatal consequences.

Traditional viewers were fine, but the immersive experience of holographic viewing had many feeling weak in the knees.

Duan Ge’s movements were decisive, showing no hesitation.

The camera maintained a distance that was neither too close nor too far, allowing the audience to see her expressionless, cool profile, with only her breathing slightly quickening.

A special alert from the production team read: “Dangerous actions, please do not attempt.”

[Wow, my legs are shaking!!!]

[What’s so impressive about this? I did it all the time before I broke my leg.]

[Thinking about it, if she falls, it’s not just a broken leg that’s at stake.]

The audience’s first reaction was that the official had given her cheat codes.

“One Life Survivor” is a relatively credible variety show.

Regardless of whether it’s the template or the storyline, everything is published on the official website—like in a cop drama, where the lead gets the [shooting] skill, it’s not just a simple line of text saying they’ve acquired it; multiple lines of code must be integrated into the lead’s subconscious.

Even if a skill is mastered, based on personal style, the lead might not use a gun as their primary weapon.

Just like someone who has never used a gun may instinctively grab the nearest item—a folding chair—when confronted with conflict; it’s a matter of thought patterns, it’s subconscious.

Astute variety show fans checked the official website and found that there were no related skills assigned to Tong Zhao.

This proved that her walking habits were genuine.

She doesn’t take the usual path.

[So, can some fans chime in? Does your sister in real life also dislike walking properly? /doge]

Tong Zhao’s fans were just as perplexed.

Despite watching countless interviews and keeping up with her on social media, thinking they understood her well…

Every time Tong Zhao appeared, there was always something new to discover!

[If I had to describe Tong Zhao with a food, I’d say she’s a lasagna.]

[You only see the second layer; you think she’s the first layer, but she’s actually on the fifth!]

[So hard to see through her!]

Climbing the fire escape on the outside of a skyscraper might be bold for a normal person, but she effortlessly slid down the vertical pipes attached to the wall, with no footholds in sight.

Duan Ge’s parkour route was not just impressive; she significantly shortened the time it took to get from Point A to Point B. In the blink of an eye, she landed in the alley behind the McDonald’s kitchen. She approached the door quietly and overheard two teams inside.

[Wow x100]

[This place looks a bit dilapidated; it probably can’t support an adult’s weight… Anyway, don’t try this; we don’t know any tricks.]

[Maybe they climbed down when no one was watching the pipe.]

[That makes sense.]

A minute earlier, a member of the Sun Team, on lookout duty, heard the approaching footsteps and immediately interrupted his teammate’s excitement over finding supplies, urging them to leave through the second door quickly.

The McDonald’s had three doors.

Two faced the customers and led to the dining area.

The last one was in the back kitchen, facing the alley.

“Someone’s coming!”

“Quick, go!”

“Damn, someone got here first!”

The captain of the later-arriving Cloud Team hesitated for a moment. Although he couldn’t understand what the Sun Team was saying, he sensed their anxiousness from their expressions—this meant they were also afraid of conflict!

In this instant, he quickly called his teammates to advance and fight for the supplies.

Duan Ge stood at the back door and listened for a moment.

The smart AI scanned her thoughts:

[Once again, I can’t understand their chatter.]

[Hmm, seven guys and one girl.]

According to the variety show’s settings, as the “hunter,” she also couldn’t understand the other contestants’ languages. However, she could categorize each voice based on subtle differences, immediately visualizing the specific number and gender of the speakers in her mind.

Upon seeing this, the variety show fans became excited, eagerly anticipating a fight with one celebrity taking on eight.

However, the next moment, Duan Ge decisively made a choice: “Hmm, there are too many people to take on, I’ll wait a bit.”

…?

Wait, does your dictionary really have the words “too many to handle”?

Perhaps Tong Zhao’s earlier unexpected moves had raised the audience’s expectations to a Super Saiyan level. Now, seeing her practical mindset made the audience both amused and understanding—yes, she wasn’t Superman, nor a berserker charging into the crowd; she was a nimble and perceptive assassin.

The production team noticed this change and couldn’t help but admire how intuitive Tong Zhao’s subconscious was.

If she maintained a perfect persona all the time, completing missions would just be satisfactory, not stunning.

Unintentionally, she showcased the strategy of building up before revealing strength…

Director Chen commented, “Her subconscious really brings a sense of drama, it’s amazing.”

In reality, the director was overthinking it.

Duan Ge was just a practical person; as long as they could scan her thoughts, they’d realize she was particularly “calculative,” skilled at finding the optimal solution in chaotic situations.

The Sun Team’s hesitation had its reasons. Among the four, there was a female doctor who probably thought she couldn’t take on four big men. Unexpectedly, the female doctor of the Sun Team quickly grabbed a chair and smashed it onto the attackers’ knees. The force from their close encounter startled the opponents.

Inside the McDonald’s, a fierce battle was underway.

Duan Ge nodded repeatedly, leaving the audience wondering what she was up to.

Is she catching the rhythm now?

The AI promptly scanned her thoughts:

【A horse stance forward, throw a left hook, then a right hook… quickly use the nunchaku, hum hum ha!】

……

She was still humming.

Due to the reality of not being discovered, she was quietly humming in her mind, still to Jay Chou’s “Nunchaku,” skipping over the parts she forgot.

Having just “woken up” in the variety show, everyone was still getting into the groove. The members of the Cloud Team were startled by the fierce display from the female doctor, and in a moment of distraction, the opposing team managed to escape. Hearing that one side had fled, Duan Ge slipped into the kitchen.

At this moment, the entire Cloud Team’s attention was focused on the direction the Sun Team had fled, unaware of the pair of eyes watching them from the kitchen.

Duan Ge: 【Four of them…】

Duan Ge: 【I can probably handle this.】

[?????]

[I take back what I said about her being a normal person!]

[No, what do you mean “probably handle”? Sister Zhao, wait, let’s talk this through!/panic/panic]

Duan Ge readied her crossbow:

Duan Ge thought clearly: 【My lousy boss only left me two arrows, damn it.】

She knew that her ranged weapon was meant to weaken the strongest member of the opposing team, who would be a difficult opponent in close combat—undoubtedly the Cloud Team’s captain, a tall man nearly six feet tall with a background in sports.

As she readied her crossbow, the audience held their breath.

Could she hit her target?

Keep in mind, her boss not only left her with just two arrows but also didn’t give her any shooting skills.

Soon, the answer was revealed!

The moment she pulled the trigger, although it didn’t produce a terrifyingly loud bang like a gun, the ensuing gasp confirmed its power—the captain, about to exit McDonald’s, howled as he slumped against the wall, collapsing to the ground: “What the fuck? I got hit?!” He touched his wound in disbelief: “An arrow???”

In “One Life Survivor,” pain perception is significantly reduced.

All contestants accepted this setup without feeling it was unusual.

However, sustaining multiple injuries would still decrease their mobility.

Even if the Cloud Team’s captain managed to stand up, he would lose combat effectiveness for a while…

The unexpected attack, combined with the leader’s injury, threw the remaining three into chaos. Duan Ge knew this was her fleeting advantage; she had to take out all four of them before they could react. She vaulted over the counter, landed on a table, and with a powerful push, jumped onto one of their shoulders, using her thigh to exert force. Within seconds, the first person was knocked out.

How to defeat the strong with the weak, to fight solo against many?

If Duan Ge were to explain, she would say that combat skill is the most important.

Why can a small, frail assailant kill a tall, strong man? It’s about catching them off guard. Most ordinary people are law-abiding citizens who freeze in fear when faced with evil, becoming even weaker when injured, panicking and only knowing to throw wild punches when fighting back.

Of course, brawls among ordinary citizens are on the same level.

But Duan Ge is not ordinary.

Her combat skills have long been ingrained in her bones through countless skirmishes and ambushes.

Even her mind sees it as trivial, hardly producing any adrenaline.

Ordinary people struggle psychologically before life-and-death fights, hesitating over whether they might kill someone… Predators are always in the minority; humans are social creatures, and killing is undoubtedly an act of alienation, a behavior that exiles one from the community. Duan Ge has long been accustomed to the process of humans turning into beasts, and she doesn’t need to wrestle with that.

If you don’t want to kill, then you shouldn’t draw your weapon in the first place.

The resolve to put someone to death is the sharpest blade in Duan Ge’s hand.

If life-and-death combat is akin to treasure hunting in water, ordinary people are like beginner swimmers, while Duan Ge is an amphibian; she can calmly and skillfully dive in and find what she seeks—

The enemy’s vital points.

The latest episode of “One Life Survivor” features the most popular combat U1, which displays both sides’ heart rates, HP values, and fighting spirit levels—when fighting spirit decreases, a person begins to show fear and looks for a chance to escape; when it hits rock bottom, they lose all desire to resist, kneeling down to plead for mercy.

And in the live broadcast—

Hunter “Tong Zhao”

Heart Rate: 140 bpm

Fighting Spirit: 80

Cloud Team “Shi Sha Tao”

Heart Rate: 180 bpm

Fighting Spirit: 40

[Wait, is Tong Zhao’s heart rate during a light jog? Are these two really engaged in the same fight?]

[You see her looking calm, but her fighting spirit is really high.]

[How is that determined?]

Since this is a newly launched system, the audience doesn’t understand the principles behind it.

They might not get it, but they certainly understand the scene where the assassin takes down everyone with a cold face:

One summary in the comments gets a lot of praise: [Got it, it boils down to four words—steady hands and ruthless.]

If Duan Ge couldn’t handle eight people, she would instantly become the target of concentrated fire.

Just like some wild animals won’t attack groups of humans, when the numbers drop to a certain point, they will hesitate no longer, pouncing from the shadows to bite the throat of the straggler, taking them down one by one.

Everything happened very quickly.

Without any cinematic slow motion, Duan Ge’s speed had the audience furiously typing question marks.

Good movies don’t have dull moments, and her fight scenes left the audience without even a chance to blink; in the blink of an eye, a big man had fallen. The differences in muscle, height, gender, and age seemed irrelevant before this assassin.

So fierce that it made the audience’s hearts race.

Yet she was also very beautiful.

The audience’s gaze drifted between her expressive eyes, slightly parted red lips, and the contours of her body.

Blood splattered onto Duan Ge’s cheek.

She closed her eyes quickly, avoiding any in her eyes, and raised her hand to wipe her face with the back of her hand.

The captain, who had initially been shot and incapacitated, ended up being the last survivor.

Cloud Team “Pei Sijie”

Heart Rate: 177 bpm

Fighting Spirit: 10

Director Chen switched to Pei Sijie’s perspective, who was sitting on the ground, looking up at Duan Ge with sheer fear on his face.

Duan Ge stepped through a pool of blood and approached him.

Her steps were light and graceful, fitting in perfectly even at a gala.

Pei Sijie was too scared to speak.

The exemption from pain didn’t make him braver; rather, it diminished the courage needed for a desperate fight to the death. He still believed he could survive, as long as the deadly figure in front of him spared his life.

Those who rely on their opponents to spare them cannot win.

[It’s over, it’s over, it’s over…]

The audience could hear his racing heartbeat.

Duan Ge, however, had a slight smile, her eyes curving with an expression of delight, as if pleased.

She nudged Pei Sijie’s thigh with the tip of her boot, causing the wound in his side to reopen and let out a small trickle of blood: “Hey, you can move, right?”

Pei Sijie didn’t understand.

He covered his wound while begging for mercy and apologizing.

“Ah, forgot you can’t understand,”

Duan Ge lost interest instantly.

[It’s okay, we understand! Zhaozhao, say more QAQ]

[Want to hear 1]

“My first arrow was a bit off; I didn’t hit your heart, just your lower back,” Duan Ge lifted her foot, pressing the boot against the arrow’s end, slowly and firmly driving it deeper into his abdomen: “You could stand up, but you didn’t. You watched your teammates die and chose to plead with me… From their attitude towards you, you must be a little leader, right?”

Duan Ge: [Forget it, it’s boring.]

Duan Ge: [All dog bosses in the world are the same.]

Duan Ge had good qualities and didn’t take pleasure in torturing her prey; she ignored the heavy undertones of Pei Sijie’s pleading and gave him a swift end. Then, she removed the watches from the wrists of the four and gathered them.

After a moment’s thought, she also took any visible jewelry and miscellaneous items from them.

Duan Ge actually wanted to strip off their clothes.

However, this fell under restricted behavior. Even though she had no inappropriate subjective intentions, the system would still prevent her from such excessive thoughts to protect the contestants’ minimum dignity.

Duan Ge: [I don’t want to expose my target, which is their watches.]

Duan Ge: [Let’s just leave it at this…]

Duan Ge: [It would be great if I could blow this place up in one go.]

The light fell on the assassin’s face, casting a gentle hue.

Only the audience knew that her mind was filled with anything but gentle and merciless thoughts.

They had no doubt that as long as she had the materials and conditions allowed, she would indeed blow the entire restaurant to smithereens.

The audience felt a bit dazed.

[Duan Ge caught four lone ones by herself?]

[Oh my, it’s like four soft and crispy players ran into a fully geared assassin and were wiped out in the blink of an eye.]

[False dangers: landmines and poison gas; true danger: Duan Ge.]

While the audience was dazed, the production team was losing it.

Director: “Thick crab…”

Assistant Director: “Ward?”

In the filming studio, the four innocent and pitiful contestants woke up in the holographic filming chamber. Pei Sijie looked around in confusion and raised his hand to report: “Director, it seems there’s a problem with the filming chamber; I didn’t enter the survival show.”

Shi Shatao raised his hand: “Me too.”

The other two members of the Cloud Team also raised their hands, eager to give feedback.

However, what they received was a subtle gaze of disappointment mixed with pity from the production staff, leaving them puzzled as they glanced at the clock on the wall—sure enough, it wasn’t long before the equipment had indeed malfunctioned!

Director Chen waved his hand: “Xiao Wu, go talk to them and find out what happened.”

Was there even half an hour since the start?

Editing it down, there might only be fifteen minutes of content?

… No, we can focus on giving more shots to Tong Zhao to extend the time, making the sacrifice of these four contestants seem less pointless. Director Chen exchanged glances with others, and they all saw the shared pain in each other’s eyes.

There are twenty contestants, and with Tong Zhao, that makes twenty-one.

Starting off by losing four—how are we supposed to film this?

And looking at Tong Zhao’s subconscious…

Fewer than five people are seen by her as easy targets.

According to the show’s setting, teams cannot communicate or cooperate…

To prevent teams from banding together for peaceful coexistence, the production team had unintentionally turned into Tong Zhao’s slaughterhouse.

“This episode’s audience retention rate has hit a new high!” an excited staff member exclaimed.

Director Chen shook his head, pointing out the problem: “Don’t be shortsighted: the high retention is because Tong Zhao made a big move, raising the audience’s expectations significantly—think about it, if you were the audience, wouldn’t you be curious about how this survival show can continue after losing one-fifth of its contestants in less than half an hour?”

The staff nodded honestly.

“That’s exactly it,” Director Chen held his head in despair: “I want to know how to continue filming too!”

The worst situation for a survival show is when everyone is ordinary, just waiting to die at the starting point.

The second worst is a series of solo acts.

The audience would get bored quickly, leading to a severe imbalance.

A meticulously prepared survival variety show turning into someone’s personal showcase is something the director absolutely does not want.

The assistant director suggested, “What if we throw in four more people?”

“That would just seem like cheating…”

The director shook his head again, pondering: “How about this—let’s remove the language barrier between the teams and see if the remaining teams can find a way to work together against the hunter.”

Staff member: “Chen, wouldn’t that also be cheating?”

Director Chen: “This is just a desperate measure.”

After some thought, everyone realized there was no better solution and agreed to change the rules as the director suggested.

Thus, the audience in the live stream saw a special effects announcement in the chat—

Temporary Announcement

“Except for the Cloud Team, the other teams are all citizens of the same country and can communicate freely. [Crying face emoji]”

The audience slowly began to flood the chat with question marks.

[Don’t ask, just know that Tong Zhao is too awesome.]

[Can anyone explain what’s going on?]

[The production team definitely didn’t expect Tong Zhao to be a walking cheat code. They initially had the language barrier for balance but realized they miscalculated and quickly patched it to stabilize the situation; otherwise, they couldn’t continue filming.]

After a fan explained, even some viewers who usually don’t watch survival shows began to understand.

Tong Zhao, a woman who made the production team change the rules!

And this woman, upon returning to base, tentatively used a watch to trade for promised resources from her superiors…

She received a gun, which contained only one bullet.

And three packs of Master Kong instant noodles.

The instant noodle packaging had three stickers on it, labeled “Breakfast,” “Lunch,” and “Dinner.”

Duan Ge: “…”

In that moment, the cold and stylish imperial assassin turned into a worker exploited by her boss.