The assistant director came over and twice confirmed with Pei Yan that he was okay to continue filming.
Pei Yan said it was nothing serious. Everyone was wearing a wire harness anyway. It was not as though he could fall.
He chewed two mint candies, rinsed his mouth, and spat to the side.
His face was still pale, but his frame was sturdy and every muscle in his body was taut.
Now it was Zhuang Xiao’s turn to stare at him. From a short distance away, Zhuang Xiao kept looking back at Pei Yan, obviously uneasy, but he could not exactly walk over, pick up the stubborn, temperamental Mr. Pei, and carry him away.
Both men dusted their hands heavily with chalk to keep their palms from slipping.
As Zhuang Xiao passed shoulder to shoulder with him, he deliberately gave a few instructions. “Old Pei, after we finish the first two shots, stop. Don’t go straight into the fall. Take a breather. In the last shot, I kick you first, you fall first and trigger the roof to tilt, then I fall. All you have to do is send me down.”
*
The wind was ferocious high in the air. It was impossible to stand steadily, as though there were no roots beneath their feet.
More than thirty meters up, before they had even begun moving, the wind stripped away the cold sweat on their bodies, only for another layer of sweat to struggle back through the skin. Pei Yan trembled involuntarily. The air suddenly seemed thin. He could not catch his breath.
Far below his eyelids were dense clusters of human figures. The director shouted from the ground while someone above relayed his instructions through a communication device. Suspended from wires, Pei Yan and Zhuang Xiao charged toward each other from opposite directions, collided in a burst of sparks, tangled through a dazzling exchange of blows, then fell toward opposite sides of the roof ridge…
Both of them seemed to hit their shoulders. The backs of their shoulder blades slammed into the hard roof model, making their vision flash. It hurt. The structure had been built extremely solidly to bear their weight, with reinforcing bars and steel cables along its edges.
The reason they needed a model roof at all was to film the spectacular image of a cliffside house collapsing and an entire roof sliding away. The two men were supposed to struggle across the tumbling rubble and debris, creating a genuinely dangerous-looking sequence.
The assistant director sat inside the crane truck and called “Action!” on Fat Charles’s behalf.
All the noise around Pei Yan’s ears seemed to freeze along with time. In an instant, everything became very quiet.
The platform under his feet began moving. Pei Yan knew this was part of the design. Pulled by steel cables, the entire roof started tilting violently until neither man could remain standing.
Zhuang Xiao began to run. If he did not run, he could not keep his balance and would fall. Pei Yan had to run too, in the opposite direction. Both men seemed to lose their center of gravity at once and rolled together the instant the roof tipped.
The safety lines at their lower backs knocked against each other with terrifying sounds, almost tangling the two men together.
White light filled Pei Yan’s vision. His palms were drenched. One kick seemed to connect with Zhuang Xiao, and after that the movements no longer followed the choreography step by step. Pei Yan suddenly grabbed Zhuang Xiao. With a sharp rrrip, he seemed to tear away a layer of thin fabric from the other man’s shoulder as he slid farther down.
The entire roof flipped up and surged toward the cliff below!
Sand and stones flew everywhere. Dust filled their eyes. The artificial landslide came down with tremendous force!
It was all designed. It looked terrifying, but there was not supposed to be any real danger. Suspended above the ground, all they had to do was curl their bodies into the necessary protective posture and avoid the collapsing dirt, rocks, and debris. Once the shot was finished, post-production would erase the wire lines and that would be that.
Zhuang Xiao was the person closest to Pei Yan. Everyone else stood far away and saw only the spectacular wide view, like an earthquake and a mountain collapse. As they rolled, Zhuang Xiao watched Pei Yan’s face. That was when he realized something was wrong.
“Hey!”
Zhuang Xiao grunted. Before he could shout, he was thrown around badly himself.
Pei Yan’s hands were reaching for him. That movement was not supposed to happen. Pei Yan had no reason to grab him. He was supposed to kick him away… Those two hands swept across Zhuang Xiao’s body and somehow failed to catch hold. Dirt sprayed over both men’s faces and mixed with cold sweat into a mask of mud. Pei Yan’s features blurred beneath it, his entire body drenched in cold sweat. He seemed to lose control all at once and slid straight down the enormous tilted platform.
Zhuang Xiao instinctively twisted around and grabbed for him.
Another sharp rrrip. Pei Yan’s own weight was too much for his clothes. The fabric tore apart in Zhuang Xiao’s hand, exposing a stretch of chest, and Pei Yan dropped again.
For one instant they were face-to-face at point-blank range, close enough to see clearly. Pei Yan’s pupils had lost focus. Suddenly, without warning, he seemed to lose consciousness completely…
He was not going to fall far. The wire harness was still strapped around him, and the steel cable would leave him suspended in midair rather than letting him splatter against the ground. But circumstances could change in an instant, and danger arrived in the same instant. The tilted fake roof swung through the air like an enormous palm, slapping straight toward them!
The normal response was to cover the head with both arms, protect the vital areas, absorb the force, then kick off and swing neatly away, just like Tarzan in the movies.
It was one of the most routine stunt movements imaginable, but Pei Yan did not curl up or protect his head. He went sideways, straight toward the enormous roof reinforced with steel bars.
“Hey!”
Zhuang Xiao shouted and lunged through the air to seize one of Pei Yan’s arms, his reaction lightning-fast.
The man he had caught did not speak or struggle toward him for help, which made the situation even more abnormal. Pei Yan’s entire body was trembling. His muscles had gone into spasms, and he sagged downward without strength.
His arm was slick with sweat. Zhuang Xiao’s grip began to slip while the tangled safety lines wound around both of them.
The exploding dirt and stone opened like a devouring mouth as the unprotected back of Pei Yan’s head hurtled toward that terrifying, hard roof model. He was almost there when Zhuang Xiao suddenly grabbed a rope whipping in front of him. It was the stunt wire attached to Pei Yan’s waist. With brute force, he hauled the man back…
In an instant, the roof completed its tilt, rotating from horizontal until it stood nearly vertical dozens of meters in the air. The sight was terrifying.
The whole thing lasted only a few seconds. Because the sequence had been choreographed in advance, the people below did not even realize at first that something had gone wrong overhead.
“Old Pei!!
“Open your eyes!!
“Open your eyes! Protect your head!!”
“…”
Zhuang Xiao kept shouting, clutching the line at Pei Yan’s back with all his strength and never once letting go.
Mr. Pei’s face was right in front of him, impossibly close. His eyes were only a hazy gray slit, as though he could not hear Zhuang Xiao shouting at all.
If Zhuang Xiao let go, Mr. Pei would swing away and strike some steel bar or cable. Without any ability to protect himself, he could injure his head, slash open his face, or take a fatal blow to the skull.
The shot finally ended. Only then did the people below react, belatedly realizing an accident had happened in the air. The set erupted into chaos.
The steel lines lowered both men back to the ground. Zhuang Xiao came down holding Pei Yan, whose face and chest were streaked with blood.
Fat Charles was badly startled, his expression changing as he immediately called emergency services. Whether it was a set accident or an injured actor, neither was a small matter. In America, once 911 was called, all three departments responded. Within five minutes, an ambulance, a fire truck, and police vehicles had all arrived. Even the cops came running over.
Still wrapped in his wire harness, Pei Yan was laid flat on the ground. His whole body was burning hot and cramping, and he was already semiconscious. It did not look good.
How had this happened? What went wrong? How could this happen?!
Nobody had expected it. The scene was noisy and chaotic. He had simply developed a sudden high fever, fallen ill, vomited, become dehydrated, and then lost consciousness…
The rigging was especially difficult to remove and had tangled the two men together. Pei Yan struggled to breathe while people crowded around and stripped the equipment from him with many hands at once. Zhuang Xiao kept his back turned. The instant he finally disentangled himself from the mass of straps and lines, he turned and walked away quickly…
Johnny Wu knelt beside Pei Yan and kept shouting in terror, “Old Pei, what happened? Where are you hurt? Where did you hit yourself? You’re bleeding so much!”
A doctor came over to check Pei Yan’s pupils, quickly placed an oxygen mask over his face, started an IV, applied cooling measures, and had him lifted onto a stretcher at the same time.
The faces of the action team had all changed. Nobody spoke. A cloud hung over the group. This was a fucking accident. Had something gone wrong with the prop, or the crane? Had the wire harness been fitted incorrectly? Had a line broken? Where exactly had things gone wrong?
Fatty Bao glanced at his boss. “You’re okay, right?”
Before he finished speaking, blood had already dripped beside his foot.
Fatty Bao jumped too. “Huh? Boss…”
Zhuang Xiao said nothing and walked all the way toward his own trailer.
Do not grab the stunt wire.
Do not grab the stunt wire.
Do not grab the stunt wire…
That was basic common sense every stunt performer was supposed to memorize on the first day he walked onto a set. You did not grab that line with a bare hand. It cut flesh and felt almost like a steel rod under tension. Anyone who grabbed it had to be out of his fucking mind.
Zhuang Xiao had not been out of his mind at the time either. It had been a split-second emergency. Nobody could have expected an accident like that. Pei Yan had been convulsing all over, hanging only inches in front of him. The arrogant madman who normally strutted around like he could fuck heaven and earth and had to prove it in front of Zhuang Xiao had suddenly seemed to stop functioning. He hung deadweight from Zhuang Xiao’s hand, soaked through, his eyes unfocused as his body sagged…
Zhuang Xiao’s face was pale. His temples were wet too, sweat running in crooked tracks down his neck toward his chest.
There was a frightening gash across his palm, with smaller cuts over the second knuckles of the index and middle fingers that had taken the strain. Bright red blood ran down his fingertips.
Only after the danger had passed did he register the agony, so intense it felt capable of tearing tendon from bone. Zhuang Xiao’s eyes turned red as he dropped to one knee on the step of the trailer door.
Sa Risheng rushed over, dug a roll of wide gauze out of the vehicle, tore it open, and pressed it around Zhuang Xiao’s fingers.
A doctor came over to disinfect the wound immediately.
Zhuang Xiao dug the fingers of his left hand into the doorframe and pressed his forehead against the door. A bottle of iodine washed over his right hand, and Zhuang Xiao clutched the frame and burst out with an “Ah!”
Injuries to the fingers hurt straight to the core. This hurt like hell. It was explosive.
The doctor said, “Mr. Zhuang, you should go to the hospital with the ambulance. You need imaging and stitches.”
Bao Pengzhi complained under his breath, “Boss, are you and that Pei guy just bad luck for each other? Nothing good happens once you get mixed up with him.
“Just wait and see what the internet says tomorrow morning.”
*
Pei Yan saw none of this.
He really had lost consciousness by then. He was suffering badly, his whole body convulsing. He had never been this sick in his life.
Apparently fate had decided he needed to embarrass himself in front of Zhuang Xiao yet again. If he had known in advance that he would lose control and fall during an aerial stunt and injure the other man along with him, he would have gone back to the hotel first thing and stayed flat on his stomach. He never would have tried to tough it out.
The local doctor handling emergency care asked the crew whether anyone else had developed a high fever. Had anyone been vomiting or had diarrhea? How many people on the production had been infected with a virus?
A virus?
Hadn’t he simply caught a chill in the seawater and come down with a cold?
The doctor said blood tests and further examination were needed. In a more serious case, it could be viral meningitis, which could be life-threatening. There had been a local outbreak of West Nile virus half a year earlier. Had Mr. Pei been bitten by mosquitoes recently?
A cold? A man this physically tough and hard to break, and an ordinary cold could make Pei Yan collapse unconscious like this?
Now everyone was genuinely frightened. Johnny Wu wiped sweat from his face and called the team back in China to report. Within minutes, a helicopter arrived on the island and airlifted Pei Yan to a central municipal hospital in San Diego.
The helicopter blasted sand and stones outward with a tremendous roar as it spiraled up from the island.
Zhuang Xiao looked up and watched the helicopter carrying the seriously ill patient accelerate into the sky and roar away. His expression changed too. “Encephalitis…? It can get that serious?”
Fatty Bao swallowed all the complaints he had made earlier. A person still had to keep some decency in his heart. Viral meningitis? Wasn’t that too much? A man like Pei Yan looked so fierce and indestructible, the sort who would take anything thrown at him. He did not look remotely like someone who would suddenly become critically ill and collapse.
Would anyone still be in the mood to hype a scandal now? Probably not. That evening, after Zhuang Xiao had his own wound treated and bandaged at the hospital, one troublesome phone call after another began arriving from China.
The artist director at Jiahuang Brothers called to negotiate with the production. Wang Yuanling argued with the producers over the phone: Our artist has been injured? Does your production have proper safety measures? Personal accident insurance? Mr. Pei has contracts for several more films after this and his schedule is already full. If the losses are serious, we’re talking about more than tens of millions. We have a responsibility to our artist.
Rumors had already begun spreading online: “Accident during filming of New Drunken Fist near the U.S.-Mexico border. Bloodshed on set. Pei and Zhuang both injured and hospitalized, condition unknown.”
The action-design team was first in the line of fire within the production. This was an accident, after all. If anyone had suffered serious injury or death, even the film guild would conduct an internal investigation and assign responsibility.
Sha Yunfei was anxious too. He asked Zhuang Xiao, “You were up there. What happened? Was there a problem with the design? Or the set equipment? How exactly did he fall?!”
Stunt teams dreaded accidents like this. Their reputation and future were at stake. They could end up paying compensation or even lose their livelihood. Who the hell wanted an accident?
Zhuang Xiao thought back to what he had seen. “He just suddenly lost consciousness.”
Sha Yunfei said, “So can anyone say this was our team’s mistake? We built the props to the specified standards. How many people went up there for test runs without a problem? He gets on and there’s an accident. I designed that move because, based on my judgment, Mr. Pei was capable of doing it. How the hell was I supposed to know he’d lose control?!
“If it were ‘Mop’ doing the stunt, I would never fucking design something that difficult for Mop! Isn’t Pei Yan supposed to be so damn capable?”
Sha Yunfei added the last sentence in frustration…
Yes, if responsibility were assigned, the model-roof design did carry some risk. The scene was extremely dangerous.
But should that action have been a risk for Pei Yan? Was it something he normally could not complete? Master Sha felt deeply wronged that an accident had happened on his team’s work.
Any stunt performer on wires faced risk. At this point, all anyone could complain about was that the two stars, Zhuang Xiao and Pei Yan, had both pushed too hard, insisting on doing the work personally and refusing doubles. If Sa Risheng or one of the younger doubles from the Zhuang Stunt Team had been injured in that fall, they could have quietly taken him to the hospital to get patched up and nobody online would have cared whether a stuntman had been hurt.
“Is your hand okay?” Fatty Bao asked Zhuang Xiao with real concern. “Don’t let it leave permanent damage. That grab in midair cost you pretty badly, Boss.”
“Wouldn’t call it that bad,” Zhuang Xiao said calmly. “It definitely hurts.”
X-rays had already shown no damage to the bone. The cut had torn muscle, though. His right hand was wrapped in a thick layer of gauze and still hurt badly, but at least the pain was barely tolerable now. On set, it had hurt enough to make him shout.
“I had to make that grab,” Zhuang Xiao explained to the people around him. “Accidents like that have happened before in fighting rings, even on soccer and football fields… When someone is conscious, they can take all kinds of impacts because the body has instinctive protective reactions. But if his head had struck something while he suddenly lost consciousness, that was too dangerous. It really could have killed him… He could have ended up like Eriletu.”
“…”
Sa Risheng lowered his head and said nothing. There was nothing he could say.
Fatty Bao said, “Boss, you’re just too decent… Forget it. There’s no point arguing with their people. Their company team is still hounding us and trying to hold us responsible. What kind of people are they…?”
Zhuang Xiao motioned to Fatty Bao. “Ask Mr. Pei’s manager how he’s doing at the hospital now.”
Fatty Bao quickly received a reply on his phone and handed it to Zhuang Xiao.
Johnny Wu replied politely over WeChat: [Sorry for delaying everyone’s filming schedule. We’re really sorry. Mr. Pei isn’t doing very well. The hospital has diagnosed viral meningitis and he needs intensive treatment, so he may need to recuperate for a while and won’t be able to work.]
Zhuang Xiao sat for a moment, then stood. “Which hospital?
“I’ll go see him.”
“…”
Fatty Bao, Sa Risheng, and the others stayed rooted where they were, watching Zhuang Xiao get up and walk away with remarkably astonished expressions. They were all thinking the same thing: Boss, give it a rest. Aren’t you a little too concerned about that Pei guy?