Set Cosmetics and Costume Sabotage

Set Cosmetics and Costume Sabotage is a backstage attack directed at Shen Tang near the end of filming. What first appears to be routine production trouble becomes a deliberate attempt to contaminate her makeup and compromise her costume, shifting the set from a workplace into an unsafe investigative scene. Shen Tang’s caution prevents the sabotage from becoming a bodily injury, while the discovery of the materials, the limits of the surveillance footage, and the arrival of Xiao Yu widen the incident from a private threat into a matter involving the police and Gu Huaian’s protective intervention.

Causes and Background

The incident occurs as filming is approaching its conclusion. Several smaller disturbances have already taken place, involving tampered accessories and makeup items, but none has yet produced a major consequence. That pattern matters: the sabotage is not an isolated accident but an escalation within an atmosphere of repeated interference. Shen Tang is not the female lead, which makes the concentration of trouble around her especially unsettling; her own disbelief reflects the mismatch between her relatively minor position on the production and the seriousness of the risks she is being made to face.

Rather than continue treating the irregularities as inconveniences, Shen Tang stops using the suspicious makeup and installs a small camera in her makeup room. The camera changes the conditions of the threat. The saboteur had relied on the privacy and blind spots of the backstage area, but Shen Tang’s precaution creates a record of the intrusion and allows the hidden action to be reconstructed. Her vigilance is therefore not merely defensive characterization: it is the practical cause of the attack’s exposure.

What Happens on the Set

One morning, Shen Tang checks the materials before beginning makeup and costume preparation, as she has recently made a habit of doing. She discovers that a man wearing black clothing and a duck-bill cap has pried open the lock and entered the room. The footage captures him adding something to the makeup and then pulling apart threads in the costume. The damage to the clothing is intentionally subtle. The costume still looks usable, but even slight force could make it rip, turning an apparently ordinary garment into a concealed hazard during performance.

The makeup presents a second and more direct danger. After Shen Tang reports the incident, Director Huo orders an investigation. The available footage shows only half of the intruder’s chin because the duck-bill cap and dark clothing conceal most of his face. The set’s surveillance system also contains numerous blind spots, and Director Huo concludes that the person was probably an outsider who knew enough about the local camera arrangement to move through it effectively. The combination of disguise, limited visibility, and familiarity with the surveillance layout makes the sabotage appear planned rather than impulsive.

Shen Tang calls the police, who take the remaining makeup for testing. The eventual results identify glue and jy among the added substances. The jy has been mixed into the lotion, where it is difficult to notice without close inspection. This finding gives physical confirmation to what had initially been only suspicion: the makeup room was not simply disordered, and the products were not harmlessly tampered with. Shen Tang’s inspection before use is what keeps the contamination from reaching her body.

Participants and Immediate Response

Director Huo treats Shen Tang as the victim rather than as a source of disruption and instructs the crew to investigate. Her response is correspondingly direct: she reports the damaged costume and compromised makeup despite her reluctance to disturb the director, then involves the police instead of allowing the matter to disappear as another minor production inconvenience. The scene’s central value shift is from presumed workplace safety to active danger, followed by a partial recovery of control through evidence preservation and official testing.

The unidentified intruder remains difficult to locate. The surveillance footage is insufficient for a clear identification, and the person’s apparent knowledge of the set’s blind spots suggests that finding him will not be easy. The uncertainty leaves the threat unresolved even after the immediate danger has passed. Shen Tang knows what was done to the materials, but not who commissioned it or what the saboteur intended beyond creating a harmful or humiliating failure.

Gu Huaian learns of the incident and immediately sends his bodyguard Xiao Yu. Shen Tang presents Xiao Yu to others as her new assistant, converting private protection into an ordinary professional arrangement that can function on the set without openly dramatizing her vulnerability. Gu Huaian also promises to discover whom the person was working for. His response extends the consequences beyond the police investigation: the sabotage becomes a threat to Shen Tang that he personally undertakes to trace.

Consequences and Aftermath

The incident ends without the major harm that Shen Tang fears, but not without consequences. The costume can no longer safely be worn, because its loosened threads could cause it to tear under minimal force. The makeup is removed for testing, and the discovery of glue and jy establishes that the danger was material and actionable. The production’s earlier minor incidents are retrospectively reclassified as warning signs in a developing pattern of set cosmetics and costume sabotage.

The event also alters Shen Tang’s position within the production. She had hoped that the set would finally be safe, yet the intrusion demonstrates that ordinary assumptions about controlled access cannot protect her. The small camera, her repeated checks, and her refusal to use altered products become the means by which she survives the attack. In place of passive fear, the aftermath produces a more guarded working environment, police involvement, and Xiao Yu’s continued presence as security disguised as assistance.

Shen Tang is disturbed by the perversity of the attack and wants to know what the intruder was trying to accomplish. Gu Huaian’s tense promise to identify the person’s employer acknowledges that the event may have an organized source rather than being the work of an isolated nuisance. The unanswered question of sponsorship preserves the incident’s suspense, while the confirmed contamination supplies a concrete consequence: the threat has crossed from rumor and harassment into a physical assault prepared through everyday production objects.

Narrative Significance

Set Cosmetics and Costume Sabotage gives material form to the danger surrounding Shen Tang’s public life. Elsewhere, her reputation is repeatedly processed through online attention, hot searches, rumors, and recorded footage; here, the threat begins in the hidden backstage space before potentially becoming visible through an accident, an injury, or a scandal. The set’s makeup and costume are supposed to support performance, but sabotage makes them unreliable props. Their sudden transformation from useful objects into concealed dangers exposes how fragile the boundary is between acting and being targeted.

The event also develops the recurring contrast between performance and reality. Shen Tang is working inside a drama production, while the intruder stages a covert intervention that could force her body into an uncontrolled spectacle. Her response is the opposite kind of performance: she presents Xiao Yu as an assistant, maintaining an ordinary public explanation while privately accepting heightened protection. The incident therefore deepens the book’s pattern of front-stage appearances supported by backstage strategies of surveillance, caution, and alliance.

Most importantly, the sabotage marks Shen Tang’s caution as an active survival skill. She does not defeat the intruder through confrontation; she defeats the plan by inspecting what she is about to use, preserving evidence, and seeking institutional help. The threat remains partially unresolved because the perpetrator is unidentified, but the value shift is decisive: an exposed vulnerability becomes a documented case, and a precarious workplace gains a protective response through the combined actions of Shen Tang, Director Huo, the police, Gu Huaian, and Xiao Yu.