July 22nd, 7:50 PM.
Chu Yumeng had just picked up her takeout and returned to the office, preparing for another round of overtime. As she sat down at her desk, she saw a bunch of messages in her friend group chat, urging her to log on and play the latest game.
With a sigh, she replied:
[Black Company: Working overtime.]
"Working life is too hard!"
Chu Yumeng slapped her cheeks and let out a deep breath. Looking at the empty office hall, her frustration bubbled up.
As she mentally listed all the tasks she had to complete tonight, the more she counted, the angrier she got. She shut down her work software and casually opened up 'SakuraNet'.
"There's no way I'll finish before ten anyway. The supervisor's already gone home. I'll just watch an episode of something while I eat."
She quickly grabbed some snacks and drinks from the office fridge, opened her takeout box, and got ready to find a show — her usual "Quick pickled veggies" — something light to watch while eating.
Scrolling down the trending drama list from the top:
'Pure Breeze'?
Hmm, watched one episode last week. School romance. Not her thing.
'The Corpse Collector' — a horror drama from last season on 'Sakura TV'. Only a 2% view rate, 5.8 rating. A clear flop.
'Sister-in-Law's Temptation!' — Pass. A 2.9 rating says it all.
…Wait, why is the play count so high?
Hmm, must be something going on. She bookmarked it for later. Maybe.
She kept scrolling — past the top 30 — and still hadn't found anything interesting.
Then suddenly, something caught her eye.
"Huh?"
She scrolled back up with her mouse.
The two big words 'Rurouni Kenshin', along with the show's promo image, appeared before her.
She wasn't particularly interested in anything about a "Rurouni" or a "Kenshin".
What grabbed her attention was the promo image: the male and female leads' looks matched her taste exactly.
She admitted it — she was all about looks.
When it came to slacking off during overtime and watching something while eating, the plot wasn't everything. What mattered most was whether the leads were good-looking enough to make the meal better.
"Alright, you're the one," Chu Yumeng chuckled.
She opened the 'Rurouni Kenshin' streaming page, quickly paid with her account, and got ready to eat.
The first shot of the episode: a full moon and a starry sky.
The second shot: a sword piercing through a woman's throat, blood splattering everywhere.
At that moment, Chu Yumeng hadn't even taken her first bite.
"???" She stared at the screen, totally stunned.
The next scene was a massacre.
A group of bandits brutally attacked a handful of defenseless women and children.
When only three women and one child remained...
The child picked up a knife and stood in front of the women, trembling with fear.
"Shinta, you're still young. You haven't had a chance to choose your own path yet. That's why you can't die now. You must live. Try your best to live on…"
"Shinta, live."
At the last second, one of the women stepped in front of the boy, taking the sword to her throat in his place.
Chu Yumeng's eyelid twitched.
How the heck am I supposed to eat with this bloody scene playing?!
In the end, the three women died tragically.
Just as the boy was about to be killed, too, a young man appeared, sword in hand.
He was extraordinarily handsome, his face cold, but his entire presence radiated righteousness.
With strange, mesmerizing sword techniques and elegant moves, he slaughtered all the bandits by himself. Severed arms and legs flew everywhere.
This scene — Kenshin's first appearance — was actually performed by Su Yan as a stunt double during filming.
That's why the movements were sharp, powerful, and brutally precise — and Chu Yumeng was totally hooked.
"These fight scenes... are seriously good!" She completely forgot to eat.
Partly because the story was gripping.
But mostly because the gore had killed her appetite.
Meanwhile, the screen was flooded with scrolling comments:
[Same stylish choreography as the trailer!]
[Cool! The master's amazing too!]
[So this is Kenshin's master from the trailer?]
[They only invested a million in this drama? Sakura TV's doomed.]
[The fight scenes have such cinematic quality!]
This was the true beginning of the story: young Shinta met his future master — the lone heir of Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu, Hiko Seijūrō.
In the following scenes:
The next day, Hiko Seijūrō returned to the scene, carrying wine, intending to bury the bandits he'd slain.
But in the twilight on the barren field, he saw rows of graves already standing.
The ragged boy, Shinta, was standing silently before the graves.
"Not just the girls who saved you... You even buried the bandits who tried to kill you?" Hiko asked.
"Whether they're bandits or human traffickers… once they're dead, they're all the same," young Shinta replied.
His words touched not just Hiko, but many viewers as well.
"That line… so profound." Chu Yumeng had set her chopsticks down.
In just a few minutes, the story explained how Shinta met his master, was renamed Kenshin, and began learning the Hiten Mitsurugi style.
It was only then that the title appeared on screen:
'Rurouni Kenshin Episode 1: The Man of the Slashing Sword'
The scene changed.
In the dark of night, a group of samurai escorted a high-ranking official through a narrow alley.
"You're getting married next month, aren't you, Kiyosato? To that lovely childhood sweetheart of yours? What a lucky man," the official said with a smile to one of his guards, Kiyosato.
"The world may be in chaos, but I still find myself thinking about love," Kiyosato replied with a polite tone, but a joyful glint in his eyes.
"So what? No matter how the world changes, what's wrong with chasing happiness?" the official said.
Then came about ten seconds of flashback showing Kiyosato's fiancée — how he left for Kyoto to make a name for himself, promising to return and marry her the next year.
Comments flew across the screen:
[Flashback alert. This Kiyosato guy is 100% doomed.]
[Talking about marriage in a dark alley? He's raising death flags. Lol.]
[RIP Kiyosato.]
[Saw this scene in the trailer. The whole escort team dies in 3 seconds — Kenshin wipes them out.]
[Incoming high-level action — don't blink, the next ten seconds are insane!]
Chu Yumeng relaxed.
Sure, streaming dramas often had spoilers in the comments.
But she didn't care.
She kept watching.
The group, lanterns in hand, soon encountered a tall, black-haired man standing silently in the alley, a sword in hand.
No words were exchanged. The official and his guards looked horrified — they recognized him.
"An assassin!" Kiyosato shouted.
"You think one sword can change the world?" the official said angrily.
The group charged.
And now Chu Yumeng understood why everyone had warned of high-energy scenes.
Because this moonlit fight was nothing short of breathtaking.
The moment five or six men charged, the black-haired youth made his move. A flash of steel, a glint of cold light — it was so fast that Chu Yumeng, watching from behind a screen, nearly jumped.
Throats slashed, hearts pierced, heads severed, bodies torn apart…
The entire fight lasted no more than three seconds. Yet the actor changed directions five or six times in rapid succession, leaping off the alley walls like a panther, flipping midair, dashing through the narrow space.
In the end, he drove his blade through the official's forehead.
And standing there, in stunned silence, was the once-hopeful, handsome samurai — Kiyosato — the man who had just raised a flag of love and life.
No special effects.
Pure choreography.
The whole scene flowed more smoothly than Chu Yumeng's digestive system after eating at Charlotte's Burgers.
Most striking of all was the contrast between the assassin's cold, merciless eyes in the moonlight and the terror etched on Kiyosato's face.
It was brutal. It was bloody.
But it was unbelievably cool.
"I don't want to die... I don't want to die…"
Kiyosato, completely powerless against the black-haired assassin, could only cry and plead.
His mind flashed with memories of his fiancée.
His desperate final strike merely grazed the assassin's cheek, leaving a thin cut.
A drop of blood slid down the assassin's face.
And Kiyosato's body was nearly cleaved in two.
He fell to the ground, weeping, whispering his last wish — not to die.
But death showed no mercy.
At that moment, Chu Yumeng finally took a long, deep breath.
What the heck was that?!
A clearly low-budget drama, yet it delivered a fight scene worthy of legend.
The screen exploded with comments:
[Insane]
[Mind-blowing]
[Incredible choreography]
[Too cool for words]