How do I render from a parent controller

Plugins
1

Hi,

In Cake 2.x plugin, I could do the following

<?php 
   App::uses('AppController', 'Controller');

   class ApiAppController extends AppController {

     public function beforeFilter(){
	    parent::beforeFilter();
                .....
                
               // Once I call $this->set() from here, operation in child classes kinda stops and rendering starts 
               $this->set([
                         'status' => "ERROR", 'statusMessage' => "Some validation failed.",
                         '_serialize' => ['status', 'statusMessage']
                ]);

      }

   }

How do i achieve this in Cake 3.x? Such that requests to /api/users.json is halted when child class call parent::initialiaze() and their is a $this->set() in it.