Chapter 10
The heavy wooden door of the conference room closed silently behind Zhou Ping'an, isolating the heated debate that had just determined the soul of "The Fallen Country".
In the corridor outside, Liu Yifan's high heels made no sound as they stepped on the soft carpet. Her manager, Yang Wei, hurried beside her, not daring to breathe. She could sense the tense aura surrounding Liu Yifan. It wasn't simply anger, but a more complex, almost trembling silence.
Only after settling into the completely private space of the nanny car did Liu Yifan's straight back suddenly slump back into the seat, as if all her strength had been drained away. She raised her hand, pressed her fingertips against her throbbing temples, and closed her eyes.
The car was dead silent. Yang Wei waited with bated breath.
A few seconds later, Liu Yifan suddenly laughed very softly. The laughter was dry and cold, with a hint of unbelievable absurdity.
"Sister Wei," she began, her voice low and hoarse, "did you hear that? He said I... 'can't act out love.'"
Yang Wei immediately said indignantly: "What does he know about acting! A battery maker with a few bucks dares to point fingers at you, the queen of the screen, and criticize you like an object! It's simply..."
"But he's right." Liu Yifan interrupted her. His voice was calm, but like an undercurrent beneath the ice, it carried tremendous power.
Yang Wei was stunned.
Liu Yifan opened his eyes, his unfocused gaze fixed on a certain point in the void, as if he was staring at the crack that had just been torn in his heart.
"Every word he said was like a knife, stabbing me in the place that hurt the most and that I dared not admit the most."
Her tone was almost cold with self-analysis. "Those film reviews praising my 'spiritual' and 'high-level' performance, aren't they just saying that I can't play clichéd, obsessive love, and can only play alienation and brokenness? I know deep down how much effort and awkward it is every time I get a role that requires passionate 'love.' My best state is when I'm 'not in love.'"
Her fingertips curled unconsciously, her nails digging into her palms.
"I hated the way he looked at me, as if he was evaluating the performance parameters of a commodity. I was angry that he reduced my art to a set of cold data."
Her breathing quickened slightly, a burning feeling of shame at being offended. "But he... he was absolutely right! He saw through all my cards at a glance, saw through the nature that I rely on to survive but am too embarrassed to admit."
Anger and the shock of being understood, like two diametrically opposed yet equally turbulent waves, clashed violently in her chest, nearly tearing her apart. She felt a naked, inescapable panic, as if all the gorgeous robes of her career had been instantly lifted, revealing the truth beneath that she herself didn't even want to examine.
"He wasn't praising me, he was defining me." There was a barely perceptible tremor in her voice. "He told me in the cruelest way possible: Liu Yifan, your greatest value is your 'coldness', your 'utter dullness'. Without this, you are nothing."
Yang Wei tried to comfort him: "Yifan, don't let him brainwash you..."
"Brainwashing?" Liu Yifan turned his head abruptly, his eyes incredibly sharp, burning with a desperate fire. "No, he's not brainwashing me. He's... liberating me."
When she said this word, even she was stunned for a moment, and then a more complicated, almost sad emotion surged up.
"He gave me the cruelest, yet most thorough excuse," she murmured, as if to herself. "From now on, I no longer have to force myself to 'act' those heartfelt, passionate performances I'm not good at. I just need to confidently and comfortably amplify my inherent indifference, alienation, and even my feeling of 'utter boredom' about all this to the extreme."
She took a deep breath, the air as cold as ice, yet it strangely calmed her. The confusion and shock in her eyes gradually settled, transforming into a clarity and determination that was almost cruel.
"He's not King You of Zhou, and I'm not Bao Si." Her voice regained its composure, even tinged with a hint of cold sarcasm. "He's more like a mad scientist, and I'm his chosen experimental material with special properties. His job isn't to please me, but to maximize my unique characteristics to complete his crazy concept."
She looked at Yang Wei, her lips curled up in a cold arc. "Alright. Then I'll play along to the end. He wants to be 'cold'? I'll show him how cold it is, cold to the bone, cold enough to make everyone who invested in him question their lives. He wants to be 'uncooperative'? I'll be uncooperative in the most extreme way possible. I want the entire crew to revolve around my 'nature'."
"I want to show him what kind of 'monster' he bought with his money. I also want to see how far I can go with this nature that he 'values' so much."
The carriage fell silent again. Yang Wei looked at Liu Yifan. At that moment, she was like a sword that had just been tempered and sharpened. Her light was cold and sharp, yet she carried a determination that hurt both the enemy and herself.
Zhou Ping'an's words were like a heavy hammer, breaking some heavy shackles on her, but also releasing something that even she herself felt was unfamiliar and dangerous.
The nanny car silently merged into the traffic, carrying a soul that was completely enraged and accidentally "liberated", and drove towards the unknown night.
After Zhou Ping'an left, only a few core members of the editing and directing team were left in the conference room. The atmosphere was weird and exciting.
After a long silence, a young screenwriter sighed and rubbed his temples. "Ah... after arguing for so long, it was finally the big boss who made the final decision. Okay, let's write according to Mr. Zhou's tone. What character arcs and inner motivations are you still thinking about? He's just..."
He didn't finish, but another senior screenwriter, Chen Feng, a strange glint in his eyes, chimed in, "Have you ever considered this? If this play really had a 'bad ending', that would be the true, ultimate beauty."
"Old Chen, are you crazy?" someone laughed.
"I'm not crazy." Chen Feng pushed his glasses up, his tone piercing with coldness. "What was the real ending of 'playing tricks on the princes'? The beacons really were lit, the princes really were tricked, and then the dynasty really collapsed. This was a completely out-of-control, absurd, unfinished project!"
He grew increasingly agitated as he spoke, standing up and pacing back and forth. "What are we doing now? We're using hundreds of millions of dollars to attempt to accurately 'reproduce' an ancient, failed gamble in the real world. What if... what we ultimately present isn't a neat, narratively accurate 'artwork,' but instead a work that carries a certain sense of loss of control, a sense of incompleteness, or even a sense of 'collapse' in a real sense due to its extreme pursuit—for example, it goes over budget, runs out of production time, or the final product sparks huge controversy and is not understood by the world because it's too advanced or too paranoid..."
He paused, his gaze sweeping across each stunned face. "So, doesn't this creative process itself perfectly recreate the spirit of 'The Princes Are Played with Fire'? We're using a near-maddening experiment with an unknown outcome to portray a historically renowned episode of madness and collapse. The process and theme are highly isomorphic. This is the ultimate metaphor, performance art!"
This view was so shocking that it made everyone gasp.
Wang He, who had originally suggested adding a love line, suddenly slapped his thigh, suddenly realizing something, his voice trembling:
"I get it! If we consider Mr. Zhou a modern-day 'King You of Zhou,' then his act of investing in this play is itself a 'trick of the lords'! Our entire crew is the 'lords' he assembled! The ultimate fate of this play—whether it becomes a legend or becomes a laughing stock—is the outcome of this modern-day 'trick of the lords'! We're not even acting; we are the play itself!"
A chilling, eerie sense of fate instantly enveloped everyone.
Director Lin Na slowly exhaled, her eyes becoming extremely complex and determined. She looked around at everyone and said word by word:
"So... precisely because of this, we must bring every frame and every performance to perfection. Because this time, there are no chances for NGs. We want this 'play', no matter what the final outcome, the process itself must be worthy of the name 'Turning the Country'."
This night's discussion did not produce a standard answer to the script, but it injected a dangerous and fascinating soul into the "Allure of the Nation" project.
Director Lin Na's words "no chance of NG" were like a final command, pressing the pervasive sense of fate into everyone's chest, and settling it into a heavy, almost tragic sense of responsibility.
After a few seconds of absolute silence, Lin Na closed the script with a snap.
She raised her head, and all the confusion and fanaticism on her face had faded, replaced by an almost military calmness and sharpness.
"Okay, we're done with the drama." She glanced at every core member present. "Now, it's time to get to work."
She spoke very quickly and clearly, and began to give instructions:
"Chen Feng, your idea is dangerous but valuable. Within three days, I want a memorandum on how to visualize the sense of 'loss of control' and 'incompleteness' using specific cases, not just empty theories."
"Old Zhao, the data for Hanfeng Ancient City will be archived tonight. Tomorrow at nine o'clock, I need the first draft of the concept art for the core scene. Remember what Mr. Zhou wants: 'real'."
"Li Rui, recalculate the budget and allocate resources towards textural restoration and texture reconstruction. I want a new plan that embodies 'ultimate authenticity.'"
"Teacher Sun, please ask the academic team to re-examine the research on power symbols based on the 'anti-gaze' theme and report to me in a week."
"Dismissed! Everyone, get moving!"
The people in the conference room immediately took action, packing up their things, making phone calls, and gathering for discussions... A highly excited and extremely focused tension replaced the previous philosophical dizziness.
Wang He, who had originally suggested adding a love storyline, was stunned for a moment before quickly walking towards Chen Feng: "Old Chen, wait a minute, I'll have a copy of your memo."
The vast philosophical debate was thus grounded, transformed into concrete tasks that required nights of hard work. After experiencing a profound shock to the soul, the giant ship of "The Fall of the Nation" finally sailed at full speed into the unknown deep waters.
When the huge machine of the "Topple the Country" project began to run at full speed precisely and enthusiastically under the command of Lin Na, its creator and only energy source, Zhou Pingan, quietly retreated behind the scenes and fell into a strange vacuum state.
The day-to-day management of the battery factory has been taken over by the Weihua team, and he retains only the core technical decision-making power. However, all of this has become familiar and easy for him, and it no longer fills up his entire energy.
He suddenly discovered that when he woke up every day, he was no longer faced with a mountain of problems, but long stretches of... blank time.
It was a strange feeling, like an engine that had been running at super-high speed and suddenly had its load cut off, idling and humming aimlessly.
Money, once a tool for solving problems and realizing his ideas, has now become a string of numbers so vast they're almost abstract. This feeling of "omnipotence" doesn't bring the expected excitement, but instead a vast, irritating sense of emptiness.
He looked out the window at the skyline of Haicheng and muttered to himself, "Money comes too easily, and sometimes it can be very troublesome."
He suddenly understood the meaning of the "small goals" theme. Perhaps it wasn't about showing off one's wealth, but rather a panicked attempt to fill a huge void.
When wealth reaches a scale beyond all dreams, you’ll inevitably fall into a void of “what next?” Zhou Pingan is now standing on the edge of this void.
His promotion of the "Overthrowing the Nation" project was originally a way to reclaim the memories of his youth, an attempt to fill emptiness with madness. But now, the project had entered a long and professional implementation phase, and with Lin Na and Su Ying to worry about it, he seemed to have nothing to do.
This feeling of having nothing to do wasn't a feeling of leisure, but rather a sense of weightlessness and directionlessness. He was used to being driven by problems, and when the external pressure disappeared, he didn't know how to motivate himself.
He paced in the empty office and for the first time felt that it was too quiet.
He needed to find a new thing, a brand new, big enough "problem" to reload his idle, high-performance brain engine.
He stopped and looked out the window again. The familiar, cold concentration in his eyes began to gather again, but this time, it was mixed with a hint of unprecedented confusion and exploration in search of a goal.
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