Chapter 17
Lin Na's silence and Liu Yifan's forced calmness during his report made the air in the studio seem to freeze like amber. Chen Feng was still excitedly muttering about "exclusive paranoia" and "extreme ego," trying to fit these newly acquired "parameters" into his still-inconsistent script model.
"No... still no..." He suddenly collapsed back onto the sofa, his head in his hands. His excitement receded like a tide, leaving behind a deeper anxiety. "Even if King You of Zhou was a complete egoist, why did he insist on using the 'lighting beacons to trick the princes' trick? This logical chain is still missing the most crucial link! Motivation! What exactly is the underlying motivation?"
Liu Yifan looked at Chen Feng, who was once again in agony, and then at Lin Na, who was frighteningly silent. She took a deep breath, as if making up her mind. She walked to the whiteboard, picked up a pen, and erased all the words that had been scribbled on.
The empty whiteboard reflected her pale face.
"Old Chen, Director Lin," her voice was low, but it carried an unusual clarity, like a beacon beam through the fog. "We may have fallen into a misconception from the very beginning."
They both looked at her at the same time.
"We've been trying to find a causal 'inner motivation' for 'King You of Zhou' and 'Bao Si' that conforms to the rules of drama. Hate, love, rebellion, compassion... we've tried everything." She tapped her pen on the whiteboard. "But have we ever considered that perhaps what Zhou Ping'an wants isn't a 'successful movie' that complies with all the rules, wins awards, and sells well?"
Chen Feng was stunned. "Don't want a successful movie? Then why did he spend tens of billions? For charity?"
"Do you still remember the contract?" Liu Yifan looked at Lin Na.
Lin Na's eyes met Liu Yifan's, and she instantly understood what she was referring to. She quickly walked to the desk and accurately pulled out the hundreds-page contract from the pile of documents. She flipped to the core terms and pointed out a few lines to Chen Feng.
"Look here, and here too," Lin Na's voice was filled with cold insight. "There's no pursuit of box office, no requirement for a public release, no ties to awards, and even... all assets and rights will ultimately belong to Liu Yifan personally. This contract fundamentally strips this film of all its commercial attributes and worldly standards of success."
Chen Feng widened his eyes, reading word by word the clauses that he had initially thought were "pie in the sky". Now, with Liu Yifan's prompts, they seemed to have become codes with another meaning.
Liu Yifan walked to the window and looked at the city below, bustling like ants. Her back looked a little frail under the light, yet remarkably determined. She remembered the look in Zhou Ping'an's eyes when he said this, the fire burning beneath that calm, almost mad, look.
She turned around, facing her two colleagues, and word by word, she repeated what Zhou Ping'an had said to Li Dingshan in the office that day, words that were almost completely etched in her mind. Her voice was not loud, but it struck the silent air like a hammer:
"Zhou Ping'an's ultimate goal may not even be to make a successful movie."
She paused, letting the weight of the words sink in.
"It's a sacrifice!"
This word made Chen Feng tremble violently, and Lin Na's pupils shrank slightly.
"Even if the movie ends badly, and billions of dollars are burned like a pile of waste paper, bang, there's nothing left..."
Liu Yifan seemed to really see the illusion of billions of wealth turning into nothingness. There was a tremor in her voice that she herself had not noticed, which was infected by that huge madness.
"...But as long as the act of 'trying to use money and technology to create the ultimate process of beauty' exists, then the money was well spent! This is his ultimate need!"
As the words fell, the studio fell into a silence deeper and more complete than before.
Chen Feng's mouth dropped open, the contract page in his hand slipping to the ground without him even noticing. The anxiety and confusion on his face vanished, replaced by a sense of bewilderment and shock, as if struck by a huge truth.
He muttered to himself, "Sacrifice... the process itself... is the goal... So, when King You of Zhou teased the princes, it wasn't to prove his love, nor to flaunt his power, but... to complete the act of 'teasing the princes' itself? He wanted the absoluteness of this 'process'? As for the outcome, whether it was the destruction of the country or being reviled, he simply... didn't care?"
Lin Na slowly closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and when she opened them again, they were clear, even tinged with a hint of awe and fear. She finally understood the pure and terrifying will they were facing. This wasn't a commercial investment; it was a modern witchcraft, sacrificing billions of capital and using reality as its altar.
Liu Yifan looked at them and nodded gently, a tired yet relieved smile on his face. "Yes, he doesn't care. What he cares about is the burning itself. And we, this movie, and even the three of us, are merely the most important sacrifices and... the executors of this grand sacrifice."
At this moment, all the entanglements and all the script difficulties seemed to have found a cruel but extremely solid foundation.
They finally touched the cold and crazy core of the soul hidden behind countless money and gorgeous projects.
The purpose of future creations will no longer be to tell a story, but to present an ultimate aesthetic combustion that is destined to be destroyed.
After Liu Yifan finished speaking, the studio fell into a brief, almost suffocating silence. The cold conclusion in her words—"a sacrifice"—was like a huge rock smashed into a deep pool, stirring up not waves but a whirlpool that swallowed everything.
Chen Feng opened his mouth, as if to refute, to find a more reasonable business logic to explain Zhou Ping'an's behavior, but he found that all conventional explanations pale into insignificance in the face of the facts Liu Yifan brought back and the harsh contract. Ultimately, he leaned back on the sofa, muttering, "Crazy... Really crazy..."
Lin Na, however, slowly straightened herself in the dead silence. The artist's anxiety and confusion on her face faded at a tangible speed, replaced by an almost cold clarity. Her gaze wasn't directed at Liu Yifan or Chen Feng, but rather at the thick contract on the table, representing Zhou Ping'an's boundless sincerity and madness.
She stepped over to the table and roughly flipped through the pages of the contract, making them rustle. Her fingertips finally rested on the clause regarding return on investment and the final disposal of the project. There it was clearly written: no pursuit of box office success, no requirement for public release, no binding to awards, and the use of funds for the project's artistic creation was the highest priority.
A few seconds later, she suddenly raised her head, a desperate fire burning in her eyes. The previous dejection was swept away, and her voice was hoarse but decisive, like a knife tempered with ice:
"What the hell are we arguing about?!"
This low roar brought both Chen Feng and Liu Yifan back to their senses.
Lin Na tapped her finger heavily on the contract terms, her eyes sweeping over the two of them sharply. "Read it carefully! It's written in black and white! He's buying the process, the 'burning' itself! He bears all the consequences and risks alone! So why are we still wasting our time here discussing why Bao Si didn't smile?! Discussing Zhou Ping'an's subconscious?!"
Chen Feng was stunned. Confusion filled his eyes behind his glasses, then a sudden flash of light shone, as if a thunderbolt had split open all the fog. He jumped up from the sofa, his voice distorted with excitement:
"Yeah! Fuck the perfect script! Didn't King Sunglasses do the same thing back then? No script, just randomly shot a bunch of footage, and finally cut a masterpiece on the editing table! What Zhou Ping'an is building for us now is a fucking real-life movie studio! Are we still thinking about things with a makeshift team?"
Lin Na took over, speaking as fast as if issuing combat orders, with an extremely rational enthusiasm that abandoned all illusions:
"Yes! That's it! Let's do it! Once the studio is built, we'll treat this as the most extravagant, no-cost footage-gathering operation in history! Saturation shooting!"
She glanced sharply at the two of them, emphasizing her most crucial advantage: "And don't forget, we have far more funding than the Sunglasses King! We also have a royal city that we can use as we please!"
She rushed to the whiteboard, fiercely erased all the abstract words like "power," "nothingness," and "resistance," and wrote four big words in red pen:
Saturation Shooting
She turned around, her eyes blazing, like a female leopard staring at its prey after being cornered:
"Listen, from now on, forget about the goal of 'making a good movie.' Our new goal is to turn every penny Zhou Ping'an invests into real, irreplaceable film material!"
"We filmed every scene we could think of—the palace banquet, the beacon-lighting tricks on the princes, the escape after the city was broken, the solitude in the inner palace... Shoot it! We filmed every emotion we could think of—Bao Si's indifference, her sarcasm, her exhaustion, her occasional trance, even her sudden bursts of compassion that even she couldn't understand... Shoot it! Every possible and impossible camera angle, every lighting change, every physical detail... Capture it all!"
Chen Feng, already fully engaged, excitedly added, his fingers gesturing rapidly in the air: "Right! Just like a scientific experiment, let's not worry about the conclusion yet, just exhaust all possible combinations of variables! Make the 'database' of images as massive as possible! Scripts? Scripts can be created from this massive amount of material later on the editing table!"
Lin Na nodded heavily, her eyes fierce. "That's right! Use absolute quantitative change to pile up the uncertainty of qualitative change! Until he burns through billions of dollars, or we can't shoot a single new shot! Doesn't he want a process? We'll give him an unprecedented, vast process!"
Finally, her gaze fixed on Liu Yifan, her tone filled with unquestionable determination:
"Yifan, your mission has changed. It's no longer about 'acting' a pre-set Bao Si. Your mission is to become a Bao Si with infinite possibilities. Unleash every aspect of yourself, every hidden possibility, completely and unreservedly in the royal city built for you! We must use this vast amount of material to burst and fill the 'ultimate process' he desires!"
Liu Yifan watched the two men, who had instantly transitioned from the depths of despair to a combative state, with a chill in his heart. This plan stripped away all sentimental struggles and empty artistic talk, leaving only a naked, contract-based, and extremely rational professional counterattack. It was cruel, but like a shot in the arm, it dispelled all confusion.
This means that she will no longer have the protective shell of a "role". She must throw herself nakedly and fully into the world created by Zhou Pingan, filling every shot with her true emotions and experiences.
A great pressure, mixed with a strange sense of relief from the entanglement, swept over her.
She took a deep breath, met Lina's eyes burning with fighting spirit, and answered clearly and calmly:
"good."
At this moment, the creative team underwent a transformation. They abandoned the futile "interpretation" and the tragic "sacrifice" and chose the most direct and frantic "action." On the golden battlefield paved with Zhou Ping'an's money, they would use his most familiar "process theory" as a weapon to launch a counterattack as a creator, an all-out war.
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