UGB Chapter 343: My 500 million special effects can't beat Jiang Ci's single tear!
Chapter 343: My 500 million special effects can't beat Jiang Ci's single tear!
Chapter 343: My 500 million special effects can't beat Jiang Ci's single tear!
The boy holding the autograph book was still standing dumbfounded in the exit corridor.
The surrounding jeers finally snapped him out of his daze. He looked down at the flamboyant signature scrawled across the page, then looked up at Jiang Ci's retreating back. His face flushed, then paled.
Finally, he clutched the book tightly to his chest, muttering softly into the empty air.
"Towel it is, then…"
2:00 AM.
The capital, Universal Studios Center, IMAX theater.
The end credits finished rolling, and the house lights came on.
The theater was deathly quiet, completely unlike the usual lively post-screening bustle.
The audience members remained in their seats, unmoving.
A few seconds later, someone finally stood up stiffly, moving with sluggish steps toward the exit.
Their faces all wore the same look of bewildered emptiness.
Without exception, everyone held one or several thoroughly soaked tissues crumpled in their hands.
A young girl walking at the front suddenly stumbled, her legs giving way, nearly collapsing to her knees before her companion swiftly caught her.
"Are you okay?"
The girl shook her head, opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Tears began to fall once more.
The cleaning lady, pushing her cart in, froze at the sight.
After over a decade in this job, she had never seen a post-screening crowd resembling a collective funeral procession.
She bent down, sweeping out a pile of drenched tissues from under a row of seats, and even a power bank whose casing had been crushed.
The lady straightened up, watching a young man at the exit who needed two people to support him just to walk. She couldn't help but pick up her walkie-talkie.
"Hello, security? At Theater 1… we might need to call an ambulance. An audience member has cried themselves into a state of collapse."
Early the next morning.
Spark Media, President's Office.
Lin Wan hadn't slept all night, with heavy dark circles under her eyes.
Her phone hadn't stopped vibrating since the premiere ended last night, and now it was shaking at a frequency that seemed about to break.
She ignored it, her entire focus captured by the glaring number on her screen—the real-time box office figures just sent by the cinema chain.
Opening day box office: 130 million.
This number had directly crushed the single-day box office record for live-action fantasy films in Chinese film history.
Lin Wan's personal phone rang. It was the manager of the capital's largest cinema chain.
"Director Lin! Save me!" The voice on the other end was both fawning and frantic.
"Screening slots! We don't have enough slots! The audience crashed our ticketing system! I don't care, you have to get Jiang Ci out here for promotional tours today!"
Lin Wan hung up directly.
She rubbed her throbbing temples and opened Weibo.
At the top of the trending list, one hashtag dominated the view: #YeChen'sDeath#
Following the hashtag were three deep, purple "Explosive" tags.
Clicking in revealed a massive, digital mourning scene.
The top trending post read: "Zhang Mouyi, are you asleep? I can't sleep from crying! The moment I close my eyes, I see Ye Chen falling!!"
Below it were tens of thousands of comments.
"I cried so hard my mom thought I'd been scammed and rushed in asking how much money I'd transferred."
"Who understands? I'm a 300-pound tough guy, crying so hard in the theater I started hiccuping, and the girl next to me handed me half a pack of tissues."
"Don't even mention it. The cleaning lady at the cinema looked at me like I was some kind of trash."
On Douyin, a challenge titled "Before & After Watching the Movie" went viral across the entire internet within just a few hours.
The videos showed countless young people walking into the cinema, full of vigor and spirit.
Before entering: makeup flawless, giving a peace sign to the camera, smiling brightly.
After exiting: everyone's makeup cried into a mess, eyes vacant, faces ashen, some even being carried out by friends.
"Don't go watch it… listen to me… it'll kill you…"
This stark contrast successfully piqued the curiosity of all onlookers.
Meanwhile, a WeChat group named "Chinese Directors Passionately Roasting Each Other" exploded.
A certain commercial film big-shot director: "I burned through five hundred million in special effects, and my box office gets utterly crushed by a single tear from Jiang Ci! Who the hell can I reason with about this?!"
Another Lunar New Year film director: "I just got a call! The cinemas cut half my screening slots, giving them all to 'Longing Across Time'! That old geezer Zhang Mouyi has no martial ethics!"
"Don't even bring it up. From now on, any film with Jiang Ci, we must avoid that release window! That kid is toxic! He's here to curse our entire film industry circle!"
Director Wei Song silently lurked, then sent a screenshot.
It was the official merchandise sales page for "Longing Across Time".
The one-to-one scale replica model of the Lingxi Bow sold out its entire inventory in three seconds.
The red robe, the same style as Ye Chen's, was being resold at an astronomical price.
After sending the picture, Wei Song added one line.
"Everyone, just accept your fate."
The video editors on Bilibili collectively refused to believe this fate, working through the night, swearing to use their divine editing skills to defy heaven and change destiny, to edit a HE for Ye Chen.
The result? No matter how they edited, no matter how sweet the BGM they paired it with, that sense of shattered destiny surrounding Ye Chen could not be erased.
After editing over a dozen versions, a top-tier editor broke down and posted a status update.
"Stop editing, you can't edit him back to life! The words 'BE' were written all over him from the moment he appeared."
"The more I edit, the more it hurts! I give up, I'm going to mail Director Zhang some knives!"
In the apartment.
Jiang Ci pulled open the curtains, and sunlight poured in.
He yawned, completely ignoring the ninety-nine WeChat messages Sun Zhou had sent to his phone.
Shuffling in slippers to the dining table, he leisurely unwrapped a family bucket delivery order.
The aroma filled the entire room.
He picked up a chicken wing, took a bite. Crispy, piping hot.
In his mind, the system panel was spinning like a slot machine that had hit the jackpot, numbers scrolling wildly.
Jiang Ci nibbled on the chicken wing, watching that string of numbers that was about to turn into garbled code, thinking very seriously.
This generation of audiences really doesn't have great mental resilience.
During the morning rush hour on the subway, a bizarre scene unfolded.
In the carriage, over half of the commuters sported a pair of puffy, tear-swollen eyes like walnuts, staring expressionlessly out the window.
At a certain internet company.
Boss Manager Zhang walked into the office to find a large number of workstations empty.
The HR manager ran over with a mournful face to report: "Manager Zhang, thirty-seven colleagues have taken 'emotional wellness leave' this morning. The reason is surprisingly consistent—'Watched a movie last night, emotional breakdown, need leave today to recover…'"
Manager Zhang slammed the table in anger. "What movie has this much power?!"
To get to the bottom of this, that afternoon, he booked out an entire theater, taking all employees who hadn't taken leave for a collective movie viewing.
Two and a half hours later.
The movie ended, lights came on.
Employees were crying, slumped over. Sitting in the front row, Manager Zhang was clutching the HR manager's arm, crying like a 300-pound child.
"My Ye Chen… how could he just die… wu wu wu…"
Su Qingying's Weibo, after being silent for a whole day, finally updated.
No long essay, no promotional schedule.
Just one still.
From the easter egg scene: A Li, wearing coarse linen clothes, drying herbs under the Divine Tree, looking up at the person in the tree, her profile showing a helpless yet indulgent expression.
The caption was only three words, but it became the final straw that broke all the viewers.
"He came."
The moment this Weibo was posted, reposts exceeded forty thousand.
In the comments section, there was no fan-controlled moderation, just an endless sea of tears.
"Sis, please don't… don't stab me with this picture!"
"He came, he lived, he loved, and then he died."
"I hate it! I hate that there are no 'what ifs'!"