“So, how are things going on your end?”
After a moment of thought, the director picked up his phone, opened the group chat, and sent that very question.
As soon as the message appeared, replies came flooding in:
“Everything’s fine. Under my control, public opinion online has almost everyone boycotting Jiang Nian and Flying Swords of Dragon Gate.”
“As for the theaters, we pooled our resources and bribed the people at Wanda to pull Flying Swords of Dragon Gate from their screens.”
“We’ve also greased the wheels with the media. Right now, it’s all slander—no one’s doing any damage control.”
“And so on and so forth.”
Messages of all kinds kept popping up.
While the flood of information was overwhelming, the names attached to each group member were enough to make anyone uneasy.
Because almost all of them were directors in the industry!
The Spring Festival box-office season is the peak traffic period of the entire year—bar none.
Whether it’s the elderly, children, or the overworked office drones, everyone is on holiday during this time, finally getting some rest.
And when people rest, they get bored. When they’re bored, they look for entertainment and distractions.
Movies, which easily run for an hour or two, are naturally one of the best options.
Just imagine: millions—or even tens of millions—of people with nothing better to do flocking to the cinemas. How much profit would that generate?
Because of this, competition during the Spring Festival slot is fierce!
After all, a cinema only has so many screens.
Your film needs to be shown, and so does his.
You can’t exactly screen two different movies in the same theater at the same time.
So, scheduling and allocation become inevitable.
And when it comes to scheduling, theaters will naturally prioritize big-budget films from major directors, screening them non-stop to maximize revenue.
Clearly, judging by the current situation,
setting aside foreign films,
the two biggest contenders for this year’s Spring Festival box office are Zhang Yimou’s The Flowers of War and Tsui Hark’s Flying Swords of Dragon Gate.
The former is a work by a national treasure of a director—quality is practically guaranteed.
The latter is the country’s very first 3D IMAX wuxia film.
Both are bound to secure massive screening allocations.
Under normal circumstances,
the other directors releasing films during the Spring Festival might just chalk it up to bad luck, grit their teeth, and swallow their losses.
But now, with Jiang Nian’s incident, everything has changed.
You see, audiences have always held celebrities to a very high standard.
Make a minor mistake, lose your temper, or even just start dating someone, and you can end up trending on social media for all the wrong reasons.
Let alone Jiang Nian, who was accused of the most serious offense—”murder”!
This golden opportunity immediately caught the attention of the other directors.
They quickly joined forces to go after Flying Swords of Dragon Gate,
hoping to crush it and split its screen time among themselves.
But now…
“How are things on your end?”
In the group chat, someone couldn’t help but ask, noticing that the director had gone quiet for a while after his initial question.
The director paused for a moment, then honestly laid out his situation: “I reported it to the SARFT, but they came back saying the complaint was invalid.”
His response immediately sparked confusion from the others: “Invalid?”
“Yeah! And my reason for reporting was Jiang Nian’s alleged murder, but it got rejected. Now I seriously suspect that this whole thing might not be what we thought it was.”
The director typed out those words with a grim expression.
In an instant, the once-lively group chat fell silent.
Because none of them were fools.
They all understood exactly what it meant when even such a seemingly solid accusation got shot down.
Could it be that Jiang Nian held so much sway that he could simply ignore this matter and make it all go away?
“Should we keep going?”
After a long pause, someone asked in the group chat.
But no one answered.
The reason they’d been bold enough to make these moves was that they were banking on the authorities stepping in to ban Flying Swords of Dragon Gate anyway. They were just speeding up the process.
But now, judging by the looks of things…
“Let’s just take it one step at a time.”
“We’re in too deep to turn back now.”
“Maybe the police haven’t closed the case yet, and the SARFT hasn’t received the official notice.”
The director tried to rally himself with that reply. But just moments after he sent it—
“Ring-ring-ring—”
“Ring-ring-ring—”
A sharp, urgent ringtone cut through the air.
It was a call from the man he’d sent to cause trouble.
The director answered: “Hello? What now?”
The voice on the other end was panicked: “Di-di-di-director! S-s-something’s happened!”
“What happened?”
“Ji-Jiang Nian! He actually showed up at the scene!”
“What did you say?”
At this very moment, at the filming site of Flying Swords of Dragon Gate,
everyone was absolutely dumbfounded as they watched Jiang Nian—fully made up—walk calmly from backstage onto the stage.
They stared blankly at the figure before them, jaws dropped, eyes wide, faces etched with sheer disbelief.
Jiang Nian wasn’t surprised by their reaction.
He simply walked unhurriedly to the microphone, clasped his hands behind his back, and stood tall, looking down at the audience with a cold smirk:
“Weren’t you all just clamoring to see this eunuch of the Imperial Factory?”
“Well? Now that I’m here, why so quiet all of a sudden?”
The moment people laid eyes on Jiang Nian, they were instantly reminded of the photos that had been circulating online over the past few days.
After a brief, stunned silence, the entire venue erupted into chaos!
“Holy crap! It’s you! Jiang Nian?!”
“No way, dude! Weren’t you supposed to be arrested?! How the hell are you here?!”
“What the hell is going on?! Why did the police let him go?!”
“I was just joking earlier! I have so much respect for you—really, I do!”
“Same here! As long as you don’t kill me, I’ll watch this movie even if I have to sell everything I own. Please, I’m begging you!”
“So that was all fake news?”
“…”
The place was in complete disarray.
But most of the people were joking around and being ridiculous—they weren’t actually scared of Jiang Nian. After all, if he could appear in public like this, there was obviously more to the story.
Jiang Nian wasn’t upset either. He just stood there on stage, beaming at the crowd.
But a few individuals in the audience clearly had uneasy expressions and started to slip away.
Thud!
With a dull thud, someone coming in from outside collided head-on with one of them.
The man let out an “Ouch!” and stumbled back, ready to curse—but the moment he laid eyes on the crisp black police uniform, the profanity died in his throat.
Quickly changing his tone, he blurted out, “Officer! You’ve arrived just in time! Did Jiang Nian escape from the station? Go catch him, quick!”
With that, he pointed frantically at Jiang Nian, who was still standing on stage, his face alight with excitement.
Seeing this, the police officer who had just arrived was momentarily speechless.
Then he patted the man on the shoulder with a smile and said, “Sir, please don’t panic. We’ll take care of it.”
With that, he and his colleagues looked at Jiang Nian and strode purposefully toward him.
