Chapter 442: Only a Madman Can Play a Fool Well |
Morning in Flower City, the dampness was thick enough to wring water from it.
In the backyard, eighteen plum-blossom stakes were staggered across the flagstones in neat order.
"Teacher Jiang, watch closely."
The speaker was the film crew's martial arts director, Seventh Uncle, known in the circle as "Ghost Foot Seven."
He wore black training pants, both legs thick with tendon and muscle.
Yesterday's brick-moving was raw labor, but training on these plum-blossom stakes tested the subtle unity of waist and horse stance.
"Start!"
Seventh Uncle barked, and his body sprang up like an arrow.
He twisted and turned across the stakes, his footwork light and catlike.
Seventh Uncle looked down at Jiang Ci from above. "Southern-style awakening lion focuses on leaping on the stakes. A Jie is a self-taught kid, but his base still has to be stable."
"Teacher Jiang, why don't you go up and walk a few steps? No need to be fast, just don't fall."
Between the lines, the message was clear: you can't do it.
Jiang Ci stood beneath the stakes, looked up, squinting.
In his vision, the world had changed.
[System Notice: Micro-level Motion Capture activated.]
Seventh Uncle's flowing movements were dismantled into countless freeze-frame images in Jiang Ci's eyes.
Red lines marked the center-of-gravity shifts, green arrows indicated the direction of muscle exertion,
even the force Seventh Uncle's toes used to hook the stakes was quantified into concrete data.
"Alright, I'll try."
Jiang Ci shrugged off his jacket and tossed it to Sun Zhou.
On his toes he stepped lightly onto the first stake.
Seventh Uncle raised an eyebrow. Experts know at a glance.
But that initial posture… felt a little too casual.
Sure enough, Jiang Ci's first run across the stakes wobbled.
He teetered and faltered on the stakes, nearly slipping several times.
The stunt crew snickered.
"Still too green." Seventh Uncle shook his head, ready to step in with instruction.
But Jiang Ci did not stop.
He completed the first run and immediately began a second.
This time, the wobble vanished. His steps landed precisely at the center of each stake.
Seventh Uncle's arms, once folded across his chest, slowly fell to his sides.
The third run.
Jiang Ci's movements perfectly replicated Seventh Uncle's demonstration!
"Holy—?" One of Seventh Uncle's eyes twitched.
No foundation? This guy must have been practicing childhood training in the womb!
While everyone stood stunned by this astonishing learning speed, an accident happened.
As Jiang Ci leapt toward the highest stake, his cloth shoe slipped.
"Watch out—!!!" Sun Zhou's scream ripped through the backyard.
Jiang Ci lost his balance and plummeted headfirst from the stake more than two meters high!
Below were hard flagstones!
"It's over!" Seventh Uncle's head buzzed; if he landed on his face, the shoot would be cancelled on the spot.
Sun Zhou rushed over. "Bro! Are you okay?"
Seventh Uncle also ran up, his face ashen.
Dust dispersed.
Jiang Ci lay on the ground, motionless.
The moment Sun Zhou's hand touched his shoulder, Jiang Ci popped up like nothing had happened, doing a kip-up.
He patted the dust off his chest and rubbed an elbow that was reddened but unbroken.
[Passive Skill: Body of Steel (Basic) activated.]
"Ugh…" Jiang Ci frowned at his elbow. "I'm fine."
Seventh Uncle gaped, looking at Jiang Ci as if at a monster.
He stomped the flagstone instinctively.
It's hard, indeed.
"Seventh Uncle." Jiang Ci cracked his neck. "The stakes are a bit slippery. Shall we keep going?"
Seventh Uncle's throat went dry. "Um… Teacher Jiang, can we stop for today? Don't break the ground."
…
What had been scheduled as a month of special training,
Jiang Ci finished in three days.
In three days, from Hong Fist's Tiger Subduing Stance, to the twelve-route Tan kicks, to the awakening lion's green-picking and high-stake hanging painting, he learned at breakneck speed—like a human photocopier.
So fast it made people despair.
But on the fourth day, Jiang Ci suddenly "went bad."
He stopped drilling the standard routines and started making himself filthy.
Every morning, the crew saw this nine-figure star in that ragged tank top, mixing with the set assistants.
He carried props, mixed cement, climbed eaves to patch leaking tiles.
Flower City's June sun was brutal.
Jiang Ci baked until he shed a layer of skin, his complexion changing from cold white to rough bronzed.
"What is Teacher Jiang doing?"
Seventh Uncle stood on the second floor, watching Jiang Ci squat by the roadside wolfing down a boxed lunch, puzzled. "He had the forms down—why is his fighting getting uglier? He's using those thug-style, crude punches."
Beside him, Jiang Wen held an unlit cigar between his fingers, his gaze deep.
"Because he's looking for 'A Jie.'"
Jiang Wen's voice was low. "A Jie isn't a grandmaster; he's a punk rolling in the mud. If Jiang Ci fights too prettily, the film will feel fake."
"Only a madman dares to waste his perfected skills to play a fool who can't fight."
Jiang Wen smiled. "This kid is a born acting fanatic."
…
Late at night, in the props room.
Jiang Ci sat alone in a corner.
In front of him lay a shabby lion head.
It was an old piece the crew sourced from the folk, the fur on the lion already bald in many places,
the paint around the lion's eyes flaked and faded, looking grimy and lifeless.
Just like the hapless A Jie in the script.
Jiang Ci reached out and ran his fingertips across the lion head's brow.
A nameless poignancy flowed down his fingertips.
"You want to win too, don't you?"
Jiang Ci murmured softly.
He rose and hoisted the heavy lion head above his head.
Feet slightly apart, waist and horse stance in sync.
"Up!"
The lion head shot upward.
In that moment, the lion in his hands seemed like a beast just roused from a nightmare, wounded all over but still wanting to tear its enemy's throat out.
He hopped and lunged within the cramped props room, knocking over a pile of bamboo baskets; the lion head traced fierce arcs in the moonlight.
Outside the props room.
Jiang Wen stood in the shadows, the cigar crushed between his fingers without him realizing.
He watched that dust-drenched lion dance figure and felt his eyes redden.
He pulled a crumpled little notebook from his pocket and scratched out the three words "special training."
Then beside it he wrote two heavy characters:
[Roll Camera].
…
Seventh-day morning.
When the crew assumed they'd resume tedious training, Jiang Wen grabbed a megaphone and hollered under the kapok tree:
"Departments, take your positions! Cameras roll in half an hour!"
His shout stunned everyone.
"Director, isn't this… too hasty?" The assistant director looked bewildered. "No ritual?"
"Ritual my foot!" Jiang Wen pointed at the sky. "Heaven's blessing or not, today's light is priceless! Get Jiang Ci up here!"
On the eaves.
Jiang Ci wore oversized shorts, an open floral shirt on top, flip-flops on his feet.
He gripped a half-meter cane of sugarcane.
He'd grabbed it from the props area as he passed.
"Scene one, take one!"
"Action!"
At the snap of the clapperboard,
Jiang Ci changed.
One second he was quiet Jiang Ci, the next his shoulders slumped.
"Crack."
He bit the sugarcane, peeled off a strip of rind, and with a casual "psht" spat it down into the street below.
A passing background actress nearly got hit by the sugarcane refuse.
Jiang Ci poked his head out, not apologizing, instead grinning and called out in a thick Flower City dialect:
"Look at that, pal! Never seen a handsome guy eat sugarcane before?"
That shameless rogue energy burst from him naturally.
Downstairs, Sun Zhou watched the monitor and covered his face in despair.
He pulled out his phone and, trembling, sent Lin Wan a WeChat:
[Sis, our "anti-drug ambassador" image is collapsing… Bro looks less like a Film Emperor and more like a habitual offender just out of lockup. I'm tempted to turn him in.]
Jiang Wen sat behind the monitors, slapped his thigh, flushed with excitement.
"Good! That's the flavor!"
"Keep one take as reference! Let's go again!"
All morning, Kapok Alley became Jiang Ci's playground.
He brought A Jie to life.
The leering but innocent expression he flashed when peeking at a widow doing laundry,
the pitiful scramble when Uncle Fa chased him down and beat him, every detail hit with bone-chilling accuracy.
Just as everyone was immersed in the smooth shooting rhythm,
"Dring-ling—"
The urgent ring of a phone shattered the set's peace.
Sun Zhou answered, pale-faced, and darted to where Jiang Ci had just finished the scene.
"Bro, Director Lin's call—it's urgent."
Jiang Ci took the phone. "Hey, Sister Wan, miss me?"
On the other end, Lin Wan's voice was unusually serious.
"Jiang Ci, don't joke."
"We just received official mail."
"The Busan International Film Festival Committee has officially notified us: Icebreaker has been selected for the main competition."
Jiang Ci froze. "That's great."
"Not only that." Lin Wan paused. "You were nominated too."
"For Best Actor."
"And the committee hinted—this time… it looks promising."