Chapter 457: Stray Dog Meets Tiger, Battle Spirit Ignites |
"Lighting! Push the main light down! I want shadows that feel like a knife pressed against your throat!"
Jiang Wen roared on the film set.
This was the main hall of the Tiger Gang.
To create that suffocating sense of oppression,
Jiang Wen had all the windows boarded up,
leaving only a few dim, swaying hanging lamps overhead.
"All departments in position!"
"Scene 342, Take One!"
"Action!"
severed reality from the dream of cinema.
The camera slowly pushed in.
At the center of the frame was a large throne-like chair draped in tiger skin.
Tony, playing "Thunder Tiger," sat on it.
This Thai boxing king, who had been like a human tank in the previous scene,
now sat with half his ass hanging off the chair, every muscle taut, sweat trickling down his bronze cheeks.
Because the old man sitting across from him was too bizarre, too freakish.
Ghost Claw Chen wore that yellowed, ragged vest, and his black cloth shoes were still splattered with mud from earlier.
He sat loosely in the throne-like chair, eyelids drooping, like an old man who had dozed off while sunbathing in the park.
But the aura emanating from him was as cold as an ice cellar.
Tony swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing violently.
According to the script, he was the overlord of this area, but now he had to beg this calamity-bringer to come out of retirement.
"Mas... Master Chen."
Tony's voice was a bit strained. He reached out and pushed several black leather cases across the table.
"Thud."
The cases opened.
Glittering gold bars, along with tightly bound stacks of US dollars, formed a small mountain.
Beside them knelt two voluptuous qipao-clad beauties, trembling with fear.
"Here are fifty gold bars and three hundred thousand US dollars."
Tony forced himself to deliver his lines, but his eyes dared not look directly at the old man's hands.
"As long as you nod, that fat piece of Kapok Alley is ours, half and half. Women, cash, you can have your pick."
Master Chen didn't move.
He didn't even lift his eyelids.
He treated that table full of wealth, enough to drive an ordinary man crazy, as if it were worthless paper.
Slowly, he raised his right hand.
The camera quickly zoomed in for an extreme close-up.
Master Chen extended that hand and lightly placed it on the expensive solid wood eight-immortal table.
The movement was gentle, like caressing a lover's skin.
"Tony... no, Thunder Tiger."
Master Chen finally spoke.
His voice was hoarse. "Do you think, at my age, I still need this scrap metal?"
Tony was stunned, instinctively trying to shrink back.
Suddenly.
Master Chen's murky eyes snapped open wide, a gleam of sharp light exploding like a lightning bolt.
"What I want is..."
"Crack!!!——"
A teeth-grinding sound of splintering wood exploded in the silent film set.
Wood splinters flew everywhere.
Five furrows, an inch deep, instantly appeared on the hard tabletop.
Master Chen's fingers sank deep into the wood, then he twisted his wrist and tore outward.
"Rip——"
A large chunk of solid wood, complete with jagged edges, was forcefully "torn" from the table.
Tony was scared stiff.
He watched in horror as that terrifying hand closed in front of him,
The chunk of solid wood in his palm, under a spine-chilling sound of compression, turned into a pile of fine sawdust, sifting down.
How the hell was that a human hand?!
If that grabbed someone's skull...
Tony felt his scalp go numb. That primal fear of a creature encountering its natural predator
made him completely unable to control his expression. His entire face twisted in distortion.
"What I want is blood."
Master Chen patted the sawdust off his hands, his tone as calm as if he were discussing what to have for dinner. "The blood of a master."
Behind the monitor.
"Great!!!"
Jiang Wen slapped his thigh in excitement, almost crushing the walkie-talkie in his hand.
"That's so fucking real! Did you see that? Did you see Tony's expression? That's real fear! You can't act that!"
"Camera! Give me a close-up! Shove it in his face! I want to see the sawdust even in his fingernails!"
Jiang Wen was possessed, the bloodshot veins in his eyes jumping with excitement.
This was the tension he wanted.
A kind of absolute oppressive force brought about by sheer physical power, no special effects needed.
Standing behind Jiang Wen, Jiang Ci was holding the prop butcher knife in his hand.
He didn't say a word.
He just stared intently at the scene on the monitor.
At this moment, he wasn't the dazzling Film Emperor on the red carpet. He was A Jie.
A Jie, who had been rolling in the mud pit of Kapok Alley.
Jiang Ci felt goosebumps rise on his back. The hand holding the knife trembled slightly.
It wasn't fear.
It was excitement.
It was the madness of a stray dog meeting a real tiger on the street,
knowing it will die, yet still unable to stop the urge to lunge and bite for the throat.
"Gulp."
Old Zhang, the head of the props team, swallowed hard,
staring in anguish at the ruined table on the screen, and whispered in lament,
"That was my old Qing Dynasty rosewood... One claw swipe, and thirty-eight thousand gone..."
"Thirty-eight thousand?"
Jiang Wen didn't turn around, staring at the screen with a cold smile,
"Worth it!" Jiang Wen still didn't turn around, staring at the screen,
"Just for this shot, for this genuine energy, all my previous frustrations were worth it!"
"This is fucking cinema! This is the ghostly aura squeezed out of the human spirit!"
"Cut!"
Jiang Wen finally called the stop.
At that moment, the coagulated killing intent on the set dissipated slightly.
"Whoosh..."
Tony, as if just pulled from the water, slumped limply onto the tiger-skin chair, gasping for breath.
He looked at the old man across from him, who had reverted to his half-dead state, his eyes filled with awe.
At that moment just now, he genuinely thought the old man would kill him.
"Master Chen, your hands... brilliant!"
Jiang Wen ran over, offering a cigar. "That move just now was a stroke of genius!"
Master Chen didn't take the cigar.
He slowly stood up, patting the dust off his pants.
His murky old eyes didn't look at Jiang Wen.
Instead, they looked past the crowd, through layers of equipment, and precisely landed on the shadow behind the monitor.
Jiang Ci was standing there.
Master Chen squinted, revealing a cruel smile.
He raised that hand still covered in sawdust and, facing Jiang Ci's direction, made a grabbing motion in the air.
Jiang Ci silently walked back to the rest area and frantically started doing push-ups,
growling with each rep, as sweat gradually soaked the floor.