Hong Kong films: From street thugs to Hong Kong financial tycoons

Chapter 121 A Super Fleet That Deceived the World, A Blind Box Bomb Planted for the Whole World!

Hong Kong, late December.

As Christmas approaches, the cold wind in Victoria Harbour grows increasingly biting, carrying the distinctive salty smell of the sea, scraping against one's face like a knife.

Deep Water Bay, Hong Kong's largest international container terminal, was brightly lit at 2 a.m., while the rest of the city was asleep. It was daytime.

Dozens of giant bridge cranes, each hundreds of meters tall, resembled steel behemoths, emitting deafening mechanical roars.

The intense beams of searchlights intertwined to form a network of light, illuminating the entire port like an alien base from a science fiction movie.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

The heavy containers were placed steadily on the deck of the ocean-going freighter, making a sickening metallic clanging sound.

Wang Pangzi was wrapped in a thick military overcoat, with a comical red scarf around his neck, making him look like a round penguin.

He stood behind the windbreak at the dock, holding a steaming cup of milk tea, but his eyes were fixed on the containers being loaded onto the ship.

"My goodness!"

Fatty Wang swallowed hard, his voice trembling in the cold wind, whether from the cold or from fear, it was hard to tell.

"Old Chen, this—this is the fifth 100,000-ton cargo ship we've loaded, isn't it?"

Standing next to him, Chen Zheng maintained his unwavering elite demeanor, wearing a pure black cashmere overcoat, his gold-rimmed glasses gleaming coldly under the searchlight.

Compared to Wang Pangzi's lack of ambition, Chen Zheng appeared very calm, but his hands, tightly gripping the thermos, betrayed his extreme inner turmoil.

"To be precise, it's the sixth one."

Chen Zheng pushed up his glasses, took a deep breath of the cold air, and his tone carried a chilling sense of oppression.

"Moreover, this only includes shipments bound for the ports of Los Angeles in North America and Rotterdam in Europe. Cargo ships bound for Tokyo in Japan and Southeast Asia departed yesterday."

"A full six hundred thousand tons of cargo!"

Fatty Wang jumped up and down excitedly, his fat face jiggling.

"My goodness! Six hundred thousand tons of related toys! If all of that were dumped into Victoria Harbour, it could fill up the entire sea! What was the boss thinking?"

"The movie hasn't even been officially released yet, and he dares to stockpile so much inventory in advance. If we can't sell it, Yaosheng Technology will have to declare bankruptcy and jump into the sea!"

"Bankruptcy?"

Chen Zheng looked at Fatty Wang as if he were an idiot.

"Director Wang, you've been with the boss for so long, don't you understand his methods? The word 'unsold' doesn't exist in the boss's dictionary. He's not selling toys, he's selling gambling instincts and beliefs."

Chen Zheng turned his head and looked at the black shipping containers bearing the huge logo of Yaosheng Manufacturing. He patiently explained to Fatty Wang how Lin Yao's business layout could be described as terrifying.

"Did you think the containers were filled with those incredibly detailed, 30-centimeter-tall action figures we see in factories?"

Chen Zheng gave a cold laugh.

"Those figurines are extremely expensive to produce and are designed to rip off high-end players and the super-rich. What's really going to sweep up the wallets of ordinary people around the world is a terrifying new way of playing that the boss invented: blind boxes."

"Blind boxes, what does that mean? Boxes for blind people to play with?"

Fatty Wang was completely baffled; in this day and age, this word was practically an alien language.

"Simply put, it's about taking those gods, mythical beasts, and magical treasures, making them into exquisite little figurines the size of a palm, and then putting them in an exact replica, opaque black box."

A deep sense of awe for Lin Yao flashed in Chen Zheng's eyes.

"A box only costs a few dollars, which is affordable for everyone. However, you never know which character is inside until you open the box."

"There are ordinary heavenly soldiers and generals inside, as well as rare, hidden versions of Erlang Shen or the nine-tailed fox."

Chen Zheng lowered his voice, as if he were recounting a devil's pact.

"Just imagine, when the movie is released on the first day of the Lunar New Year, children and young people all over the world are blown away by the traditional Chinese martial arts."

"They went to the mall, spent a few dollars to buy a box, opened it, and found an ordinary heavenly soldier inside. Would they be satisfied with that?"

'

"No, they'll buy one more, then ten more, just to complete the set, to try and get that one-in-a-million hidden Yang Jian. They'll be hopelessly addicted to collecting and gambling!"

"It was as if a thunderbolt struck Wang Pangzi's mind. He was completely dumbfounded. What kind of divine marketing tactic is this?"

This is practically exploiting human greed and curiosity to legally print money!

"Furthermore, to maintain the sense of mystery."

Chen Zheng pointed at the containers, his tone cold.

"All the goods were not only covered with black cloth, but also sealed with three layers of lead."

"The boss gave a death order: if any distributor worldwide, even the president of Walmart, dares to open a box before midnight on Chinese New Year's Day and leak the news, Yaosheng Capital will immediately cut off the supply and sue them until they're completely ruined!"

Fatty Wang watched as the massive ocean-going cargo ship slowly sailed away from the port and headed towards the deep Pacific Ocean.

He suddenly realized that this was not a cargo ship at all, but a super fleet fully loaded with cargo.

Under the cover of night, it is quietly carrying out an unprecedented penetration into consumer terminals around the world.

For more than half a year, Lin Yao neither competed for nor grabbed anything.

He slowly and precisely wove movies, arcade games, and blind boxes into an impenetrable web of death, tightly binding the entire era.

They were just waiting for midnight on New Year's Eve to fall, when the butcher's knife would fall, leaving nothing but desolation.

Across the ocean, in Hollywood, Beverly Hills, a luxurious estate.

Steven, the legendary director who holds the title of the godfather of science fiction in Hollywood, is sitting dejectedly on the floor of his studio.

Around him, there were scattered exquisite clay dinosaur models.

These physical special effects models, which he was once proud of and prepared to use in his next epic sci-fi blockbuster, now looked like a pile of disgusting garbage to him.

"F**k, F**k, it's all garbage!"

Steven suddenly grabbed a clay model of a velociraptor and slammed it against the wall. With a loud crack, the model shattered into pieces.

He grabbed his messy hair, his eyes bloodshot, staring intently at the screen of a Loongson microcomputer in front of him. The screen was still frozen on the ten-second image of Erlang Shen creating a sonic boom cloud half a month ago.

"The movement—the center of gravity—and that damn, perfect muscle contraction feedback!"

Steven muttered to himself like a mental patient.

"Even the most detailed stop-motion animations from Industrial Light & Magic make dinosaurs look like polio-stricken puppets when they walk. They lack a sense of gravity and that lifelike vitality."

"But what kind of black magic did these Easterners use? When that deity threw a punch, I could even feel the veins in his arm swelling with blood!"

Just then, the studio door was pushed open, and one of Hollywood's biggest producers, the president of Paramount Pictures, walked in with a worried look on his face.

"Steven, you've locked yourself in here for three days."

The president sighed and handed over a cup of coffee.

"I just spoke with the Japanese guys at Capcom. They went to Hong Kong to see this guy named Lin Yao."

"How did it go?"

Steven suddenly looked up, his eyes filled with what seemed like a lifeline.

"Would Lin Yao sell his motion engine, or even just license the source code of that algorithm? If he's willing to sell, we can get him to invest in Paramount!"

The president shook his head with a wry smile; his expression was even worse than if he had eaten a bitter herb.

"He neither sells nor licenses any of the underlying code."

The president's voice was filled with a deep sense of despair and helplessness.

"Lin Yao said that Chinese martial arts movements are not patented and anyone can learn them, but his Loongson motion capture rendering engine is Yaosheng Technology's exclusive industrial foundation. If Hollywood wants to do this level of special effects—"

"You can only bring the script and US dollars, go to his Tai Po computing farm, queue up, and rent his 100,000 computers and server arrays for rendering."

The president swallowed hard.

"Moreover, computing power is very expensive, charged by the second, and for every frame rendered, it takes a high industrial base tax."

"Furthermore, Yaosheng Technology retains a backup of the underlying data for all CG characters rendered using their engine."

"What?!"

Steven, enraged, laughed and jumped up from the ground.

"Is he trying to turn Hollywood into his factory? He not only wants to make money off us, but he also wants to devour all the data we painstakingly designed for the monsters and aliens?"

"This is blatant robbery, a monopoly!"

"But, Steven—"

The president looked at him in despair.

"If we don't queue up there, as long as Yaosheng Technology's movie is released on the first day of the Lunar New Year, the eyes of audiences worldwide will be baptized by that divine picture quality—"

"They will never again spend a dollar to go to the movies to see your limping clay dinosaurs like puppets."

A deathly silence fell over the luxurious studio for five minutes. Steven, as if all his strength had been drained, slumped onto the sofa in despair.

The Western film industry he was so proud of didn't even have the right to fight back in front of that young Eastern man named Lin Yao.

They don't bother making movies in Hollywood; they just built a money printing factory, locked the doors, and left only an expensive coin slot.

Pay up or wait to die.

"Book me a first-class ticket to Hong Kong."

After a long silence, Steven closed his eyes and squeezed out a sentence through gritted teeth.

"Take our Jurassic Park script with you and head to the Tai Po Industrial District to queue up."

The Hollywood myth bowed its proud head at this moment.

Hong Kong, Tai Po Industrial Area, New Territories, Top Secret Factory Area No. 0.

After operating at full speed for more than half a year, the deafening roar of the water-cooling system in the supercomputing farm, composed of 100,000 Loongson nodes, finally gradually decreased in decibels in the early hours of this morning.

Inside the central control room, Lu Qiu, the Silicon Valley genius who single-handedly built the entire Cyber ​​Martial Arts Engine, was now completely unrecognizable as human.

He had a stubble beard and sunken eyes, and he even swayed while standing, but his eyes shone as brightly as the stars in the sky.

"Boss————"

Lu Qiu pressed the Enter key, his hands trembling as he left the keyboard, his voice so hoarse it was almost inaudible.

"346,250 shots."

"19.7 million frames of ultra-high precision physical and mechanical rendering".

"The entire calculation is complete."

Lu Qiu turned her head and looked at Lin Yao, who was sitting on the sofa, still calm and composed. A tear slid down the corner of the science fanatic's eye.

"The complete 120-minute master tape of 'Primordial Era: The Great Tribulation of Gods' has wrapped filming!"

Lin Yao put down his teacup, slowly stood up, and walked to the huge monitor screen.

With less than a month left until Chinese New Year, movies, arcade games, and blind boxes—all the nuclear bombs have been loaded and are lying quietly in their silos, waiting for the countdown to reach zero.

"Lu Qiu, you've had a tough time these past six months."

Lin Yao patted Lu Qiu on the shoulder, a breathtaking smile curving his lips.

"Lock the master tape into the highest-security vault, then go to sleep. When you wake up—"

Lin Yao turned his head and looked at the dawn light outside the window.

"This world should belong to the Lin family."