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

Deep in the mountains of Sichuan, at Yuntai Peak.

The morning mist had not yet completely dissipated, and the entire mountain was filled with a moist and cool fragrance of grass and trees.

Compared to the cutthroat, money-driven battles on Wall Street, this place is like an Eastern ink painting frozen in time.

But as soon as you get a little closer to the majestic Sanqing Main Hall, you can immediately feel the vibrant atmosphere of everyday life.

"Props team, move that bronze cauldron under the Three Pure Ones statue ten centimeters to the left. Yes, it needs to be positioned precisely at the eye of the feng shui formation!"

"Where's the smoke master? What are they doing? The dry ice was added way too quickly. I wanted that ethereal, swirling sea of ​​clouds, not the steam from a public bathhouse. Do it again!"

The famous director, Fatty Wang, was sitting behind the monitor, wearing an extremely flashy custom-made baseball cap, holding a megaphone, and spitting as he verbally berated every staff member on set.

With Lin Yao's decree granting an unlimited budget, Fatty Wang is now completely letting loose.

He used to feel heartbroken if he wasted even a little bit of film when making those cheap movies in Hong Kong that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But now? An extremely expensive Steadicam heavy-duty camera, just to capture a beautiful moment when the heroine's skirt is blown up by the mountain wind, can make the photographer do 30 takes in total.

Exquisite craftsmanship and meticulous workmanship are the foundation for success, built through relentless spending of countless US dollars!

"Cut! Ready to film scene thirty-two, 'The Mortuary Encounters a Mystery, Tai Chi Formation Unfolds!'"

Fatty Wang took a deep breath, his expression turning extremely serious, and shouted loudly, "Attention all departments! This scene is one of the highlights of our movie. The opening and closing of the Wan Gui Men's machinery must be perfectly synchronized with Uncle Jiu's movements. There can be no mistakes."

Standing in the very center of the Taiji Bagua Square was Master Lin Zheng, who was wearing an extremely expensive Taoist robe, hand-sewn by top embroiderers from Jiangnan over half a month.

Uncle Nine held the century-old lightning-struck peach wood sword in his hand, which exuded an ancient aura. He closed his eyes slightly and was quietly adjusting his breathing.

As the pioneer of Hong Kong zombie films, Uncle Nine used to film in plastic-paper fake zombies and cramped sheds, and often relied entirely on the actors' own belief to fill in the gaps in their imagination.

But today was different. Uncle Nine slowly opened his eyes and looked around.

Beneath your feet are massive, hard bluestone slabs that bear the marks of time. In front of you stands the statue of the Three Pure Ones, a deity over thirty meters tall, overlooking all living beings and exuding boundless majesty. All around you are sheer cliffs and rolling seas of real clouds.

This overwhelming sense of realism is so powerful that it requires no mental effort or belief to comprehend it.

As long as he stands here and puts on this Taoist robe, Uncle Nine feels as if he has truly become the Maoshan Celestial Master who guards the righteous path in the world and slays demons.

That Taoist spirit, which comes from his very bones, emanates from him in an extremely natural way, without any trace of acting!

"Chief Engineer Li, is there anything wrong with the hydraulic transmission system of the underground mechanical door?"

Fatty Wang turned to look at Li Qiang, who was standing to the side wearing a red safety helmet.

Li Qiang, a senior student, was still clutching the large engineering drawing, which had been flipped through and was now slightly curled.

He pushed up his dusty glasses and patted his chest with extreme confidence: "Director Wang, don't worry, this Ten Thousand Ghosts Gate is a mechanical transmission model that we hundreds of college students calculated over three sleepless nights."

"It is made of pure steel and weighs 30 tons. It has no computer special effects and is driven entirely by 16 heavy-duty hydraulic pumps buried deep underground."

"As long as I press the button on the center console, its opening and closing precision can be controlled to the millimeter level, with an error of no more than half a second!"

This is the confidence of China's hardcore engineering students: using the coldest mechanical physics to hardcorely recreate the visual spectacles in mythological movies.

"Okay, everyone quiet down!"

Fatty Wang raised his right hand and chopped down fiercely: "Action!"

"boom--"

As the clapperboard sounded, the entire set fell into an eerily silent atmosphere.

Several heavy cameras moved silently along the slide rails, locking Uncle Nine's proud and upright figure firmly in the center of the lens from different angles.

"Demon, now that you're here, why hide?"

Uncle Nine suddenly opened his eyes, and two sharp, almost tangible beams of light instantly erupted from his usually gentle eyes.

He didn't shout or yell; his voice was extremely low, yet it possessed a terrifying penetrating power capable of suppressing the entire scene.

Immediately afterwards, Uncle Nine moved, without the pulling of wires or exaggerated rolling.

He moved with incredible fluidity, his body gliding across the Tai Chi square like a dragon, his century-old peach wood sword gleaming faintly with a dark red glow under the sunlight.

"Borrowing the divine eyes of the Three Pure Ones, we can open the gates of Heaven and shatter the gates of Hell!"

Uncle Nine bit his middle finger hard, smearing a streak of blood onto the peach wood sword with remarkable force. Then, he lowered his knees slightly, exerted force from his waist, and plunged the entire sword fiercely into the Yin-Yang array eye in the very center of the Tai Chi Bagua Square.

At the exact 0.1 seconds that the wooden sword was inserted into the array's core, Li Qiang, who had been intently watching the monitor, decisively pressed the red detonation button on the heavy industrial remote control in his hand.

"Click!"

"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"

A terrifying roar, seemingly emanating from the depths of the earth, suddenly resounded from the depths of the Taiji Square.

The sound was so loud that even the loose rocks on the surrounding cliffs were shaken and fell down.

Under the ultra-high-definition lenses of dozens of cameras, the extremely flat, giant bluestone square in front of Uncle Nine, which was more than ten meters long and wide, suddenly had a very straight crack split in the middle.

Then, under the extreme physical strain of thirty tons of pure steel and sixteen heavy hydraulic pumps.

Two massive, extremely heavy metal palace doors, engraved with countless ferocious demon totems, slowly and powerfully opened to both sides, accompanied by a teeth-grinding metallic scraping sound.

Without a single CGI computer effects, this is the pure beauty of heavy industrial machinery, created at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

The moment the door opened, an extremely dense stream of dry ice, mixed with the eerie green light from the ceiling, surged out like a flood from the bottomless eighteen-story underground mortuary, instantly engulfing Uncle Nine's lower body.

The wind howled, blowing Uncle Nine's Taoist robes. He held a sword in one hand, standing before the Gate of Ten Thousand Ghosts, which seemed to lead to hell, like an unshakeable peerless war god.

"hiss--"

Behind the monitor, Fatty Wang stared at the breathtakingly beautiful scene on the screen, a scene brimming with intense tension and oppressive power that seemed to overflow from the screen itself. He gripped his thighs tightly with both hands, his breath catching in his throat.

My scalp tingled, and the tingling sensation spread from the soles of my feet all the way to the top of my head.

This is truly Eastern mythology! The visual quality and realistic physical effects are a million times better than those green screen effects from Hollywood!

"That's amazing... Uncle Nine's god-like sword strike, paired with that solid heavy industrial gate, if this movie doesn't do well, I'll twist my head off and use it as a football!"

Fatty Wang's eyes welled up with tears.

And on the edge of the film set.

"Oh my god!"

Big D, carrying two heavy baskets of red bricks and about to cross the square, was so frightened by the sight of the huge ghost gate that suddenly split open on the flat ground and the terrifying cold air that gushed out that he collapsed to the ground.

His yellow safety helmet, which was firmly stuck on by welding, slammed against the red bricks with a comical clanging sound due to the violent shaking.

"W-w-w-this...this is a movie shoot! I have this feeling that the old Taoist priest really cleaved open hell!"

Big D swallowed hard, his eyes filled with extreme terror.

As the former head of Wo Luen Shing, he used to collect protection money from film crews in Hong Kong, but when had he ever seen such a terrifying scene where a huge hole was blown open in the ground and green light was sprayed out?

Lin Yao, that devil, not only are his men skilled fighters, but even the movies he makes are terrifying, like they're dealing with biological weapons.

Just as everyone was stunned by this beautiful scene.

"Slap, slap, slap."

A very calm and composed clapping sound, full of the composure of a superior, slowly came from behind the monitor.

Fatty Wang suddenly turned around and saw that Lin Yao had arrived on set at some point.

He was dressed in a casual windbreaker and wearing sunglasses. He was standing not far away with Chingmy Yau, watching the monitor screen with great ease.

"Boss, when did you arrive?"

Fatty Wang quickly jumped up from the director's chair and scurried over to greet him.

"Just arrived."

Lin Yao took off his sunglasses, glanced at the stunning image that Uncle Nine had captured on the monitor, and nodded in satisfaction.

"The visual quality is good. The physical weight of the mechanical door opening is something that no computer effects can simulate. Li Qiang and his students' design did not disappoint me."

Lin Yao patted Fatty Wang on the shoulder.

"Uncle Zheng's acting is getting more and more amazing. This kind of slow and meticulous work without rushing the schedule is the only way to truly create timeless masterpieces."

Fatty Wang chuckled and said, "It's all thanks to you, Boss, that we have the confidence to throw money at things like this. You didn't see how we set up two hundred extremely expensive film-grade searchlights on the mountain last night when we were filming the night scene, making the whole mountain look like it was daytime."

"At the time, the villagers in the nearby villages thought it was a real divine intervention, and they were kowtowing at the foot of the mountain in the middle of the night!"

"Anything that can be solved with money is a minor issue."

Lin Yao walked to the edge of Tai Chi Square, looking down at the vast mountains below. Away from the smog-filled financial meat grinder of Hong Kong, the air here was indeed refreshing.

"Fatty Wang, don't rush the filming schedule. I'll give you six months to use every corner of these tens of thousands of square meters of real sets. Every shot must be cut to the highest Hollywood standards."

Lin Yao turned around, his deep eyes flashing with extreme ambition.

"My legal team is already cleaning up the mess on Wall Street. The underlying source code of Intel and MSI will soon be transferred to our Yaosheng Technology at a bargain price."

"The day this movie wraps up filming and is released..."

Lin Yao stretched out his hand, as if he wanted to grasp the entire world in the void.

"That is the day when our Yaosheng Group's three major sectors—technology, finance, and entertainment—officially launch a full-scale attack on the global Western hegemony."

"I want cinemas all over the world to screen the myths of the Chinese people, and I want computers all over the world to run on the underlying systems of the Chinese people!"