299: Chapter 299 You want a knife? Here you go.

Lin Que's gaze moved past the character "Guo" in the email's subject line, and he double-clicked the mouse.

The body of the email finished loading.

Densely packed Song-style characters filled the entire screen, devoid of even a single polite pleasantry.

Director Guo Changhe's writing style was exactly like his filmmaking—

the structure was rigid, he didn't waste time on idle chatter, and every line cut straight to the point.

The email was divided into two halves.

The first half discussed the preparation progress, noting that the third round of script refinements had concluded.

Director Guo Changhe had marked the changes in the attachment, which were mainly concentrated on the narrative tension of the first six episodes and the dialogue density of key rival scenes.

There weren't many places where the blade was applied, but every cut stripped the bone clean.

Scrolling down, the results of the location scouting were finalized, with a total of three core filming locations.

The first was a century-old alley in the old city district, known in industry slang as "Ghost Alley."

It was a narrow path specifically used for storing coffins during the Republican era. The blue brick walls on either side were less than two meters apart, and even in broad daylight, not a single ray of sunlight could be seen inside.

The second was on the edge of the southern industrial zone—an old funeral parlor abandoned for thirty years.

It was surrounded by the broken walls and ruins of unfinished factory buildings, overgrown with wild weeds.

The third was an abandoned hospital in the suburbs.

A three-story structure with mottled, peeling walls and corridors paved with 1980s-style terrazzo. The creaking sound of footsteps would echo up through the lightwell.

Below the text was a string of compressed files.

He clicked open the folder for the art concept maps.

Over thirty JPEG images popped up one by one.

The first was the panoramic setting for Ghost Alley.

Puddles had accumulated on the bluestone road, reflecting a ghastly white light.

The eaves of the old houses on both sides overhead nearly collided, tightly pinching that sliver of sky.

The Door God New Year pictures at the base of the walls were half-eaten by mold; the remaining half-face glared with wide-open eyes, while the other half was bare black brick.

the color tones were pushed to the limit. It was the kind of "pitch black to the end" filter used by cheap web movies to hide flaws, but the palette was mixed with a large amount of grayish-green.

It carried that rotten smell of mold growing in the corners of walls during the southern rainy season.

He zoomed in on a section.

At the end of the alley stood an old-fashioned street lamp. Beneath its rust-pierced lampshade stood a deformed humanoid silhouette.

The outlines were deliberately feathered, hovering on the borderline between "living thing" and "dead thing."

The second image was the mortuary room of the funeral parlor.

Rusty iron gurneys were lined up, covered with white sheets.

The texture of the folds in the cloth was handled exquisitely, locally presenting a sense of expansion as if pushed up by an internal foreign object.

Yet, when you followed the light source and looked closer, there was nothing underneath.

The entire room had only a single half-open Venetian blind providing the main light source.

Deathly white pillars of light sliced across the floor, and the shadow zones between the bands of light were so thick they seemed inseparable.

The third image was the long corridor of the abandoned hospital.

A long string of muddy footprints was imprinted on the mottled terrazzo floor.

They led from far to near. From behind a load-bearing wall at the end of the corridor, half a body peeked out, its gender indistinguishable.

After going through all thirty-plus images, there wasn't a single pool of blood, not one actual corpse, and not even a decent horror-style ghost face shown.

The horror relied entirely on compositional imbalance and light source suppression.

Places that should be dark were unapologetically black; places that should have light only leaked a sliver, just enough to hook your optic nerves while keeping the full picture obscured.

Lin Que's fingers tapped on the desk.

It was done.

The art team under Director Guo Changhe had truly grasped the trump card of soul ferry.

The mundane life of the living and the Underworld path of the dead were stirred together in one pot to simmer—that was the core texture.

In the alley, there was both the breath of life and the remnant paintings of Door Gods.

Beside the mortuary table sat a tea mug left unfinished by a staff member.

The aura of the living and the aura of ghosts had to be in the same frame.

This show didn't rely on jump scares, but on that cicada-wing-thin, desolate warmth at the boundary between Yin and Yang.

Closing the image viewer, his gaze switched back to the body of the email.

The fingers tapping the desk stopped.

The second half of the email: The casting proposal list.

Five people. Their resumes were categorized behind their names: representative works, schedule availability, starting salary, number of active fans across the web, and commercial conversion rating.

He scrutinized them one by one.

Five people were listed.

Zhou Xuan, the male lead of a hit historical idol drama, with over thirty million fans across the web, starting at 800,000 per episode.

Li Zichen, the center of an idol survival show group, who had been forcing his way into TV dramas for the past two years, starting at 600,000 per episode.

Gu Chen, a rising star in the traffic-tier, who made his name in sweet campus dramas, starting at 700,000 per episode.

Shen Yi, the slightly more reliable one among this bunch, a traffic-monetization type among the acting-powerhouse class. His looks were too righteous, starting at 700,000 per episode.

The last one was Zhao Mingyu.

An apprentice brought up by the old veterans of the theater, one of the few among his peers with real texture.

Unfortunately, Director Guo had added a note in red: His schedule has a serious exclusivity agreement; it will be extremely difficult to secure him.

He scrolled back up.

This group of candidates all suffered from the same flaw: they were too meticulous.

Their skin was maintained to perfection, and even the curvature of their smiles was calculated by expression management classes.

Their heads were covered in the traces of meticulous grooming by their management teams, and when they opened their mouths, you could see eight shining porcelain veneers.

In contrast, consider Zhao Li.

What was his style?

An old veteran who had rolled and crawled through the path of Yin and Yang.

This man held a Soul-Hooking Gun in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth, and his eye sockets were always filled with the dark circles of someone who hadn't seen daylight for years.

Cold-blooded, a bastard, prone to banter,

but when holding a bowl of wontons under a streetlamp on a midnight street, he could reveal a tiny bit of warmth that a living person shouldn't have.

That kind of roughness and street-wise aura that flowed from the gaps in his bones

wasn't something a traffic star could bring to life just by sitting in front of a makeup mirror and drawing on some dark circles.

The five on the list, if they put on Zhao Li's black trench coat, their very frames would collapse.

His gaze continued downward, landing at the end of the email.

Director Guo Changhe's writing rhythm changed.

The crisp short sentences from the first half were gone, replaced by a mix of long and short sentences, and the frequency of transitional conjunctions spiked.

"Regarding the candidate for the role of 'Zhao Li,' there is an objective situation that I need to inform you of truthfully."

"Chen Chengrui, the son of Chairman Chen of Changfeng Capital, has recently expressed strong interest in this role through various channels.

According to internal news, his management team has already had multiple rounds of informal contact with the project producer, President Liu.

President Liu's attitude toward this matter... is somewhat ambiguous."

"Judging solely from a director's perspective, the role of 'Zhao Li' has extremely high requirements for an actor's gloomy aura and explosive power. This is definitely not something that can be compensated for simply by bringing investment into the production.

But at the moment, the pressure exerted from the investor level cannot be underestimated. My personal say is not enough to withstand the maneuvering of all parties alone."

"Based on this, I earnestly request that you, as the original author, provide clear guidance on the core casting.

Your attitude will be my most weighty bargaining chip in the subsequent multilateral negotiations."

After reading the last line of text, he pushed the mouse away.

Leaning back against the chair, his gaze fell on the air conditioning vent on the ceiling.

"Prince Chen." Chen Chengrui.

This name wasn't obscure in the circle.

The only son of the head of Changfeng Capital, a standard crown prince of the Beijing Circle.

Two years ago, he was idling about and spent money to buy a micro-movie nomination at a fly-by-night film festival,

and since then, he had welded the tag of "up-and-coming actor" onto his Microblogging platform certification.

As for how much acting skill he actually had, Lin Que hadn't seen any of his work, so he couldn't draw a conclusion.

But the inner workings were clear as day.

When someone like this was stuffed into a film crew, the extras they brought along were definitely more than just an actor parachuted in.

What came with them was the spread of the investor's will,

the invisible surrender of the right to speak on the script, and the capital erosion of the entire art team and narrative pace.

Director Guo Changhe's email was polite in its phrasing, lowering his stance to the minimum.

Translated into plain English, it meant one thing: The producer wants the investor's money, and I can't hold out anymore...

The author had a right of veto; this was the trump card held in hand when the copyright gambling agreement was signed.

Director Guo Changhe was trying to borrow a blade to kill someone.

True enough.

They were grasshoppers on the same string. The gambling agreement was signed; if the film was ruined, no one would benefit.

The investors wanted to force someone in and ruin the show, and the director didn't want to compromise,

so he could only bring out the original author, the ace card, to hold down the fort.

He pulled his phone from the drawer and unlocked the screen.

His fingertip flipped through the contact list, stopping on a contact labeled "Director Guo."

Lin Que propped his legs up on the desk, shifted into a comfortable position, and pressed the call button.

Want a blade? Here it is.

...