273: Chapter 273 Project Establishment

When Su Zhe's words, spoken with such resonant conviction and even a hint of obsessive madness, exploded in the corridor outside the CEO's office...

The expressions of Liu Jie, Yin Hua, Tie Niu, Zhao Xiaoxiao, and the others froze instantly.

The air in the corridor seemed to stop flowing, with only the faint "whoosh" sound of the central air conditioning remaining.

The few of them looked at each other, staring wide-eyed.

"Build... build a real one?"

Yin Hua swallowed hard, looking at Su Zhe, who had just emerged from his seclusion in the Little Black Room, as if he were an alien: "Director Su, have you been cooped up in the Little Black Room for too long? Did oxygen deprivation cause you to hallucinate?

Hollywood is filming interstellar battleship 3! It's a spaceship! It's alien mecha! What are you going to use to build a real one? Paper-mâché? Or are you going to stock up at the Yiwu Small Commodity Wholesale Market?"

Liu Jie also looked pained. She quickly stepped forward and felt Su Zhe's forehead: "No fever... Su Zhe, I know that James from Hollywood's mockery made you angry, and I'm angry too! But making sci-fi films isn't child's play; that's heavy industry. Although we had a huge hit with i am not a medicine god, we can't afford for you to go crazy like this!"

Seeing everyone looking at him with expressions that said, "The boss has gone crazy, call 120 immediately," Su Zhe didn't get angry. Instead, the curve of his lips rose even higher.

His deep eyes were currently glinting with a fanatical metallic luster. Because only he knew what kind of terrifying technological power was contained in the complete heavy industry nuclear explosion package for the wandering earth, which he had just exchanged for a full 50 million popularity points in the system's [Black Tech Blueprint Mall].

That was absolutely not some Hollywood green screen CG effect. It was the real deal—industrial manufacturing blueprints detailed down to every single hydraulic line, every micro-servo motor, and every piece of aerospace-grade aluminum alloy frame.

"I'm not crazy, and I don't have a fever." Su Zhe brushed off Liu Jie's hand and patted his slightly wrinkled shirt, his tone filled with absolute dominance: "Not only am I not crazy, but I'm also clearer now than I've ever been. Hollywood sci-fi films rely on stacking dollars, green screen cutouts, and massive post-production rendering farms. But in the end, that is just fake visual deception. Since they mock us as a sci-fi desert and mock us for having no film industry, this time, I will let them witness what true, ultimate, violent aesthetics of heavy industry look like!"

Su Zhe waved his hand and issued the order directly: "Don't just stand there like idiots. Go back tonight, get a good night's sleep, and recharge your energy. Tomorrow morning at eight, everyone gathers in the top-floor Conference Room 1. I want to show you how we are going to fight our next tough battle!"

The next morning. Jinyuan Building, top-floor conference room of Su Zhe Culture Media. Su Zhe's hardcore declaration of war on Weibo last night, "Let me teach you what heavy industry is," had already exploded across the internet. Early this morning, the entire studio staff, as if injected with stimulants, sat at the conference table early.

Take down Hollywood. Crush the arrogance of Western film capital. This slogan sounded so fiery that even Zhang Song, usually the most composed, couldn't hide the anticipation in his eyes.

Everyone sat in comfortable leather chairs with hot coffee in front of them, secretly guessing.

"We are holding 2 billion in cash flow; this is top-tier capital reserve for the Chinese Entertainment Industry." Yin Hua straightened his high-end suit tie and muttered in a low voice to Zhang Song next to him: "Brother Song, what kind of god-tier plan do you think Director Su will bring out today? I reckon it must be spending a fortune to hire a top Hollywood special effects director to oversee it, and then renting out the largest indoor green screen studio in Asia, right? Once this sci-fi blockbuster is filmed, we'll be going international!"

Zhang Song pushed up his black-rimmed glasses, his hands trembling slightly: "No matter what Director Su films, my life is his. I'd even be willing to play an alien."

Just as everyone was full of expectation, even imagining scenes of grand spaceships in their minds, the heavy double wooden doors of the conference room were pushed open. Su Zhe walked in with long strides, wearing a simple black pullover hoodie and holding a thin laptop.

He walked to the whiteboard at the front of the conference room and uncapped a marker. His wrist flicked, the writing pressing deep into the paper. In the very center of the whiteboard, he wrote four large, sweeping characters—[the wandering earth].

After writing, Su Zhe tossed the marker into the pen tray and connected the laptop to the conference room's high-definition large screen.

"Everyone." Su Zhe turned around, pressing his hands on the edge of the conference table, his body leaning slightly forward: "This is our ultimate goal. A hardcore heavy-industry sci-fi film that truly belongs to us Chinese people!"

As his words fell, a concept PPT that Su Zhe had worked on all night using the system blueprints lit up on the large screen.

The first slide cut in. It was a concept image with a strong sense of apocalyptic oppression. A huge, aging sun emitting a dark red glow, like a fiery eye devouring everything, occupied most of the frame. The tongues of fire from the solar storm seemed as if they would burn the tiny Earth to ashes in the next second.

"Background setting: Near future." Su Zhe's voice was low, magnetic, and carried the heaviness of a documentary narrator: "The sun's core is aging rapidly, internal hydrogen fusion is out of control, it continues to expand, and a helium flash is about to occur. Earth is about to be swallowed by the sun; not even a drop of water will be left. In order to survive."

Su Zhe held up two fingers: "Humanity has only two choices. Either wait for death, or escape."

Hearing this, Yin Hua subconsciously flicked his bangs and raised his hand to interject: "I know this one! Director Su, Hollywood sci-fi films are all played like this. When encountering a global extinction disaster, it's definitely all of humanity pooling resources to build a few super spaceships similar to Noah's Ark. Then put the rich, politicians, and elites inside, and abandon billions of ordinary people."

Yin Hua became more excited as he spoke, as if he had already seen through the script: "Next, a lone hero male lead needs to stand up! Infiltrate the spaceship, defeat the villain, and save the world. Although this routine is old, as long as enough money is thrown at the special effects, the audience will definitely buy it!"

Gao Lan, Liu Jie, and others present also nodded slightly. This was indeed the most classic routine of Western sci-fi films, the so-called "Ark Escape" combined with "individual heroism."

However, facing the eloquent Yin Hua, Su Zhe put his hand down. He looked at Yin Hua and let out a scornful laugh.

"Spaceships? Abandoning ordinary people?" Su Zhe shook his head, a flash of the deep, five-thousand-year agricultural heritage of Chinese civilization crossing his eyes: "Hua-zi, your thinking has been poisoned too deeply by Hollywood's narrow jungle law. That is the logic of pirates! When encountering a disaster, if you can't fight it, build a ship and run away, leaving the homeland behind without a care."

Su Zhe tapped the computer keyboard. "But on this land, in the bones of Chinese people. When our ancestors encountered floods, Yu the Great didn't build a boat to run away, but split mountains to control the water. When encountered with ten suns scorching the earth, Hou Yi didn't hide in a cave, but drew his bow to shoot the suns. When a mountain blocked the way, Yu Gong didn't move house, but had his descendants dig it flat!"

Su Zhe's voice grew louder and louder, deafening in the conference room: "We Chinese people value attachment to our native land and returning to our roots. Where home is, the roots are! Since the sun wants to destroy our home, then we will... take the Earth and run together!"

Accompanied by Su Zhe's words, the second slide on the large screen jumped into everyone's eyes with a bang. The moment they saw this picture, everyone in the conference room, including Lin Qingxue, who always maintained her high-cold diva persona, and Zhang Song, who had won the Best Actor award, all gasped!

Tie Niu opened his mouth wide, staring blankly at the screen, not even noticing that the tea egg he had just peeled had fallen onto the mahogany table. On the screen, there were no escaping spaceships at all. It was a close-up shot of the Earth from a god's-eye view.

On the surface of that frozen Earth, thousands upon thousands of dazzling, deep-blue plasma tail flames were shooting out, piercing straight into the abyss of the universe. With an arrogant, violent, heavy-metal posture, they were forcibly pushing this massive planet, sailing forward in the pitch-black, cold universe.

Take the Earth and run? These five words, added to this visually impactful image, were like a nuclear bomb splitting everyone's skull. Westerners build small boats to run away when encountering disasters. But when Chinese people encounter disasters, they actually install ten thousand engines on this planet, pushing the entire Earth, along with its mountains, rivers, and billions of lives, away from the solar system. What kind of grand, awe-inspiring Chinese-style romance is this!

"This... how to run?" Zhao Xiaoxiao pointed stammeringly at the deep-blue light beams on the screen, feeling that her imagination had dried up: "What exactly are these glowing things?"

"Planetary Engines." Su Zhe continued to flip the page. A more precise, shocking heavy-industrial mechanical structure diagram was presented before everyone. It was a steel beast so huge that it could not be described in words.

"Humanity exhausted the strength of the whole world, hollowed out mountains, and built ten thousand planetary engines on the Earth's surface, each over ten thousand meters high! Ten thousand meters, that is a Great Wall of steel two thousand meters higher than Mount Everest." Su Zhe's voice carried a cold industrial texture: "Using heavy fusion technology to convert rock into power. Forcibly stop the Earth's rotation, push the Earth away from the solar system, and sail toward the Alpha Centauri system 4.2 light-years away! This long and desperate journey requires two thousand five hundred years. A full one hundred generations of people living and dying, following one after another. This epic plan is called—the wandering earth Project!"

Dead silence. In the entire conference room, one could only hear the heavy, bellows-like breathing of everyone. Everyone stared fixedly at the steel beasts on the PPT that towered into the clouds. Looking at the Beijing landmarks covered by hundreds of meters of ice and snow, looking at the cyberpunk underground cities five thousand meters deep. They were stunned.

This breathtakingly grand worldview, this perfect fusion of the community of shared future for mankind and heavy-metal violent aesthetics, directly crushed their imagination, which had been cultivated by Hollywood popcorn movies, into powder.

"This script..." Zhang Song adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose, his hands trembling uncontrollably, his voice hoarse: "Too awesome. This isn't a movie; this is a complete world! If this is filmed, it will definitely be able to rub those Hollywood hero movies with people flying around in tights into the ground!"

Zhang Song stood up abruptly, his eyes shining: "I'll act! Even if it's a boiler maintenance worker with no lines, I'll act!"

Yin Hua and Gao Lan were also flushed with excitement, wishing they could rush into the studio and start filming right now. However, among this group of people who were giddy with heavy-industry aesthetics, Liu Jie, as the studio's chief steward and CFO, suddenly felt as if someone had poured a basin of ice water over her head. She suddenly woke up from the shock. Her face turned pale in a very short time. With trembling hands, she took out a calculator with severely worn buttons from her bag and pressed it frantically.

"Beep, beep, beep..." The calculator made a rapid, cold sound, which seemed particularly harsh in this fanatical conference room. "Bang!" Liu Jie slammed the calculator onto the solid wood table, looking at Su Zhe with red eyes, her voice full of deep despair: "Su Zhe... wake up! We can't afford to make this movie at all!"

As soon as these words were spoken, everyone who had just been eager to give it a try was stunned. "Liu Jie, what's wrong?" Tie Niu scratched his head: "Don't we have 2 billion in our account? How can we not afford to make a movie?"

"Two billion?" Liu Jie gave a miserable laugh, pointing at the concept map of the 10,000-meter-high planetary engine on the screen: "Do you know how much money that James who mocked us spent on filming interstellar battleship 3? 300 million US dollars! That's over 2 billion in RMB! And they are built on a mature film industry system, with ready-made green screen studios and CG asset libraries!"

Liu Jie was so anxious she slammed the table, her fingers trembling: "Our domestic heavy-industry sci-fi film is completely blank! Concept design, model building, CG rendering, everything has to start from scratch. Look at the things on this PPT. Ten thousand planetary engines. Frozen global landmarks. Heavy mecha. If you use CG special effects to make them in a green screen, a random ten-second long shot will burn millions or even tens of millions. This movie needs at least two thousand special effects shots!"

Liu Jie looked at Su Zhe, her eyes red, and shouted almost in despair: "This is simply a bottomless cosmic black hole! Even if we dump all 2 billion into it, I'm afraid we won't even be able to fill the price list of the special effects outsourcing company, and we won't even hear a sound. Hollywood has monopolized the highest-end rendering technology; if we go to outsource, they will definitely raise prices on the spot! This movie will drag down our newly established studio!"

The conference room fell into dead silence again. Everyone's breathing became heavy. The ideal is plump, but the reality is bony. Without an industrial foundation, relying solely on enthusiasm to challenge the most money-burning sci-fi genre in the world, what is the difference between this and looking for death?

Looking at the people who had fallen into despair and silence, Su Zhe smiled. He did not refute Liu Jie's precise cost accounting. He slowly stood up from the boss chair and walked to the front of the conference table. "Clap!" With a slap, he slammed heavily on the table.

In that instant, a light erupted in Su Zhe's eyes that made Liu Jie and Tie Niu, who knew him well, feel their scalps tingle. That was the light of ultimate stinginess that would make capitalists cry and Grandet call him master!

"Liu Jie." Su Zhe's mouth curved high, smiling like a profiteer: "You just said that finding an outsourcing company to do CG special effects would burn millions for a random shot?"

Liu Jie nodded blankly: "Yes, domestic special effects companies, relying on the fact that this is the only sci-fi seedling, their quotes are definitely sky-high..."

"Then that's easy!" Su Zhe laughed loudly, hands on his hips, domineering: "Who told you that to shoot a sci-fi film, you must go to an expensive green screen studio! Who stipulated that we must burn a few hundred million, begging grandfathers and grandmothers to find outsourcing companies to do that nonsense green screen cutout special effects?"

The whole room was stunned. Yin Hua swallowed, and a foreboding premonition surged into his heart. Su Zhe turned his head abruptly, staring at the tall and burly Tie Niu with eyes like torches.

"Tie Niu!" "Here!" Tie Niu stood straight as a reflex. Su Zhe waved his hand and issued the first instruction since the establishment of the wandering earth crew: "Go and rent me the largest, most remote, and cheapest abandoned heavy steel factory in the Beijing Suburbs. Then go to the building materials wholesale market and buy me the cheapest second-hand steel and hydraulic scrap by the ton. Also!"

Su Zhe pointed to the corner, a "nuclear" friendly smile on his face: "By the way, buy me five high-power industrial welding machines and bring them back! Didn't I say it? I want to build a real one!"