Chapter Eighty-Seven: He Scored Another Windfall

“Xiao Hai, did you eat chives today?” After a tender, lingering kiss, Wu Xiang of all people came out with that question.

“Huh? How did you know?” Hai Qing was still savoring that kiss, utterly unable to imagine that its taste had somehow turned into chives.

Wu Xiang made a small motion. His lips moved; then his finger went to his mouth, and when it came away, a tiny shred of chive leaf was perched on his fingertip.

“Hahaha...” The moment Hai Qing saw it, she burst into helpless laughter, nearly unable to catch her breath.

Wu Xiang did not know whether to laugh or cry. What should have been something romantic had ended like this. “Xiao Hai, you should take those braces off sooner rather than later.”

“Gahaha...” Hai Qing could do nothing but laugh. There was no need to say it aloud; that little leaf had absolutely been caught in her braces...

“What are you grinning at like an idiot?”

Without warning, Huang Haibo’s voice broke in and cut off Wu Xiang’s thoughts.

That was right—he had just been remembering that bizarre farewell kiss with Hai Qing. It had been so absurd that, without realizing it, he had smiled.

“Nothing, nothing. I was thinking about the script,” Wu Xiang replied easily, producing a perfectly plausible excuse.

“All right, stop giggling to yourself. Come on, let’s play cards!” Huang Haibo was simply too bored to sit still.

Of course he was bored. They were on the train to Yiwu, and the entire cast and crew of The Emperor Wu of Han had practically taken over a whole carriage. Flying was out of the question; that would have cost far too much.

Yiwu, the world-famous capital of small commodities, was already impressive in scale by now. In the future, online commerce would send it into even more explosive growth. To be honest, after arriving here, Wu Xiang truly wanted to stroll around and see for himself what the market that supplied cheap goods to the whole world actually looked like.

But filming came first. Before long, the group boarded another vehicle and headed for their true destination: Hengdian World Studios.

The transport had been arranged for them. At first Wu Xiang had assumed he would need to pay out of pocket to hire a car, but the studio side had been astonishingly warm and generous.

It was only a little over thirty kilometers, not far at all. And unlike the bustling frenzy it would become in later years, Hengdian was still relatively quiet, so the roads were excellent. Before long, the crew of The Emperor Wu of Han arrived at their destination: the Qin Palace at Hengdian World Studios.

The Qin Palace—yet they were shooting a Han Emperor there?

Well, of course. Was he supposed to build another palace himself?

Wu Xiang did not have that kind of capital. He was no grand director Chen Kaige.

This Qin Palace was the very same one from The Emperor and the Assassin, built specifically for that film.

And yes, it truly had been built for that movie—though the investment had not come from Director Chen, nor from that film’s production team, but from Hengdian itself.

Their ambition had been extraordinary. Just a few years earlier, this place had been nothing but barren hills and farmland, yet now a Qin Palace had risen from the ground. Before that, they had already built a replica of the Forbidden City. Wu Xiang knew even more clearly that in years to come the place would continue expanding until it became a world-class film production base and a national top-tier scenic destination.

To wrench a famous attraction out of a wasteland by sheer force, to create a city infused with the styles of many different eras—was that not a miracle?

“Hello, hello! You must be Director Wu. I’m Xu Yong’an.”

The moment he got out of the car, Wu Xiang was met with warm enthusiasm.

“Hello, hello!” The instant he heard the name, Wu Xiang did not dare neglect his manners. This was the local master of the land.

To be honest, he had never expected Xu Yong’an to come receive him in person. By this point, Xu Yong’an was already the owner of Hengdian World Studios, and his fortune was by no means small.

In those days, ordinary wages were still low. Earning one or two thousand a month was already considered decent. But businessmen in that era were often genuinely wealthy—they were the first batch to get rich. Compared with them, salaried workers were on entirely different footing.

And yet now, with Xu Yong’an showing him such respect, Wu Xiang felt almost overwhelmed by the honor.

What surprised him even more was the rental price for the location.

Do you know how much it was?

Nothing.

Truly nothing.

In fact, Wu Xiang had already known that price beforehand, but he had not taken it seriously. In later years, were there not countless scams disguised as “free tours”? He had honestly assumed this was one of those traps—free on the surface, with hidden expenses waiting to devour him. He had suspected that Xu Yong’an might be trying to fleece him. But once he arrived, he found the conditions here were astonishingly favorable.

“Our only weak point right now is lodging,” Xu Yong’an said. “There are hotels over in Yiwu, but out here we only have a few farmhouse inns, so accommodation is something I can’t really solve for you. As for meals, if you don’t mind our local cooking, we can help prepare them.”

In other words, apart from food and lodging, everything else was free.

Wasn’t that almost too good?

Had Xu Yong’an lost his mind?

Wu Xiang was genuinely curious, so he kept talking with him. A figure of this stature was someone the Wu Xiang of his former life would never have had any chance to meet.

After several rounds of conversation, he finally understood.

It all came back to The Emperor and the Assassin.

The entire design of this Qin Palace had originally been created by Director Chen’s team. The design was his, but the construction had been done by Hengdian. The problem was that now, in retrospect, the palace was at risk of becoming little more than a ghostly shell. The box office for that film had been terrible.

And because the box office had been so poor, the publicity effect had fallen far short of what it should have been. Hengdian had originally been confident: fine, they would not ask Director Chen for money, but in return his film ought to promote the place for them. Instead, the promotional effect had been practically nonexistent—if anything, it had gone into the negative.

Why negative?

Because of those muddy yellow shots, for one thing. The Qin Palace had been filmed in a way that made it look positively unattractive. This was a truly magnificent complex, sprawling across more than eight hundred mu, yet where was the grandeur in those camera angles? On top of that, Director Chen’s film had lost everything but the actors’ underwear. Chen Kaige himself might not have bled personally, but what about the investors? Did that not make the place seem unlucky? And besides, since the palace had been designed specifically for that one film, would it even suit other productions?...

All these worries added together, and Xu Yong’an had begun to fear that this enormous Qin Palace would simply rot in his hands.

It was really free. Sincerely free. All he wanted was a little publicity.

And in truth, that was exactly how it had been. Wu Xiang remembered it very clearly. In later years the Qin Palace would become immensely, extraordinarily popular. But The Emperor and the Assassin had been filmed around 1997 to 1998, and until Hero in 2001, nobody came.

Such a vast architectural complex had simply stood there empty for nearly three years. You could have planted vegetables in it, hung out laundry, even raised fish if you fancied it—no one would have stopped you. The point was that nobody came to shoot films there. By the time Wu Xiang’s crew arrived, the place had already gone nearly two years without visitors.

All you want is for us to help spread the word?

Fine. Gladly.

“Come on! Let’s go see the Hall of Unity Under Heaven!” Wu Xiang was brimming with excitement now. In his heart, his confidence in this grand and sweeping production was immense.

“Let’s go! Everyone, keep up! We’ll take a look around first!” Huang Haibo immediately took on the role of herald.

Click, click...

Over there, Ning Hao was taking photographs without pause. He too seemed deeply fascinated by the palace complex. This time he was serving as cinematographer; Wu Xiang had relied on his classmates as much as possible for this production, and he trusted Ning Hao completely.

As for the rest of the crew, they truly made a mighty procession. If each of them had been holding a little flag, they would have looked exactly like tourists from afar on a group excursion.

They had traveled all day, and by the time they arrived, the sun was already sinking westward, the hour when chickens and ducks were being herded back to their coops. The blood-red afterglow poured over the towering palace halls, and standing there amid them, one felt as though one had crossed through time into the Qin and Han eras.

“This truly is... such beauty and majesty that countless heroes have bowed before it.”

Standing atop the highest point of the great hall and gazing into the distance, Wu Xiang took in the far-off mountains, the magnificent complex of buildings, the vast empty square—and a sweeping grandeur surged through his chest.

Yet to judge the great men of the age, one must look to the present.