Huayu: This director is pretty strong.

Chapter 164 Night in the Slaughterhouse, Cold-Blooded Knife

The Daxing pig slaughterhouse is located in the outskirts of Beijing.

Two o'clock in the morning.

The strong smell of blood mixed with the sour odor of fermenting offal filled the more than 100-square-meter cold chain workshop.

The exhaust fan overhead emitted a dull hum, and the surface of the incandescent light bulb was covered with a greasy, dark red layer.

Lin Qingqiu, wearing a heavy black waterproof latex suit and knee-high rubber boots, stepped on the edge of a drainage ditch filled with blood and bits of flesh.

She held a 30-centimeter-long boning knife in her hand, the blade gleaming coldly under the light.

Half of a live pig, freshly plucked, hangs upside down on an iron hook in front of me.

"The point of force application is incorrect."

Chen Yan stood three meters away, his hands in the pockets of his black windbreaker, his gaze fixed on Lin Qingqiu's taut right shoulder.

Lin Qingqiu didn't stop. He flipped his wrist, and the tip of the knife went into the gap in the pig's ribs, slicing downwards with force.

The blade sliced ​​through fat and muscle with a dull ripping sound, and blood splattered onto the front of her latex suit.

She gritted her teeth, a fierce look in her eyes, and her breathing was heavy.

Chen Yan stepped forward and reached out to press down on her wrist.

Lin Qingqiu stopped what she was doing and turned to look at him.

Her face was pale, her forehead was covered with fine beads of sweat, and her stomach was churning, but she forced it down.

"You're venting, not working."

Chen Yan took the boning knife from her hand, weighed it in his hand a couple of times, and found the center of gravity.

He walked up to the half-eaten pork and said calmly, "The female protagonist in 'Thunder' spent ten years in hiding, dissecting people for revenge. For her, murder wasn't a crime of passion, nor was it an outburst of hatred when meeting an enemy. It was her daily routine. It was the same monotonous and tedious routine she went through every morning, like getting up, brushing her teeth, and washing her face."

Chen Yan raised his hand, the tip of the knife pressed against the third vertebra of the pig's spine.

"Look carefully."

Without any unnecessary movements, Chen Yan flicked his wrist slightly, and the blade slid in along the bone's texture without encountering any resistance.

He pressed down on his wrist, the blade cutting down along the spine, the cut smooth and clean, the flesh and bone perfectly separated.

The entire process took less than three seconds, was quiet, efficient, and not a single drop of blood was spilled.

Chen Yan threw the boning knife into the sterilization bucket next to him, making a crisp metallic clanging sound.

"She doesn't hate those capitalists. She's just balancing the books."

Chen Yan looked into Lin Qingqiu's eyes. "Hide your ruthlessness. I want you to show absolute numbness. There should be no difference in your eyes between cutting open a corpse and cutting open a cabbage."

Lin Qingqiu looked at the perfectly separated spine on the cutting board and swallowed hard.

She took off her rubber gloves, walked to the sink, turned on the tap, and washed her hands with the cold groundwater.

"I see."

Lin Qingqiu turned off the tap, shook the water droplets off her hands, and said, "I'll continue tomorrow night."

Four o'clock in the morning, on the national highway outside the slaughterhouse.

A mutton soup stall that operates 24 hours a day has a red plastic canopy.

A large iron pot was bubbling with milky white mutton bone soup, steaming hot.

Chen Yan and Lin Qingqiu sat at a low folding table.

Two bowls of hot soup with mutton offal and cilantro were served.

Lin Qingqiu picked up a plastic spoon, scooped up a spoonful of soup, and brought it to her mouth.

The spoon trembled slightly in mid-air, and a few drops of soup spilled onto the table.

A week of intense nighttime observation and dissection exercises, coupled with extremely bloody visual impact and muscle fatigue, pushed her nerves to the brink of overload.

She put down her spoon, hid her hands under the table, clenched her fists tightly, and tried to control the physical trembling.

A hand reached out and grasped her wrist across the table.

Chen Yan's fingers were long and slender, and his palms were dry and warm.

He controlled his strength perfectly, not enough to hurt her, but firm enough to forcefully suppress the uncontrollable spasms in her hand.

Lin Qingqiu raised her head.

Chen Yan didn't look at her. With her other hand, she picked up a piece of tripe with her chopsticks, put it in her mouth, and chewed it slowly.

"After eating, go back and sleep for twelve hours."

Chen Yan released her hand and pushed the chili oil on the table in front of her. "You're going to Peking University's Guanghua School of Management to register the day after tomorrow. Your finance class is in the afternoon. Remember, wear the Armani haute couture outfit I prepared for you. From now on, you're the chairman's assistant in charge of billions of dollars."

Lin Qingqiu looked at the chili oil in front of her and picked up a spoon to scoop out more soup.

This time, her hand was as steady as a rock.

"it is good."

She took a sip of the hot soup, the spicy flavor sliding down her esophagus into her stomach, dispelling the chill emanating from the slaughterhouse.

10:00 AM, Yanying Culture Headquarters.

Sunlight streamed into the office through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Su Wan sat on the sofa, with more than a dozen artist profiles and a pile of videotapes on the coffee table in front of her.

She was wearing a light gray business suit, and there was a faint blue under her eyes.

The subsequent financial handover of the Southern Cinema Line acquisition consumed a great deal of her energy.

Chen Yan sat on a single sofa, watching the audition footage on the TV screen.

On the screen, a veteran actor who has won numerous awards is wearing a suit, smoking a cigar, and shouting at the camera, banging on the table, performing a scene of "a gangster boss getting angry".

"It's off."

Chen Yan spoke up.

Su Wan pressed the remote control, and the screen disappeared.

This is the third one.

Su Wan flipped through the roster in her hand. "Most of the male actors in China who are between fifty and sixty years old, have box office appeal, and whose acting skills are widely recognized are listed here. You didn't find any of them to your liking."

Chen Yan leaned back on the sofa and picked up the bottled water on the table and turned it on.

"They're playing gangsters, not capitalists."

Chen Yan took a sip of water. "Roaring, smashing things, smoking cigars, and being surrounded by bodyguards. This is a stereotype left by Hong Kong movies from the 1990s. Real coal bosses, real financial tycoons, never do it themselves."

Chen Yan pointed to the blacked-out television screen.

"The protagonist Zhao Xiao in 'Thunder' can be a benevolent elder, donating five million yuan to Project Hope at a charity gala one second, and casually ordering his men to dump several miners demanding unpaid wages into an abandoned mine shaft the next. He cannibalize people without shedding blood. These actors' performances are too contrived; they're used to showing the audience 'I'm bad.' What I want is that kind of underlying character who takes evil for granted."

Su Wan closed the roster and rubbed her temples.

"If we don't choose from these top-tier actors, then we can only look for veteran actors with stage experience but no box office appeal. But Director Chen, we're going to Venice. Without a sufficiently charismatic male lead to carry the film, the European selection committee won't even have the patience to watch it."

Chen Yan put down the water bottle and tapped his fingers lightly on his knee.

"What did Zhou Zhengming say?"

Chen Yan asked.

Zhou Zhengming, a Grand Slam winner of Chinese film awards, is 55 years old. His acting is restrained and profound, and he was Chen Yan's first choice for the male lead.

Two weeks ago, Yan Ying had already submitted the script, and the agent gave excellent feedback, even verbally agreeing to the schedule.

Su Wan's expression turned somewhat unpleasant.

She pulled a fax from the bottom of the pile of documents and handed it to Chen Yan.

"I was just about to report this to you."

Su Wan lowered her voice, "This morning, Zhou Zhengming's agency sent a formal letter. They declined the offer for 'Thunder'."

Chen Yan took the fax and glanced at it.

The official excuse was scheduling conflicts and health reasons.

The red secure phone on the desk rang at that moment.

Chen Yan walked over and picked up the receiver.

"Chen Yan".

Pierre's voice came from across the ocean, tinged with obvious fatigue: "Harvey has made his move. He's much faster than we anticipated."

Chen Yan looked at the traffic outside the window: "Be more specific."

"He bribed two key members of the Venice Film Selection Committee. What's more troublesome is that he's using Hollywood resources to undermine your project."

Pierre quickly added, "I just received word that Miramax, through their agents in Asia, has offered one of your top male actors a Hollywood A-list production deal. There's only one condition: he's forbidden from filming any Chinese-language films that might be competing in Venice."

Chen Yan's gaze fell on the fax in his hand announcing his refusal to perform.

"I see."

Chen Yan hung up the phone.

He tossed the fax onto his desk and turned to look at Su Wan.

"It's not a scheduling conflict."

Chen Yan's voice was completely flat. "Harvey used Hollywood's bargaining chips to buy our male lead."