Huayu: This director is pretty strong.

Chapter 172 Breakthrough from the Clouds, The Eastern Storm Descending on Water City

In Beijing, Chaoyang District, there is a secluded courtyard house.

Lin Shufen sat in front of a mahogany tea table, wearing a silk nightgown. Her face was completely bare of makeup, and the fine lines around her eyes were clearly visible under the light. Her eyes were also incredibly bright, and wherever her gaze fell, it was as if a lid had been lifted.

She held an old Nokia candybar phone in her hand, her thumb lingering on the keypad for a moment before she found a number she hadn't dialed in years and pressed it.

The call connected quickly, and a Russian song came through the receiver, followed by the clinking of glasses.

"Old Ivan."

Lin Shufen spoke in Russian from the moment she opened her mouth.

"It's me, Lin."

There was a brief silence on the other side, followed by a burst of rough, hoarse laughter.

"Lin! My Siberian she-wolf! You're still alive! What, you're tired of the peaceful life in Beijing and miss the wind on the ice plains?"

"Stop talking nonsense."

Lin Shufen lit a slender cigarette, took a drag, and the smoke slowly dissipated from her lips.

"I need a cargo plane that can take off today, departing from northern China and flying directly into the heart of Europe, not via regular civilian routes."

"Lin, you're insane."

Old Ivan's laughter subsided.

"You know how strictly airspace is controlled now. Flights without prior notification will be shot down as enemy aircraft halfway through the flight."

That's your problem.

Lin Shufen flicked the cigarette ash into the ashtray, her tone leaving no room for negotiation.

"I want results: two million US dollars, in cash, deposited into your anonymous account in Switzerland."

All that could be heard on the other end of the phone was heavy breathing. After a few seconds, old Ivan spoke again.

"There is an Il-76."

He lowered his voice.

"The original plan was to transport a batch of heavy machinery parts to Eastern Europe. They had just filled up their tanks at a military-civilian airport in Datong. The flight route was specially approved, passing through Mongolian airspace, crossing Siberia, and finally landing at a military airport in Verona, northern Italy."

He paused, and the soft sound of the cup falling back onto the table traveled through the electrical current.

"However, there is no heating in the cabin. If a living person goes up there, they will be so cold that even their bones will go numb."

Send me the coordinates.

Lin Shufen stubbed out her cigarette.

"Tell your captain to wait for me for thirty minutes."

After hanging up the phone, she immediately edited the coordinates into a text message and sent it to Chen Yan.

Datong, on the edge of a dual-use military and civilian airport.

A massive Il-76 was parked at the end of the runway, its gray fuselage bearing the marks of time. The roar of its four D-30KP turbofan engines pressed down on the night, its exhaust swirling up snow from the ground, which flew wildly under the runway lights.

Chen Yan and Wu Gang drove their damaged pickup truck straight through the barbed wire fence surrounding the airport and came to an abrupt stop in front of the transport plane's tail ramp.

Su Wan and Lin Qingqiu did not come along.

Chen Yan told them to stay in China to handle the follow-up publicity and security.

The rest of the journey requires neither producers nor actors; all that's needed is for someone to deliver the negatives to Venice alive.

A burly Russian man in a thick leather jacket stood beside the gangplank, looking at the aluminum case in Chen Yan's hand, and shouted in broken Chinese, "The people Lin arranged? Get on the plane, take off immediately!"

Chen Yan and Wu Gang stepped onto the gangway and quickly entered the cabin.

The cargo hold was astonishingly spacious, yet chillingly cold. Several massive pieces of machinery were secured to the floor with steel cables. There were no seats, no windows, only a few dim overhead lights. The air was thick with the smell of aviation kerosene and metallic rust-preventing oil, heavy and unpleasant to breathe.

The hatch closed, completely cutting off the outside light.

The engine thrust increased suddenly.

The two could only lean against the bulkhead, their hands gripping the securing cables, and in a strong sense of weightlessness, they followed the cargo-laden aerial behemoth as it raised its nose, plunged into the clouds, and flew toward the Siberian ice fields.

As the aircraft flew at high altitude, the temperature inside the cargo hold dropped steadily, soon falling below minus twenty degrees Celsius.

Chen Yan took off his down jacket and then took the military overcoat that Wu Gang handed him, wrapping it layer by layer around the aluminum alloy temperature-controlled box. Film is most vulnerable to freezing; once it becomes brittle, all the effort will be wasted.

He hugged the box to his chest, using his body heat to protect the thin, weak warmth.

Wu Gang rubbed his hands together, his breath forming a layer of frost on his eyebrows. He glanced at Chen Yan, said nothing, but simply moved half a step towards the ventilation vent to shield him from the most biting gust of cold wind.

A thirteen-hour flight.

There was no food, no water, only deafening noise and a chill that could freeze your bones.

Chen Yan's eyelids began to feel heavy, and his vision blurred intermittently. In a daze, he was transported back to that winter night in his past life when he died drunk on the street. But this time, what he held in his arms was not regret, but something he could throw back at them.

He bit his tongue, using the pain to forcefully pull himself back to his senses.

Italy, Venice, Lido Island.

Conference room at the headquarters building of the film festival organizing committee.

The clock on the wall pointed to 2:50 p.m.

There are only ten minutes left until the ultimatum deadline.

French producer Jean-Claude leaned back in his leather chair, slowly manicuring his nails.

"Mark, I think we don't need to wait any longer."

He tossed the nail clippers onto the table with a crisp sound.

"There's an old Chinese saying, 'to release a pigeon,' and Chen Yan has clearly given up. Harvey's 'The Abyss' crew has already arrived in Venice, and we should leave the prime premiere slot in the main competition to the real film industry."

Marco Müller sat in the head seat, his brow furrowed, his fingers tracing patterns on his pen. He stared at the prepared disqualification statement on the table, hesitating to put pen to paper.

He admires Chen Yan.

The raw energy and authenticity of that five-minute sample clip, a long-lost quality in Chinese cinema, has stayed with him ever since.

But he was, after all, the chairman, and sitting next to him were the sponsors, the distributors, and a whole set of rules that no one could circumvent.

The rules are there.

"Wait five more minutes."

"Mark Muller said in a deep voice."

Jean-Claude scoffed.

"Don't even mention five minutes, even if you gave him five days, he still couldn't fly over. Delta flights are all grounded; do you think he can sprout wings and fly over the Alps?"

2:55 PM.

Suddenly, a series of hurried footsteps sounded outside the meeting room. Security personnel shouted in Italian to stop them, their voices approaching the door.

The heavy double wooden door was pushed open with great force, the door panel slammed against the wall with a dull thud, and the hinges made a piercing groan.

Jean-Claude was startled and nearly spilled his coffee on his trousers.

Chen Yan stood at the door.

His clothes were wrinkled and stiff, stained with engine oil and coal dust, his hair was a mess, and his face was pale and bluish from the long flight in extreme cold. But his eyes were astonishingly bright, and his whole being was taut with an unyielding spirit.

Wu Gang stood behind him like an iron tower, forcefully blocking the security personnel who were chasing after him from entering the door.

Chen Yan strode into the conference room, not looking at anyone, and went straight to the long table, where he heavily placed the aluminum alloy incubator wrapped in a military overcoat.

A dull thud echoed through the room.

"Thunder, 120 minutes, rough cut of the complete film."

His voice was hoarse, but every word he uttered was clearly audible to everyone.

He looked up at the clock on the wall.

"At 2:56, I wasn't late."

Mark Muller stood up abruptly, staring at the box, then at Chen Yan, his eyes gleaming with barely suppressed excitement.

"Arrange a screening room immediately!"

He turned and called out to his assistant.

Half an hour later, in a small screening room inside the organizing committee.

The visuals on the screen were raw and unpolished, with no color grading and ambient noise in the sound recording. But it was precisely this unpolished texture that amplified the oppressive feeling of the wasteland from the East many times over.

Zhao Xiao's cold indifference to human life in the mine, and Lin Qingqiu's close-quarters combat in the office without any dialogue, only the sound of muscles tearing apart, pressed down on everyone's eyes one after another.

There are no Hollywood-style explosions or dazzling special effects, only stark reality that makes you afraid to even breathe too heavily.

When the last shot appeared, Lin Qingqiu wiped the blood off the scalpel, turned and walked into the swirling snow. When the screen went completely dark, the screening room was quiet for a long time.

Jean-Claude slumped into the chair, his back soaked with cold sweat.

His proud aesthetic of European art films was shattered in the face of this crime film brimming with primal power.

Mark Muller let out a long breath, stood up and walked to Chen Yan, reaching out to tightly grasp Chen Yan's still-cold hands.

"Chen, welcome to Venice."

There was not a trace of perfunctoriness in his tone.

"You brought a storm."

He turned around and looked at Jean-Claude.

"Tear up that statement, and 'Thunder' will enter the main competition. It will premiere in the main theater the day after the opening ceremony."

Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, USA.

Harvey Weinstein, dressed in silk pajamas, sat in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of his mansion, overlooking Los Angeles at night. He held a glass of expensive bourbon whiskey in his hand, the ice cubes on the glass gently clinking against the rim.

The phone rang, breaking the silence in the room.

Harvey answered the phone and listened to the report on the other end; the smile on his face gradually faded.

"What did you say? He's arrived?"

His voice suddenly rose in pitch.

"I suspended all commercial flights, how did he get there? Did he fucking take a rocket?!"

The assistant's voice trembled on the other end of the phone.

"Mr. Harvey chartered a Russian Il-76 military cargo plane, which landed directly in Verona. Marco Müller has already seen the entire film and immediately decided on its place in the main competition."

The crystal goblet cracked in Harvey's palm, and whiskey spilled onto the expensive Persian carpet.

He gritted his teeth and suppressed the anger rising in his chest.

"Okay, very good. He wants to risk his life, I'll play along."

Harvey threw the shattered glass into the trash can, his gaze hard and brooding.

"Notify us of all media resources in Europe to prepare to activate Plan B."

He gave instructions over the phone.

"Translate the criminal record of the male protagonist named Zhao Xiao into ten languages ​​and send it to all the judges and journalists attending the Venice Film Festival."

After saying that, he walked to his desk, grabbed a promotional poster for "Thunder", and tore it in two.

"At the premiere, I want to turn this film into a moral trial of the murderer, and I want him to never be able to leave the theater."