This director is vindictive.

Chapter 600 You Remember Us, We Remember You—To the Audience That Never Ends

Although no one knows what's inside Chen Mo's first batch of gift boxes.

But I can't describe how much I'm looking forward to it.

After all, Chen Mo's actions have always been extraordinary.

Chen Mo stood in the center of the brightly lit stage, looking at the audience with different expressions below, and suddenly revealed his signature roguish smile: "Well, judging from your expressions, you're probably all guessing what I'm up to."

He casually grabbed a high stool, sat back, and draped his arm over the back of the stool, looking as nonchalant as if he were chatting casually at the entrance of an alley.

"Your retirement from the entertainment industry has caused quite a stir, hasn't it?"

He pointed his thumb behind him to the live scrolling comments on the big screen, "I just saw someone say—'Chen Gou's marketing campaign is brilliant!'"

A burst of laughter erupted from the scene, and several reporters instinctively raised their cameras, snapping photos in rapid succession.

Chen Mo suddenly leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees: "Let me tell you from the bottom of my heart—"

He deliberately dragged out the last syllable, and in the close-up shot, you could clearly see the cunning glint in his eyes: "That's right! I'm doing marketing! This is the last movie I'll make, so I have to do something!" The audience erupted instantly, and a fan wearing a baseball cap dropped his glow stick to the ground with a "thud."

"but--"

He suddenly raised his voice, causing the confetti at the edge of the stage to flutter down from the loudspeakers: "The marketing is real, and so is my retirement from the industry!"

This sentence was like pressing the pause button, even the live stream chat went blank for two seconds. Chen Mo grabbed the bottle of mineral water handed to him by a staff member and gulped down more than half of it, his Adam's apple bobbing violently. He casually wiped his mouth with his sleeve: "It's like you said you'd cover my airfare and accommodation. Does that mean all the benefits you mentioned before were just empty talk because of the lottery at the end?"

A girl in the audience wearing a support T-shirt suddenly shouted in a tearful voice, "Then why did you have to leave?!"

The question was like water dripping into boiling oil, instantly creating a buzzing sound in the room. Chen Mo chuckled, twirling a mineral water bottle: "Simple—"

He suddenly and precisely tossed the empty bottle into a trash can five meters away: "What's the thrill of filming compared to traveling the world with your wife?" The big screen then cut to the women in the VIP area covering their faces and laughing, and the whole audience cheered "Oh—".

"Moreover,"

Chen Mo counted on his fingers: "You guys count how much I've done in the past few years? How many movies have I made? How many events have I organized?"

He suddenly grinned, revealing his pearly white teeth: "We can't just slink away when the audience is yelling 'This generation of directors is no good,' can we?"

This remark made the reporters on the scene laugh so hard they were doubled over, and a cameraman from an entertainment channel laughed so hard his camera was shaking.

The stage lights suddenly dimmed, leaving only a spotlight shining on Chen Mo. He lowered his head, turned away in silence for a moment, and when he looked up again, the nonchalant expression had completely vanished: "So, for today's show—"

His voice suddenly became a little hoarse, and he cleared his throat: "This is both a meet-and-greet and a farewell party." His words were as light as a feather, yet they made everyone in the room hold their breath. A reporter carrying professional equipment suddenly put down his camera and secretly wiped his eyes.

"Okay, stop making it sound like a life-or-death situation. I'm just retiring, not dying."

Chen Mo looked at the fans below the stage and suddenly smiled mysteriously: "Actually, before inviting everyone, our team did something really 'cheesy'—"

He snapped his fingers, and the stage screen lit up abruptly, beginning to play a carefully edited montage:
Suddenly, a mature woman with red eyes covered her mouth in astonishment.

Because she saw her own image appear on the big screen.

Subtitle: 2011, Love is Not Blind, Shanghai Times Cinema.

In the video, she, who was very young at the time, is seen holding hands with an equally young and handsome man as they scan a QR code to collect tickets at a movie theater's self-service ticket machine.

The young woman's eyes immediately welled up with tears.

She hadn't expected Chen Mo to be so thoughtful in arranging this surprise.

My thoughts drifted back to those days. Although time has passed and the people from back then have broken up, this surprise still fills my heart.

After that, there were several more of Chen Mo's movies. Some I watched alone, some with my best friend, some with my boyfriend, and finally, there was a scene of the three of us watching the movie together.

"Zhang Shuzhen, thank you for your support over the years!" Chen Mo said, raising the microphone.

"Waaah!" The female fan named Zhang Shuzhen burst into tears.

The live stream chat exploded instantly.

[Holy crap! Does Chen Mo's team have supernatural abilities? How did they find this out?!]

[The DNA is working! I burst into tears when I saw the ticket stub for "Love is Not Blind" from 2011. My ex was with me when we watched it back then (although that bastard got married last year and the bride wasn't me)]

Tech enthusiasts are shocked: How many cinema surveillance cameras and photos from across the internet would this require? Does Chen Mo's team have an AI intelligence agency?!

This is indeed a huge project, and of course, it's impossible to accommodate all one thousand movie fans.

However, the effect was truly amazing.

Because no one has ever done anything like this for their fans before. Just look at Zhang Shuzhen crying so hard her makeup was ruined below.

Soon, the second act begins.

Another female fan in the crowd suddenly exclaimed, "Ah! It's me!"

In the video, a college girl holds up a homemade light-up sign that reads "Chen Mo Global Fan Club," leading the entire audience in laughter at the screening of "Goodbye Mr. Loser," and wiping away tears at the exit of the theater for "Dying to Survive."
[Subtitle] appears: "Lin Xiaoxia has organized 32 campus events and had 18 support signs confiscated by security guards!"

Chen Mo said with a smile, "Next time the security guards confiscate your support signs, just tell me, and I'll have my assistant give you their contact information in a bit!"

Below the stage, everyone looked at Lin Xiaxia with envy, while she was crying so hard that her false eyelashes fell off, clutching her fan meeting ticket.

The live stream chat exploded with comments again.

"Holy crap, holy crap, this is some serious pampering for fans! What could make fans happier than having their idol see and acknowledge what they've done?"

"Rich woman, kill me!"

"Chen Mo is completely disrupting the fan circle's order. How are other idols supposed to compete now?"

"He really did, I'm so moved, this is more touching than any gift I could ever receive!"

Soon, the third scene, then the fourth scene.
Then a fishmonger appeared at a market.

The fishmonger's knife gleamed coldly as he gutted fish at the market, while a faded poster of the movie "Dying to Survive" hung in the corner of his stall. He was wiping the lens with his fish-scale-covered hands.

[Subtitle] "Zhang Jianguo sells fish at four in the morning every day, but he never misses a premiere of a Chen Mo film!"

This scene surprised and puzzled many people because the man named Zhang Jianguo was a fishmonger.

She's probably in her fifties. At that age, she's still a fan of celebrities? And she didn't miss a single premiere of Chen Mo's movie.

This has left many people puzzled.

At this point, a reporter couldn't help but ask loudly, "Mr. Zhang, could you tell me why this is?"

The camera focused in real-time on Zhang Jianguo, a fishmonger whose face was etched with the marks of time.

Zhang Jianguo's rough fingers unconsciously rubbed the fan pass hanging around his neck. When the stage spotlight suddenly shone on him, this middle-aged man, who had spent years bending over to kill fish, subconsciously covered his face with his hand.

The large screen clearly showed the indelible fish scale marks under his cracked fingernails, and the four crookedly embroidered words "May the God of Medicine Bless You" on his faded denim apron.

"Old Zhang, the camera's pointed at you!"

A young fan next to him gently nudged him. Zhang Jianguo then hurriedly stood up, the sound of his knee hitting the chair echoing throughout the venue via the microphone. He hunched over, wiping his hands repeatedly on his apron, just like he would when dealing with city management inspectors at a market.

Chen Mo had somehow walked to the edge of the stage, squatted down, and handed over the microphone: "Uncle Zhang, your son."

"It's okay!"

Zhang Jianguo suddenly looked up, his cloudy eyes shining like the white of a freshly cut fish belly: "We got married last year, and my wife is already pregnant!"

He frantically pulled out his phone, and a photo slipped out from its rusty case—a young man in a delivery uniform was standing under a "Discount Pharmacy" sign, his arms around a pregnant woman, grinning from ear to ear.

The large screen then displayed a comparison image: the emaciated boy in the 2018 news report, curled up in a hospital bed, overlapped with the healthy young man in the current photo. Chen Mo suddenly turned his back, his shoulders twitching suspiciously twice.

"I'm just a rough guy."

Zhang Jianguo stammered, his cracked lips trembling like fish gills in the wind: "My son also lost all his hair back then, just like that blond guy in the movie."

He suddenly grabbed Chen Mo's hand as he handed him the microphone: "Three months after your movie was released, people from the medical insurance bureau came to the market to see me and said they had made special approval for my son's medicine to be included in the medical insurance program."

The stage lighting technician suddenly switched the top light to the orange-yellow hue of the ending of "Dying to Survive," making a puddle of water at Zhang Jianguo's feet shimmer—no one knew whether it was mineral water he had spilled or tears. A burly man carrying a camera in the audience suddenly took off his glasses and wiped his face violently, the metal frames making a crisp "click" sound in the silence.

"Later, the team behind 'Dying to Survive' contacted me."

“I’m not very capable, but people should always be grateful. I wanted to repay that kindness, but I didn’t know how. So later, every year when Director Chen’s movies were released, I thought about taking the whole family to see them, because that movie brought a new life to our whole family, so it was a festival for our whole family!”

Zhang Jianguo suddenly broke free of her hand and pulled a yellowish plastic bag from the fishy-smelling canvas bag. Inside were dozens of movie ticket stubs neatly stacked, ranging from "Dying to Survive" to "The Wedding in a Cheongsam," with the viewing date written on the back of each ticket in ballpoint pen.

"If you don't mind..."

He hunched over and shoved the plastic bag into Chen Mo's arms: "I caught the fattest sea bass for you and put it in the hotel kitchen freezer."

The applause from the audience startled the waterbirds on the shore of Erhai Lake. The online live stream was suddenly flooded with "tribute" comments, causing it to lag.

As Zhang Jianguo was led side-by-side by Chen Mo to the center of the stage, the entire audience saw this fishmonger, who had been hunched over for twenty years, straighten his back for the first time. A fish scale, still clinging to the back of his wrinkled shirt collar, looked like a fallen star under the spotlight.

(End of this chapter)