Huayu: Starting with Xiang Yu, the Hegemon of Western Chu

The film crew wrapped up work at 4:30 p.m. that day.

The film didn't wrap up normally because the main scene of "Shooting the Eagle" wasn't completed, so the subsequent scenes revolving around "Shooting the Eagle" had to be postponed, disrupting the overall rhythm of the film.

Luo Yifeng didn't lose his temper. He simply asked the production crew to dismantle the camera positions and then had the assistant director tell everyone to disperse.

Chen Mo finished removing his armor at 5:10.

After handing over the sample armor, he didn't say goodbye to anyone and walked towards the grassy slope outside the film crew's residence.

The base was located at the foot of a gentle slope, with several rows of prefabricated houses standing in the wind. The crew's bus was parked behind the prefabricated houses, and the sound of its engine could be heard from afar.

Chen Mo walked to the top of the gentle slope.

The sun had already dipped behind the western ridge, the sky was a grayish-blue, the lawn was bent slightly by the wind, and the air was dry and chilly.

Chen Mo stood at the top of the slope.

He didn't sit down.

I stood there for about half an hour.

He was thinking about something for the past half hour.

He was wondering when exactly he had gone wrong with his scene today.

He arrived at the film set at 5:30 this morning.

He was well prepared.

He practiced riding horses for twelve days, read the relevant sections of the "Annals of Emperor Xuanzong" and the "Veritable Records of Emperor Xuanzong of Ming" in the History of Ming, and compiled a table of all the events in Zhu Zhanji's life before he was fifteen years old.

He put on eighteen kilograms of real material armor.

He was sitting on a horse.

He faced a charge of 180 horses.

Every movement he makes is precise.

But he was wrong.

Wang Xueqi didn't speak before entering the monitoring booth, and neither did Luo Yifeng; they both let the face on the screen speak for itself.

Chen Mo stood at the top of the slope with his eyes closed.

He went over that face in his mind again.

There was no fear on that face.

There is no fear.

He played Zhu Zhanji, a character who "suppressed his fear".

He didn't act "fear".

He knew the difference between the two.

But he didn't know why he skipped over "fear" today.

The wind blew up from below the gentle slope.

Chen Mo opened his eyes.

Below the slope is a grassland, in the distance are the film crew's temporary houses, and further away are the continuous mountain ridges, with a flock of crows flying overhead.

He remembered something he had looked up.

When Zhu Zhanji was fifteen years old, he followed Zhu Di on a northern expedition. The journey took five months and covered 20,000 li (approximately 10,000 kilometers) round trip, during which countless people died.

He saw a number while he was checking.

In the twelfth year of the Yongle reign, the Ministry of War reported that 7,300 soldiers were killed in action during the northern expedition.

This doesn't even include those who died from illness.

This doesn't even include the horse.

This doesn't even include the laborers.

No one counts the number of laborers; the imperial court never does.

The army of 500,000 marched north, and the number of civilian laborers was twice that.

One million laborers transported grain along the way, but the number of those who died of illness, freezing, starvation, or fled along the way is not recorded in historical records.

He had mentally estimated the outcome when he closed the book.

It's about 50,000.

At the very least, it's 30,000.

Zhu Zhanji couldn't see these figures at that time.

He was a fifteen-year-old boy at that time.

He was just riding a horse alongside his grandfather.

He was simply listening to the ministers' discussion.

He was just sleeping in the camp.

But he will smell it.

The stench of corpses on the grain carts.

The smell of a horse that has fallen and been partially buried on the spot.

The smell of laborers who froze to death and were dragged to the roadside.

For five months, he marched through that smell every day.

By the morning he first truly witnessed the Oirat cavalry charging into battle, he had been carrying this kind of equipment for five whole months.

When he saw the 180 horses charging towards him, he was not a blank slate.

He was a fifteen-year-old boy who had been smelling the stench of corpses for five months.

That kind of fear—it's probably not the first time I've seen dark clouds looming over the city.

That kind of fear is the fear of a boy who has been immersed in the smell of death for five months, finally seeing death rushing towards him from afar.

That fear was even stronger than when I first saw it.

Because he already knew.

He already knows what death smells like.

His grandfather had been exposing him to this smell for five months.

Why did his grandfather bring him into this smell?

This is the moment we've been waiting for.

It was so that he could see with his own eyes what the source of the smell was.

Chen Mo suddenly smiled at the top of the slope.

The question he kept pondering, "What did I see at fifteen?", was asking the wrong question.

He shouldn't have started by thinking that he "had never seen it before".

He should think about it from the perspective of "having seen too much".

After being led by his grandfather through the stench of corpses for five months, a fifteen-year-old boy would likely react like this upon seeing 180 horses charging towards him.

He recognized him.

He saw that the scent had finally taken shape.

He recognized the shape as the one he had been smelling every day for the past five months.

He fears.

But he became afraid after recognizing her.

This isn't the first time I've seen something like this, and it scares me.

These two are probably different.

The first thing you see is probably big, vague, and shapeless.

Once recognized, it will likely be something concrete, with a shape and a smell.

An actor portraying the first type of fear would act out pupil constriction, rapid breathing, and trembling fingers.

An actor portraying a second kind of fear is portraying something entirely different.

calm.

Because he recognized it, he was no longer confused. But what he recognized was death. He knew how big it was, and he knew how many people around him it would devour.

His calm demeanor masked deep fear.

Chen Mo stood on the hilltop, looking at the last ray of light behind the distant mountain ridge.

He knew where he went wrong this morning.

He portrayed the kind of "calm that comes after suppressing fear".

He didn't act out that kind of "calm after recognizing someone".

Both of these states of calm appear calm in the lens.

But they are not the same thing.

It got dark.

Lights were being lit up one by one at the film crew's accommodation.

Chen Mo walked down.

He went back to his room.

It was cold in the prefab house. There was only a bed, a table, and a lamp in the room. On the table were the copy of "Ming Shilu" that he hadn't finished reading the night before and his notebook.

He took off his coat and sat down at the table.

He didn't turn on the heating.

He kept the room cold.

He opened his notebook.

He turned to a new page in his notebook, but instead of writing immediately, he let the pen tip hover above the paper.

He mentally went over the scene he was to perform the next day.

The horse came down the slope.

Dust and smoke rose.

A flash of light.

He was sitting on a horse.

He smelled that scent.

He saw the shape of the scent.

He recognized him.

His pupils did not contract at that moment.

His pupils were dilated.

Zoom in for a moment, then zoom out again.

The moment it zooms in is the moment it's recognized.

After taking it back, fear began.

Chen Mo opened his eyes.

He wrote a line in his notebook.

"First enlarge it, then shrink it."

He put down his pen after finishing writing.

He thought about it for a while longer.

Then he added a second line.

"It's not that it's being pressured, it's that it can't be contained."

A fifteen-year-old boy whose heart was filled with five months of death, when he saw death rushing towards him from afar, he did not "suppress" his fear.

He couldn't fit any more in.

The fear that overflows from what can no longer be contained is reflected on the face.

An emptiness.

An emptiness with nowhere to fall.

It's like a cup that's already full. If you pour more water into it, the water will overflow from the rim of the cup, and the overflowing part doesn't belong to the cup anymore.

That part has nowhere to go.

The emptiness on the face of a fifteen-year-old boy is the overflowing fear.

Chen Mo crossed out the second line of text.

He changed it to...

"null."

Just one word.

He closed his notebook.

He stood up and walked to the center of the room.

He closed his eyes.

He tried to make his face, in his heart, become that kind of emptiness.

He set a mental image in his mind.

One hundred and eighty horses charged from afar, raising dust and flashing blades.

His pupils dilated at that moment.

Then take it back.

He felt the muscles in his face relax for a moment as he pulled back.

That moment of relaxation is emptiness.

He opened his eyes.

He walked to the table and picked up a pen.

He wrote a line on the next page of the notebook.

"Tomorrow, the second one, the one that can't be filled."

After he finished writing, he closed the notebook.

He didn't go to sleep.

He turned off the table lamp.

He sat on the bed, his back against the cold wall.

He waited in that position until dawn.

He didn't count the seconds, nor did he think about anything else; he just sat there.

He left that emptiness on his face.

All night long.

The wind outside the window kept blowing.

As dawn broke, Chen Mo stood up.

There was a light layer of darkness under his eyes, and his face was pale. He hadn't slept all night and hadn't warmed up.

But his eyes were clear.

He walked to the window.

Outside the window, several crows flew across the sky above the prefab houses where the film crew was staying.

Chen Mo looked at the crows.

He said something to himself.

He didn't say that aloud.

This sentence is...

"Zhu Zhanji also spent those five months in the same way."