CDJMM – Volume 4 -Chapter 39 Filming in the Interstellar Era (39)

The entanglement of love and hate between the Zerg planet and humanity couldn’t be explained clearly even in days and nights.

The three hundred years of darkness were still a key topic in every nation’s history textbooks.

Textbooks classified it as colonial rule, but in the eyes of the Zerg, humans were simply livestock they raised—nutritious, delicious, tender, soft-bodied livestock easy to slaughter.

The Zerg were a division-of-labor species. The Queen was the brain, responsible for commanding the entire race. This allowed them to fully exploit the advantages of collectivism—absolute obedience, efficiency above all. And because arthropods lacked emotions and pain perception, they were the most terrifying iron army on any battlefield.

Unlike humans, who had to rely on exoskeletons to move in space, the Zerg could travel freely in the universe. Their body hardness was roughly fifty times that of steel, and their survival ability was tenacious—they could survive for nearly a year without eating or drinking.

Even more frightening, they understood technology.

The Zerg Queen produced a type of brain-worm. These brain-worms were the scientists of the race, specializing in researching advanced technology.

Throughout the entire star system, the Zerg were a notoriously infamous species.

Zerg genetic instinct revolved around reproduction and expansion, so wherever the Zerg went, there was only war.

To put it plainly, the Zerg were inherently violent and warlike. The entire species were battle maniacs whose favorite things were seizing territory and reproducing.

Humanity’s victory back then was purely luck.

Human scientists accidentally developed a brain-wave pheromone specifically targeting the Zerg Queen, successfully achieving “Queen brain death” and plunging the Zerg into chaos without leadership, giving humans the chance to heavily wound them.

But the troublesome part about the Zerg was this—after the Queen died, certain female Zerg would rapidly mutate into new Queens. After a fierce life-and-death struggle, the strongest one would step over the corpses of the others and ascend the throne.

And over time, after who-knows-how-many Queens had died, the new Queens evolved—and became immune to the pheromones!

Humans could only continue developing new pheromones and biochemical weapons; the Zerg continued to evolve and become immune. Thus began an endless cycle.

How to put it… the Zerg were basically cockroaches. Kill one, and thousands more were waiting. No matter how many you killed, you could never finish them off. In short: extremely annoying.

Although humanity had overthrown Zerg colonial rule and grown strong—developing mecha capable of fighting Zerg soldiers head-on—the two sides were still only evenly matched, with no clear victor.

Thus humanity and the Zerg maintained a fragile, precarious balance. Though conflicts broke out now and then, they remained confined to local skirmishes.

This round of friction between the Zerg and the Pan-American Federation was just business as usual.

Even though the news exaggerated it as “planetary war,” few people took it seriously. Most laughed it off, and some goofy netizens even began seriously analyzing the “causes and significance” of this so-called planetary war.

But Le Jing could not be so optimistic.

The news gave him a vague, indescribable sense of crisis.

He hadn’t felt this strongly in a long time.

The last time he had felt such danger, he was still the Buddha-child, and through his innate sense of fate, he’d foreseen an impending foreign invasion.

Now he was just an ordinary mortal without any fate-sense, yet his intuition was desperately trying to warn him.

Feeling agitated, Le Jing rubbed his forehead. After thinking for a bit, he realized that even if a war truly broke out, there was nothing he could do.

He couldn’t exactly go to the police and say: “My intuition tells me a star-war is coming—we need wartime mobilization!”

The next second, he’d probably be thrown into a mental hospital.

The outbreak of war involved countless factors—not something one individual could prevent.

He believed that the national think tanks had long prepared comprehensive crisis-response plans. Even if a planetary war truly erupted, humanity wouldn’t be caught off guard.

So the only thing he could do was continue his work, make movies, and live life as usual.

At the very least, he shouldn’t wait until war broke out and regret not having used his time well.

…

The advance screening of The Empress’s Imperial Dog was met with overwhelmingly positive reactions. The strong feedback was like a shot of adrenaline for Bai Entertainment, and they confidently scheduled the official release for the Spring Festival season.

Before release, of course, there would be a premiere.

After discussing it with Le Jing, Bai Entertainment decided to set the premiere date for the third day after Tian Hui’s new film Tulip Beauty held its own premiere.

It seemed the investors were boldly preparing for a showdown with Tian Hui.

After that, there wasn’t much for Le Jing to do. The only thing he needed to handle was cooperating with the promotional activities.

Which gave him plenty of time to refine the Wu Zetian documentary that would soon air on the documentary channel.

The Mystery of Empress Wu Zetian would broadcast one day earlier than The Empress’s Imperial Dog, on New Year’s Eve. It was expected to draw massive viewership, acting as the perfect warm-up and traffic funnel for his film.

…

A week later, Tian Hui’s new work Tulip Beauty held its premiere. The red carpet glittered with stars, cameras flashing wildly.

Countless media outlets broadcast the event live, and Tian Hui’s smug, triumphant expression entered thousands of households.

Le Jing didn’t watch the broadcast.

He was in seclusion, editing videos.

It wasn’t until the next afternoon that Bai Entertainment’s manager called him, sounding worried. “Yesterday, Tulip Beauty received rave reviews. Even an international director praised it. Many critics are boldly predicting it’ll be this year’s box-office champion. I’m afraid we may need to change our release date.” The previous ambition in his tone was nowhere to be found.

Le Jing raised a brow. “Why change the date?”

The manager spoke tactfully: “Tulip Beauty and our The Empress’s Imperial Dog are both historical topics, both in the Spring Festival slot. The audience will inevitably be split, which could hurt our box office.”

“Historical?” Le Jing had only heard of it recently. From the online summaries, it seemed to be a human-Zerg romance? He thought it was something like The Shape of Water.

The manager explained, “Tulip Beauty tells a past-life-and-present-life story. The Dark Three Hundred Years and modern times are interwoven. The male lead was a brain-worm scientist in his past life; the female lead was an experimental subject. They fell in love but couldn’t break the chains of their species, so she was killed and he committed suicide out of grief. Then time flows, and in the present, the reincarnated heroine meets the reincarnated hero during her trip to the Zerg planet, and their fate reconnects.”

Le Jing fell silent. “I have one question.”

“…What is it?”

“The Zerg… have emotions?”

Love? Heartache? Arthropods weren’t supposed to have that kind of function!

The manager explained, “Ordinary Zerg don’t. They’re basically brainless organisms without thought or emotional capacity. But brain-worms have highly developed brains, so naturally they have emotions.” Then he looked confused—wasn’t this middle-school biology? Director Shi didn’t even know this?

Le Jing: …Your interstellar insects are really fancy.

“No need to change the release date,” Le Jing said calmly. “The two films are different in genre and target audience. Even if the dates overlap, it’s fine.”

One was a tragic romance wrapped in a historical skin; the other was a true historical palace-power struggle. There was no need to worry about audience overlap.

He explained his reasoning one by one, and finally persuaded the manager to stick to the original release plan.

However, “Right now Tulip Beauty is blazing hot. It’s bound to steal the spotlight from our premiere.” The manager sighed. “If we had known, we should’ve held our premiere first.”

Le Jing replied, “Good food isn’t afraid of being late. Our film is not worse than Tian Hui’s. Who overshadows who isn’t certain yet.”

After the call, Le Jing grew curious about Tulip Beauty and began browsing online reactions.

He found countless critics singing its praises. Even more astonishing, an army of enthusiastic viewers were fervently promoting the film online. Major entertainment magazines published detailed reports about the premiere.

With such powerful promotion and strong word of mouth, the internet was full of discussion about Tulip Beauty. In contrast, The Empress’s Imperial Dog was eerily quiet—only a handful of users talking about it.

Le Jing didn’t mind. Ultimately, the work itself spoke. And he had confidence in his film.

He didn’t know where Tian Hui had gotten such a highly praised script, but Le Jing didn’t believe his own work was inferior.

While browsing comments, he discovered an interesting little group.

Their avatars were all various insects. Their profiles were full of giant-bug pictures.

Their posts consisted entirely of worshipping the Zerg—calling them handsome, mighty, loyal, intelligent… One girl even said the Zerg were so alpha they made her knees weak.

These people were the most enthusiastic and dramatic promoters of Tulip Beauty. Many hadn’t even watched the movie—they declared that because the male lead was a Zerg, they would absolutely contribute to its box office.

They seemed to be engaging in Zerg-worship.

Le Jing wasn’t too surprised.

Even on Earth, plenty of people loved insects. In the interstellar era, human affection for the Zerg was layered with many complicated elements.

On one hand, human aesthetics had become more diverse. Inter-species relationships were common. Although humans and Zerg couldn’t reproduce, future humans didn’t care much about children.

Zerg were strong and imposing; many people genuinely wanted a giant bug as a spouse.

On the other hand, since the Zerg were former overlords, many humans felt awe or admiration for strength. Thus arose twisted Zerg-fanatics, similar to later-era pro-America or pro-Japan types.

There was also a small group of genuine insect lovers or “giant-creature lovers.” Giant Zerg hit all their peculiar preferences. If not for the Zerg’s extreme danger and legal restrictions, these people would probably already be raising Zerg at home.

Suddenly, a thought flashed across Le Jing’s mind:

Could Tulip Beauty be a cultural propaganda film secretly funded by the Zerg?

Is this human-Zerg romance actually a psychological warfare movie for cultural infiltration and peaceful subversion?

Le Jing thought for a few seconds, then laughed and shook his head.

Even he felt the idea was far-fetched.

He was probably overthinking it.