The More Tragic I Act, the Stronger I Get — My Fans Beg Me to Stop Killing Off My Roles-Chapter 280: "I’ll Wait for You at the Wu River"
The final trailer ended.
On the giant screen, all the brutality and grandeur fell into silence.
On that blood-soaked bank of the Wu River, Xiang Yu plunged his sword into himself,
the moment his body collapsed with a thunderous crash, frozen into an eternal frame.
The screen went black abruptly.
A line of blood-red characters appeared, one by one.
The Legend of Han and Chu, September 1st, Coming with a Shock!
Inside the theater, there was a silence like death.
It lasted a full three seconds.
Then the applause erupted like a volcano that had been building pressure for ages.
This was not polite clapping.
It was an outpouring from the bottom of people's chests after being washed by overwhelming emotion.
The applause surged like a tide, sweeping from the front row to the last, unceasing.
The bespectacled reporter who had asked the earlier question sat there, stunned.
His glasses were gone without him knowing when, clutched tightly in his hand.
His gaze fell hollowly on the now-dark screen.
In the notebook spread across his knee,
those sharp lines he had painstakingly prepared about "unworthy virtue" and "capital's forceful backing,"
each word now seemed to silently mock his overconfidence.
On stage, the lights came back up.
Director Wei Song sat there quietly,
watching the faces in the audience, moved and shocked.
That silence carried more weight than any hoarse defense.
The work is king.
The host only managed to regain professional composure in the brief pause between waves of applause,
his throat a little dry.
"Thank you all... thank you for such an enthusiastic reaction."
He tried to bring the out-of-control atmosphere back on track.
"I believe, like me, you cannot wait for the official release of The Legend of Han and Chu."
"However, at the end of today's press conference, we have one more special segment." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚
The host played coy for a moment, drawing everyone's attention back.
"As we all know, due to the tight shooting schedule, our leading actress, the performer of Yu Ji, Teacher Zhao Yingfei, could not be here today."
"However, she specially recorded a VCR for us."
No sooner had he finished than the previously darkened giant screen lit up again.
On screen there were no glamorous gowns, no exquisite makeup,
not even professional lighting.
Only an empty, dim practice room.
A huge full-length mirror reflected the pale moonlight outside the window.
Zhao Yingfei stood before the mirror, wearing the simplest black practice uniform, her face bare.
There was none of the glow of a movie star on her face, only a near-obsessive, icy calm.
She looked into the camera.
Her gaze seemed to pierce the screen, pierce the noisy theater, pierce the hundreds of viewers,
and finally land on the figure on stage in a black suit.
The video was very quiet, only the soft sound of breathing.
Just five seconds of footage.
She spoke only one sentence.
Her tone was very flat, so flat it had not the slightest inflection,
yet it contained a calm and resoluteness that transcended life and death.
A love that would never waver until death.
"My lord, I will wait for you at the Wu River."
When she finished, the screen returned to black.
The entire theater was even quieter than after the trailer had ended.
If Xiang Yu's suicide was the apex of tragedy, a magnificent destruction,
then Zhao Yingfei's casually delivered line
injected the blood-stained Wu River at the trailer's end with the most cruel and the most tender soul.
Backstage, in the control room.
Lin Wan stared at her phone expressionlessly.
On the screen was the real-time chart of The Legend of Han and Chu's online presale box office.
At the exact moment Zhao Yingfei's line fell, that curve which had been rising steadily
shot upward almost vertically, as if at ninety degrees.
At the same time, her Weibo special notification tone went crazy, ringing without stop.
#I'llWaitForYouAtTheWuRiver#
This hashtag, without any preheat, blasted toward the trending chart at a terrifying speed.
On stage.
Jiang Ci watched the face of Zhao Yingfei disappear from the screen.
His fingers, resting on his knee, unconsciously rubbed the slightly cool button on his suit sleeve.
A strange stirring flashed through his chest.
It was not the emotion of actor Jiang Ci.
It belonged to "Xiang Yu."
It was the resonance unique to the Hegemon who had just lost his beloved at Gaixia and now, on the bank of the Wu River,
heard her call across life and death.
That Hegemon's resonance struck like lightning, splitting Jiang Ci's mindset as a mere "life-extension day laborer."
He almost instinctively realized that this tragic echo across time and space
would harvest Heartbreak Value far more efficiently than any face-to-face, gut-wrenching scene.
This was not merely Yu Ji's promise to the Hegemon,
it was a broad, paved highway to massive additional life — the ultimate form of Bad Ending Aesthetics: cutting someone unseen.
Safe, efficient, and with limitless aftereffects.
"Thanks to Teacher Zhao Yingfei, and thanks to all the media friends and audience members here today!"
The host announced loudly.
"The first roadshow press conference for The Legend of Han and Chu concludes here! See you in theaters on September 1st!"
The press conference ended.
Escorted by more than a dozen security guards, Jiang Ci left through the side passage of the stage.
The corridor outside the theater was packed with people.
He pushed through the crowd toward the exit.
The anticipated ear-piercing protests and jeers did not appear.
When he stepped out of the cinema doors and breathed the cool air, he paused.
Outside, the group that had been holding protest banners had already dispersed completely.
They had been replaced by another group.
They stood quietly along both sides of the red carpet, spontaneously making way.
In their hands they held various light boards.
None of the boards read "Jiang Ci."
They bore only two characters.
Hegemon.
Their faces showed no fanatical idol worship, only a solemnity shared by all.
Among the crowd, the leader of the black-fan protesters who had shouted the loudest earlier now kept his head bowed in silence.
He first blocked the "protest group" leader he had just paid, then opened his photo album and deleted the secretly taken pictures.
Only after doing all that did he set the official poster of Xiang Yu's Wu River suicide as his phone wallpaper.
Sun Zhou hurried alongside Jiang Ci, whispering in his ear,
his voice full of uncontrollable excitement and awe.
"Ci-ge, next stop, Star City."
"Director Lin just sent a message—right after the trailer and Teacher Zhao's VCR played, our online presale box office... in fifteen minutes, hit ten million!"
"That curve looked like a rocket launch!"
