The More Tragic I Act, the Stronger I Get — My Fans Beg Me to Stop Killing Off My Roles-Chapter 286: This Sword Dances Only for You

The film's narrative arrived at Gaixia.

It was a death island, completely surrounded.

The camera coldly looked down from high above.

The Han Army's tents stretched endlessly, like a black tide swallowing the earth.

The faint light shining through each tent converged into a rope of light, strangling the insignificant patch of darkness at the center.

In the Chu Army camp, only a few sparks of nearly extinguished bonfires remained, clinging to life.

The audience in the theater was yanked down from the clouds by an invisible giant hand and thrown brutally into the mud.

The intense feeling of weightlessness made some subconsciously grip the armrests of their seats.

A film critic in the front row gasped, his pen tip scratching a harsh, long line across his notebook.

Wei Song's cinematography was filled with an oppressive force that brooked no argument.

He gave the audience absolutely no room to catch their breath.

The camera slowly descended, pushing closer.

The focus landed on a hand.

That hand was covered in dark red chilblains and cracked, dried bloodstains, with black mud embedded under the fingernails.

It was no longer the hand from the Hongmen Feast, the one that had casually toyed with the bronze wine vessel.

This hand was laboriously breaking a piece of military rations, hard as a rock, into two halves.

One half was shoved into its own mouth, chewed mechanically.

The other half was extended towards the side.

The camera panned accordingly.

It was the Black Steed.

The pitch-black warhorse hung its head, quietly nuzzling its master's arm with its cheek.

It did not eat the dry ration, its moist nostrils puffing out two plumes of white steam.

Jiang Ci on the silver screen did not speak.

He just pressed that half piece of ration even more forcefully against the Black Steed's mouth.

A hero at the end of his road.

Even his warhorse understood human nature, unwilling to share his last morsel of food.

Jiang Ci sat in the front row, his mind unusually calm.

He remembered filming this scene.

To capture Xiang Yu's hunger after being besieged for days, he had genuinely starved for a full day.

That rock-hard military ration grated against his teeth, wind and snow poured into the gaps of his armor.

Every pore on his body screamed with cold and exhaustion.

In that moment, he couldn't tell if he was Jiang Ci or Xiang Yu.

He only knew the Black Steed trembling in his embrace was real.

Just then, a strange sound faintly arose.

A low hum seeped out from the surround sound speakers around the theater.

It was as if thousands upon thousands of people, somewhere both extremely far and extremely near, were humming an ancient folk song in the most familiar hometown dialect.

The singing had no fixed melody, intermittent, filled with static noise.

"It's... the Chu Songs."

In the front row, Professor Li from the history academia slowly removed his glasses.

He pressed hard on his temples, resisting some form of intangible mental attack.

"Using the hometown dialect to break the army's morale... This is killing people, and even more, it's destroying their hearts."

The old man's arm trembled slightly.

The four cold characters from the books—'Chu Songs on All Sides'.

At this moment, they transformed into the cruelest form of psychological warfare.

The singing grew clearer and louder.

On the silver screen, the ragged Chu Army soldiers, one after another, laid down their weapons.

They curled up on the ground, clutching their heads.

Xiang Yu, portrayed by Jiang Ci, sat quietly.

Leaning against the Black Steed, he raised his head, earnestly trying to discern the direction of the singing.

His face was the exhaustion of something burned to ashes.

He had fought for too long, even the strength for hatred was spent.

[Ding, detecting primary heartbreak emotional resonance.]

[Heartbreak Value +12.]

[Ding, detecting repressed heartbreak emotion... Heartbreak Value +8.]

In Jiang Ci's mind, the system's notification sounds sporadically chimed.

The tent flap was suddenly thrown open, wind and snow pouring in.

Yu Ji, portrayed by Zhao Yingfei, appeared at the entrance.

She wore only a thin white garment, her pretty face pale from the cold in the wind and snow.

Those eyes that always held a shimmering smile now contained only a bottomless despair.

"My King..."

She spoke, her voice hoarse, carrying a broken sob, yet it clearly reached every corner of the theater.

Just two words instantly reddened the eyes of many audience members present in the cinema.

On the silver screen, Jiang Ci's action of wiping his sword paused. He did not turn around, lacking even the strength to look back at her.

After a long while, an equally broken and hollow voice finally came from him.

"I crossed the river with eight thousand of my brethren. Now, not a single one returns."

"What face do I have to see the elders of Jiangdong again?"

He slowly set down his sword, propped himself up on the low table to stand, his body swaying before steadying.

When he turned around, that face no longer held exhaustion, but a kind of resigned, tragic acceptance.

He walked step by step towards Yu Ji, reached out, and gently touched her cold, damp cheek with his rough fingertip.

"Don't cry."

His words carried a bitterness and tenderness the audience had never felt from him before.

"Dawn... is about to break."

Jiang Ci withdrew his hand, gazing emptily at the tent ceiling, murmuring to himself.

"For me... dance one last time."

Zhao Yingfei nodded through tears, the dam breaking completely at this moment.

She drew the long sword from Xiang Yu's waist.

Sword light rose!

The chorus of 'Eight Thousand Souls' suddenly surged with passion!

On the silver screen, within the great tent amidst wind and snow, the sword dance was resolute. Yu Ji's tearful profile was illuminated by the candle flames, tragically beautiful.

And at this very moment, her figure began to turn transparent, the image dissolving like ink.

The sunlit scene of Wuzhong Market seeped out from behind her, gently swallowing her up.

The young Xiang Yu, spirited and proud, was arguing with someone over that untamable Black Steed.

He turned his head and saw the plainly dressed young girl who had come to shop.

The camera gave Jiang Ci a close-up.

All his arrogance and defiance froze the moment he saw Zhao Yingfei.

A daze of being struck by fate.

Finally, these two shots briefly overlapped.

In the theater, some female audience members covered their mouths to keep their sobs from escaping.

On the silver screen, the sword light on the left grew increasingly fierce—the resolve to go to one's death.

The young man's gaze on the right shifted from shock to recognition, finally settling into a kind of gentle acceptance, as if the dust had settled.

It was the first meeting, and also the final farewell.

Wei Song used the cruelest editing to stitch together this world's most beautiful 'love at first sight'

with its most tragic 'life-and-death farewell' into the same frame.

That extreme sweetness and that extreme bitterness

interwove into an inescapable net, tightening brutally around the hearts of all the audience members in the theater.

As the montage sequence ended, the camera refocused inside the great tent.

Xiang Yu, portrayed by Jiang Ci, slowly lifted the tent flap and walked towards the boundless wind and snow outside.

Behind him was Yu Ji's resolute sword dance.

Before him was the place where the souls of his eight thousand brethren would return, the already predetermined dead end.