Head Balloon

[The system had detected that the host possessed extraordinary potential and had specially issued a chain quest.]

[Quest 1: Please create a film screenplay.]

[Quest Reward: B-grade Talent: Junji Ito's Manga Technique.]

[Quest 2: Please film and complete the movie.]

[Quest Reward: B-Rank Selectable Talent.]

[Quest 3: Please release the movie and achieve box office revenue exceeding 20 million.]

[Quest Reward: A-Rank Selectable Talent.]

Looking at the densely packed quests that had popped up before him,

Lin Chuan sighed inwardly.

They were popping out one after another like eggs from a hen.

Except the rewards for these quests were absurdly generous.

Junji Ito's Manga Technique, a B-Rank Selectable Talent.

Especially that final A-Rank Selectable Talent.

It included Nolan's nonlinear narrative techniques, James Cameron's special effects skills, and Stephen King's horror and suspense novel-writing skills.

There were also plenty of other rewards that made Lin Chuan drool.

Of course, these quests were also highly difficult.

Writing a screenplay was not particularly hard.

The hard part was getting the movie released and making more than twenty million at the box office.

For a freshman, it was basically like asking Stephen Hawking to climb Mount Everest.

Lin Chuan had quite a few low-budget, high-grossing films in mind.

Phone Booth, Buried, Saw, The Maze Runner.

They were all classic examples of small budgets yielding huge box office returns.

But the problem was that he lacked funding.

At present, Lin Chuan had only a little over 350,000 yuan in total.

That was an enormous sum for a college student, but for making a movie, it was merely a drop in the bucket.

There was no need to mention the famous Saw.

It had earned 103 million dollars at the box office.

But its production cost had been 1.5 million dollars.

Phone Booth.

Its box office had exceeded ninety million dollars, around 650 million yuan.

Its budget had also been 1.3 million dollars.

The cheapest was The Maze Runner.

With a budget of 1.7 million yuan, it had pulled in more than ten million at the box office.

But even for the cheapest, The Maze Runner, Lin Chuan's money did not even amount to a fraction of its budget.

Lin Chuan looked at the system's transparent screen.

Then he looked at the quest reward: Junji Ito's Manga Technique.

He stared at the B-Rank Selectable Talent list for a long while.

Then inspiration suddenly struck him.

He clicked to accept the quests.

Then he returned to his room and immediately began writing the screenplay.

At 9:45 that night,

Lin Chuan rubbed his sore shoulders and typed the final character.

The system notification sounded.

[Congratulations, host, for completing the quest and creating the film screenplay: Balloon.]

[System reward: Junji Ito's Manga Technique has been distributed.]

As he absorbed Junji Ito's Manga Technique, Lin Chuan took a deep breath and felt an overwhelming sense of calm and peace.

After putting away the screenplay,

Lin Chuan trimmed his nails, made himself a cup of warm milk, did twenty minutes of aerobics, and took a hot bath before falling asleep easily.

Tomorrow, another hard battle awaited him!

The screenplay Lin Chuan had created this time was originally called Head Balloon.

It could be said that this was Junji Ito's most famous work.

A female high school student hid at home, too afraid to go outside.

A voice called to her from beyond the window:

"Hezi, hurry and open the window. You must be starving. If you don't come out and eat something soon, you'll starve to death!"

Outside the window floated a balloon that looked exactly like Hezi.

It was calling for Hezi in Hezi's own voice.

The next day, Lin Chuan got up early.

After eating a simple meal, he began creating the manga version of Head Balloon.

When he had accepted the quest, Lin Chuan had already made up his mind.

The movie he would release for this quest would be Head Balloon.

An animated movie was still a movie.

When the time came, he could simply hand the original artwork to Xiao Hei and let him produce it.

Compared to live-action movies, animated films undoubtedly had a much simpler production process.

With the boost from Junji Ito's Manga Technique,

Lin Chuan finished drawing the manga version of Head Balloon in just five hours.

After finishing it, Lin Chuan examined Head Balloon with satisfaction.

The more he looked, the more pleased he became.

After absorbing James Wan's Directing Skills and gaining Junji Ito's Manga Technique,

the manga Lin Chuan drew even surpassed Junji Ito's original Head Balloon.

It was already past noon.

After staying bent over his desk for so long, Lin Chuan's back and waist were aching.

Lin Chuan's home was a simple three-bedroom apartment with a living room.

Two rooms were bedrooms.

The remaining room had been converted into a study.

The space was not large, but it was more than enough for Lin Chuan to work in.

Rubbing his shoulders, Lin Chuan sniffed and realized that the air in the study had become somewhat stale.

So he pulled open the curtains and opened the window.

Sunlight streamed in, instantly brightening the room, while a breeze swept through and brought a refreshing coolness.

Lin Chuan was about to staple the draft pages together.

Then he realized he had run out of staples.

He remembered that there was a box of staples in the drawer of the living room coffee table.

So he left the study and went into the living room.

Since he would be returning shortly, Lin Chuan did not close the door behind him.

Another breeze swept through, making the draft pages rustle and roll like ocean waves.

Lin Chuan had just reached the coffee table.

Bang!

At that exact moment, a powerful gust blew in through the window and slammed the door shut.

The draft pages were blown everywhere.

Several pages spun in the air, refusing to fall for a long time.

The face-bearing balloons drawn on the pages seemed to come alive.

They hovered in the air, watching their surroundings.

They had human expressions and facial features, yet their eyes contained nothing but pure malice.

Their smiles carried a bone-chilling air.

It was as if they would pounce on someone at any moment.

Two days later, Lin Chuan called Xiao Hei over to his home.

There was a risk of leaks if he sent the files to Xiao Hei through the computer.

So Lin Chuan simply brought Xiao Hei to his house and had him complete the film adaptation of Killer Balloon there.

Besides, Xiao Hei could also come over and hang out.

Actually, Lin Chuan had considered filming some other low-budget movies.

Even if he could not make a movie, making a short drama would not be bad.

If Ren Hang had not gone off to star in Golden Warrior, Lin Chuan might have made a version of Diors Man with Ren Hang as the lead.

But in the end, Lin Chuan still chose to produce the animated film Balloon.

Cost was one reason.

The other reason was that when they were young, children loved Golden Warrior, Armor Hero, Ultraman, and Spider-Man.

It was because children still had hope for the future.

They longed to have superpowers, to be able to go anywhere and do anything, and perhaps save the world along the way.

But the adult world contained only hardship.

Unpaid mortgages, aging parents, and hair falling onto the pillow.

That was why when adults watched the cartoons they had loved as children and heard the ending theme, they could not help feeling a little melancholy.

The cartoon was still the same cartoon, but the child who had watched it had already become an adult.

Without realizing it, we had lost the superpower of falling asleep on the sofa and waking up in bed the next day.

A sign of growing up was no longer fantasizing—no longer imagining that one had superpowers, nor imagining that the campus beauty had fallen in love with oneself.

In Lin Chuan's view, only horror movies could cure the pain of adulthood.

Only after seeing how hopeless the characters' situations were in a movie

would people realize, the moment they walked out of the theater, just how wonderful reality was.

Before Xiao Hei could make the movie, he first needed to look over the original manga artwork.

So Lin Chuan handed the manga to Xiao Hei.

More than ten minutes later, Xiao Hei finished reading it.

He looked at the manga, then at Lin Chuan, who was eating watermelon.

He opened his mouth, wanting to speak but stopping himself.

At that moment, Xiao Hei really wanted to ask, "Chuan, do you have some kind of psychological problem?"

But in the end, he swallowed the question.

After all, Lin Chuan usually seemed perfectly normal.

But this manga was far too abnormal.

Whenever he thought about the scenes in it,

Xiao Hei's scalp went numb.

Could a human being really come up with such scenes?

Xiao Hei was not particularly timid. On the contrary, he often sought out horror movies in the dorm.

But would anyone really watch a horror movie that was this horrifying?

After hesitating for a while, Xiao Hei said, "I'm confident I can finish adapting this manga into animation within a month."

"But I can't handle things like the narration and voice acting. For most of the shots, you'll have to guide me."

Lin Chuan nodded. "Piece of cake!"

Xiao Hei suddenly thought that if Ren Hang had seen this manga,

he would probably have already screamed his head off and grabbed mulberry leaves to ward off evil.

Xiao Hei's mental fortitude was still somewhat stronger than Ren Hang's.

He found a blank sheet of draft paper and covered Head Balloon with it.

Closing his eyes, he tried hard to calm himself down.

One month later, through the combined efforts of Xiao Hei and Ren Hang, the film version of Head Balloon was initially completed.