Having completed his first date with a Type B girl, the host's performance rating: S
After returning to his New York home from his trip to Big Bear Mountain Park with Liu Yifei, Lin Yuan immediately received a system notification.
An S-rank rating? The reward had to be substantial, right?
Thinking back on yesterday's wonderful experience, Lin Yuan felt that he had already gained more than enough.
He was grateful for his rebirth, which had allowed him to make up for his regrets.
So the reward did not really matter anymore?
How could that be possible!
He desperately needed the skill rewards provided by the system.
Lin Yuan wanted to become an action superstar. Other than having somewhat better physical conditioning, he knew absolutely nothing about martial arts.
Wing Chun, Jeet Kune Do, Baji Quan, Xing Yi Quan, Drunken Fist... he knew none of them.
Swordsmanship, spear techniques, saber techniques, staff techniques... he did not understand any of them at all.
Muay Thai, karate, sambo, wrestling, jujutsu... he was a complete outsider to all of them.
How was he supposed to become an action superstar like this?
For that car-jumping scene in The Fast and the Furious, he had relied entirely on brute force and his physical abilities.
If he had mastered all kinds of parkour techniques like Jackie Chan, his success rate would not have been so low.
Becoming the God of War of a furniture store was not so easy.
So what reward would the system give him?
Lin Yuan did not have to wait long before golden words appeared before his eyes:
Host has received skill reward: Swordsmanship (Master Level) Achieved the highest date rating. Additional reward: Parkour Techniques (Master Level)
Before Lin Yuan could think further, a memory suddenly appeared out of nowhere in his mind.
In that memory, he held a three-foot blade and rose to practice at dawn, training without interruption for more than thirty years.
One sword style after another unfolded in his hands, continually refined until the movements became ever simpler and more concentrated.
His swordsmanship was only one step away from that ethereal, supreme realm.
Having instantly gained swordsmanship that would have taken over thirty years of grueling practice to achieve, Lin Yuan could not help but feel ecstatic.
Not only had he mastered flashy routine sword forms suitable for film and television performances, but he had also acquired practical sword skills that could be used in deadly combat.
It was truly killing two birds with one stone.
While he was still celebrating, another memory concerning parkour was crammed into his mind.
It was likewise the result of years of hard training: climbing and jumping techniques for all kinds of complex terrain, even including insights on how to reduce the injuries he suffered.
After mastering Master Level parkour techniques, Lin Yuan suddenly had an arrogant thought.
What were stairs? Did he really need those things to go downstairs?
An image appeared in his mind of himself climbing over the balcony railing and jumping down floor by floor along the air-conditioning units outside the windows.
If you court death, death will come for you. The next instant, he immediately drove that thought out of his mind.
"I smile proudly, smile proudly again, raise a toast and sing while the moment is still here..." His phone suddenly rang.
Lin Yuan glanced at the caller ID and quickly answered. "Hello, Director Ang Lee."
"You brat, The Fast and the Furious has wrapped, right?"
"Yes, it ended yesterday."
"Then hurry up and join the promotional tour. The movie has already been out for two days. You're one of the leads—you can't be absent the whole time, can you?"
"Alright, I'll buy a ticket and come over right away."
After hanging up, Lin Yuan changed into formal clothes, grabbed the suitcase he had not yet had time to unpack, and headed out.
Yesterday, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had officially premiered in North America.
As someone reborn, Lin Yuan knew that the film would ultimately earn 128 million USD at the North American box office and exceed 200 million USD worldwide—an astonishing achievement.
But he also knew that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had not enjoyed a smooth start after its release.
A wuxia film made by a Chinese director, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had not initially received much attention from North American theater chains.
It had opened in only sixteen theaters, earning merely 600,000 USD in its first week.
That was a catastrophic flop, no wonder Director Ang Lee had sounded somewhat anxious on the phone.
Yet Lin Yuan was not worried in the slightest. As word of mouth spread, its second-week theater count would rise to thirty-one, then over one hundred and forty in the third week...
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would continue expanding into more theaters month after month, while the effects of its reputation became increasingly apparent.
At its peak, more than two thousand theaters would be showing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It would ultimately gross 128 million USD, becoming the highest-grossing foreign-language film in North America.
The foreign-language film in second place was the Italian movie Life is Beautiful, which had made only a little over 50 million dollars—more than 70 million dollars less than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Achieving such results was enough to prove that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was an exceptionally fine wuxia film.
In truth, Director Ang Lee had already made the film's theme abundantly clear through its title: "hidden" and "crouching."
To hide was to conceal; to crouch was to repress.
Hidden was the struggle over whether to confront one's inner desires.
Crouching was the repression imposed by moral norms represented by rites and propriety.
Thus, it was a story of the struggles and choices of the human heart when faced with human nature, desire, fame and profit, and social conventions.
The more desires you had, the less you could learn to let go, and the more tightly bound you would become.
But if you let go of everything and pursued freedom, could you truly bear the consequences?
In a few more years, Chinese people would start shouting about decluttering and letting go.
That was why this was a story with an intensely Eastern core, not some work designed to pander to the West.
Director Ang Lee had merely used a form that both Eastern and Western audiences could understand in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to portray the struggles of human nature.
Yu Jiaolong, played by Zhang Ziyi, was the film's female lead and someone who truly pursued freedom regardless of the cost.
But what did she ultimately gain from that reckless determination?
At the end of the film, she chose to leap from a mountain peak. Perhaps only in that brief instant did she attain true freedom.
Western audiences liked this sort of philosophically contemplative story, and they could readily understand its core themes of struggling with desire and pursuing freedom.
Combined with the beautifully filmed Eastern elements in the movie—Chinese architecture, Jiangnan water towns, bamboo forests, qinggong, and the eighteen kinds of weapons...
Those many sources of appeal came together to create the miracle of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Being able to appear in such a film was undoubtedly fortunate for Lin Yuan.
He was not at all worried about the film's performance, but he did have one small, hard-to-express concern.
Lin Yuan had a bed scene in this movie!
The Luo Xiaohu he played had a bed scene with Yu Jiaolong...
And it was rather intense...
Liu Yifei would definitely see this movie. She would not get angry, would she?
The key was that Lin Yuan could not completely keep his distance from Zhang Ziyi either. According to his plans, he needed to get to know Director Zhang Yimou through her.
Spurred on by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, domestic directors had all begun burning with ambition to make commercial blockbusters and break into Hollywood.
Hero and The Promise were the products of that ambition.
Lin Yuan decisively chose to avoid The Promise, but he did not want to miss Hero.
For him, that film was territory every strategist would fight to claim.
If Lin Yuan only intended to develop in Hollywood, then whether he appeared in that film truly would not matter.
But Lin Yuan was Chinese. His path to superstardom could not stand on Hollywood alone; China should be his foundation.
Hero had pioneered Chinese commercial blockbusters and was the opportunity he could least afford to miss in these coming years.
It was just that his current credentials were not enough to compete for it. He had to wait until his wings were stronger.
Soon enough, Lin Yuan calculated. In another year, he would have accumulated enough capital.
Being reborn was such a blessing. Only by pressing forward without pause could he live up to his youth.
Sensing the host's fighting spirit, an additional mission has been issued. Please work hard to help Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon increase its box office revenue. Attributes will be rewarded according to the results.
Lin Yuan: ???
Before you continue