Holy Mountain Journey

"Holy Mountain Journey? What's this?"

In a compartment aboard the steam train Voyager, Aisha curiously looked at what Drogo was writing on paper.

"A script."

"A script? You're writing a play?"

"Not exactly, but close. It's for filming a magical projection." Drogo wrote one line, then paused for ages. A magical projection script was much harder than a children's comic. Even with the rough plot already in his head, turning it into a script was giving him a headache.

"So you're using a camera to film a stage play?" Aisha thought about the stage plays she had seen. She felt the effect would not be very good if they were stuffed into magic crystals.

"No stage. They'll act in real locations."

"Like it's real?"

"Like it's real."

Holy Mountain Journey was naturally an adaptation of Train to Busan.

The original told the story of a male lead taking his daughter to Busan to visit her mother, only for a zombie crisis to suddenly erupt. Alongside several companions he had just met, he struggled to survive aboard a train.

It was one of the better zombie films. The plot was somewhat formulaic, but those formulas still made the tearjerking moments hit hard.

Besides, the residents of Twin Towers City had never seen the conventions of commercial genre films before.

The results were guaranteed to be spectacular!

Zombie films on Earth had taken many years of development before most viewers accepted them. But this world needed no such buildup, because zombies genuinely existed here. There were far more necromancers than illusionists.

Still, quite a few plot details needed adjusting.

Most importantly, the cause of the zombie outbreak in the original had to be changed. Instead of a biological company leaking raw materials, the potions of the Kullman Potion Factory would be a necromancer conspiracy.

Never underestimate the power of film and television. Did anyone know just how much damage the line, "Baleno, it's a brand," from Crazy Stone had done to Baleno?

Besides, other healing potions did exist on the market. They were merely a little more expensive than machine-produced ones. If he ruined the potion factory's reputation, consumers would naturally choose alternatives.

Next, he had to resolve the issue of power scaling.

Zombie films always had one problem: why were the armies in them so weak?

Logically, zombies transformed from humans should have no ability to resist an army. At most, they could cause some chaos at the initial outbreak before being mowed down by modern firepower.

This world was even more absurd. High-level professionals were all humanoid mechs, while even entry-level professionals were at least on Li Sanguang and Chris's level. Who would be afraid of zombies?

How could he justify that?

Ah, got it. The stronger someone was, the more battles they had participated in, and the more healing potions they had used. So they were all infected, leaving only ordinary people.

As for why the train was not full of zombies from the start, professionals used teleportation, so there were no professionals aboard.

As the church's holy land, Holy Mountain used its own healing methods and had therefore not been affected by the healing potions. It had also erected a defensive line with magical constructs, making it the story's final destination.

Genius. This dragon was an absolute genius.

The next step was to find every possible way to dump dirt on the potion factory.

The male lead's occupation would be changed from fund manager to supplier of raw materials for the potion factory. He would discover that there was a problem with the factory through the materials, yet choose to conceal it for profit.

And the executive, the pure self-serving bastard most hated throughout the original script, would be changed into one of the potion factory's managers, choosing to cooperate with necromancers for money.

Then he would make a Requiem for a Dream-style rapid montage of the healing potion's production, consumption, and eventual transformation into zombies. He would make sure it became synonymous with poison.

The last thing that gave him some pause was whether he should alter the original ending.

Though the original was miserable all the way through, the pregnant woman and little girl were ultimately rescued by the military. It gave the tragedy a comforting ending—complete, but not impactful enough.

When the film had first been released, an alternate ending had circulated online: the military mistook the two for infected and shot them dead. It had a lot of impact, but if he filmed that, the church would probably come looking for trouble.

Better to compromise and use an open ending. The final shot would freeze when the constructs discovered the survivors and awaited orders from their superiors.

Whether they lived or died would be left to the audience's imagination. It might get cursed at, but the discussion would definitely go through the roof.

He needed buzz.

"Why?" Beside him, Aisha was already crying her eyes out over the script draft. "What happens next? Is there nothing after this? What happened to them in the end?"

"Uh, that's the ending."

"The ending? How can that be an ending?!" Aisha's face was full of disbelief. What kind of play was this? It was completely different from anything she had heard or seen. It did not even clearly explain what happened to the protagonists in the end, stopping right at the most tense moment.

"It's just a story. There's no need to care so much about how it ends. Leaving things unsaid can be beautiful too, right?"

Although Drogo said that, he was quite pleased with Aisha's reaction. This was exactly the effect he wanted.

And this was only text. The strength of text lay in leaving room for imagination, not in creating sensory impact in a short time.

Once Holy Mountain Journey was completed, with visual and auditory effects layered together, he could already imagine the public outrage.

Those optimistic and pessimistic about the ending would argue fiercely, and even more curious people would want to see what kind of thing it was.

Anger always needed an outlet. Aside from the magical projection crew, the most suitable target would be the Kullman Potion Factory.

Never overestimate most people's rationality. Even if they knew the film was fake, anger would still cloud their minds and make them project it onto real-life potion factories.

He wondered whether Kullman could withstand it.

It would be best if they could not.

Hehehe...

"All the train cars have been filmed." Yuno led a tall figure wrapped up from head to toe into the compartment.

Of course, it was an undead—and also a camera.

Their task today had been to film the train and the station, recording every detail as thoroughly as possible.

They certainly could not find a real train for the official shoot. He would need to build a filming location and recreate it at a one-to-one scale.

Even if illusionists created an illusion, they still needed a reference.

Fortunately, the railway system had only just been established, and its rules were far from complete. There were no security checks, no identity verification, and no species restrictions. That was why Drogo and the camera had been able to board.

"Woo—"

The steam train's piercing whistle swept across the wilderness.

They had entered the territory of Holy Mountain.

"Wow!" Aisha and her brother eagerly pressed themselves against the window, curiously gazing at the azure mountain peaks in the distance.

Holy Mountain—without any other qualifier—was the only mountain on the entire continent bestowed with the title of holy. It was the church's sacred land and one of the most famous tourist attractions.

But Drogo was not particularly interested. It was not as though he had never been here before. Last time, he had accidentally burned down a temple and suffered terribly for it.

Besides, this place was permeated with a scent similar to that eleven-ring scroll. Just smelling it gave him phantom pain.

He might as well continue studying his "If You're a Dragon, Descend One Hundred Floors."

The second installment of his mini-game project.

But now the dragon was stuck on spikes at the top of the screen and could not move. Where exactly was the bug?

Before he could finish sorting through the inscriptions, the screen suddenly crashed.

What was going on?

He tried restarting it, but there was no response at all.

His instincts told him it had something to do with Holy Mountain.

What was this supposed to mean? So Holy Mountain was basically a restroom meant to stop people from slacking off on the clock, with a signal jammer installed or something?