SEC Chapter 513 "Bright Sword"
Chapter 513 "Bright Sword"
After a busy day, Lu Ran stretched. The company matters were finally settled.
Next, it's time to get down to personal matters.
Just as Lu Ran thought he could finally breathe a sigh of relief, Shen Yuege sent him a message.
He had just stepped out of the office building when his phone vibrated. A message popped up on the screen: "My dad's looking for you. He says he wants to talk to you about something. Are you free tonight?" followed by a question mark.
Since it's a message from my wife, she must be free.
Lu Ran replied from the roadside: "I'm free. Shall we go straight there?"
"Yes. I'm already here."
He put away his phone and hailed a taxi at the intersection.
After getting in the car, I gave the driver an address, and he responded and started the car.
The street scene outside the window receded frame by frame. In late June, the sky over Shanghai was not yet completely dark. The plane trees on both sides of the road filtered the light from the streetlights into fragmented shadows that swayed back and forth on the windshield.
When Lu Ran arrived at Shen Zhiwei's building, he saw that the lights in the living room on the second floor were on.
He rang the doorbell, and Shen Zhiwei himself opened the door, wearing a gray short-sleeved shirt and holding a pair of reading glasses, as if he had just stood up from his desk.
He waved to Lu Ran when he saw him: "Come in, the tea has just been brewed."
Lu Ran changed her shoes and walked into the living room.
Shen Zhiwei had already sat back on the sofa. On the coffee table in front of him was a pot of tea and two cups. The tea was a dark color, indicating that it had been steeping for a while.
He sat down on the single sofa next to him, picked up his teacup, and took a sip. It was Tieguanyin tea; slightly astringent at first, but with a quick, sweet aftertaste.
"Dad, did you need something?" It was getting late, and Lu Ran still wanted to ask what the situation was and what the matter was.
Shen Zhiwei took off his reading glasses and placed them on the coffee table, leaning back slightly. "It's nothing particularly urgent. It's just that lately, you've seen the trend in the industry. From top to bottom, everyone's pushing patriotic themes—movies, TV series, documentaries, short videos, everywhere. I'm thinking it's time for my old bones to get moving."
Lu Ran held his teacup without speaking, waiting for him to continue.
"To be honest, I got a bit tired of filming the 'Ip Man' series towards the end. It's not that I couldn't continue, but that we'd already covered most of the material, and continuing would just be repetitive. I wanted to try a different direction." Shen Zhiwei paused here, tracing a line on the rim of his teacup with his finger. "I've always wanted to make a TV series about the War of Resistance against Japan. Not one of those ridiculous dramas where people tear apart Japanese soldiers with their bare hands, but one that clearly and thoroughly explains that period of history, leaving viewers with something to remember."
Shen Zhiwei picked up his teacup, took a sip, and put it down: "But there's a lack of good scripts on the market right now. I've looked at a few ready-made ones, but I'm not satisfied with any of them. Some are too fake, some are too superficial, and some are simply piles of information together without any storyline. That's why I thought of you. You write quickly, and your writing has a special characteristic—it's grounded. Not the kind that floats in the air, but something that's firmly planted on the ground."
Lu Ran leaned back on the sofa and thought for a moment.
He did have the name of a TV series running through his mind. He had already exported that series from the system and had been saving it in a folder on his computer called "Pending".
He didn't bring it up before because he felt the timing wasn't right.
If that kind of subject matter is filmed too early, the audience may not be receptive enough.
But now, at this particular point in time, it's perfect.
"Dad, I do have a notebook. I wrote it a while ago, but I haven't shown it to anyone. It's about the War of Resistance against Japan. The main character is a regimental commander, hot-tempered, fierce in battle, and unpredictable. His men both fear and respect him. The story begins when he takes command of a scattered unit and continues until the end of the war." Lu Ran put down his teacup. "If you're interested, I'll send you the notebook tomorrow."
Shen Zhiwei's eyes lit up for a moment, but he controlled his expression well, simply picking up the teapot to refill Lu Ran's cup: "What's your name?"
"Bright Sword."
Shen Zhiwei repeated the name to himself, then nodded and didn't ask any further questions.
He knew that given Lu Ran's style, if he said "it will be released tomorrow," he wouldn't delay until the day after tomorrow.
But this tomorrow, he found it rather interesting.
"Bright Sword... Bright Sword..." Shen Zhiwei muttered to himself, savoring the moment.
The two drank another half pot of tea and chatted about recent industry developments and family matters.
Shen Zhiwei asked Shen Yuege how she was feeling lately, and Lu Ran said she was fine, able to eat and sleep well, and her prenatal checkups were all normal.
Shen Zhiwei hummed in response without saying anything more, but the smile on his lips never faded.
He was increasingly pleased with his son-in-law, and now that the two had a child, he, as the father, was happy for his daughter.
When Shen Yuege arrived home, she had already gone upstairs to rest. The living room light was still on, and there was a plate of sliced watermelon and a pot of iced tea on the coffee table. There was a note underneath that read, "The watermelon has been chilled in the refrigerator. You can eat it yourself when you get back."
Lu Ran sat down on the sofa, ate a few slices of watermelon, then turned off the lights and went upstairs.
After returning to his study, he turned on his computer and browsed through the folder called "To-Have" for a while.
The folder contained a lot of things: movie scripts, TV series scripts, and game design proposals, all neatly arranged chronologically.
He found the document marked "Bright Sword" and opened it; the text on the screen was densely packed across hundreds of pages.
He flipped through it from beginning to end.
The story begins in 1940, when the Independent Regiment of the 386th Brigade of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army was active in the Shanxi-Northwest region.
The regimental commander was named Li Yunlong. He was in his thirties, not very tall, and spoke rudely. When fighting, he liked to personally lead the assault team to the front.
His subordinates gave him the nickname "Living Yama," meaning that he was even more ruthless than Yama himself when it came to fighting.
The first major battle was against a Japanese transport convoy.
Li Yunlong led the Independent Regiment to set up an ambush on both sides of the highway. Instead of using conventional tactics or waiting for orders from superiors, they judged the timing and acted ahead of time.
The battle was fought swiftly and decisively, resulting in the capture of a large quantity of weapons and ammunition, as well as several boxes of canned goods. The brigade commander scolded him on the phone for disobeying orders and acting without authorization. Li Yunlong chuckled twice on the other end of the line and said, "Don't worry, brigade commander, I'll share half of the captured supplies with you."
Despite the brigade commander's scolding, Li Yunlong still accepted the supplies; his temper was notorious throughout the army.
But Li Yunlong was not only good at fighting.
He has a unique way of leading troops. He doesn't engage in formalism or show off. When talking to his subordinates, he squats on the ground with a bowl in his hand and chats. After he's done talking, he gets up and goes about his business.
The soldiers of the Independent Regiment always carried an air of arrogance when they met soldiers from other units, because they knew that their regimental commander was not a coward, and that following Li Yunlong in battle meant they could survive and even earn merit.
The deputy regimental commander was Zhao Gang, a political commissar sent from above. He had attended university and spoke in a refined manner. He and Li Yunlong were quite different – one was rough and the other was delicate – and they initially disliked each other.
Li Yunlong felt that the political commissar was just there to cause trouble, while Zhao Gang thought the regimental commander was simply a bandit.
The two had argued several times. Once, they were slamming their fists on the table at the regimental headquarters. A row of soldiers stood outside the door, listening intently. They heard a teacup being smashed inside.
It wasn't until we spent more time together that I realized the other person wasn't what I expected.
Zhao Gang was even calmer than Li Yunlong in battle, able to find the optimal solution in chaotic situations. Li Yunlong appeared rough on the surface, but his judgment of the battlefield situation was frighteningly accurate, and he managed to minimize casualties in every attack.
The two men, one reckless and the other steady, worked together more seamlessly than any other military unit.
Several major battles are interspersed throughout the story.
The Battle of Ping'an County, the Battle of Lijiapo, the Ambush of the Japanese Observation Group, and the Attack on the Yamazaki Battalion.
Every match was a different battle. Li Yunlong never repeated himself. In one match, he would use surprise tactics, in the next match he would engage in a head-on confrontation, and in the match after that he would switch to a flanking maneuver.
Japanese commander Ichiki Yamamoto once wrote a sentence in his operations log that roughly translates to, "This opponent has no set pattern; he changes every time."
Besides the storyline on the battlefield, there is another, longer and more complex storyline.
The friendship between Li Yunlong and Zhao Gang runs through the entire series, from disliking each other to sharing life and death, separated by countless arguments and standing side by side.
Both men survived the war, but their fates diverged. Li Yunlong remained in the army to lead troops, while Zhao Gang transferred to civilian work.
The two meet once every few years. When they meet, they don't say anything sentimental. They just sit down and drink. After they finish drinking, they stand up, pat each other on the shoulder, and say they'll get together again next time.
That "next time" never came.
When Lu Ran turned to the last page of the document, it was already completely dark outside the window.
Only the desk lamp on the desk was lit in the study, its light encircling the keyboard and mouse, while the rest of the room was shrouded in darkness.
He stared at the line "The End" on the screen for a long time before closing the document.
He knew the significance of this notebook.
Li Yunlong is an imperfect character; he has flaws, a temper, and shortcomings, but that's precisely what makes him real.
Viewers are more likely to believe that a regimental commander who curses, smashes bowls, and slams his fist on the table with the political commissar is truly fighting desperately.
Perfect characters never move people; it's flawed heroes who are truly memorable.
Lu Ran copied the document to a USB drive, then pulled it out and placed it on the top shelf of his desk drawer.
He turned off his computer, stood up, walked to the window, and looked out.
The streetlights downstairs were still on, and several cars returning home at night drove past the entrance of the community. The headlights left short white streaks on the asphalt road before disappearing.
The city skyline stretched out quietly in the distance against the deep blue night sky, with a few lights shining from the windows of the high-rise residential buildings.
He recalled the notebooks and game plans that hadn't been released yet in the system, arranging them one by one in folders, waiting for the right opportunity.
This is also a good thing for him that his father-in-law is filming "Bright Sword". After the series is finished, the discussions about the bloody battles in Shanghai overseas will reach a new level.
Even TV dramas have been made about it; I bet those Japanese won't react at all.
They probably didn't expect that such a small game could have such a big impact.
...