Shadow Empire

Chapter 776: Filming completed ahead of schedule and dragging people into the water

The Angels of Death are indeed unpopular, hated and resented by everyone who has to make a living on the interstate.

But there is no way. There are too many of these people, and as the gang grows and expands, they have gradually begun to more systematically exploit the large trucks that make a living on state highways.

For some unknown reason, the Perez family suddenly started to take action against this group of people, whose territories overlapped.

However, the Angel of Death who was looking for a living on the interstate highway was definitely no match for the Perez family who ruled the city, and they suffered heavy losses for a while.

This move was appreciated by a large number of truck drivers, who also sold a lot of information about the Angel of Death to the Perez family, helping them to better eradicate this group of people.

Most people don't know what's mad about them, but some, a few, do.

Lance said it was done by the Angel of Death.

Regardless of whether it is true or not, this gives the Perez family a chance to vent their anger. At the same time, they can also flex their strong muscles and make those who are watching them turn their heads away.

This can be considered as indirectly doing a good thing for the people, so even though they went a little too far, society did not tend towards chaos, but instead tended towards a more stable state.

The federal government did not interfere with the actions of the Perez family.

Because the Angel of Death is a criminal organization that spans multiple states and has no specific headquarters, it is highly mobile.

Therefore, organizing their arrest requires cooperation among multiple states, which is a very troublesome thing in itself, so they have been allowed to act recklessly.

For the federal government, the Perez family's actions not only eradicated a cancer, but also helped them save a lot of money.

When everything is leaning towards war, it is better to save a little than to waste a little.

In addition to these masters whose interests are related to the war between the Lance Family, the Perez Family and the Angel of Death, the newly established criminal investigation department of the FBI is also paying close attention to the war between them.

Before the new director took office, the FBI's main job was to "investigate who is speaking ill of the President" and "who is plotting to harm the President", while also helping the President frame his political opponents.

But as a new chief took office and his proposal to gain greater law enforcement powers than local police began to be submitted to Congress, things began to move in the direction that had already been written.

This is actually an obvious centralized means of power, so neither the Presidential Office nor Congress will stop it. Instead, they will help the FBI to implement this matter as quickly as possible.

This proposal is still in the submission stage and has not yet been voted on or passed, but the FBI has already begun paying attention to these federal gangs.

The new director general is a 37-year-old young man with blond hair, thin and narrow cheeks, and an aquiline nose. He doesn't look like someone who is easy to mess with, and gives people a somewhat dangerous feeling.

The room was filled with the characters he had selected, and behind him, a senior agent was explaining the organizational structure and main members of the Angel of Death to these people.

It can be seen that each of them is very serious.

At the same time, they also have great respect for their new director and are not at all affected by some of the outside rumors that "the FBI director is good at licking hooks."

Almost all of them were alumni of the same school as the new director, and many of them had joined the same fraternity. Except for a few senior managers, the heads of the lower departments were all young people who had just graduated or had graduated only one or two years ago, or two or three years ago.

They are like a blank sheet of paper that has already been scribbled on by the director.

The director, who looks older than them, is actually also a blank sheet of paper at this time. The ones drawing his future are not the president or the Congress, but these young people in front of him!

Perhaps the word "mutual achievement" can better reflect his emotions at this moment.

In a trance, he turned his head to look at the blackboard, gave the lecturer an encouraging look, and then watched very seriously.

The wind outside the window blows the grass leaves into the air. The real summer has arrived.

Lance took off his straw hat and stood in the shade of the tree fanning himself. To be honest, the weather was really too hot, but the filming of the movie was almost coming to an end, just like what they were filming now.

The male protagonist will ride on the last torpedo, and then control the direction with his hands to ensure that the last torpedo can sink the battleship of the Republic of Dentra.

Even though the plot is ridiculous, the two directors, the screenwriter, and everyone knows it, but the feeling when it was filmed gave people a very surprising positive feedback!
The Federation is a country that advocates personal heroism. When the hero sacrifices himself for victory in the war, the shock is enough to leave everyone speechless.

Of course, this scene was not easy to shoot, but fortunately Lance already had enough creativity.

A huge glass tank and some human-powered water wheels were used to simulate waves, so that you can also shoot the feeling of being under the ocean.

To put it simply, they built a transparent swimming pool!

The male protagonist was riding on the huge torpedo. In one hand he was holding a necklace with photos of his girlfriend and family, and in the other hand he was holding the torpedo tightly.

He controlled the direction of the torpedo by stepping on the torpedo's steering structure with his legs.

At this moment, it doesn’t matter whether it’s reasonable or not!

The moment he rode the torpedo and hit the "hull", the set suddenly became quiet.

After about twenty or thirty seconds of silence, the two directors looked at each other and nodded, and all the real-life shooting was completed!

The male protagonist jumped out of the swimming pool. He shook off the water stains on his head and breathed heavily. "I want to know, did I survive in the end?"

This is a very stupid question. He also knows that many parts of this movie are illogical and unreasonable, but that does not prevent him from feeling the core of the movie.

The personal attachment to family and lover, as well as the responsibility to the country, the collision, entanglement, struggle, and the final explosion between them were completely sublimated!

The character he played told people through his own choices that without a country, there is no home.

And this is also a line from the male protagonist. Before he was about to "set off" on the torpedo, he took out the last half of a cigarette and lit it. While savoring it carefully, he said this to the officer who tried to stop him -

"If I don't go, you don't go, and no one goes, then the next ones to face them will be our parents, wives, and children!"

"We should do our part and make this country the guardian of every home. Without a country, how can there be a home?"

He looked a little haggard, but there was a gleam of light in his narrow eyes. "Now it's just my turn to defend our country and our home. You should be happy for me, not sad."

"I have fulfilled my duty as a man and my duty as a soldier. May..." He took the last puff of his cigarette and handed the remaining cigarette butt to his superior, "May the Federation prosper!"

Then he resolutely fixed himself to the torpedo. In order to avoid being pushed under by the current, he needed to tie himself completely to the torpedo.

In a charge that was certain to lead to his death, he did not hesitate at all. After ignoring all kinds of unreasonable things, he displayed a strong inner strength that shocked everyone!
In response to the actor's question, the two directors smiled, said nothing, and just shook their heads.

There are actually two endings here, the first of which is that everything ends in an explosion, but there is another ending.

One morning, after the heroine had been reading the letter from the military in a daze for a while, a ruffian-looking guy with his fingers on his coat leaned against the door, looked at her with a smile, and said "Good morning".

It’s just that the male protagonist himself doesn’t know it, because this scene has already been filmed and used at the beginning of the plot.

What followed was some "special effects filming", in which a human-guided torpedo sank the last battleship of Dantra, buying precious time and space for the Federation Navy to regain control of the Eastern Ocean and even counterattack the Dantra Republic.

After all, this is not a true story, so some of the subsequent content is only mentioned in passing.

The next step is to cut all the materials into a film and then conduct a test screening.

Because Lance personally invested in and decided everything about the entire project, he also had a lot of power when it came to editing.

This process took more than a week, and the film was finally completed by the end of July or the beginning of August.

It is worth mentioning that during this process, the Federal Film Commission applied for by Lance was also approved, of course, Senator Cleveland’s efforts were indispensable.

It was said that he had had some trouble with two other senators, but that was what Tom told him.

After all, Golden State is too far away from here, and Lance doesn't know what is going on here, but he will make the Cleveland Senators realize that it is valuable to help him.

At around seven o'clock in the evening, the main creative team came to Lans's movie theater, where there was a small preview today.

Patricia was already showing signs of pregnancy and had some reactions, so Lance didn't let her come because of her health problems. The movie was 110 minutes long, which was considered a very long movie in this era.

Nowadays, the average length of a movie is about one hour or fifty minutes, and very few are that long.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t any big studios. There are also movies that are three, four, or even five hours long.

After the cinema went dark, people began to be attracted by what was on the big screen.

Sometimes you have to admit that movies shot with black and white film have a strong flavor of the times.

There are also those accents that are unique to this era, which obviously have a stronger and more intense operatic style. People will perform them in a more exaggerated way and have not yet gotten rid of the influence of opera and stage plays on movies.

This is especially true for outstanding actors, because they are not only movie actors, but are often also opera singers.

The opening is slow-paced, but it's full of scenes that foreshadow a bad future, such as the huge battleship model in the seaside souvenir shop in Jingang City suddenly sinking to the bottom of the sea.

For example, suddenly a large flock of seabirds fly away without looking back, or the hero and heroine may encounter some minor accidents at work and hurt themselves.

There are many hints and omens, and both directors call it a new film language. They are fascinated by it and think that Lance is the best producer, director, screenwriter, and possibly actor in the current film industry.

The pace of the movie became very fast after the warm early stage. The real shelling scenes and shaking shots made many people exclaim in surprise.

Lance suddenly felt someone holding his hand. He turned his head to look at Barbara who was sitting next to him. Her palms were sweaty.

"Are you nervous?", Lance asked.

Barbara nodded, and Lance took out a handkerchief, wiped the sweat off her palms, rolled it up, and stuffed it into her hands. "Patricia is four months pregnant."

He reminded Barbara that it was not that Lance's puppy was useless, but that he had experienced a lot and had developed self-control.

Barbara's expression was not very good and she didn't look at Lance again.

The movie ended after one hundred and ten minutes, and everyone in the audience couldn't help but stand up and applaud.

The great director came over and hugged Lance, "This movie and you will go down in history, Mr. Lance!"

This sentence made Lance very happy. Perhaps this could be considered a kind of immortality.

He patted the director's arm, "You too!"

Then Lance received more praise and blessings. This is definitely a cross-era movie, with a gripping plot and unreasonable but full of visual effects and emotional pictures.

All this tells people one thing, this movie is going to be a big hit!

Lance had no intention of taking the movie to Golden State to show Senator Cleveland. Instead, Senator Cleveland would be coming to Golden Port City soon because the naval base was here.

A lot of military supplies are also transported to the front line from here, and this place currently plays an extraordinary role.

As a core senator in Congress, to a certain extent, some of the duties he has to perform also belong to the president.

It has been four or five months since the war started, and no heavyweight politicians have visited the "front lines". This is not right.

They might have been discussing who would come and who would not, and Senator Cleveland was chosen, or it might be that he competed for this result.

As for the real front line, it may require someone like the Speaker of the House of Representatives or the President of the Senate to visit.

In addition to these things, the person that Lance had an appointment with also arrived in Jingang City.

Mr. Cassia, Lapa's Undersecretary of Commerce.

Mr. Cassia has a good relationship with Alberto and was invited to come to the Federation for a business investigation last time.

But the results of the investigation disappointed him greatly. It was not that he did not see anything valuable from the Federation, but that what he saw and heard was of no help to Lapa.

Lapa is a purely agricultural country in the Asian region with a population of 12 million, which is not a small country in Asia.

But the country's economic pillars are primitive jungles and agriculture and animal husbandry, and the federal economy is built on a complete industrial foundation.

He saw many excellent projects, but the country had no industrial foundation at all, so even if they were introduced, it would be a big problem.

He could only bring back some manual light industrial content that did not require electricity or machine tools, and gain some economic growth by exporting crude raw materials to the Federation.

This was his second visit to the Federation, still private, at the invitation of Lance.

When he was picked up, Minister Cassia asked curiously, "Why didn't my friend Alberto come?"

He and Alberto do have a good relationship. On the other hand, he and Lance have only met once and they still lack some mutual trust. It would be much better if there was a friend they were both familiar with.

So he asked where Alberto was right away, which was also a hint to Lance that it would be better to find Alberto.

Lance shook his head slightly, "I'm sorry to tell you, Mr. Cassia, Alberto is dead."

"He's buried in the cemetery now if you want to see him."

Because he had no bloodline of the Pasleto family and did not have the surname, he could not be buried in the Pasleto family cemetery and could only be buried in the public cemetery.

Minister Cassia was shocked when he heard the news, "This... is really too bad!"

"I didn't expect something like this to happen. When did it happen?"

Lance briefly explained the whole story, and he sighed heavily after listening.

"A respectable man!"

Lance agreed with this view.

The convoy seemed to be wandering aimlessly on the streets and in busy areas.

After a while, he asked, "Mr. Lance, why did you invite me here this time?"

Lance handed him a cigarette, "Make money."

"Making money?" Mr. Cassia, who had just received the cigarette, was stunned for a moment. He didn't react, but soon realized that this was a bit embarrassing.

He quickly put the cigarette in his mouth and took out a lighter to light it for himself, "Do you mean my personal one, or Lapa?"

"All."

Lance's words were ambiguous, but in Minister Cassia's ears, they had a different meaning.

If a person has never seen heaven, he will be at ease in hell.

But after he had seen heaven, he could no longer endure hell.

Perhaps he himself did not feel this change. After returning to China, what he often talked about was "how great the federation is". It seemed that he wanted to prove in this way that his point of view was correct.

Because in their eyes, the federation separated by a sea is a typical representative of success!
Sometimes he would think that if he lived in the Federation, or even was a Federation citizen, he would not have so many troubles.

Lance may not be aware of what he said at this moment, but he does not feel disgusted.

"I may be the Undersecretary of Commerce, but Mr. Lance, I don't really know how to make money!", he replied.

(End of this chapter)