The Rise of Otaku

Chapter 31 The Old Movie

One month later, Gao Shu completely became grey-colored. He didn’t understand why it was so difficult to find a person.

He even suspected that the Taoist’s team left fake names in the game.

Every single team member of the soldier’s development team had their names written in the ending credits of the game. That was why Gao Shu thought that he would be able to find at least some of them.

But what he didn’t expect was that all of them were the characters from the ACG world. Unless he had the same ability as Zhou Yu, otherwise, he would never be able to find them.

The only person he could find was Taoist – Zhou Yu. All three games were based on Luhua village, and Zhou Yu also lived there, so it was not hard to find him.

Different to his team, the Taoist had no signs of wanting to hide his identity. Of course, when signing the contract and giving the bank details, Zhou Yu needed to provide real details, so even if he wanted to hide, he couldn’t do it.

This meant that Zhou Yu had an important role in the team. Otherwise, why would other people trust him to manage the money?

However, Zhou Yu insisted that he was the representative of the team, he was not the team member, and didn’t know anything about the game, so he didn’t want to do interviews.

After he investigated Zhou Yu, he found out that Zhou Yu was just an otaku. He had not even left the village for more than a year. So it was most likely that they communicated with each other through the internet.

His profession was an online novel writer, and the novels he wrote was not particularly good. So it was very unlikely that he was the scriptwriter of the game.

It made him wonder how did an ordinary man like him get to know the people who developed those games, and why they trusted him so much. Gao Shu could only marvel at how strange the relationship between otakus, and soon, got back to his task of trying to find out other team members of the Taoist group.

………………………

For business activities, Zhou Yu would definitely not participate in any of them. The first reason was that he did not want to move. The second reason was that the game was not made by him at all. Going out and revealing his face in the public, was a very classic face slapping trope. What if he was asked with some technical questions, then his lie would be exposed at an instant.

If the game sold well, he would get more money. If the game did not sell well, he would still get some money. It was a business did not require any investment. No matter how ones looked at it, Zhou Yu would still profit. On the other hand, I am crazy over otaku had spent a lot of money on advertisements, if the game did not sell well, probably Gao Shu would be in deep troubles.

Zhou Yu treated this matter entirely from an outsider’s perspective. Therefore, he was pretty relaxed. Even if the game did not sell well, and the site lost a lot of money over this project, or maybe the site would no longer want to work with him, he already got the money from the first game. With that money, it would help him to survive for a very long time. In short, it would be great if it was a success, but even if it was not, he did not mind it at all.

What Zhou Yu was addicted right now was making animations. Therefore, he didn’t want to think about games at the moment.

Tier one animation movie “Journey to the west – the flaming mountain” was finally completed! There was an animation director in the team and a legendary statue providing special effects, plus the production team was also a high-quality team, and the animation itself was also the type of animations that would trigger the production team’s special effects. So the final product would not be too bad.

Moreover, after spending 50 ordinary small beast cards today, he surprisingly drew a cursed vintage film projector, which could be used in the real life from the chubby and stingy third dragon Prince’s treasure bowl.

Taking a close look, it was indeed an antique. It even reminded him of the outdoor cinema that he used to go to when he was young. At that time, the movie was projected onto a big canvas screen that was hanged onto a wall.

Then as the strange “two-wheeled” machine started running while making the clicking sounds, it projected a bright light beam onto the screen, displaying many interesting stories.

It usually played two movies a night. However, when he was a kid, he would always become very sleepy during the night time. Despite that, no matter how his parents tried to drag him away, he would still refuse to leave, and still, want to see the movie to the end.

‘I really miss the old days.’

The appearance of this antique was exactly the same as the projector in his memory. But through the eyes of the ACG world, he could see that there was a small creature called shadow demon inside the projector.

With red skin, horns on its head, and the iconic arrow tail, it was the typical appearance of a Western-style demon. The only strange thing was, that it was wearing a worker’s uniform.

“Greetings, master, shadow demon at your service,” The demon was as polite as a gentleman, Zhou Yu couldn’t sense dangers from it at all.

Looking carefully inside the projector box, three was a small bed, a table, a chair, tool cabinet, and a bookshelf that was full of books, the whole box looked like a study room.

In terms of the outside of the projector box, it was covered with normal mechanic stuff. Although Zhou Yu didn’t know how long it was in the dragon palace’s treasure house, it still looked very new. Perhaps, it was all because of the shadow demon.

And as he had expected, the shadow demon carried on, “I used to be a projectionist. In order to give the audience the best movie experience, I sold my soul to the devil.

The movie that is shown by me will give the audiences the most enjoyable experiences. However, the cost of that is, I will never be able to leave this box unless I finished showing 1,000 movies. Master, can you help me to eliminate this curse?”

1000 movies… The production time of an animation movie was one day, he would definitely and only make high-tier animations in the future, plus the time he needed to use to restore mood points, it would take him at least one week to make one animation movie.

Therefore, if he wanted to save this shadow demon, he would need at least 10 or 20 years.

But eliminating curses? Wasn’t this the old Immortal crane’s expertise? Both Yang Kuai, and little Niannian’s curses were removed by him, so probably he would be able to remove this curse as well.

Quickly finding the old Immortal Crane, he explained the situation to him. However, after the old Immortal Crane walked around the projector’s box to examine it carefully, he just shook his head and said, “I’m afraid that I am unable to remove this curse. If you can find my master, maybe he will be able to do it.”

Uh… It seemed like it was a legendary quest, and who knows how long it would take him to find the old immortal crane’s master. So probably the shadow demon would have to show the movies at the moment.

But the shadow demon didn’t seem to be upset about it. After all, he had already spent a very long time in the projector box in the deep sea. He already felt very grateful that Zhou Yu had the intention to free him, let alone that he just needed to wait for some time.

Having hope was much better than being hopeless.

Besides, the shadow demon was passionate about his job. Otherwise, he would not have traded with the devil to obtain the special ability.

Now that he could show movies to people again, he was very happy.

Seeing him was checking the equipment nervously, fearing that the equipment would have problems when projecting movies, Zhou Yu didn’t want to let him down.

He went to his toolhouse and took out the finished animation movie. The first one he took out was the digital data, which could be stored on his computer.

Another one had multiple options, he could choose to have a film roll, a VHS tape, a disc, etc… with all kinds of technical terms, it made Zhou Yu feel headaches.

Luckily, there was a Shadow Demon. It knew exactly what kind of film reel that was needed for this projector, which was called ‘nightmare’.

After selecting the film roll, a film reel was slowly spat out of the bottom of the animation base. Just one roll couldn’t store a two hours movie, so it was split into two parts.

Anyway, it was time to view the movie.

…..note…..

Alas, those good old days. I don’t know if any of you have experienced outdoor cinemas. But I really miss those days…

Anyway, the same as usual, there will be no chapters next week. I need to correct mistakes in dark blood age.

If you like this style of novels, do not hesitate to recommend any other novels with a similar style in the comment section. I believe that many other readers will appreciate it.