Chapter 129: Chapter 128: Ice and Snow Fairy Tale
Arriving in the dark screening hall, the members of the Deer Spirit Tribe were a little nervous.
Living in the woodlands year-round had made them accustomed to guarding against all sorts of potential dangers.
Being packed so tightly together with so many people around them felt very strange.
In a confined space like a movie theater, it would be difficult to escape if an accident occurred. If the crowd panicked, even casting a Teleportation Spell would be difficult.
"It’s alright, everyone. It’s very safe here," the Elder Priest reassured them.
She hadn’t let her guard down since entering Twin Tower City, but this place was much safer than she had anticipated.
A dormant Teleportation Array had been laid out under the screening hall’s carpet. It could cover the entire hall and was likely intended for emergency evacuation in case of danger.
The activation Rune was placed inside a glass case on the wall, with the words "Emergency Teleport" written above it in green fluorescent script.
’Zog Group really thought of everything.’
The people here were also friendlier than she had imagined. Although they wore clothes with very distinct tribal features, no one seemed to find it strange.
In fact, quite a few people enthusiastically came up to take pictures with them, asking what characters they were playing. Were they the Priests from that new comic?
The Elder Priest, however, didn’t understand what "playing a character" meant. She was, in fact, a Priest.
But it was also difficult to refuse these people.
After a short wait, the film officially began.
As it was the first screening of the premiere, there were no advertisements before the main feature.
The Zog Film Studio logo appeared—the classic double roar of the Red Dragon.
The audience cheered along with the roars on screen.
The fervent atmosphere throughout the hall was enough to nearly blow the roof off.
"Are Shadows of Evil really this popular?" the Elder Priest asked a young tribesperson beside her.
"Of course!" came the reply, but from another audience member in the front row. "We’ve been waiting for a Shadow of Evil from Zog Film Studio for a long time!"
The Elder Priest did not understand the audience’s excitement.
After partnering with the Zog Group, she had diligently watched the previous two Shadows of Evil to understand her collaborator. She admitted they were indeed good productions, she just wasn’t very interested in them.
She had also tried playing the games, which was a real trial for an old person like her. After just a little while, her eyes would get dizzy and her mind would feel exhausted.
Besides Zog Film Studio, the opening credits also featured an Ice and Snow Castle topped with an arc of particles, credited to the Magic Light Magic Visual Effects Team.
’Visual effects? What are those? Some new Illusion Technique used for Shadows of Evil?’
Although she couldn’t quite appreciate Zog Group’s creations, they certainly were always coming up with something new.
After the brief uproar, the screening hall quieted down.
After a year of development, audiences for Shadows of Evil had already developed good viewing etiquette.
There were no screaming, unsupervised children, no weirdos bootlegging the screen without turning off their flash, and no chatterboxes showing off by explaining the plot to their companions.
Of course, this habit wasn’t cultivated because of some high average level of courtesy.
It was mainly because the local customs were simple and straightforward: people would rather use their fists than their mouths.
Once, a young man, trying to show off for his female companion, had displayed all his behind-the-scenes knowledge during a screening like a peacock spreading its feathers.
An audience member in the next seat, unable to bear the disturbance, directly challenged him to a duel.
In the Sutton Kingdom, dueling was protected by law—it was reasonable, legitimate, sacred, and serious.
So in the end, the fate of the young man who liked to chatter during screenings wasn’t too tragic.
He died.
At the age of 23.
After seeing the news about the death resulting from a duel over a theater dispute, Zog immediately issued a new Zog Group regulation: employees were forbidden from personally participating in duels.
If a duel was unavoidable, they could ask the Group for help, and an absolutely professional duel proxy would be dispatched.
A 100% win rate, with a verifiable track record, capable of handling opponents from Ordinary people to the Legendary Level. However, the proxy’s fee would be deducted from their salary.
Zog had no desire to see key researchers or boy geniuses on his team die a pointless death in a duel.
In the screening hall, the audience watched the screen with rapt attention.
The Shadow of Evil began with a song and dance number on a sheet of ice.
Ice Gatherers used traditional tools to saw the frozen lake into half-meter-square blocks of ice, which they then dragged onto horse-drawn carts and hauled away.
In the Northern Domain, the lakes could freeze nearly two meters thick in winter, making them incredibly sturdy. Not only could horse-drawn carts travel on them, but historically, even siege engines had.
As the workers gathered ice, they sang a work shanty characteristic of the Northern Domain.
To actually combine a Shadow of Evil with song and dance—it was another novel experiment.
The audience of Twin Tower City found it novel, but the Elder Priest found it familiar.
Seeing a common scene from her life appear in a Shadow of Evil gave her a strange feeling.
She recognized at a glance that the little boy with the most screen time was a magically de-aged Grove.
He looked exactly as he did in his youth—reckless and clumsy, with a young Little Deer beside him.
’Getting old really makes one sentimental.’
To her surprise, the audience here seemed very interested in the ice-gathering scene.
What was considered miserable work in the Northern Domain was somehow interesting in their eyes.
But this was mainly due to the beautification of filming. Real ice gathering was much more exhausting; it would take a long time to saw just one block. The ice here had clearly been pre-cut.
’Shadows of Evil are truly deceptive.’
In the subsequent plot, the two sisters, the main characters, appeared as children. The older sister, Elsa, was born with Ice Magic and accidentally injured her younger sister while they were playing.
The moment the Magic struck the younger sister, the audience let out a collective gasp.
The Elder Priest’s heart clenched as well.
As someone raised to be a Priest from a young age, she always took all responsibility upon herself.
She could see that Elsa in the story was also such a responsible older sister, and people like them would close themselves off out of self-blame.
Just as she thought, Elsa began to shut herself in her room, no longer interacting with her sister. Loneliness became the keynote of her life.
The tragic death of the King and Queen while seeking a way to undo the Magic only made their sorrowful fate even worse.
This drew repeated sighs from the audience.
The sense of resonance was strong; it was starting to get painful to watch.
Because of the gap between her status and her tribespeople’s from a young age, the Elder Priest had shouldered all the pressures and expectations of the previous generation, and she too had grown up in loneliness.
But she never had an "Anna" who would sing outside her door, inviting her to build a snowman.
She had always been alone.
Even now, she had not escaped this feeling of loneliness. She had just... gotten used to it.
A unique talent doesn’t always bring advantages.
The sisters grew up. The older sister was crowned Queen, while the younger sister met a charming Prince at the coronation ball.
Moments that seem this joyous and harmonious are usually when accidents are about to happen.
That’s how all the stories passed down by word of mouth in the tribe went, and the Minstrels in the city also loved to stir up their audience’s emotions this way.
As expected, during an argument at the ball, the glove Elsa wore to seal her Magic was accidentally removed, and her Ice Magic spiraled out of control in an instant.
Under the gazes of everyone who looked at her as if she were a monster, Elsa fled across the lake that froze with her every step, escaping to a snowy mountain.
The entire Kingdom was frozen over in her wake, plunged into a deep winter.
The visual spectacle of the frozen Kingdom left the audience gasping in amazement.
For a moment, they couldn’t help but start murmuring.
"Did they freeze an entire Kingdom just to film this Shadow of Evil?"
"Impossible. Did you forget *Holy Mountain Journey*? They didn’t really derail a train for that. It’s all Illusion Technique."
"What kind of Illusion Technique can be on such a massive scale?"
"Quiet!"
The Elder Priest wasn’t interested in how Zog Film Studio created its visual spectacles.
She now felt it was a bit of a shame; the story seemed to be heading in a clichéd direction.
A Queen and a Princess with dead parents, a Prince who appeared out of nowhere—it all seemed like a fairytale sung to death by Minstrels.
’What comes next? The Princess and the Prince defeat the "evil queen" of the frozen Kingdom? Or will another new Prince appear to save the lost Elsa?’
’It couldn’t possibly be a grown-up Grove, could it? Heavens, although she was an elder who had watched Grove grow up, that foolish boy was definitely not worthy of this strong girl.’
It wasn’t that such stories were bad, but deep down, the Elder Priest felt that Elsa, who had been repeatedly toyed with by fate, should not become a decorative damsel to be rescued by a Prince.
The Elder Priest didn’t believe in saviors who descended from the heavens; she firmly believed that one had to fight for everything oneself.
Just as she was lamenting that the story had fallen into mediocrity, the clear, cool notes of a piano drifted from the screening hall’s surround sound system.
Elsa stood alone on the snowy mountain, facing the wind and snow, and slowly began to sing, "The snow glows white on the mountain tonight..."
