Chapter 433: Everyone, Stand Up! A Salute Twenty Years Overdue
The massive screen went completely dark.
There were no post-credits scenes, no flashy special effect transitions.
On the black background, white subtitles began scrolling from bottom to top.
[According to incomplete statistics, the average lifespan of China’s narcotics police is only 41 years.]
[They are the police force with the highest sacrifice rate and the highest injury rate.]
[Every operation is a life-and-death gamble against desperados.]
[To protect their families, they cannot show their faces while alive, and cannot have tombstones erected after death.]
[Even in sacrifice, their tombstones often have no name, no photo, only a badge number.]
The subt scrolled very slowly.
Finally, a bold white line of text floated alone in the center of the screen, lingering for a long time.
[This film is dedicated to all the nameless heroes who struggle in the darkness and cannot stand in the sunlight.]
That line of text burned itself into the retinas of everyone present.
“Mommy…”
In the darkness, a childish voice suddenly rang out, innocent and scared:
“Is that kind uncle… asleep?”
“He’s just too tired, he fell asleep…”
The mother’s voice trembled, barely holding back her sobs, “From now on… no one will dare bully him again.”
“Click.”
The lights in Hall Four came on.
White light spilled down, illuminating the space.
Looking around at the hundred or so people,
Without exception, every face was covered in crisscrossing tear streaks.
Those usually glamorous influencers, those picky, sharp-tongued critics,
All had bloodshot eyes, looking disheveled and pathetic.
From next door, Hall Two, the exit music of “Laughing All the Way” could still be faintly heard, mixed with the laughter of the audience leaving.
In Hall Four, there was only heavy breathing and barely suppressed sobs.
This emotion was stuck in their chests, too heavy, heavy enough to make it hard to breathe.
They desperately needed an outlet.
“Swish—”
The last row.
The sound of a seat flipping broke the silence.
The middle-aged man with a burn scar on his face was the first to stand up.
He didn’t speak, just silently adjusted the hem of his slightly worn jacket, and straightened his back.
Then.
“Shwoosh! Shwoosh! Shwoosh!”
The twenty-odd men sitting around him stood up in unison.
Even if they were in civilian clothes, even if some had graying hair, some walked with a slight limp.
But the motion of standing up was perfectly synchronized.
The people in the theater were startled by the commotion and turned their heads one after another.
The lead veteran criminal investigator took off his hat and held it in his hand.
His gaze pierced through the rows of seats, fixed on the slightly thin figure in the third row.
“Attention all!”
The veteran investigator’s voice echoed through the theater.
“Stand at attention!”
The twenty-odd men snapped their dress shoes together.
“Crack!”
A sharp sound.
The veteran investigator used all his strength to roar out those two words:
“Salute—!!!”
Shwoosh!
Over twenty arms rose at the same time.
The audience in the front row watched the scene in shock.
They saw those hands.
Some hands were covered in calluses and scars, very rough.
Some hands had only three fingers, the empty sleeve glaringly obvious under the light.
And some hands were trembling slightly, the aftereffect of nerve damage.
This was a group of broken people.
But they were also the most complete people.
Their fingertips pressed against their brows, their eyes resolute—
That was the highest honor for the departed, and the greatest recognition for the living.
This salute pierced the boundary between screen and reality.
It was for “Jiang He,” who died before the dawn.
It was for those comrades whose names were carved on stone tablets, whose photos were locked in file cabinets.
And it was for the young actor in front of them, who dared to tear open this bloody scene and show it to the world.
Third row.
Jiang Ci felt the commotion behind him.
He didn’t turn around.
Because his hand was tightly gripped by the mother beside him.
Chu Hong stood up.
She was wearing that old-fashioned suit from twenty years ago, the threads on the cuffs trembling slightly under the light.
She turned around to face the group of veterans.
Her back was very straight.
At this moment, she was no longer that auntie who haggled over two yuan on variety shows,
Nor was she the mother who brought her son food in a stainless steel pot.
She was Jiang Yanjun’s wife.
The guardian of a badge number.
Chu Hong looked at those broken hands,
Tears swirled in her eyes, but they never fell.
She raised her right hand.
Five fingers together.
Returning the salute.
The movement was standard, crisp, and clean.
This was a police officer’s wife, in place of her sacrificed husband, returning the salute to his comrades.
This scene was too heavy.
Heavy enough to make everyone present feel their eyes sting and their hearts tighten.
Jiang Ci slowly stood up.
He turned around to face the group of veterans, face his mother, and face the entire audience.
He took off the small white flower pinned to his chest, holding it in his palm.
Then he bent down.
Deeply, he bowed.
He didn’t need to speak.
All the lines had already been said in the film.
All the emotions had been exhausted in that one glance of “the sky has cleared.”
At this moment, he didn’t need applause, didn’t need flowers.
He was just a storyteller, telling a story about coming home for those who couldn’t speak.
“Whoosh—”
No one knew who started it first.
The girl in the front row, whose makeup was a mess from crying, wiped her tears and clapped desperately.
Then came the reporter in gold-rimmed glasses.
Then the young man holding popcorn.
One by one, the people in the theater stood up.
Applause grew from scattered claps into a thunderous roar.
That female influencer who had mocked the film for being unpopular at the door,
Was now holding her selfie stick, her hands shaking badly.
Half of her false eyelashes had fallen off from crying, hanging on her face precariously, looking utterly ridiculous.
But the tens of thousands of viewers in her live stream didn’t laugh at her.
“Family…” the streamer choked out, her voice breaking, speaking incoherently into the camera:
“I… I was wrong.”
“I said this was a bad film before… I really deserve to die.”
“This isn’t a movie… This is a life! It’s a dawn bought with lives!”
She turned the camera toward the veterans saluting behind her, toward Jiang Ci who was still bowing.
“Please… all of you, come and watch.”
“Don’t let the heroes… be left cold in the corner.”
The bullet comments in the live stream paused for a moment.
Then, a dense barrage of comments exploded.
[Tears! This is the kind of star we should follow!]
[Salute! Salute to the veterans! Salute to Jiang He!]
[I’m a cop, and I cried. Thank you, Jiang Ci. Thank you, “Icebreaker”.]
[Who the hell said this was a bad film? I’m going to buy a ticket right now! If I can’t get one today, I’ll buy one for tomorrow!]
In the corner.
The gold-rimmed glasses reporter who had asked the sharpest questions earlier, waiting to see a trainwreck, was now lowering his head.
His fingers were flying over the operation interface of his camera.
“Delete.”
The incriminating photos he had taken, meant to write about “Jiang Ci’s premiere cold reception” or “the burst of the traffic bubble,”
Were deleted one by one.
After deleting them, he pulled out his notebook from his bag.
And tore out the page covered in sharp questions.
“Rip—”
The sound of tearing paper was drowned in the applause.
He turned to a new page, picked up his pen, and wrote a title:
“If light has a color, it must be the dawn dyed red by blood.”
After writing that line, he adjusted his glasses and found the lenses completely fogged up.
“What’s going on? Is there a fight inside?!”
The door to Hall Four was pushed open.
Wang Pangzi, the cinema manager, along with a few security guards, rushed in, panting.
He had just seen everyone in Hall Four stand up from the monitoring room, the commotion terrifyingly loud,
And thought the audience was causing trouble because the film was so bad.
“Everyone, calm down! We can talk this out… Uh?”
Wang Pangzi’s words got stuck in his throat.
He stood there, stunned, staring at the scene before him.
Everyone was standing.
Thunderous applause.
That group of tough-looking “flat-top guys” was saluting solemnly.
Wang Pangzi had worked in the cinema for ten years.
He had seen fans stampede to see their idols,
Seen couples scream at horror movies,
And seen people laugh until they fell over at comedies.
But he had never seen a scene like this.
A niche film with only a 15% screening allocation, in the most remote Hall Four.
Had somehow produced a ceremony as solemn as the national flag guard’s flag-raising.
“Manager…” the young security guard beside him swallowed,
And asked quietly, “So… should we still kick them out? The next screening is about to start.”
“Kick my ass!”
Wang Pangzi slapped the security guard on the back of the head.
He was a businessman, but he wasn’t blind.
He looked at the dedication subtitles still lingering on the massive screen, then at the tear-streaked faces of the audience.
A professional intuition told him—
Today, things were about to change.
“Go!” Wang Pangzi lowered his voice, speaking urgently,
“Tell the projection room to pull up the screening schedule for tomorrow… no, for tonight!”
“Cancel all those unpopular animated films and the low-occupancy screenings of ‘Laughing All the Way’!”
“This film…”
Wang Pangzi’s gaze burned as he stared at Jiang Ci’s bloodstained face on the poster.
“Is going to explode.”
…
At the same time.
Weibo.
An inconspicuous topic was climbing the trending chart at an incredible speed from the tail end.
#Icebreaker Made Me Cry#
Followed by a deep red character for “boiling.”
No marketing accounts hyping it up, no paid posters controlling the comments.
It was all spontaneous promotion from the first batch of viewers leaving the theater.
[@IWantToEatHotpot: Don’t ask, just ask I’ve got a brick in my eyes.]
[@PoliceAcademyStudentLittleLiu: Our whole dorm went to see it. No one talked when we came out. We just silently smoked a cigarette on the roadside. If I hadn’t gone, I would regret it for the rest of my life.]
[@RandomPasserby: I’ve seen so many drug-fighting films, but this is the only one that made me feel that the character for ‘drug’ is stained with blood. Jiang He’s last scene—I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life.]
As word of mouth fermented, a storm called “shock”
Was sweeping from this cold, deserted Hall Four toward the entire internet.
And Jiang Ci, at the center of the storm,
Finally straightened up.
He felt someone pat him on the shoulder.
It was the lead veteran investigator.
The veteran investigator didn’t speak. He just pulled out a slightly worn cigarette pack from his chest, took out a cigarette, and handed it to Jiang Ci.
Jiang Ci was taken aback.
“I don’t smoke…”
“Take it.” The veteran investigator’s voice was deep, “This was the brand the old captain loved most while he was alive.”
“It’s been discontinued, but I’ve always kept it.”
He tucked the cigarette into the pocket of Jiang Ci’s jacket, right next to the small white flower.
“You brought him to life.”
The veteran investigator’s big hand, with only three fingers, pressed heavily on Jiang Ci’s shoulder.
“Thank you, for bringing him back.”
Jiang Ci felt the warmth of that hand, through the thin shirt, all the way down to his heart.
He instinctively looked at Chu Hong beside him.
His mother was staring at the cigarette, her tears bursting forth once again.
It was a Hongtashan.
The kind that Jiang Yanjun always had in his pocket twenty years ago.
Jiang Ci reached out and pressed down on the cigarette in his pocket.
“You’re welcome.”
He said softly.
“I want him to see how bright the sky is now.”