Chapter 4876

In fact, Chris's original plan was to have that corpse that fell earlier stand up again, to demonstrate that there was indeed a supernatural force. That's why he and Shiler studied the corpse's positioning, to achieve maximum shock impact when it stood up, then give Stark a close-up of a terrified, despairing expression, and that would've been about it.

But ever since discovering that paramecium in the basement, the previous plan could be completely scrapped. What corpse standing up, what terrified expression — none of it needed to be filmed. Just give that monster a one-second wide shot, then film a close-up of a raised hand, and that's it.

Just like that, a horror shot that could rank in the top ten of human film history was born.

You have to understand, human achievement in horror shots far surpasses that of other types of shots. The saying "the smaller the circle, the more divine the masters" applies to the horror film circle as well.

Striking directly at the human heart's fear requires talent, and an extremely rare talent at that. It requires sensing others' fear, confronting one's own fear, yet not being crushed, able to present everything in a logical manner — simply harder than ascending to heaven.

Therefore, horror directors are exceptionally skilled at creating all kinds of horror shots, especially psychological horror — that is, no gore and severed limbs, no jump scares, but purely using content and visual composition to frighten.

The final shot Chris captured wasn't actually shot by him. It was extracted from footage caught by the camera when Venom and Eddie fell hugging it, the camera having opened during the fall. The footage shook violently, the monster's shadow fleeting. Art achieves greatness unintentionally like this.

90% of this film's acclaim in the horror community came from that final shot. Chris also earned the title "horror genius," and because of his prior experience shooting heartwarming comedies, people were even more willing to call him a "dual genius."

Many were also curious where Chris got his inspiration. Some audience members wanted to visit the set, see that prop, experience that soul-striking terror firsthand. Naturally, all were refused.

Audiences aren't so easily fobbed off. Soon, that Lei Ting paramecium became the most breakout element of this film, even overshadowing the buzz around Stark's eyes. For a time, the internet was flooded with derivative works about it.

No wonder they say people don't mind the effort when doing bad things. If you ask them to praise how beautiful Stark's eyes are, how brilliant this film's deduction is, they might be too lazy to bother. But if you have them take the Lei Ting paramecium to scare others, they'll instantly repost it across all platforms.

From just those few seconds of footage, they managed to excavate countless details, even producing character art and 3D models of the thing.

Stark couldn't describe to anyone the feeling of opening his phone one morning wanting to scroll TikTok, only to be greeted by a Lei Ting paramecium component breakdown diagram.

Not only that, thanks to 3D printing, nothing in the world can't be printed. Some people made models following the modeling diagrams, even assembleable ones, and they actually became the film's hottest merchandise. Then buyers would assemble and review them simultaneously. Anyone who'd browsed content related to this film had their feed full of this damn thing these past few days — Stark included.

Of course, there were plenty of cute cartoon versions too. Some even turned the thing into wreaths worn on the heads of various R-rated characters. Some even drew crossovers with all kinds of horror monsters — Xenomorphs, SCP, Cthulhu Mythos, etc.

And since the horror and dread this thing brings actually comes from its mode of combination, many people started combining their favorite monster images in this way, and a "Paramecium Universe" was quickly born.

In this universe's setting, whether human, animal, or supernatural monster, all have similar ring structures. They have society, different divisions of labor, even culture. Its popularity rivals those long-established horror concepts.

Stark quit the internet.

His solo film was a hit, he should be happy. But blowing up this way, he really didn't know whether to cry or laugh. No wonder they say Stark values face over comfort — after this image blew up, he went to Greed and said: "Perhaps we can invite another you to a meal, to express our gratitude to him."

"You're more like you want to put on a performance of 'a smile uglier than tears.'" Greed shook his head helplessly. "Fear is fear, dislike is dislike, why force yourself to keep up appearances?"

"Regardless of whether he did it on purpose, he did help me." Stark said. "On this kind of thing, I only look at results. I'll also do my best to help him. Do you know what he wants?"

Stark had improved quite a bit. Though he still didn't feel Arrogance and Greed were the same person, at least after treating Arrogance as an independent person, he could barely accept getting along with him.

"Speaking of which, he does have a bit of a problem." Greed said. "He wants to improve Gotham University's teaching situation, wants to find a batch of scientists to go be professors. Can you help?"

Stark's hand paused, then he said: "Find scientists from our side? But they wouldn't be willing to go, right?"

Greed briefly explained Arrogance's plan. But Stark's attention wasn't on the professor aspect. He said: "I always feel he's a bit too old-school. Has he considered that Gotham University's ranking can't rise because of mismanagement?"

Greed looked at him, signaling him to continue. Stark instead looked at him suspiciously: "Aren't you the best at business? Didn't you see it?"

"I'm still not used to treating a school as a company." Greed just said this, but it provoked even greater doubt from Stark.

"What is a school if not a company? Where does the board of directors come from if not a company? Even state universities or community colleges need sponsors. Without dedicated management, they'd shut down and go bankrupt soon enough."

"Seems like it." Greed said. "But why do you think it's due to mismanagement?"

"You two think it's Gotham's previous bad reputation scaring off teachers and students. But the fact is, teaching and studying are no different from licking blood off a knife's edge. People will do business that risks their heads; no one does business that loses money."

"They don't come not because Gotham is terrifying, but because the benefits they can get from the school cannot overcome that fear. Otherwise, even a mountain of knives and sea of fire, they'd still charge in. How about offering student loan rates below 4%? Removing on-time repayment restrictions for some, allowing early repayment, and increasing some scholarships?" Stark proposed a plan.

"If it were before, that would've worked well." Greed said. "But now Brainiac has already waived all university tuition. Trying to find a solution from the tuition angle probably won't work."

"That's troublesome." Stark frowned. "Then we can only try to recruit famous teachers as much as possible, poach those professors who bring their own grad student and PhD resources, produce a few decent projects, and naturally attract students."

"Arrogance is planning to do just that."

"But he hasn't realized the crux of the problem." Stark shook his head. "Professors and students are the same, even face more tedious problems. They don't come not because it's dangerous here, but because the treatment they can get isn't worth the risk."

"Gotham University shouldn't lack funds, which proves the entire university's teaching system and project management have huge problems. This leads to funds not being used where they're useful, naturally failing to attract experts and scholars."

"This I indeed don't understand well." Greed said. "I teach psychology, and theoretical psychology at that, basically don't need to conduct experiments, and I don't know how most experimental projects operate."

Stark clearly still wasn't used to him referring to himself as "I" when talking about Arrogance's matters, but he still forced himself to digest it, then said: "I'm afraid this is the fundamental method to solve the problem. Of course, I'm just mentioning it. Me going to Gotham is impossible."

Greed naturally knew Stark was completely unsuited for Gotham. His basic process there would be: land, get scared, pull out hand cannon, fire.

Gotham is a famous historical city to some degree, still wants to develop tourism, but can't withstand his missile bombardment. But making someone like him not get scared in Gotham is also impossible. Even current Gotham, best not to go.

"I'll remind him." Greed said. "This is indeed a very valuable suggestion, you definitely helped him."

"For the sake of your face." Stark curled his lip.

"Looks like our birthday surprise wasn't prepared in vain." Greed shook his head, laughing.

"Speaking of this..." Stark seemed a bit stifled. "You shouldn't have come at that time, my condition was terrible, didn't even have the energy to make a fuss."

"We didn't just start preparing then."

"We didn't just start preparing now either." Natasha picked confetti off her head with her hand, set the confetti cannon aside, and said, "Started from the day filming began. The collective lateness was just because the cake had a small issue, but it's fixed now."

Soon, the birthday song rang out in the empty screening hall. A two-tier large cake was wheeled out, others put birthday hats on Stark's head.

Stark seemed not to have recovered yet. After the film ended, the lights didn't come on for a long time, he thought the lights were broken. Who knew, music suddenly started playing. Natasha and Shiler each held a confetti cannon, pulled them, and shouted: "Happy birthday!! Tony!!"

Only then did Stark realize today was his birthday. Filming was too busy, then he got sick later, he'd completely forgotten about it.

Then Pepper came out from backstage holding little Morgan. They hadn't watched the film because the rating was too high, little Morgan couldn't watch, so they only came over now.

"Oh, thank you!" Stark was still very surprised. He said how usually punctual people, one by one were late, even Steve was quite late, this wasn't like them.

His friends cared extra about his affairs. To accommodate his OCD, almost everyone would arrive a few minutes before the agreed time, neither too early nor too late, so as not to easily trigger his anxiety. But this time they were all over ten minutes late, turns out they were preparing his birthday surprise.

"Come on, cut the cake." Steve called everyone over. Spider-Men surged from all directions, others came too. Stark was surrounded and walked to the cake.

"What happened to the cake? What problem?" Stark still asked.

"Sudden temperature rise today, the chocolate glaze on top melted for some reason." Natasha sighed. "Chocolate got everywhere, dirty and ugly, you definitely couldn't stand it. We had to scrape off the surface cream and re-glaze it."

"I did it." Miles stepped forward. "I just learned to make cakes, might not be great, but this was the only way."

Stark lowered his head to look at the cake. The cake wasn't a retro piping style, but a simpler design, pale blue. In the very center, in cute rounded English font, it read "Happy Birthday to the Best Tony."

Stark subconsciously looked at the glaze again. The outer ring of the top layer was glazed with chocolate, the chocolate naturally flowing down as decoration. Though no modification traces were visible, that ring shape and the flowing chocolate lines made Stark instantly think of the footage from the last few seconds before the film ended.

Stark fell asleep head-first.