A lot of people heading to the cinema today were there for Immortal Path.
Nearly everyone in line at the smart ticket machines was there to pick up tickets for Immortal Path. With no strong competitors and the film poised to claim almost half the screenings, the trailers playing on every screen in the theater, large or small, and the dense schedule displayed behind the ticket counter were persuading plenty of people who had come without a particular movie in mind to choose Immortal Path.
But some of Xie Chen’s die-hard fans were more curious about what the Best Actor had been up to during his six-month hiatus than about an extravagant xianxia blockbuster with a star-studded cast.
He had not only made a decidedly unserious return to work, but had chosen to make a cameo in a flop.
Some moviegoers who disliked crowded screenings chose to watch a less popular film first. Others opted for different movies, including The Missing Bride.
Zhao Qiqi and Zhu Yu belonged to the former group. They had become fans of Xie Chen from his very first movie, and over the years, whether he played the lead or a supporting role, they had never missed a film he appeared in.
Although the original IP of Immortal Path was also one of their favorites, their expectations for it had fallen sharply when the male lead went to someone other than the Xie Chen they had always hoped to see in the role.
What was more, in order to make a cameo in this flop, Xie Chen—who had practically never been involved in scandals—had unexpectedly become embroiled in explosive news. Even Zhao Qiqi and Zhu Yu, fans with some life experience and who were not girlfriend fans, could not help wondering whether the flop’s production team had been unsatisfied with merely hiring Xie Chen for a cameo.
Perhaps they had even tried to ride his coattails and milk his fame through publicity. Otherwise, with the flop-film trio’s lineup, the movie could never have claimed such a considerable share of mainstream attention while Immortal Path was generating so much hype.
After buying their tickets, the two picked up cola and popcorn. Zhao Qiqi even pulled a neck pillow out of her bag.
“If I get bored and fall asleep later, remember to wake me when Xie Chen comes on,” she told Zhu Yu.
“Damn, I should’ve thought of that,” Zhu Yu cursed.
As they spoke, the advertisements before the movie ended, and the film began.
The first shot showed a luxurious presidential suite in complete disarray. Even before any characters appeared, the image looked solid and polished.
At least it no longer had the cheap, poverty-stricken feel that permeated Director Liu’s earlier movies. Of course, this particular shot had also appeared in the trailer.
Perhaps the entire investment had gone into this one scene. Either way, the two women continued drinking their cola without the slightest reaction.
The other moviegoers in the theater were the same. Attendance for this screening was neither high nor low, hovering around thirty or forty percent. At this time of day, it obviously could not compare with Immortal Path next door, where nearly every seat was filled.
The audience watched indifferently as three women with disheveled hair and smeared makeup woke up like crazed old hags. Yet unlike the crude, shoddy comedies that usually gave their characters bird’s nests for hair and had them screeching and shouting, these three women were calm and composed, bleary-eyed and dazed with the discomfort of a hangover.
It was flat and realistic—just like waking up the morning after a night of clubbing with your roommates.
That was, until the character played by Pei Liang opened the bathroom door—
A fierce tiger appearing in a luxury hotel dozens of stories above the ground was such a jarring contradiction that it pierced through the scene’s bland, uneventful surface.
The sight of Third peeing while locking eyes with the tiger and Big Sis Gu Fei made the theater erupt in laughter for the first time.
The movie had been running for less than two minutes. Most of the audience had not expected much from it in the first place, and some even choked on their popcorn because of the sheer abruptness of the moment.
As the three sisters hilariously and perilously escaped the tiger’s jaws, the whole sequence unfolded with naturally funny, unforced humor. The pacing was brisk, and the absurdity never felt awkward.
Quite a few people sat up straighter, beginning to develop a little anticipation for the movie.
They had assumed that once the opening jokes were over, the film would settle into a relatively uneventful stretch of exposition. But clearly, everyone had underestimated the madness three women could unleash in a single night.
The three had barely recovered from their fright when the bedroom door opened. Thinking it was Fourth Sis, they turned toward it.
Instead, a handsome, dangerously sexy naked man stepped out, his hair slightly mussed and his only clothing a pair of black briefs.
The three women in the movie were stunned. So was everyone in the theater.
Zhao Qiqi had originally planned to fall asleep if the opening proved boring. Now, forget sleeping—her eyes were wide as a dog’s glowing green eyes in the dark, and she looked as though she wished she could crawl right into the screen.
The instant Xie Chen emerged from the room, the entire theater let out a perfectly synchronized gasp. The female audience members in particular were both shocked and thrilled, clenching their fists as their bodies trembled with excitement.
Xie Chen strode toward the three women on a pair of long legs. At that moment, the screen showed him from behind.
Xie Chen had never appeared fully naked on-screen, nor had he ever done a sexy photo shoot. Anyone could tell that he had an excellent physique.
But no one had expected him to be so breathtakingly, blood-stirringly attractive.
Broad shoulders, a narrow waist, solid back muscles, a pert rear, and long, strong, athletic legs—he simply walked forward, and every pull and release of the muscles throughout his body was so sensual it left people dizzy and mesmerized.
Director Liu had made too many terrible movies. No one had imagined that he could capture male beauty and turn it into such an extraordinary visual feast.
Xie Chen walked up to Pei Liang, embraced him with the familiarity of an old lover, and gave him a passionate kiss.
While Pei Liang stared at him in bewilderment, Xie Chen picked up the clothes from the floor and put them on. Before leaving the suite, he said to Pei Liang, “Baby, you were incredible last night. I’ve never been this bold and crazy in my life.”
“See you tonight!”
With that, he kissed Pei Liang once more and left the suite.
Only after Xie Chen disappeared from the frame did the three sisters in the movie finally relax completely. Most of the audience in the theater did the same.
It was only after Xie Chen was gone that they recovered from the suffocating temptation and explosive chemistry of the scene. Some viewers who knew a little about filmmaking glanced around at the reactions of those nearby.
Whatever else might be said, the movie had at least nailed its opening. Many audience members had not even realized that in the first three short minutes, they had already shared the characters’ emotions several times.
Creating a powerful sense of identification between the audience and the characters was, in itself, a sign of success—although The Missing Bride had achieved it through somewhat of a cheat.
After all, it was Xie Chen’s physique that had provoked such a reaction.
Even so, plenty of moviegoers were thinking the same thing: just seeing Best Actor Xie’s naked body was enough to make the ticket worth the price.
But the scenes that followed showed them that the filmmakers’ ambitions went far beyond that. The movie was not relying solely on the Best Actor as a gimmick.
Under the spell of that inexplicable male beauty, the three women finally came to their senses and went into the master bedroom to wake the bride. Instead, they discovered a corpse lying on the bed.
A tiger in the bathroom. A strange, sexy naked man. A corpse in the bed.
These opening hooks seized the audience’s curiosity at once.
What kind of madness had taken place for things to end up like this?
With only a dozen or so hours left until the wedding, the three women had to find the missing bride.
Only then did the title The Missing Bride finally appear on the big screen.
A few minutes into the film, the pace is brisk and the jokes come thick and fast, thoroughly whetting the audience’s appetite. Admittedly, there’s no real depth to be found here, and some of the humor is crude enough to revolve around bodily functions.
But the tight pacing makes it impossible to spare any thought for real-world logic. You just laugh and go with it.
The film’s cleverest touch is that, despite being a comedy, it uses the narrative structure of a mystery. The three women follow the clues to reconstruct what happened the night before and find Fourth Sis.
This setup is very different from the straightforward storytelling used by most comedies, and it immediately grabs the audience’s attention.
After hiding the body, the three women panic and decide that, whether or not they were responsible, they absolutely cannot ruin Fourth Sis’s wedding. So they follow the clues on their bodies and retrace their steps, visiting each place they went the previous night.
The first clue they find is a ticket stub, which leads them to a tattoo parlor. When the tattoo artist sees them, he starts laughing.
“You girls are crazy. So daring. And that joke you told last night was hilarious.”
The three women have no idea what he’s talking about, but the tattoo artist points toward the Boss’s upper thigh. The Boss lifts her skirt. No wonder her thigh had been aching faintly since she woke up.
There, on the inside of her thigh, is the name of a strange man tattooed in large letters—
“Fxxk!”
Usually calm and rational, she completely loses it. She grabs the tattoo artist and is about to tear him apart.
The tattoo artist hurriedly explains, “Hey, hey! When you and your husband came in, you never said you’d regret it so soon.”
His words are shocking. Prompted by them, the three women recover another fragment of their memories and immediately rush to the nearest church.
Sure enough, the priest remembers them vividly. He gives the Boss a deep, heartfelt hug.
He says he has never seen anyone so crazy, then produces a wedding photo of the Boss posing with a naked stranger the night before. He even has matching couple’s mugs made from the photograph.
The three women flee in a panic and squat by the curb, questioning every decision that has brought them to this point.
Second and Third seem delighted to have finally found an opportunity to lecture the Boss. With expressions of exasperation, they say, “Look at you! You’re usually such a proper person. How could you do something like this?”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. Nobody goes through life without a little recklessness. The Boss is only human.”
The Boss, Gu Fei, is still struggling to accept the fact that she is married. On top of that, she has to endure a lecture from the two least serious people she knows. It is a disgrace to her otherwise disciplined, perfect life.
The camera is practically pressed against Pei Liang’s face in this shot.
Her face fills nearly the entire screen. Behind her are Second and Third, looking somewhat gleeful. Pei Liang looks as though she is questioning her entire existence; the sharp intelligence in her eyes has vanished, and she now looks completely dazed and foolish.
With the two idiots babbling away behind her, the whole scene is absolutely hilarious.
But the other two quickly lose their good mood when the Boss suddenly says, “I remember what the joke was.”
She is referring to the joke the tattoo artist mentioned.
As the tattoo was being done, Third had been scrolling through her social-media feed when she came across a post.
She shared it with the other two as if she were telling them a joke. “There’s this guy on my feed whose life goal is to find a rich older woman.”
“He asks everyone he meets to set him up. He doesn’t care if she’s forty or fifty; even sixty or seventy would be fine. And if she’s eighty, he says, ‘It’s not about the money. I just want to find someone to spend the rest of my life with.’”
“Hahahaha…”
The Boss and Second clutch their stomachs laughing. “So he can inherit her fortune?”
“Exactly. And the funniest part is, he actually found someone,” Third says. “He just posted it. They were introduced yesterday, and they’re already legally married today.”
“He posted a wedding photo with the caption: ‘The past is like smoke. From now on, Auntie Zhou will be my partner for the rest of my life.’”
“Hahahahahaha…”
“The best part isn’t even that. As soon as he posted it, his mom replied: ‘She’s eighty years old, and you have the nerve to call her Auntie?’”
“All his friends and relatives were trying to calm his mom down in the comments. Then, a few minutes later, she added: ‘Call her Baby instead.’”
“Hahahahahahahaha…”
The Boss, Second, and the tattoo artist laugh until they can barely stand.
Second then asks, “Who is this guy? Which shameless man is he?”
Third looks confused. “I’ve forgotten how I added him. I think he privately added me after meeting in some group chat.”
“What group?”
“Let me think… Happy Four Sisters?”
The laughter of the Boss and Second stops dead.
“This is our group chat! Apart from the four of us, the only men in it are the boyfriends Second and Fourth Sis invited!”
Second quickly snatches Third’s phone. The wedding photo on the screen clearly shows her boyfriend standing beside an eighty-year-old woman.
The entire room falls into suffocating silence. The only sound is the buzzing of the tattoo machine.
This time, Second’s boyfriend had sworn up and down that he was an honest man with no hidden agenda. When the Boss criticized her taste in men, Second had even nearly gotten into an argument with her.
She never expected him to reveal himself as such a disgusting person.
Unable to bear the shock, Second heads to a bar. With alcohol loosening her inhibitions, she casts aside the Boss and Third, along with all the emotional restraints she has carried for years.
Her sweet, reserved demeanor transforms into something alluring and sensual. In truth, she was never naturally quiet or introverted. She had simply suffered too many betrayals.
After cheating on her, those men would even turn around and blame her, searching for the supposed reasons behind their own behavior. Once or twice, she could let it go. But after it happened so many times, she began to wonder whether there was something wrong with her.
So she tried to cater to the tastes of ordinary men, toning down her charm and restricting her behavior, turning herself into the kind of “good woman” who was obedient and suitable for marriage.
But the results were the same no matter how much she accommodated other people. So why not do whatever she wanted?
And so, the naturally gifted player within Second breaks free.
She becomes a one-woman seduction machine, taking down one man every ten steps. By the time the Boss and Third assume she has merely gone to the restroom, she has already flirted with eight men along the way.
During her time at the bar, she drinks and flirts with all eight of them simultaneously, handling each interaction with effortless skill.
The sequence uses a split-screen montage, presenting the audience with a jaw-dropping demonstration of a heartbreaker’s time-management abilities and the coordination skills required to juggle so many dates.
Even while dating and flirting with eight men at once, Second still finds time to chat with her sisters.
But when the bar closes for the night, everything falls apart. All eight men want to take Second back to their own rooms.
They collide, each refusing to back down. Among them are members of three local criminal organizations. Before long, tempers flare, guns are drawn, and a full-blown shootout erupts.
The three women are taken hostage. Yet even with bullets flying in every direction, not one of them is hit.
The gang members curse and scream at one another like characters in an American rap battle, turning on each other in a massive internal feud. In the end, the only people still standing alive are the three sisters.
Just then, police officers storm in from outside. They had carefully planned to use the bar as the meeting point for a drug deal and wipe out all three organizations in one operation.
But thanks to the three women’s accidental intrusion—and one heartbreaker’s indiscriminate flirting—the gangs have destroyed one another from within. The police do not have to fire a single shot to eliminate the core members of all three organizations.
The three women are taken back to the station, where they are awarded medals of honor.
However, as they leave the station, they run into two drug dealers who have been arrested for selling illegal medication. The drugs had been mixed into fruit juice.
A careless police officer knocks over a bottle of juice, and its packaging happens to be identical to the drink Third has just bought from a vending machine.
When Third was opening a bottle, someone bumped into her. The juice fell to the ground, and the two bottles rolled across each other, accidentally getting switched.
After drinking the juice, Third seemed to undergo a complete personality swap.
Her eyes immediately became hazy and lecherous. While the Boss and Second weren’t paying attention, she slipped away from the police station alone.
Along the way, she harassed countless passersby.
A burly man tried to take advantage of her while she was drunk, only to be subdued by Third, who had become terrifyingly strong under the influence of alcohol—
“You wanna fxxk me? Huh? You wanna fxxk me?”
“I wanna fxxk you too. With a bottle, a cell phone, a steel pipe, a brick—and five more big men?”
“I’ve got pretty extreme tastes. Lately, I’ve been especially into getting bear-like hunks mopped.”
“Come with me. I’ll satisfy you.”
“There’s a tiger in that villa over there. How about we get it to join us for some bestiality?”
The big man’s face filled with terror, but before he could react, she shoved him into the trunk.
The men who witnessed the scene hurriedly buttoned up their collars. Even the gay men soliciting on the chaotic streets at night covered their backsides and fled.
The burly man’s miserable cries were sealed away by the trunk lid.
By this point, the audience was already laughing so hard from the earlier scenes that their muscles ached and their stomachs cramped. Now, they pounded on the armrests as the laughter grew even louder.
“Hahahaha…”
“Hahahahahaha…”
People who had just finished watching other movies passed by the theater. Hearing peals of laughter coming through the door, which had not been properly closed, many of them asked the ticket inspector curiously, “What’s playing in that theater?”
“The Missing Bride.”
“That terrible movie?” someone who knew the film exclaimed in surprise.
One of their companions said, “Let’s go take a look too. The Immortal Path was such a disappointment. We can’t leave empty-handed.”
“All right. Judging by the noise, we can at least be sure the movie’s funny.”
Indeed, throughout the brief conversation, the laughter coming from the theater never stopped.
By then, the Boss and Second had tracked down Third, completely unaware that someone was already stuffed in the trunk.
Thirsty, they took a sip of the juice Third had left on the seat. The two, who were already out of their minds, immediately became even more unhinged.
That was why none of the three could remember anything about the previous night after they woke up.
Once they recalled what had happened, the three sisters hurried to find the car and opened the trunk.
Inside, the man had been stripped down to nothing but his underwear. Covered in hair and twice the size of any of them, the burly man shed tears of frightened humiliation.
He suddenly leaped out, picked up a beer bottle from the ground, and pointed it at the three women for protection.
“Don’t come any closer! I’m warning you, don’t come any closer. I have a weapon.” The ferocious, powerfully built man screamed at the three delicate young women as though he were defending himself against sexual predators.
The contrast made many viewers laugh so hard they nearly threw up.
Third spoke apologetically. “Listen, I’m very sor—”
“Don’t come any closer!” The big man smashed the beer bottle against the wall, then held the jagged end to his own neck. “Come any closer and I’ll kill myself right in front of you!”
The Boss and Second hurriedly pulled Third back.
The man dropped to his knees, sobbing. “I was wrong! I’ll turn over a new leaf! I want to go home to my mother!”
The three could only watch as the man covered his backside and fled warily, as if escaping a pack of sexual predators.
The Boss couldn’t help slapping Third on the head. “What a fine man. You’ve completely ruined him.”
“Pfft! Hahahahaha—”
Zhao Qiqi and Zhu Yu were laughing so hard in their seats that they stamped their feet.
If many people, including them, had initially entered the theater because of Xie Chen, by this point in the movie they had completely forgotten about him.
The three came up empty-handed after searching around and had no choice but to return to the hotel first. The moment they entered, however, they saw a fat Black man sitting in the presidential suite, playing the piano.
Several bodyguards dressed entirely in black and wearing sunglasses stood on either side, seizing the stunned trio and dragging them into the living room.
The Black man was a powerful local tycoon who had influence on both sides of the law. He was also the owner of the tiger from the bathroom.
He turned around. The fat Black actor’s naturally comical face wore an indescribably complicated expression as he stared at the three women.
Then he shook his head, and his assistant switched on the television in the living room.
But instead of a television program, the screen displayed surveillance footage.
Because they had already been drugged before stealing the tiger, the three still couldn’t remember how they had done it.
Now they finally saw the truth. Third had climbed over the wall, opened the gate, and simply led the tiger away.
At the time, a party was being held at the mansion. The tiger had even been dressed in a specially tailored suit. After making an appearance before the guests, it had been confined near the back entrance for safety. But with the staff busy and people constantly coming and going, the three women had somehow managed to steal it.
That alone might have been bad enough.
But just as Third was leading the tiger to the car, she spotted the animal’s buttoned-up suit and suddenly succumbed to her baser instincts.
She pounced directly on the tiger, leering as she frantically tore apart the suit. At first, the tiger looked ready to fight back.
But the Boss and Second, acting like accomplices, pinned it down and became accessories to this horrifying crime.
By the time its shoulders were exposed and the person on top of it roughly and domineeringly ripped away everything covering its body, the tiger’s expression and eyes—rendered through modeling and special effects with humanlike reactions—showed a mixture of frozen terror and bashful shame.
Everyone watching had only one thought:
You could at least have waited until it became a spirit before making your move.
This was also the most expensive special-effects sequence in the entire film. Fortunately, it was the only scene of its kind, making the cost manageable. Pei Liang had hired a world-class special-effects team at great expense to take on the job.
The tiger’s reactions were made hilarious without seeming fake or pulling viewers out of the movie.
Sure enough, the moment this scene appeared, the theater erupted in another wave of explosive laughter.
The three women stared at the surveillance footage, dumbfounded. Then the Black owner’s voice rang out, filled with utter contempt—
“Absolutely indecent.”
Third immediately untied the scarf around her neck, hung it from the chandelier, dragged over a chair, climbed onto it, and started tying a knot.
A crowd of people hurriedly wrestled her down.
Seeing how ashamed they were, the Black tycoon ultimately decided to let them off with a warning. He only demanded that since they had stolen the tiger, they had to return it themselves, exactly as it was.
Alcohol had given them courage. When sober, the three of them would never have possessed such nerve.
But they had no room left to bargain. The three found some raw meat, cut it up, and marinated it in the leftover juice from the previous day. With a massive dose of the drug, they managed to knock out the tiger.
They then transported it out of the hotel, concealing their actions along the way and nearly getting caught several times. But the trunk could not hold the tiger, so they had no choice but to put it in the back seat.
Halfway through the drive, however, the tiger woke up. The three women fled the car in panic, leaving them with no choice but to lock the tiger inside and push the vehicle back by hand.
The matter of the tiger had been settled, but they still had no idea what to do about the corpse hidden in the master bedroom. And the bride was still nowhere to be found.
So far, none of their memories contained any sign of the bride.
With the wedding drawing closer, the women looked up and saw the naked man from that morning appearing on a giant screen in the plaza.
It turned out that he was an ethnic Chinese star who had made a name for himself in Country X—a typical actor who had become famous overseas before returning to achieve stardom back home. The three women simply weren’t interested in celebrities, though, and whenever they saw him on television, they had only ever thought that his face looked vaguely familiar.
After getting blind drunk and giving herself over to temptation the night before, the Boss had been too terrified that morning to recognize him.
The Boss took out the contact information the man had left in her pocket. He was currently filming on set, which was why he had left in such a hurry that morning.
When the three of them arrived, the agent led them straight into the dressing room.
The moment the man saw Pei Liang, his face lit up with the bliss of a newlywed husband seeing his wife. He rushed over, wrapped the Boss in his arms, and gave her a passionate kiss.
The Boss had always looked down on men and had barely dated anyone in her life. How could she possibly withstand that?
Then she spotted the necklace her late mother had left her hanging around the man’s neck as well.
The man was extremely pleased with his married status. He said that although he had countless admirers, he was actually lonely and desperately wanted to build a family, yet he was also timid and afraid of the future.
It was the Boss who had given him courage the night before. They had fallen in love at first sight and were mutually drawn to each other. Both of them were willing to walk down the aisle together.
As he spoke, the man even prepared to show them the Boss’s name tattooed on his leg.
The Boss hurriedly refused, insisting that what happened had merely been an impulse brought on by alcohol. In reality, she had not fallen in love with him at all.
The disappointment and loneliness in the man’s eyes broke the hearts of everyone in the theater. It was also the only genuinely serious moment in the entire film.
In the end, the man returned the necklace to the Boss. With his help, she also remembered what had happened with the body in the room.
It turned out that after the wedding, Second had suddenly suffered an emotional blow while getting her tattoo and wanted to go drinking. The Boss had no choice but to hand her room card to the man first and ask him to return to the hotel and wait.
After they got back to the hotel, Tiger was casually shoved into the bathroom. The Boss returned to the second bedroom and spent her wedding night with the man.
Meanwhile, one of the survivors of the earlier bar brawl had witnessed the three women’s misdeeds from hiding. He secretly followed them back to the hotel, intending to take revenge.
The man pointed a gun at them, but before he could say more than a few words, his drug addiction flared up. The Boss had only just drunk that juice and was already thinking about her wedding night, so she told the other two to call the police while she dragged the man back into the room.
But how could Second and Third have any rationality left?
The moment the Boss closed the door, the two of them collapsed on the floor and fell asleep.
And so the gang-affiliated junkie died from choking on his own vomit while everyone else was completely incapable of resisting.
When the three women learned that none of them had actually killed anyone, they immediately breathed a sigh of relief and hurriedly called the police to come collect the body.
But beneath the bed where they had hidden the corpse, they discovered the bride, bound hand and foot with tape over her mouth.
It turned out that when they had thrown a wild bachelorette party in the suite, they had gotten the bride drunk beyond consciousness.
The bride was about to get married herself and had been feeling anxious. She kept wanting to prove that her fiancé loved her, so under the influence of alcohol, she had acted out.
She had someone tie her up, seal her mouth with tape, and take a picture to send to the groom, pretending that she had been kidnapped so she could see how he would react.
But after taking the photo, the women realized that the groom already had all of their phone numbers. Their attempt to impersonate kidnappers had been exposed immediately.
So they carried the bride over and hid her beneath the bed, in case the groom and the others came looking for her and discovered the truth too quickly. The three of them then went out to get new phones.
Once they left, however, they completely forgot about the bride. All they remembered was that they were supposed to party all night.
The bride was fine that night. She slept through it in a drunken stupor and felt nothing.
When she woke up the next morning, she discovered that she had spent the entire day lying beside a corpse.
The three women frantically untied her. The bride’s face twisted with fury as she grabbed them all by the neck, looking as though she genuinely wanted to kill them.
So the people the three women had supposedly spent the whole day searching for had never left the room in the first place.
By then, however, the wedding was about to begin. The three women hurried to the church and changed into their wedding and bridesmaid dresses, stumbling all over one another in the car.
The church doors stood wide open. When the anxious groom and the waiting guests saw the bride’s figure, their faces finally relaxed.
As the bright, cheerful music played, the credits rolled.
Many audience members sat in their seats and took several deep breaths before finally dragging their limp, laughter-weakened bodies out of the theater.
Every one of them emerged beaming, already eager to discuss the plot.
Compared with the viewers coming out of the theater next door, where Immortal Path was playing, their satisfaction was strikingly obvious.
Some people had originally planned to watch The Missing Bride and then go see Immortal Path afterward. Seeing the expressions of those coming out, they began asking questions.
“How was it? Is the movie any good?”
The people leaving shook their heads. “A waste of more than two hours. The only reason I didn’t leave early was because movie tickets are so expensive that I couldn’t bear to throw the money away. If you haven’t seen it, don’t bother. It’s an awful movie.”
“Hey, what did you watch? You all look so happy coming out.”
“The Missing Bride. It had me laughing so hard my stomach still hurts. I highly recommend it. If you’re not in a hurry, go watch it. I guarantee you won’t regret it.”
“Hmm… All right! We’ll get lunch and then go see it.”
The same scene played out in cinemas across the country.
Since The Missing Bride had been promoted through mainstream channels, quite a few video creators and livestreamers who specialized in explaining terrible movies—and who had already decided that the flop-film trio were stubbornly courting ridicule—naturally went to support it.
Before going in, they announced on the forums that they were going to give an honest review.
But the moment they entered, they fell silent.
For a full ninety minutes, people in the thread kept urging them to say something. Some even wondered whether the theater seats had malfunctioned and sent the three of them to the hospital with their backsides in tatters.
The comments below were filled with concerned inquiries:
“How’s the OP’s butt?”
“Is Liu Chaozhi kidnapping people and forcing them to watch just to boost the box office?”
“Some people talk and talk, then disappear.”
Then, ninety minutes later, the original poster suddenly reappeared—
“FUCK!!!! Liu Chaozhi is for real this time! It’s not a flop! Every one of you needs to go watch it.”
“?”
“??”
“???”
“?…?”
“Liu Chaozhi must have paid you pretty well this time. You’ve started shilling for terrible movies?”
“Shill my ass. I swear on my life, if you don’t laugh, you can chop me up. Oof, my bladder’s about to burst. I’ll keep talking after I take a leak.”
Someone else who had already watched the movie and was eager to discuss it online entered the thread.
“The OP is right. Go watch it now. Xie Chen naked alone is worth the price of admission. The woman next to me practically wanted to crawl into the screen.”
“??????”
“Xie Chen? Naked?”
“I’m buying a ticket right now. Whether he’s naked or not is irrelevant. I mainly want to support a small-budget film struggling to survive.”
“What small-budget film? Judging by the image quality, the investment definitely wasn’t small. The sets and special effects are all there, and they didn’t skimp on the big set pieces either. The money was spent on the movie.”
“I just came out too. Before watching this film, I had no hope at all for a comedy led by female actresses. Now I’ve slapped myself three times. Liu Chaozhi is a freaking genius—”
“Hahahaha! The part where they stole the tiger had me laughing so hard I nearly pissed myself. The female pervert is unbeatable, and Lu Baobei’s acting is genuinely incredible.”
“Is the plot really that wild? I was planning to see Immortal Path first.”
“For anyone coming back after watching Immortal Path: don’t waste your money on it. The male lead is basically a piece of scenery, the female lead’s acting is so awkward it makes your toes curl, and the film supposedly had a three-hundred-million investment but looks like it was made with bargain-bin special effects.”
“All I can say is that the female lead is incredible. She managed to get so many famous stars to play supporting roles for her. No wonder she’s Huiyuan’s Fourth Mistress.”
【No need to put down one thing just to praise another, okay? I think Immortal Path is pretty good! The men are handsome, the women are beautiful, and there’s nothing they can do about the slow development of domestic special effects. Still, you can tell Director Ke really put his heart into filming it.】
【Oh? Then go say that in the book fans’ group. They’ll tear you to pieces alive.】
【Bro, if there’s money to be made, let’s all make it together, huh?】
【You’re licking boots this hard? It can’t be cheap, right? At least fifty cents per post.】
【This time I’m siding with the book fans. Even if you haven’t read the original, it’s still a terrible movie. If they’re calling it good, then their eyes must be full of shit.】
【There have already been several hot searches just this morning. They’re secretly trying to steer public opinion and drum up publicity. Every time someone says it’s bad, a bunch of people flood the comments with long essays insulting them for having no taste. Who would believe this reaction wasn’t prepared in advance by PR teams and paid trolls?】
【Is it really that bad?】
【It is! Forget the acting and special effects—the plot has been butchered into a steaming pile of crap. If they’d followed the original story, even mediocre effects and acting would have left the film with some redeeming qualities. But what the hell has Ke Luzhang turned it into?】
【Why blame the director? The original was an ensemble story with no absolute protagonist. Every character had a distinct personality and a compelling setup. If they’d really filmed it according to the original, how many people would remember the female lead after the movie, when all she can do is stare wide-eyed?】
【So this massive three-hundred-million investment and star-studded production were really just meant to promote the Fourth Mistress? The Huiyuan CEO is certainly generous.】
【I guess they saw how the male and female leads of last year’s xianxia hit both became hugely popular and wanted to replicate that success.】
【Ugh! They copied someone else’s homework and still managed to screw it up. I feel sorry for the films that gave up their release slots for them. Damn Huiyuan has hyped this movie so aggressively. With no serious competition around, they’ll probably still make their money back.】
【What do you mean, no competition? The Missing Bride! I bet it’ll be the dark horse of the May Day holiday.】
【It may not have much substance, and the logic can’t withstand scrutiny, but I guarantee it’ll make you laugh your guts out.】
【I’ve already made plans to see it a second time with my friends.】
By the time the morning had passed, feedback on all the films had begun to emerge.
People like Zhao Qiqi and Zhu Yu, who had already seen the movies, weren’t just discussing them online. Their colleagues, friends, and fellow fans had spent the entire day enthusiastically recommending them in person and in their group chats.
These were real social connections—not some unknown person, bot, or paid troll lurking on the other end of the internet. Word of mouth from people you actually knew was far more persuasive than a hundred online comments.
As a result, more and more people entered theaters based on recommendations from various sources, changing their original first choice, Immortal Path, to The Missing Bride.
The hilarious plot details people shared online—and the fact that Xie Chen had gone all out for this film—were both major reasons The Missing Bride’s buzz exploded so quickly.
By the time the first wave of viewers walked out of theaters that morning, the hashtag “Xie Chen Nude” had already made it onto the hot-search rankings, shooting straight to number one.
That explosive piece of news was hardly less sensational than the romance scandal that had made headlines before.
Thus, within just a day or two, The Missing Bride achieved attendance rates of over eighty percent at almost every screening, crushing Immortal Path during the same period.
And movie theaters were nothing if not pragmatic. Whichever film brought in the box office got more screenings.
The major theater chains promptly adjusted their schedules. Overnight, the two films’ screening shares were nearly equal.
Seeing these results, and watching The Missing Bride emerge from nowhere and launch a fierce assault—within less than three days, ruthlessly stealing the advantage they had originally held—the creative team and investors behind Immortal Path could no longer sit still.
