Chapter 95: Extraordinary Eyesight (Please Subscribe)

Huang Tao was not teasing Huang Guokun this time. He said with a very earnest air, “Uncle, I really think you and Sister Bai Yao look alike. Look at your noses, your eyes...”

Huang Guolun cut in at once. “Not even close.”

“Yes, the shapes are different, but the proportions are really similar! Dad, look carefully—the placement of my uncle’s nose, eyes, and mouth is practically identical to Sister Bai Yao’s!”

Bai Yao said, amused and helpless, “If the placement were different, that would be a huge problem.”

Huang Guokun burst out laughing at that and turned Huang Tao into the joke instead. “Tao, have you ever seen anyone whose nose sits above their eyes?”

Huang Tao hurriedly said, “No, no, you’re not understanding what I mean!”

Huang Guolun cut him off. “Enough, enough. Stop making trouble. Bai Yao, you two finished eating? Take Tao over to feed Dudu.”

Bai Yao understood at once that Huang Guolun wanted a private word with Huang Guokun, so she rose without bothering them further, picked up the yogurt, and called to Huang Tao, “Tao, come on. Let’s go feed Dudu.”

Huang Tao was deeply frustrated that none of these grown-ups were taking him seriously.

How could these arrogant adults not believe him?

Huang Tao had extraordinary eyesight, and he truly felt that Bai Yao and Huang Guokun had remarkably similar facial proportions.

Especially when both of them were worn down and thin, the placement of their features, their bearing, their aura—it would not have been an exaggeration to call them father and daughter.

After Bai Yao took him aside to feed Dudu, Huang Tao still refused to give up. He asked her, “Sister Bai Yao, you really don’t think you and my uncle look a lot alike? Could you be father and daughter who were separated long ago?”

Bai Yao had never even known who her biological father was. She had taken her mother’s surname.

According to her grandfather, even her mother seemed not to know who her father was...

And her mother had actually been adopted by her grandfather later on.

In short, it was an awkward matter, one difficult to speak of.

But whoever her father was, it surely could not have been Huang Guokun.

The two of them did not look alike at all.

Bai Yao laughed and sighed at the same time. “I think you’re getting sleepy and seeing things all blurry.”

“I’m not seeing things blurry. My eyesight is really good. You two really do look alike.”

Then his expression suddenly changed, and Huang Tao cried out, “Could my uncle be a Snow Witch too? No, a Snow Warlock!”

After letting his imagination run wild for a moment, Huang Tao frowned and denied it himself. “No way. If my uncle were a Snow Warlock, I would have known long ago. If he could do magic, how would he have ended up like this? He definitely isn’t a Snow Warlock.”

“Stop running wild with your thoughts,” Bai Yao said, feeding Dudu and trying to divert his attention. “You keep asking me questions, so I’ll ask you one too—a riddle.”

“Okay, okay! I love riddles!”

“Say there’s a man who wants to take a plane. When he goes through security, the airport staff won’t let him in no matter what, insisting that he’s carrying flammable and explosive materials, and that such items are forbidden on planes. But in fact, he isn’t carrying anything like that. Do you know why?”

Huang Tao rolled his little brain around it for a moment and answered, “Because he’s... ugly enough to explode?”

Bai Yao laughed delightedly. “Haha. You really are good at riddles,” she praised.

Being praised by the Snow Witch, Huang Tao immediately started to float with pride. “I’m just average, average—the third best in the country, hehe.”

On Huang Guokun’s side, he was sitting with Huang Guolun at the dining table, carefully asking about The Beautiful Corpse.

The moment The Beautiful Corpse was mentioned, Huang Guokun’s worries came flooding back.

He briefly told Huang Guolun about the film’s current miserable situation.

Without top-tier traffic stars like Yang Mi and the others stepping in to help, The Beautiful Corpse would be hard-pressed to make any real progress.

That fine wine had been sealed away in a deep alley, never to be discovered.

Given the current trend, by the most important settlement period over the next three months, if The Beautiful Corpse could recover three million in costs, that would already count as an impressive achievement.

The film was doomed to lose money; the only question was how much.

The comeback he had imagined was simply impossible. Huang Guokun was utterly stifled by it all, and he poured out his bitterness to Huang Guolun. “They say luck is bad in some years, but my bad luck has been rolling along for years and years. With wind and sails, I still can’t get things to go right. It’s infuriating. Our company was finally getting on the right track this year. In the first half, we were doing online movies with real style and momentum, almost ready to rise up, and then at the most crucial moment, we lost a massive chain link like this. Fate is completely against us. This year feels like a roller coaster to me. Just when I was about to surge uphill, it all ended in a free fall, and one blow sent me right back to square one. This kind of swing... honestly, no one could take it.”

Huang Tao, feeding Dudu in another corner of the living room, had sharp ears and caught Huang Guokun’s lament.

He trotted over in a hurry, patted Huang Guokun on the shoulder, and comforted him. “Uncle, don’t give up on yourself. What’s a little ups and downs? I heard a man on TV, the one with a bird always perched on his shoulder, say that life is like an electrocardiogram. What matters is the ups and downs. If you want everything to be smooth and flat with no rises and falls, then you’d have to be dead.”

Huang Guokun, broad-minded as ever, ruffled Huang Tao’s hair and laughed. “You really do know a lot for a kid.”

Huang Guolun muttered, “How could he not know a lot? He does nothing all day except eat and watch TV.”

Huang Tao ignored Huang Guolun and asked Huang Guokun, “Uncle, are you worried because nobody wants to watch that zombie movie your company made?”

“Yeah. Your uncle put every ounce of effort into that film, practically gambling everything on it, and in the end no one wants to watch it. Tell me, isn’t that miserable?”

“It does sound pretty miserable. But why doesn’t anyone want to see it? I think it’s pretty good. Sure, it’s a little bloody and violent, but it isn’t gross. The ending is a bit rushed, but the twist is really impressive.”

Huang Guokun froze.

Huang Guolun was shocked. He asked Huang Tao, “You watched The Beautiful Corpse?”

“I did. You guys wear the movie T-shirts every day and keep talking about it, so I got curious what kind of movie it was and watched it on the laptop you left open.”

Huang Guolun said in exasperation, “Why are you looking at everything? That kind of movie is not for children!”

Huang Guokun agreed, “Exactly, Tao. That film is too violent. Little kids shouldn’t watch it.”

“But Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf is violent too. If they made Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf into a live-action version, it might be even more violent than your movie.”

Huang Guolun did not bother arguing with Huang Tao and laid down the law. “From now on, you are not allowed to watch movies like that again. Do you hear me?”

“I wasn’t that interested in movies like that to begin with. I watched it because I like my uncle. If it weren’t a movie my uncle made, you could beg me to watch it and I still wouldn’t.”

Huang Guolun was left speechless by the retort.

Huang Guokun wrapped an arm around Huang Tao, pleased, and kissed him on the forehead. “My grandnephew is the one who’s truly close to me!”

“Uncle, don’t just kiss me. Tell me—why is no one watching your movie? I think your film is way more interesting than the bad movies on TV. Adults should like it, shouldn’t they?”

Huang Guokun sighed. “Sigh. Those who have seen it all say it’s good, but the problem is that right now nobody even knows this movie exists. If people don’t know about it, of course they won’t watch it.”

Huang Tao immediately offered a clear-headed suggestion. “Then just make people know there’s such a movie, right?”

“I’d like people to know too, but promoting a film isn’t easy. You see how your dad and the others wear the movie T-shirts when they go out—that’s just to let more passersby see the film.”

Huang Guolun interjected, “The grassroots effect of those T-shirts is really pretty poor. Even if people see them, very few will go online and search for the movie.”

“Yeah, I’ve figured that out too. For promoting an online movie like this, online publicity is still the most reliable. I’ve already found a few movie influencers to run ads for us, so I’m hoping it’ll help.”

“Honestly, brother, I don’t think a promo strategy that’s just a Weibo post or a casual article on a public account will work very well. Soft advertising like that is everywhere now, and people don’t take it seriously when they see it. You should find a way or a channel that leaves a deeper impression and push the promotion through there.”

“I’d like to find that kind of channel too. The problem is, there isn’t one.”

Huang Tao suddenly cut in. “Uncle, why don’t you shoot a fun little promo video to advertise the movie?”

Huang Guokun was a little startled. “How do you even know about making ad promos? You’re too amazing!”

“What’s so amazing about that?” Huang Tao was actually a little puzzled by his shock. “Doesn’t every movie have a trailer before it comes out? Sometimes TV commercials even show those trailers. Like the trailer for Thor 3 I saw on TV recently—it was pretty cool. The Hulk was awesome! You guys could make a trailer like that too, air it on TV, and then a lot of people would know about your movie.”

Huang Guokun gave a wry smile. “Those are all super-expensive blockbuster productions. Ours is just a small online film with a small budget. How could we afford TV ad time? Forget TV ads—video ads on websites are expensive too, and we can’t even afford those.”

Huang Tao asked in surprise, “Isn’t our family rich? We can’t even afford that kind of ad?”

Huang Guolun said helplessly, “That has nothing to do with whether our family has money or not. Sigh, you’re still too young; you don’t understand anything. Go have your Sister Bai Yao feed Dudu and stop giving your uncle a headache.”

“I am young, I admit that, but I’m not ignorant! Don’t keep treating me like a two- or three-year-old. I’m four this year, and next year I’ll be five!”

Huang Guolun teased him, “Right, the year after next you’ll be six, and the year after that you’ll be seven. Let me add ten more years for you—you’ll be seventeen! By then you’ll still be a kid!”

Annoyed, Huang Tao stopped talking to Huang Guolun and got back to the point with Huang Guokun. “Uncle, now I get it. You don’t have money to buy ads, right?”

“That’s right.”

Seeing that Huang Tao seemed to have some little scheme in mind, Huang Guokun asked, “Got any clever idea?”