Lu Zhiyao was completely speechless.

The script for “Mission and Choice” was originally given to them in segments. Director Zhu Xiaocai had euphemistically claimed this was to let Lu Zhiyao “carefully study each segment’s plot, so that prior knowledge of the ending wouldn’t affect their current performance.”

Director Zhu Xiaocai’s goal had indeed been achieved.

When Lu Zhiyao performed each segment of the plot, they genuinely immersed themselves in the role of Captain Qin Yi, completely unaware of what would happen next, making their performance closer to Qin Yi’s true state in the play.

But this brought along a problem – Lu Zhiyao was driven crazy by the constant interruptions.

Each time, only a small segment of the script was provided. Worse yet, the plot development was particularly twisted. Every time Lu Zhiyao wanted to know the next part of the story, too bad – it was cut off.

Now, having finally received the script for the movie’s ending, to their utter disbelief, it was still incomplete. The rest of the plot was still missing!

This left Lu Zhiyao feeling utterly devastated and desperate.

Of course, they understood in their heart that with just the current content alone, the entire story was already complete. It had a clear beginning, development, climax, and resolution – more than sufficient for a movie.

The subsequent plot was probably not even finalized by Huang Sibo and Director Zhu Xiaocai. They had simply left this loose end to create suspense for the next installment in the series.

Even though Lu Zhiyao clearly understood this reasoning, they couldn’t help but curse about these “cliffhanger endings” a few times.

After calming down their emotions, Lu Zhiyao began to re-examine this final segment of the plot.

Previously, their acting skills had been tested from every angle without any weaknesses. They thought they were already battle-hardened and fearless.

But seeing this final segment of the script, Lu Zhiyao realized the truly challenging part was at the end!

The final conclusion still contained multiple reversals. Qin Yi’s emotions shifted from despair to breakdown, then finding a glimmer of hope within despair, followed by inspiring all the soldiers’ morale through rousing speeches, successfully showing humanity a glimpse of victory.

If the script ended here, it would be a standard popcorn movie with a very conventional passionate ending.

However, just as Qin Yi was about to see the dawn of victory, the plot took another sharp turn.

After falling unconscious, Qin Yi discovered he possessed the Hive Mind, which naturally made him think from the Zerg’s perspective and develop empathy for them. Qin Yi realized that humanity had actually initiated the attack on the Zerg first. Strictly speaking, the Zerg were the ones being invaded.

Upon awakening, Qin Yi ordered all soldiers to cease fire, forcibly halting the white-hot war between humans and Zerg.

If the script ended here with humans and Zerg making peace and building a beautiful universe together, it would be a standard Western politically correct ending.

But Qin Yi wasn’t planning to make peace with the Zerg. Instead, he deceived the Zerg while using the Hive Mind to locate the Queen and all Secondary Queens, continuing to execute the decapitation strategy.

Qin Yi deceived the Zerg for humanity’s sake, but he himself was also deceived and abandoned. In the end, because all Zerg Queens and Secondary Queens were eliminated, Qin Yi unexpectedly became the leader of all Zerg, carried by the Leviathan creature as it drifted into the endless cosmic space.

In this segment, Qin Yi’s emotions continued to undergo dramatic changes.

There was inspiring heroic passion, surprise upon learning the truth, cold-blooded deception of the Zerg, and fury at being betrayed…

Especially in the final shot, when Qin Yi awakens in the breeding pool inside the Leviathan beast, there would be a close-up where Lu Zhiyao had to express Qin Yi’s complex emotions with just their eyes.

Clearly, this plot segment was even more challenging for Lu Zhiyao to perform than previous scripts!

And just as Lu Zhiyao had known from the beginning, what made Qin Yi’s character so demanding on acting skills and difficult to portray was precisely his character setup as an iron-willed soldier.

In most situations, Qin Yi lacked emotions, and even when he had them, they were very subtle and restrained.

But in this script, Qin Yi’s fate was incredibly turbulent, constantly facing extreme despair or extreme pain. This made it difficult for Lu Zhiyao to find the right balance.

With slightly too much force, Qin Yi’s character would collapse. A hardened warrior jumping in rage or having a mental breakdown wouldn’t fit the character. But with insufficient intensity, audiences would think Lu Zhiyao lacked acting skills and couldn’t properly express emotions.

In comparison, young characters were easier to play because their emotions were usually straightforward. Joy was simply joy, anger was simply anger, without complexity. The margin for error was much wider.

Conversely, showing the emotions of someone with strong willpower like Captain Qin Yi was the most challenging.

Lu Zhiyao sighed softly. It seemed he would be busy for the coming period.

He would continue staying in his hotel room, practicing in front of the mirror to carefully study the plot and adjust his acting and expressions to perfectly present this final segment.

However, before that, Lu Zhiyao first gathered all the scripts he had received so far and read them from beginning to end, analyzing the story from his own perspective.

The most profound impression this story left on Lu Zhiyao was its “cultural perspective.”

As an actor, Lu Zhiyao had naturally watched many films from various countries and genres.

The story of “Mission and Choice,” when broken down into individual plot points, actually wasn’t particularly special compared to many traditional sci-fi films.

This was quite normal, of course.

After all, the “Zerg” theme had existed in sci-fi films for decades. Previous generations had already presented various concepts from multiple angles and approaches, leaving little room for innovation.

With so many classic works setting the precedent, making every plot point revolutionary was impossible.

However, in Lu Zhiyao’s view, the greatest breakthrough of “Mission and Choice” was combining Chinese cultural perspective with sci-fi themes – something never done before.

In China, sci-fi films were extremely rare. Sci-fi movies required enormous investments, including extensive props, special effects, and professional crew members. Without proper experience, they easily turned out mediocre.

So even in the domestic film market, when discussing sci-fi movies, people often first thought of those Hollywood blockbusters.

This led to the issue that nearly all popular sci-fi works presented Western cultural perspectives.

This created a sense of doubt and disconnection for many domestic audiences regarding the values and perspectives in these sci-fi films. What seemed natural to Western audiences was completely unacceptable to domestic viewers.

The concept of “Mission and Choice” actually originated from a famous foreign sci-fi author’s work from 1985, which won both Hugo and Nebula awards and became an eternal sci-fi classic.

But in that story, the commander was a child who felt extremely guilty after annihilating the Zerg, so he took a young Zerg Queen to space to find a new home and atone for his sins.

This was typical Western thinking, similar to many Western animal protection organizations advocating for vegetarianism and equal rights for animals…

For people living in Western culture, this might be natural political correctness and kindness.

But for those in Chinese culture, this was complete foolishness and hypocrisy, an expression of misplaced compassion.

Westerners shouted slogans of political correctness and fought for animal rights fundamentally because their lives were too comfortable and affluent. With abundant resources, they had surplus compassion to spare after their waste and extravagance.

The root of Western prosperity and comfort lay in their ancestors’ exploitation, plunder, and brutal killings across the world centuries ago.

While Westerners proclaimed “animals have rights too,” they never looked back at the native populations exterminated by their ancestors, never considered how easily they obtained their material wealth through their countries’ exploitation of other nations.

When these Westerners lavished their excess sympathy on animals, their countries were bullying, oppressing, and exploiting other nations, constantly spreading war, famine, and plague, leaving human beings in living hell.

Therefore, from a Chinese cultural perspective, humans showing sympathy to the Zerg was extremely foolish and hypocritical.

If Westerners showed half their animal sympathy to other races and peoples of different nations, the world would be much better.

In the setting, the Zerg were a race posing extreme threats to all life in the universe. They possessed powerful collective consciousness, efficient information sharing, and strong adaptive evolution. This race’s sole purpose was constant expansion and reproduction throughout the universe, eliminating all other species.

Even if the Zerg Queen genuinely wanted peaceful coexistence with humans, their species’ life form still posed an extreme threat to human survival.

Humans showing sympathy and sparing the Zerg was essentially nurturing a threat. How could one judge if the Zerg Queen wasn’t lying? How could one predict if the Queen’s thoughts might change?

Under these circumstances, complete extermination of the Zerg was humanity’s most rational decision.

Sympathizing with and protecting the Zerg meant exposing humanity to enormous danger.

“Mission and Choice” fully adopted the Chinese cultural perspective on this theme.