"Ghost Bride" premiered, and thanks to an overwhelming marketing campaign, it pulled in 65 million US dollars at the box office on the first day worldwide.
In the days that followed, "Ghost Bride" became unstoppable. The spread of word-of-mouth and the horror, reality, and scariness associated with the "Ghost Bride" movie piqued people's curiosity even more.
The more the movie was advertised as terrifying, the more it drew people to the theaters to see for themselves if it really was as supernatural as touted, and then they too became victims, most leaving the theaters with wobbly legs.
And to drag more people down with them, these once-victimized viewers would spontaneously promote the movie online, attracting more audiences to the theaters, creating a positive cycle.
Of course, the excellence of the "Ghost Bride" movie itself also conquered these audiences.
Although the plot wasn't particularly dazzling—fairly standard, in fact—it was the terrifying atmosphere and sense of reality in the movie that were more stimulating than any other horror movie on Blue Star.
Especially when wearing the Hundred Ghosts 3D Glasses, the fear that hit the physiological limits of human beings led to a new online challenge, where whoever could watch the entire "Ghost Bride" with the glasses on was a true warrior.
Under various boosters, the box office for "Ghost Bride" spiraled out of control.
Its first-week box office broke through 310 million US dollars, easily taking the global weekly box office crown, and continued to dominate for a month.
As a result, many details about the "Ghost Bride" emerged, and Nightmare Park saw a surge in visitors. Many who saw the movie wanted to check out Nightmare Park to see if the female ghost in "Ghost Bride" was as terrifying as in the film.
Of course, these new visitors, let alone seeing the Ghost Bride, were scared to tears by just the regular difficulty Ghost House, pushing the fame of Nightmare Park even higher, with tens of thousands of daily visitors insufficient to meet the demand.
Seeing the opportunity, Jieke Group announced plans to build branches of Nightmare Park in Manchester, Yang City, River City, Hu City, and Qing City in Southeast Asia to accommodate the future expansion of visitors.
In just two months after release, when "Ghost Bride" was taken off screens in most global markets, its cumulative worldwide box office reached 1.27 billion US dollars, entering the billion-dollar club and breaking into the top twenty of global box offices.
For an average movie company, this figure would have prompted jubilant champagne celebrations.
But for the Jieke Group, this sum was just pocket change, as they shared a larger slice of the box office returns with theaters in exchange for more screenings and larger audiences.
Therefore, the net profit was only several hundred million dollars, which pales in comparison to the profits from Jieke Group's pharmaceutical sales. Jieke Group's monthly profits are over billions of dollars.
This is why the outside world doesn't understand why the Jieke Group would be interested in the meager profits from the film industry, as the entire industry's annual profits combined don't even come close to the fractional earnings of Jieke Group.
What the Jieke Group was really after, was beyond anyone's wildest guess.
The hard drives sent to the movie theaters all contained Primordial Spirit Pearls, which got activated when the film played, covering the entire theater.
The fear emotions generated by viewers during the movie were naturally absorbed into the Primordial Spirit Pearls.
When "Ghost Bride" ended its run, these hard drives were returned to the distribution company and higher-level theaters, then mailed back to Hundred Ghost Film Company.
What were sent out as empty Primordial Spirit Pearls, came back filled with Fear Energy—contributed by tens of millions of viewers, an astonishing amount.
Although the quality wasn't high, the quantity more than compensated for it.
This amount of Fear Energy was already enough to satisfy the needs of the Ghost Bride to advance to a Seventh-grade Fierce Ghost.
In a valley outside Ghost Ridge Palace.
Su Jie and Han Ruyan appeared here, where the entire valley was now covered by a Formation which Su Jie hid using an Array Plate.
Because they anticipated that the breakthrough would cause a huge disturbance, unsuitable for the environment of Blue Star, they decided to carry out the breakthrough in Tianyuan World.
After checking the Array Plate again to ensure there were no issues, Su Jie made a flash of light appear from the Storage Bag at his waist, and a large number of Primordial Spirit Pearls and Soul Summoning Banners were taken out, piling up into a small mountain.
The Primordial Spirit Pearls were the major contributions from Nightmare Park and the "Ghost Bride" movie, while the Soul Summoning Banners came from the wars in Southeast Asia and the breeding farms.
Because Su Jie equipped the Jieke Group's troops with a large number of Soul Summoning Banners, disguised in the form of national and military flags, now that the battles were over, these banners had absorbed a significant number of souls.
However, the majority of souls absorbed on the battlefield were few, while the breeding farms contributed the bulk with the souls of pigs—though of lower quality, the quantity was immense!
Now, Su Jie's Mu Hua Food Company in Hua Country, thanks to relentless investment and the acquisition of other pig enterprises, has become the leading pig-breeding business. With over 100 million pigs marketed annually, and including those bred in Chan Country, they stored a massive amount of Yin Souls.
To create one Yin Soul, 300 pigs' souls were needed. Over the past half-year, through continuous marketing, the amount of stored Yin Souls had reached five to six hundred thousand, dispersed across numerous Soul Summoning Banners, with the souls from over a hundred million pigs stored within.
This was just the annual production of Mu Hua Food, which would be completely unaffordable for the entire Da Li Dynasty in the Tianyuan World.