Chapter 239 - Forbidden City

Many players who didn’t care about Minecraft clicked on the video filled with doubt.

And they were completely stunned by it.

“This is real gameplay?”

“It looks so good, how could it be real gameplay? Where are the mosaics?”

“What’s the difference between this and high quality cinematics? Are you lying to me again Chen Mo?”

The Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City was the first shot in the video.

The camera went under the gates, over the Jinshui Bridge, arriving at Taihe Gate.

The camera Zoomed in to reveal a stone lion was built using blocks. Although it was mosaic-like, it looked exactly like a stone lion.

The camera went over white jade stairs. Although the dragon sculpture on the middle of the stairs wasn’t perfectly recreated, the general shape of it was there.

Many cuts followed to show details of the buildings.

Glorious roof tiles.

The plaque in the centre.

Lanterns on the side.

Serene forest and pavilions.

As well as the interior of the palace.

Beds, desks, cushions, incense burner, bonsai…

The camera panned to the Hall of Supreme Harmony, with the nine dragon screen, and the golden throne was in the middle of the screen.

Many different cuts from different angels followed alongside a Chinese background music to reveal many more details of the Forbidden City.

Finally, the camera banned backwards, the doors to the city closed, and the music fades out.

But the cinematic hadn’t ended.

There was a smaller scene at the end revealing a timelapse of the build.

From the foundations, to the red pillars, shiny glass tiles… showing the entire build process.

The players watching had their eyes and mouth wide open the entire time.

Chen Mo’s Weibo was also shared countless times, with more and more comments under it.

“Get this documentary out of my face…”

“Was this really built in Minecraft?”

“My mom asked me why I was watching a video on my knees.”

“Chen Mo’s an architectural genius! Have my knees!”

“I heard there’s a palace in real life that recreated this pretty well.”

“I’m interested in this game now! Can you really recreate the entire Forbidden City? That means it’s going to work for other buildings too?”

“It’s so detailed! Although you could tell it’s made of blocks, it looks so good I might just lick the screen!”

“Is this hard to make? I imagine if you gave me… a hundred thousand years I could do it to.”

“It’s probably quite difficult, but it’s only fun if it is!”

—

It wasn’t some special large scaled promotion, but just from one Weibo and video, the hashtags #Minecraft and #ForbiddenCity was now trending!”

The video also gained more and more views.

And the way this gained popularity was not the same as Gokuraku Jodo.

Gokuraku Jodo gained popularity from the ACG community, then slowly spread to everyone else.

But this Forbidden City video gained its popularity though the recommendation algorithm and news outlets.

This was treated as the biggest news of the day in the gaming section of news outlets, as they were shared everywhere.

It was even read out on the news. Many who weren’t into videogames heard about Minecraft and how someone built the forbidden city in game.

This wasn’t like the usual advertisements. The video caught the eyes of many and was filled with Chinese culture. This tickled the fancy of many traditional media as it piqued the interest of many non-gamers.

And the name Minecraft became a familiar word among the people.

“Chen Mo made Forbidden City in Minecraft” was a topic that was gone over and over again. It even looked like it could overtake Thousand Hells.

It was a trending topic for a whole week.

Just as the buzz was dying out after two weeks, Chen Mo released another Weibo.

“Minecraft: Recreated Yuanmingyuan Park (Summer Palace). Note: Still actual gameplay.”

Another one?

It has only been two weeks since the release or Forbidden City, and you release another one already? It’s Yuanmingyuan Park at that!

The video gained even more popularity with the help of Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was an actual building, but Yuanmingyuan Park had been destroyed agest ago with only a stretch of wall left.

Many educational shows have tried rendering Yuanmingyuan Park in perfect condition. However, fully recreating took a lot of money for not a lot of profit, which show would make such a terrible financial decision?

It’d be a few images at most, but images will never be as realistic as a video.

Everyone knew how incredible Yuanmingyuan Park was as it was known as the park of the parks. Everybody had to imagine what it looked like, and nobody had any idea what it originally looked like.

But Chen Mo recreated the whole thing in Minecraft!

This got the players even more riled up as they couldn’t wait to watch the video.

The video started with some text.

“There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world; this wonder was called the Summer Palace.

“Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar building, and you will have the Summer Palace

“Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk, make it here a sanctuary, there a harem, elsewhere a citadel, put gods there, and monsters, varnish it, enamel it, gild it, paint it

“Have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, basins, gushing water and foam, swans, ibis, peacocks.

“Suppose in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace, such was this building.

— Victor Hugo.

This was written by the French poet Victor Hugo to Captain Butler to denounce the destruction of the Old Summer Palace by the British and French forces. This description about the Old Summer Palace in this passage became a classic piece of classic description, remembered by countless people.

The text faded away to reveal the map of Yuanmingyuan Park.

The camera panned upwards to reveal Minecraft characters. It was only now that the players released the map they were looking at was in Minecraft.

The character walked to the ruins of the Old Summer Palace and found a special portal.

They jumped into the portal and were transported to another world.