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7:30 PM.

At this hour, most people who've toiled through the day have just finished dinner.

The nightlife of the big city hasn't even started yet.

Hu Wei, waiting backstage in the bar's green room, opened Audio-Visual, ready to scroll through some interesting videos to kill time.

Big data knew him well.

Everything recommended was all kinds of pretty girls.

With beauty filters on, they were all stunning.

Real or fake, they were pleasant to look at, and that was enough.

Hu Wei graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music and kept an eye on news about his alma mater, so he often came across related videos.

After scrolling past a few pretty girls, he saw a video of a young man singing on stage with a guitar.

The video wasn't complete, hadn't been edited at all, the footage was a bit shaky, and the quality looked rough.

He was about to swipe past it quickly, but the singing that came through instantly made his thumb hover over the phone screen.

"A heartless world, a heartless you, you treat love like a transaction of cash."

The moment that lyric hit, it was like a bullet, striking Hu Wei's heart with perfect accuracy.

He cautiously glanced around; a few band members were scrolling on their phones just like him.

Without a word, he took out his earphones and put them on.

He listened intently.

A moment later.

A complicated expression crossed his face.

He thought he'd already been able to let it go.

After all, it had been over two years, and he was gradually getting better.

His daily income as a bar singer wasn't enough to make him rich, but it was more than enough to support himself.

But this song instantly dragged him back two years, to that night when the rain was pouring down.

In the old, rundown basement, the air was so stuffy it was hard to breathe.

An old, broken fan, as worn-out as the basement, whirred noisily.

Accompanied by his girlfriend's hysterical roar.

"That's right, I cheated. So what? Yeah, it's the investor on that TV drama I was in, that nouveau riche you look down on the most, and he's filthy rich!"

"One meal from him is enough for a year of your living expenses!"

"One pack of his cigarettes could buy you a whole carton!"

"The apartment he rented for me is twenty-eight thousand a month! Elevator straight to the door, butler service, and he paid for a whole year upfront!"

"I admit I'm vain, but let me ask you, who wouldn't want this kind of life?"

"Hu Wei, wake up. Stop living in your music daydreams every day. Staying holed up at home writing songs, releasing songs, scraping together those few pennies—don't even talk about spending them on me, you can't even support yourself!"

"Still think you're that music prodigy from the Central Conservatory, with countless girls fawning over you?"

"Let's break up!"

"I can't live another day like this!"

"Having such a nice place to live but not being able to stay there, having to come back to this crappy dump to play house with you—I've had enough!"

"..."

He remembered that day he was wearing a pair of shorts, shirtless, with messy hair.

He stood there silently, watching his ex-girlfriend vent.

The basement was unbearably stuffy, but his heart was ice-cold.

He couldn't believe how his girlfriend, who had always been so gentle, could say such nasty things.

And how could she cheat without a shred of guilt, even turning around and acting like it was all his fault?

You say there's no future with me, no hope—I can accept that.

If you break up to find someone better, no one would blame you!

But sneaking around behind your boyfriend's back to be The Third Party—don't you feel even a little guilty?

How could you be so... self-righteous?

The two broke up, as expected.

And he, head down, bent over, chose to sing in bars.

With a low, hoarse, highly distinctive smoker's voice and a handsome face full of stories, he'd been singing here for two years.

He'd found his groove, more or less.

As for the music dream—what even was that?

Could you eat it?

But right now, the clean-cut big boy on the phone screen, singing with a magnetic voice tinged with melancholy, made his heart ache again and again.

He glanced at the uploader—sure enough, a Central Conservatory of Music student.

"This original song is pretty solid quality!"

"It'd fit a bar pretty well too!"

"After all, plenty of people come here to drown their sorrows in booze. If it can move me this easily, it'll definitely move more people!"

Hu Wei pondered.

He sent a private message to the Junior Brother who posted the video.

"Hey man, I'm Hu Wei, also a Central Conservatory grad. Wanted to ask a favor—could you help me get in touch with the person singing in the video?"

Just using the song outright wouldn't be a big deal.

But Hu Wei was someone who deeply respected creative work, and at the same time, he really wanted to get to know that Junior Brother named Song Dao.

After sending it, he looked at the video with hardly any comments, thought it over, and casually threw two thousand yuan into boosting it.

A hundred bucks got you about 5,000+ views.

Two thousand—roughly a hundred thousand views!

He admitted he was a bit impulsive.

But he didn't regret it!

This original heartbreak song would probably blow up.

Feeling the lyrics in his bones and holding immense reverence for the craft, Hu Wei felt he had more than enough reasons to get this video seen by more people.

Then it was time to go on stage. Hu Wei took off his headphones and put away his somewhat outdated phone.

He grabbed his guitar and walked out of the green room with a few band members.

Half an hour later, around eight in the evening, the video blew up!

After finishing her song, Kong Xi kept bowing to the thunderous applause.

She walked backstage with light steps.

Glancing around, she noticed Song Dao had left, so she politely said her goodbyes to everyone and headed back to the place she rented off-campus.

In front of others, she came across as lively and outgoing, but in private, when she was alone, she was actually a pretty quiet girl.

The songs she wrote were also the quieter folk style.

"My Cat Can Do Backflips" was her breakout hit.

The name was a bit funny and carried a meme, but the content leaned toward the artsy side.

The reason it blew up—her looks and the song's quality were part of it, sure, but more than that, it was the name being so amusing.

A bunch of goofy netizens ran wild with all kinds of memes, and it exploded across the internet in no time.

Students at art schools usually matured early.

Especially the girls.

After becoming famous, all kinds of gigs came flooding in, and living in the dorms like before became pretty unrealistic.

No matter how good the relationships used to be, once you're the one who made it, busy flying around all day raking in cash, someone's bound to feel sour about it.

Kong Xi was smart. As soon as she blew up, she moved out of the dorm.

Every now and then, she'd treat her old dorm sisters to a meal, and occasionally give them little gifts.

With distance between them and her being generous enough, the relationships were kept in decent shape.

She'd actually planned to invite them out to eat today, but after hearing the song Song Dao had written, she changed her mind on the spot and pushed it back a day.

She intended to talk to her Senior Brother about a collaboration.

Her company had recently handed her a "big job."

Writing an insert song for a xianxia drama with a huge budget and top-tier male and female leads.

It was supposed to be a xianxia drama, but really it was just a romance in ancient costume cosplay.

A bunch of immortals doing nothing all day but falling in love.

And angsting all over the place.

Kong Xi wanted to turn it down on the spot.

Her thing was folk music—she couldn't write anything else.

Especially since she'd never even been in love—how was she supposed to write a heartbreak song?

But her agent said the client specifically requested that she sing it!

Ideally, the whole package—lyrics, composition, and performance—would be hers, since that makes for a bigger selling point.

If that's not possible, she could have the company try to acquire a new song.

Either way, as long as Kong Xi sang it, the other side would accept it.

"Xixi, they're betting on you because you're super hot right now, especially with your fans' strong cohesion. In plain terms, they're banking on your current traffic!"

"As for how good the song actually is, does that really matter?"

"You're a professional anyway—just write something to fit the plot. As long as it's not terrible, it's fine. It's not the theme song, so what are you afraid of?"

"A million! That's a sky-high price!"

"They only want the usage rights. If you handle lyrics, composition, and singing all by yourself, you can take home four hundred thousand before tax from this single deal!"

"Four hundred thousand, baby!"

"You need to understand one thing: your popularity right now might last, or it might be fleeting. You've got to make money while you can, got it?"

In the Xia Kingdom's revenue-sharing model, if an independent musician uploads a work to a music platform, the split is usually forty-sixty.

The platform takes forty percent, and the lyricist, composer, and singer split the remaining sixty.

If one person handles all the steps, that pre-tax sixty percent is all theirs.

If the roles are split, the lyricist and composer can get fifteen to twenty-five percent of that sixty percent.

The singer takes the larger share of what's left.

Of course, this varies by person—exceptionally talented lyricists or composers, or big-name singers, have bargaining power.

Specific split models are negotiated individually.

For unknown small-time lyricists and composers, selling a song outright for a few thousand yuan to gain fame or survive isn't unusual at all.

And for a case like Kong Xi's—a direct custom order where the production company only wants the usage rights—it's an absolute steal.

According to her current contract with the company, which splits sixty-forty, she could indeed get a lump sum of a lot of money.

Her company was practically a model of industry conscience!

For newcomers at other companies, even if they got famous, they'd be lucky to get twenty or thirty percent.

After all, the company has to package and promote its artists and staff various support personnel.

Many companies even deduct the costs of lyrics and composition from the artist's twenty percent!

So she was very grateful to her company and was quite tempted by this collaboration.

This custom invitation, as her agent said, was more about the production side betting on her current traffic.

It was less about buying a song and more like a promotional fee.

Once she finished recording and uploaded it to the music platform, she and the company could still enjoy the subsequent revenue it brought.

But the problem was, she'd been stuck for over a month, writing several drafts, but never finding that feeling.

The TV drama had wrapped up ages ago, and it was about to air on both online and TV platforms, yet she still had no clue.

On the surface, she seemed like an extrovert, but inside, she was practically an introvert.

She'd known about Senior Brother Song Dao for a long time, but before, his eyes had only been on Miao Xiu, and he never interacted with other girls.

In Kong Xi's understanding, Senior Brother Song was a talented person—many teachers said his creative ability wasn't bad, and he was skilled at several instruments.

The song he'd written today, possibly in just three days, also showed her his strength.

So she started to get ideas.

Of course, if it weren't absolutely necessary, she wouldn't want to go to Song Dao for a song like a desperate patient grasping at any doctor.

"Anyway, I'll just give it a try. What if it works out?"

Kong Xi opened her phone to scroll through Audio-Visual, thinking about how to phrase things to talk to her senior brother about this.

If it was possible, how much money would be appropriate?

She was kind of a little famous, so she should have some leverage, right?

Then she stumbled upon Song Dao's performance tonight.

And she fell into the comments section, unable to climb out.

She temporarily forgot about the song request.

Nine o'clock at night.

The barrage comments on that video were already overwhelmed—

"Holy crap, what kind of shock did he take to write a song like this?"

"This song is insane!"

"Keep cursing!"

"Ouch, that hit home, bro."

"No way, how'd you know my girlfriend just ran off with some greasy rich middle-aged guy?"

"I feel attacked!"

"Did you install a camera in my house?"

Scrolling into the comments section, it was even livelier!

"I'm a Song Dao schoolmate. Let me drop a huge scoop—Song Dao broke up with his girlfriend just three days ago! Apparently, she forced him to confess at the graduation party, but after signing with a big company a few days back, she immediately dumped him. First sword ashore, first cut to the one you loved. That move was smooth. It's all over our campus forum. But that's not the point. The point is, this song was written by Song Dao in just three days after the breakup. Tell me, isn't that insane?"

"Am I the only one who thinks this guy is gross? How can a breakup ever be one person's fault? Is it wrong for a girl to choose the life she wants? Instead of reflecting on his own issues, he slings mud at an innocent girl and writes a song to get revenge—what a scumbag!"

Both comments had tons of replies. Music Conservatory students came out to reveal the truth, random passersby shared their own stories, and plenty of people sympathized with the "female lead," speaking up for Miao Xiu.

Information about Miao Xiu and photos taken of her before were quickly posted online too.

The reason this blew up so fast was partly Hu Wei's promotion, but more so because the singer was really handsome, and the song's quality... was pretty good!

The lyrics hit hard for anyone who'd been through something similar. One listen and you'd feel the resonance, the empathy.

At the same time, the exposed gossip and the lyrics "hurt" those sisters who thought they could just make any choice they wanted.

"You put on the new clothes he bought." "Watching you drive off in style in his little car." "You turned love into a transaction for money."

These blunt lyrics made them lose it on the spot.

No need for paid trolls to join in—they were already cursing up a storm in the comments.

By the time Lu Wen's hired water army charged in, the video's comment section was already a chaotic mess.

In just an hour or two, likes topped a hundred thousand, and comments exceeded ten thousand.

With the water army fanning the flames, the buzz was skyrocketing.

It was almost getting pushed onto the trending list!

Most netizens were actually silent.

Forget commenting, they couldn't even be bothered to like.

If so many people hadn't been touched where it hurt, there'd never be that many replies.

So when the water army started attacking Song Dao en masse, the "organic" netizens instantly got pissed.

They clashed with the trolls in a mess of arguments.

But they were barely holding up.

The water army's unified rhetoric was all about "freedom to love; Song Dao has low character, can't have her so he destroys her; this kind of man is terrifying, sisters be careful," and similar lines.

They escalated it to a moral level, focusing on personal attacks.

Winning an argument online is already incredibly hard, if not impossible.

Let alone fighting organized trolls like these.

The only reason it hadn't turned into a one-sided slaughter was that too many people resonated with the song.

They all had a strong, pent-up emotion inside that they rarely voiced to others.

Facing the water army's spin, this group didn't care.

You do your black-bashing, I'll say my piece.

Suddenly, across various social media groups, forums, and high-traffic spots, people were sharing this video everywhere.

At ten in the evening.

The video hit the top thirty on the Audio-Visual trending list.

--Music prodigy breaks up, writes song to slam ex-girlfriend.