Chapter 18

"What on earth was going on?"

"...Because your Fan Value broke seventy thousand overnight, the system spontaneously rewarded you with one Landmine, one Grenade, one rocket, one Depth Charge, and one Deepwater Torpedo. This allowed you to feel your fans' love while completely restoring the mental strength and stamina you'd lost from spending so much time in the space. Your overall condition has now returned to its peak. You no longer need to worry about becoming ill from fatigue or suffering a mental breakdown. Looking after your physical and mental health is every system administrator's duty. Please don't thank me too much~"

Chen Mo fell strangely silent for a moment. Then he asked, "What's this Fan Value you mentioned? And what are those bombs and mines?"

Hearing Chen Mo's question, the system patiently explained, "This system is the Entertainment Circle Male God System from the Jinjiang Literature Repository. Your performances can accumulate Fan Value, which can restore your mental strength. Each fan's love for you has five levels: Landmine, Grenade, rocket, Depth Charge, and Deepwater Torpedo. One hundred Fan Value can be exchanged for one Landmine, five hundred for one Grenade, one thousand for one rocket, five thousand for one Depth Charge, and ten thousand for one Deepwater Torpedo. These five items all restore mental strength, though their effects... You've already gained one hundred fans through your performance on the set of Emperor Wu of Han: The Young Emperor and your series of impressive performances afterward. So the system had already exchanged a Landmine for you once to help restore your mental strength..."

Chen Mo gradually understood. There was still something he didn't get, though. "So this Fan Value and the Landmines that restore mental strength... Why didn't I know about them before?"

The system replied matter-of-factly, "Because you never asked me!"

Chen Mo: "..." Great. That answer made perfect sense!

You've got to be kidding me! (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻

Shouldn't you have told me about something like this on your own?!

After venting his frustration, Chen Mo remembered Yuan Haobin had asked him to introduce himself. He didn't have time to keep questioning the system about why staying in the space too long drained his mental strength, or what happened when it ran out.

Instead, he returned to reality, took the microphone, and said, "Hello, everyone. I'm Chen Mo, a newcomer with Huaxia Entertainment. I'm very happy to have the honor of partnering with Yuan, the Heavenly King, this time... I hope you'll support the TV series Emperor Wu of Han: The Young Emperor. Thank you."

He was young and inexperienced, and the system's casual antics had thrown him off. Because of the strange experience he'd just had inside his body, Chen Mo hadn't been in the mood to introduce himself at all. It showed in how poorly his introduction went.

Yuan Haobin gave Chen Mo a helpless look, then took the microphone and said, "Don't let this handsome young man beside me fool you. He may not be much of a talker, but he's a genius! You've probably seen the news from a while back, right? You know I lost a bet to Xiao Mo, so I had no choice but to invite him to be a guest at my concert... Your idol had never lost a bet in all these years, and he handed his first loss to this guy."

The audience burst into laughter. Yuan Haobin lightened the mood, then continued telling the fans about his "fateful entanglement" with Chen Mo. Along the way, he also promoted Young Emperor, then pulled Chen Mo into singing the ending theme for Emperor Wu of Han: The Young Emperor.

Chen Mo's talent naturally couldn't compare to Yuan Haobin's. But he'd just been bombarded by his fans, from Landmines to Deepwater Torpedoes, and their Wish Power still lingered inside him. Under its influence, his voice grew even clearer and richer, moving listeners more deeply.

When the song ended, everyone who'd heard Chen Mo sing was surprised to find themselves liking the young man even more...

Though Yuan Haobin had invited him as a guest, and both Yuan Haobin and the company intended to promote Chen Mo at the concert, promoting him didn't mean letting him steal the spotlight. So Chen Mo's time onstage was limited.

After singing the ending theme for Young Emperor, Chen Mo briefly promoted Director Zhang's TV series, thanked Yuan, the Heavenly King, for supporting a newcomer and the enthusiastic fans at the concert, then waved casually to the audience and strode offstage.

As everyone had expected, though Chen Mo's concert performance was over, his career in show business under the media spotlight had only just begun.

Chapter 18

Thanks to Yuan, the Heavenly King's enormous influence in Chinese pop music and Chen Mo's almost miraculous performance at the concert, the next day every Chinese newspaper and online media outlet had entertainment headlines about "The Young Piano Prodigy Who Lit a Cigarette" or "A Marvelous Young Man Appears at Yuan, the Heavenly King's Concert, Perfectly Presenting the Piano Prince's King's Arrival."

As Chen Mo's agency and manager, Huaxia Entertainment and Yang Qindong had already cultivated media connections and prepared press releases to promote him. They'd also hired online shills to build buzz for Chen Mo. In addition, Yang Qindong had instructed Chen Mo's assistant to record a video of him lighting a cigarette with the piano from the audience and post it online, pretending to be one of Yuan, the Heavenly King's fans and promoting the video with the caption, "Oh my god, come out and see this!" Then the online shills took over, liking and reposting it and coming up with all kinds of attention-grabbing headlines to draw in netizens and ordinary passersby.

Chen Mo's piano-and-cigarette trick was so incredible and impressive that the video immediately caught countless netizens' attention after it was uploaded. After watching the video, which was less than ten minutes long, they flooded the comments with likes and messages such as "Our male god is so handsome!" and "I want to have his babies!"

Of course, some people questioned whether the video was real. The shills were ready for this, too. They steered the discussion, pretending to be fact-checkers and arguing that the video was impossible, using all sorts of theories to prove it couldn't have happened.

They sounded perfectly serious and convincing, enough to leave people impressed without understanding why. But it was all pointless. Chen Mo had performed the piano-and-cigarette trick live at Yuan Haobin's concert. So, besides the publicists and online shills hired by Yang Qindong, many of Yuan, the Heavenly King's fans who'd attended the concert also uploaded videos during and after the show. Their footage wasn't as clear as professional recordings, and their phones picked up plenty of background noise. But there were so many videos, all recorded live with no post-production, and they captured Chen Mo from various angles as he finished playing, stood to acknowledge the audience, then touched his cigarette to the piano strings while they were still warm and lit it. The footage completely answered the fact-checkers' doubts.

With the online shills and Yuan, the Heavenly King's fans dominating the conversation, the videos got even more views, likes, and reposts. Less than twenty hours after the first upload, the piano-and-cigarette trick had become Weibo's hottest topic, with people from all sides driving it to the top. Yuan Haobin, the concert, the piano-and-cigarette trick, and even Director Zhang and Emperor Wu of Han: The Young Emperor all became trending search terms.

Chen Mo, the Piano Little Prince, had become an overnight sensation. The TV series he'd appeared in, Emperor Wu of Han: The Young Emperor, which had been promoted at Yuan Haobin's concert, also became a hit before it even aired.

Director Zhang and Huaxia Entertainment's operations department seized the opportunity to invite the purchasing departments of various TV stations to negotiate, hoping to sell the premiere rights to Young Emperor for the best possible price while the buzz was still hot.

Chen Mo had become an overnight sensation, and his phone nearly exploded with calls. Actors he'd worked with on the set of Emperor Wu of Han: The Young Emperor called to congratulate him. The show had only just wrapped, and most of its cast hadn't lined up new projects yet. To promote the series, Director Zhang wanted to get everyone together again. He figured a press release about "Chen Mo's Overnight Rise to Fame: Young Emperor Cast Reunites After Wrapping" would make a catchy headline.

He explained the idea to Chen Mo over the phone. Lin Xia, Huang Lixin, and Fei Yuchen, who were all fairly close to Chen Mo, were also eager to meet up. They grumbled, "You missed the wrap party, anyway. We might as well use this promotional event as an excuse to get together."

In his previous life, Chen Mo had been a rich playboy. He hadn't held down a proper job for long, but he'd had a wide circle of friends, and a few of them were willing to help when things went wrong. Of course, when nothing was going on, they mostly just wasted their lives together. To outsiders, they probably looked like a bunch of idle rich kids.

But that was beside the point. Whether with a group of friends or a band of rich wastrels, Chen Mo had always liked being part of a crowd. Since transmigrating, he'd been busy either filming or studying every day and hadn't really gone out to have fun. Now that people were inviting him to sing karaoke and hit the bars, he was happy to go.

Yang Qindong approved of Chen Mo's plans. No matter what circle you lived in, people with good relationships generally had better prospects than loners with bad attitudes. This was especially true in the entertainment industry, where social skills and connections were sometimes even more important than professional ability.

Still, though getting together to socialize was fine, Yang Qindong didn't trust the young people to have much self-control. Before Chen Mo left, he repeatedly warned him not to drink too much and, more importantly, not to touch anything he shouldn't.

Chen Mo didn't need Yang Qindong to tell him that. Since he didn't have a driver's license and couldn't drive, he asked his young assistant to chauffeur him to the gathering.

Whale Shark Nightclub was in the middle of Huajing's busiest bar district, in Three Seas District. The story went that it got its name from a large aquarium installed during construction, where a shark was kept. Several enormous VIP rooms had been built around the tank, so guests could see the shark swimming past the reinforced glass—below them, above them, or behind them. The visual impact was stunning and perfect for people who went clubbing in search of thrills. That was how Whale Shark Nightclub made a name for itself, carving out a distinctive spot among the countless bars and nightclubs in the capital.

But these super VIP rooms cost a fortune, and anyone who could book one was either rich or influential. There was no way minor actors like Chen Mo and Lin Xia could reserve one. If Lin Xia's sugar daddy, Young Master Gu, had stepped in, it might have been possible.

Fortunately, they were only there to get together, not to show off their wealth. So they'd booked a medium-sized room instead.

Chen Mo found the room by its number. As he pushed the door open, a pack of wolves howled inside—or so it sounded. The demonic singing nearly knocked him off his feet. He took a closer look and saw Lin Xia had monopolized the microphone, singing one of the most popular love songs of the moment.

She was so off-key that even the songwriter's mother probably wouldn't have recognized it.

Chen Mo surreptitiously glanced at Lin Xia. He really hadn't expected his idol to be like that! Then he quietly waved to Director Zhang, Huang Lixin, Sun Yun, and the others, who were sitting on the sofa eating, playing on their phones, or chatting. He pulled out his phone...

Lin Xia, the "karaoke queen," was singing with such enthusiasm that when she turned, she caught sight of Chen Mo recording her. The others on the sofa were watching him surreptitiously, not one of them saying a word.

Lin Xia jumped in fright and rushed over to snatch the phone. As she tried to grab it, she demanded, "Chen Mo, what are you trying to do to me now?"

Thanks to their difference in height, Chen Mo easily raised his arm out of reach. Watching Lin Xia hop around in front of him, he grinned. "I'm going to save this embarrassing footage and use it to blackmail you into working like a beast for me. If you don't do a good job, I'll put the video online, ruin your image, and make you lose fans."