“…Hello?”
The boy who pushed the door open had a handsome, gentle appearance like polished jade, with eyebrows like distant mountains and clear, sharp eyes, clearly someone who’s very easy to get along with.
‘…Wen Xinyi.’
The moment their eyes met, Quentin recalled this name, and the performance the other party had given on the initial stage also surfaced in Quentin’s mind.
A university senior with excellent vocal skills, whose specialized talent was so outstanding he could have simply turned left outside the door and made it to the top four in the neighboring singer competition show filled with big-name celebrities, instead of coming here to compete with a group of trainees of varying skill levels in singing, dancing, and rap for 7 debut spots in a boy group.
The system had previously said that Wen Xinyi was the next-generation King of Songs that Xinda Media was focusing on cultivating. Quentin was skeptical about this; he didn’t think a major company specializing in music would easily stuff their “future King of Songs” into a boy group survival show.
Not to mention that these three-plus months were more than enough to make a few new songs or even prepare a low-cost album. The key point was that Wen Xinyi could only sing and not dance. Just looking at his stiff dance moves on the initial stage made it clear that Xinda Media hadn’t taken his dance lessons seriously at all.
Moreover, the attitudes of the two mentors from Xinda Media towards Wen Xinyi were also somewhat strange.
Quentin nodded in response: “Hello, I’m Quentin.”
“…”
Wen Xinyi held his suitcase in his right hand, his left hand resting on the door handle, staring blankly at the boy standing by the window.
He froze for a full two seconds before hurriedly closing the door, somewhat flustered as he placed the suitcase he was carrying on the ground, his line of sight always directed towards Quentin: “I’m Wen Xinyi….”
“Sorry.” He apologized subconsciously, “I didn’t expect my roommate to be… you, I thought you had made arrangements with them.”
At this point, he suddenly remembered the room selection rules arranged by the program team. After hesitating for a moment, he couldn’t help but ask: “You… didn’t choose green?”
Quentin was puzzled: “Why would I choose green?”
“Because……Xue Mingzhu and Yan Ci would probably both choose green?” Wen Xinyi coughed lightly, “Of course, this is just my personal guess.”
Quentin understood and didn’t press further, still leaning lazily against the windowsill, his gaze sweeping over the other two empty beds: “Which bed do you want? You can choose your bed first, or if you want to swap with me, that’s fine too.”
Wen Xinyi waved his hand: “No, no need, I’ll sleep on this one…… Are you going to shower first later?”
“You go first.” Quentin noticed his intention to use the bathroom and said casually, “I’ll go after you.”
“Okay…… thank you.”
Wen Xinyi reached up and touched his hair fixed with gel; the dry texture made him feel slightly uncomfortable.
He lifted his suitcase to the bedside, gently opened it, bent down, and picked out a set of clothes to change into.
Most of the trainees had brought more than three 24-inch suitcases, even Xue Mingzhu and Yan Ci were the same.
After all, it was a closed recording for a three-month program. A group of trainees living under the camera’s gaze at all times couldn’t afford to not pay attention to their appearance. Daily skincare management and dressing up all required their own effort.
Quentin only brought one suitcase because he didn’t have the money to prepare more things. Energy points could of course be exchanged for money, but it wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t like he couldn’t earn money in the future. The luggage the system prepared for him was sufficient for now.
But Wen Xinyi actually brought even less than Quentin. He was even using an 18-inch carry-on suitcase. Besides a few basic sets of clothes, towels, toothbrush, facial wash, and other daily necessities, there was nothing else in the suitcase.
Even the system-generated luggage included accessories like a few watches, necklaces, rings, and such. Wen Xinyi……was simply too plain, not like someone coming to participate in a boy group survival show.
The sound of running water soon came from the bathroom.
Quentin sat leaning against the headboard. With no phone or computer, and no Internet connection, ordinary trainees could only space out or sleep when alone.
But Quentin was different.
He closed his eyes and called out in his heart: “System, pull me into the recording studio.”
“Okay.”
Fluorescent blue data streams emerged in response.
As his consciousness sank, Quentin quickly entered the familiar space.
The overhead light cast a soft, eye-protecting glow. The palm wood floor was still scattered with the manuscripts where he had casually written down inspirations. The computer screen on the coffee table remained on the operation page of the music composition software……
Everything was exactly the same as the scene when he left yesterday.
The cheerful electronic voice chirped noisily: “Host, host, this system just detected that your account on the Light Music app suddenly gained over 500 fans 20 minutes ago! The plays for your new song ‘Leap’ released last night have already increased to over 5000, and it’s still growing!”
“Although there’s still some distance from the daily chart, you have successfully been promoted to Lv.1 Creator! Your backend received a private message automatically sent by a platform editor, asking if you are willing to participate in manual chart ranking. Do you need me to check the box for you?”
Quentin sat on the sofa in the recording studio, and raised an eyebrow in surprise upon hearing this: “Check it. What happened 20 minutes ago? Why the sudden rapid increase?”
Originally, according to his estimates, it would take at least a week to meet the requirements for Lv.1 Creator, since he could only rely on the personalized recommendation “Guess You Like” chart.
This kind of promotion mode had extremely low exposure, but truly good songs could naturally seize this extremely small exposure opportunity to stand out. He simply needed time.
The system answered cheerfully: “Because it’s currently the autumn recruitment season for graduating university students! There are many recruitment bloggers in the forum live stream section broadcasting analyses of the current autumn recruitment situation in various industries, and they even connect with university students to explain resumes. Most of these live streams randomly play songs from the Light Music app as BGM.”
“Your ‘Leap’ was automatically tagged by the platform with labels like #inspirational#, #dream chasing#, #struggle# upon release, and it just happened to enter the random playlist of an autumn recruitment streamer with 100,000+ fans, and then your song blew up!”
The system set off firework sound effects in its host’s head.
Quentin: “…”
It felt like many details were omitted in the middle.
The rapid data increase of “Leap” was something Quentin hadn’t anticipated, but judging from the system’s meaning, this song won’t jump onto the daily chart just yet at its current growth rate.
The daily chart on the Light Music app refreshed every hour, containing 500 songs in total. To make the chart, it required at least 50,000+ daily plays and a completion rate of ≥60%.
However, according to the ranking mechanism, if the listener interaction rate was high enough, the requirement for daily plays would be appropriately reduced.
Ultimately, the essence of climbing the chart was to spread and drive traffic to increase plays, while the song quality determined the completion rate and interaction rate.
Quentin was confident about the latter, but the former required waiting for the right opportunity.
In short, if he didn’t make it to the daily chart, he probably won’t be noticed by other music companies so quickly.
He was bound to become a musical genius who appeared out of nowhere once again, but before that emergence, he needed to rest and build up his strength for a while.
After all, he was alone, with a weak background, a nobody without a big company backing him. He could only wait for more and more people to hear his works, fall in love with his singing voice, and become infatuated with their imagined “Cupid”.
In this world, only the love of fans is the most crazy and unreasonable.
This love would gradually fill Cupid’s flesh and blood, transforming into his power, making him more and more valuable, and more and more unshakable.
The world busies itself for profit.
By that time, what did it matter if he hadn’t signed with a company? What did it matter if he set up his own studio? There would be many people secretly harming him, but there would be even more people hoping to cooperate and achieve mutual benefits with him.
“Alright, I know.”
Quentin temporarily set aside the matter of the released songs and instead asked: “How about the progress bar, still 15.2%?”
Earlier, his few exchanges with Qiao and Zhong Qu had increased the progress bar of Main Character No.1 to 10.7%.
Later, in the battle round, after Zhong Qu was challenged by Yan Wenbing, he lost 2:3 and was eliminated to Class B, causing the progress bar to instantly surge by 4.5%!
This wave of progress came too easily, and Quentin didn’t even know whether to be happy or not.
Look at how fiercely Main Character No.1’s bar rose, while the other five remained completely motionless. The triggering method of the progress bar was really puzzling.
The system hummed a few times: “It’s 15.2%, there’s no change…hmm hmm hmm??”
The electronic voice stalled for 0.01 seconds, then suddenly raised sharply: “It rose again! A sharp rise! A big rise!!!”
“Host host host host….Main Character No.1 rose by 4.8%!!! It’s already at 20% now!!!”
Quentin: “…”
Really, it gave one no sense of achievement at all.
He clearly did nothing, but Main Character No.1 relied entirely on himself to save himself. What happened this time?
Quentin realized belatedly…. ‘Oh, random dormitory room assignments were going on outside.’
‘Wait, let me calculate.’
If he hadn’t participated in [NS], there would have been one vacant spot in the Class A selections from the initial stage performance. Judging from the progress bar’s reaction when Zhong Qu was battled down to Class B earlier, this spot would definitely have fallen to Zhong Qu.
Then Zhong Qu would have had a 1/3 probability of sharing a room with Yan Qiao when choosing a dorm.
Now, seeing the progress bar rise so generously, it seems that in the original plot, Yan Qiao was unlucky enough to run into this 1/3 probability, coincidentally ending up in the same dorm room as Zhong Qu, who was eager to bind with him to sell BL and hype their cp.
The electronic voice in his mind suddenly became serious: “Host, because the redemption progress bar for a single main character card has reached 20%, you will have the opportunity to unlock a segment of the original book’s plot. This plot segment will be fed back to you tonight in the form of a dream, so you cannot stay in the data space tonight, otherwise you will miss the plot transmission.”
Quentin finally perked up: “Unlock original book plot…Is it one segment for every 20% increase? For every main character? Is this plot segment about the corresponding protagonist?”
The system stammered: “Uh… this can’t be guaranteed, perhaps……either is possible?”
Quentin: “…… There’s a question I’ve wanted to ask for a long time, do you systems have a headquarters? Are you an intern system that has never hosted anyone before? Your business skills are a bit lacking.”
His tone was still calm, but the content he stated was very blunt.
If someone else said it, it would probably sound harsh, but against the backdrop of this handsome face and green-eyes, the system, which was routinely dazzled into data disorder by the host’s S+ looks, forcibly interpreted a tone of concern from these words.
It didn’t mind at all, instead answering sincerely: “Of course there’s a headquarters, this system is an old employee of the Transmigration Bureau headquarters, and has hosted many, many hosts! But this system previously worked in the Study God Cultivation Department, and only transferred to the Protagonist Redemption Department a while ago. You are this system’s first host after the transfer.”
Quentin: “…?!”
Quentin suddenly understood.
No wonder this system stuffed him into China’s top university, came with built-in tutoring functions, and was single-mindedly urging him to rehearse, debut, and build a career. In addition, it spoke in such a lively, positive tone and always adopted an encouraging tone…So it’s all occupational habits!
And, Study God “Cultivation” Department…… Could it be that the system’s previous job was raising children?
The electronic voice responded seriously: “Not necessarily, this system’s previous hosts were all school-age students from billions of small worlds. As long as they were of the right age for studying, possessed the potential to be a study god, but were unable to obtain educational resources due to various factors, they could become this system’s host!”
Understood, this is a philanthropic system dedicated to promoting compulsory education and saving countless children from dropping out of school, a genuinely upright and good system.
Quentin sighed softly: “Luckily you didn’t bind with my past life self.”
System: “Why? If there was a chance, this system would be very willing to bind with a host from any period.”
“Hmm….” Quentin pondered for a few seconds, then said tactfully, “The me from my past life meets your screening criteria, but I was a bit rebellious and not very easy to deal with.”
More than just a bit rebellious, the Quentin from 15 to 18 years old in his past life was like a mad dog, and his mind was somewhat ill.
If he suddenly heard an electronic voice in his head urging him to study every day, he would probably think he had finally been driven insane.
That Quentin was extremely unruly and perverse, highly vigilant and exclusionary, and disliked uninvited guests who talked too much the most. Something like the system, which moved into his brain without a word of greeting, would most likely be completely ignored by him.
The system, unaware of what Quentin was thinking, muttered quietly: “This system has a lot of experience with rebellious hosts.”
The blond boy sitting on the sofa lowered his head and smiled: “Okay, let’s stop chatting for now. Since there’s a plot-related dream tonight, we should sleep early instead of writing songs.”
“Let me out, the last roommate should have arrived, I need to prepare to shower too.”
