Time went back to the late night of September 26th.
After the lights went out in the dormitory building of the “Next Stage” filming base, the boy lying on the bed, carrying the exhaustion of a full day of training, fell asleep.
The next second, he opened his eyes in the system recording studio, his brilliant golden hair brushed back, the strands sticking up randomly, looking like as if he had just rolled out of bed.
Quentin’s mind was clear, but his consciousness from a moment ago was still lingering in the darkness of sleep. He habitually raised his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, his other hand taking out his phone from his pocket.
The climbing speed of “Leap” on the daily chart far exceeded his expectations. He learned through the system that the song’s fame and spread were both due to a series of interlocking coincidences.
First, it accidentally entered the random playlist of an autumn recruitment consulting anchor, then spread among the large student population preparing for civil service exams, postgraduate exams, and job hunting, passed around a few times before being included in a fixed playlist by a study-focused anchor, and finally directly became an essential track in the study section on the forum.
At first glance, this upward path has nothing to do with passionate rock music fans, but the stirring, high-pitched melody and uplifting lyrics happened to perfectly match the mindset of young people burying their heads in hard work for their goals.
To put it bluntly, it was a bowl of chicken soup, a shot of adrenaline.
When they were tired from studying, when life was so monotonous they questioned its meaning, they could take it out and listen, perhaps helping these lost and struggling teenagers regain the belief and confidence to study and strive.
A company’s push might be able to promote the viral spread of a song, but it can’t make a shallow, meaningless catchy song become the white moonlight the masses are reluctant to let go of.
Quentin always believed that the sudden popularity of every song through a twist of fate was the resonance between the music and the hearts of countless listeners.
Even a creator can not fully predict the complex emotions arising spontaneously from the depths of the audience’s hearts.
Similarly, whether a song can become popular, and when, was not up to them.
Although the current achievement of “Leap” at 18th place on the daily chart disrupted Quentin’s plan for low-key development, his mindset remained steady.
He was already reborn and had transmigrated into a book with a system, so why hold back? At most, he could just let loose and have fun.
He was never someone who feared trouble.
Since the path of steady and solid progress had inadvertently diverged, he might as well change horses and switch to a tumbling mud truck. Leveraging the golden finger given by the system, while those big companies were still watching and testing, and no one knew that Cupid was not going to sign with a company, he would slam the accelerator and blast straight down the road ahead.
These two weeks had been enough for him to fully explore the functional limits of the system.
The system never had any intention of hiding things. The “Virtual Practice Room”, “Master 1v1”, and “Multi-dimensional Data Evaluation for Singing, Dancing, Rap” it introduced when first binding with Quentin were indeed its only three functions.
However, these three functions could be explored at a deeper level.
The devices derived from the “Virtual Practice Room” like the “Recording Studio”, “Camera”, “Phone”, etc…. ultimately are all manifestations of the system’s “creativity” within the data space.
“Master 1v1” demonstrated that this “creativity” was not limited to inanimate objects, but it could also generate NPCs with various specialties.
As for “Data Evaluation”, Quentin didn’t dwell on it for now.
Its inherent rating function was already heaven-defying enough; predicting the feedback an artist or work would receive after being put into the market was an ability many capitalists dreamed of.
The results of “Leap” prompted Quentin to schedule the use of the system’s “creativity” to produce the song MV and digital album in advance.
Fortunately, in his previous life, he had personally participated in and overseen every step of releasing an album from early-stage creation and song selection, recording production, and visual design, to the later stages of pre-release single warm-up, promotional activities for the title track, and the official album launch.
Quentin was extremely familiar with this process. Moreover, his albums that had been massively popular in his previous life were still brand new in this world.
All he needed to do was recreate the songs he had written before, and then use the system’s “creativity” to shoot the MV…
“So, I need you to extract the complete data of my 25-year-old self and transfer it to my body in the data space.” Quentin sat on the sofa, concentrating on his conversation with the electronic voice in his mind. “In other words, make my body in the data space grow to 25 years old. Is that possible?”
The system sensed the host’s serious attitude and also answered seriously: “If it’s only within the data space, it is possible.”
Quentin nodded: “Okay, the data space is enough. What about the NPCs? Do you create their faces and bodies, or copy them from real people?”
The system paused for 0.1 seconds before realizing that “NPC” referred to its “All-round Masters”.
“The NPCs are randomly generated by this system and will not have faces that match real people existing in reality.”
“However, if you wish to use this function to shoot an MV, these virtual NPCs cannot show their faces, including the 25-year-old you. Any behavior that exceeds the technological level of this world and could potentially raise suspicions among the world’s natives is strictly prohibited.”
The system was about to elaborate on the prohibited behaviors, but Quentin already understood.
Basically, it meant no showing faces openly. Simple.
As long as no human faces were shown, special effects could explain it, the audience will fill in the blanks themselves.
And so, Quentin began to instruct the system on character creation.
“The appearance of the NPCs doesn’t matter. Start with seven, I need male bodies, female bodies, tall, short, fat, thin… Wait, wait, not that kind of fat, I mean strong, muscular giants two and a half meters tall, understand?”
He held a pen and quickly sketched on draft paper, roughly outlining a tall humanoid figure with a twisted rhinoceros horn on its forehead: “Something like this, make the skin tone in red tones with a dark complexion, then wrap him in a black robe, with burn marks on the hem of the robe.”
“Okay!”
As the electronic voice in his mind fell, streams of luminous blue light swirled up from the empty space in the recording studio, intertwining to construct a complete human form within seconds.
“…”
Quentin looked up at the system’s first creation, his eyes paused, and his expression became subtle, “Why did you censor him?”
And it wasn’t a mosaic censor, but rather something like a column of holy light found in certain R18 comics.
It was excessively bright and dazzling.
The system said righteously: “You are currently 17 years old, still a minor. Don’t look at improper things!”
“Couldn’t you just not create that part for him?”
Quentin lowered his head again, drew pants on the strong man in the sketch, and said casually: “Anyway, an NPC won’t need that thing.”
The system: “Oh, right…”
Quentin wrote “gluttony” on the first piece of paper, then continued directing the system to create the NPCs for lust, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.
The seven demons representing the seven deadly sins varied in height and wore hoods, their bodies wrapped in thick black robes and their faces beneath the hood rims replaced by a flame-like black mist.
“Humans cannot look directly upon the faces of demons”… he’ll use this setting to explain the reason for not showing faces.
The filming team could be generated by the system. If he calculated based on four skill slots, it could save over a hundred points of energy.
“As for the scene…”
Quentin thought about the recording studio he was currently in, which was a fusion of world-renowned studios like Abbey Road Studios from his previous world that the system created and said: “Mont Saint Michel castle in France…can you create that?”
What a lion’s big mouth!
The system spat out a bunch of garbled code flusteredly: “@#￥%!*##!! Host! The larger the area, the more energy it consumes. Are you sure you want to spend so much energy on one MV?”
Quentin: “Give me a number first.”
The system cautiously searched: “At least 1000 points of energy.”
“How much do I have left now?”
“There are 5116 left…” the system said quietly, “…5000 of them are from Yan Qiao. Host, we might not encounter another opportunity to trigger a 50% progress bar for a long time after this.”
Quentin said without hesitation: “It’s fine. I won’t release another album for a long time after finishing this MV. Moreover, this scene isn’t just for shooting one MV; the MVs that need to be filmed all tell interconnected stories set against the same background. We can finish shooting them all at once.”
Singers who release one album a year are considered workaholics among workaholics. In his previous life, Quentin had been active for seven years and only properly released three albums.
The preparation time this time was too short, and the decision to release an album was made hastily. He didn’t plan to use the three formal albums from his previous life, but instead chose a series of seven songs to be released in an EP (mini-album).
These series of songs were originally commissioned by a small-to-medium-sized game company that contacted him after he had returned from a year of silence. They contacted him to create custom theme songs for the seven big bosses in their upcoming large-scale online game.
Later, this game was hailed as an epic masterpiece among RPGs, its production company became an overnight sensation, and these seven songs became very popular in the global fan creation circle, further advancing Quentin’s career.
He was only 18 years old that year.
Perhaps it was a coincidence in the grand scheme of things, the 21st of next month was his 18th birthday in this world.
So he thought, why not set the official release date for this album… on October 21st.
*
On the afternoon of September 27th, the members of the “Black Umbrella” team had just finished a dance class.
Quentin was called out by the assistant director midway through the class to discuss the contract signing. The other six members continued to immerse themselves in the practice room, training hard.
The wooden floor echoed with the sound of stomping feet, and the counts of “1234” were interwoven with the music. All of them were sweating profusely, staring intently at the mirror. Even with the air conditioning on, the atmosphere felt heated.
Cui Yan distributed the throat lozenges he brought from the dorm to everyone. Several boys avoided the cameras and huddled together in a corner of the practice room. While sucking in air from the coolness of the mint lozenges, they chatted during their short break.
“Today is Saturday…”
Someone murmured: “The main episode will air tomorrow afternoon, it’s so fast.”
“Indeed, if you really calculate it, we’ve only been recording for less than two weeks, how is it about to air already…”
“Sigh, to be honest, when I first arrived here, I was quite uncomfortable. I was tired all the time and had to eat vegetables every day, it felt like I had turned into a real workhorse.” The boy complained resentfully, continuing, “At the time, I felt I would go crazy if the show didn’t air soon, but now that it’s really about to air, I’m so nervous… you know, the feeling that your execution date is approaching.”
He raised his hand to touch his heart: “Even now, chatting with you guys, I feel my heart rate speeding up… Damn it, when it comes to the official performance, won’t I be so nervous I can’t speak?!”
Seeing this, Liao Fei also raised his hand to press against his heart, muttering softly: “Brother Yao, say less, you’re making me nervous too. We still have to sing and dance for the performance, what will we do if you’re too nervous to speak?”
Liang Yao grabbed his hair hard, his face full of worry: “I don’t want to either, but I just can’t control it…to speak from the heart, before coming to the survival show, I really didn’t expect so many young and talented people to be gathered together, and all are so handsome!”
“You might not believe it, but in terms of skill, I was always in the top three at my company and dance studio before, but here I can only manage to hang on at the bottom of Class B. Last week when practicing the theme song, I was so stressed I was losing hair every day. If I wasn’t exhausted, I would probably have had insomnia at night.”
Liao Fei said quietly: “Brother… What are you saying in front of me, an F-class student? And think about it, how many of the people coming to this program aren’t the top-tier trainees from their companies? Ordinary people can’t get this opportunity.”
In fact, individual trainees like Liao Fei had to go through even stricter layers of screening.
He was an officially verified lv.3 creator on the Light Music app, having previously released several songs that made it onto the daily charts. Although his fame was still modest, he had genuinely accumulated a small fanbase of tens of thousands, without any inflated numbers.
Lv.3 on the Light Music app meant he had already moved out of the low-tier novice circle. Just the streaming revenue and platform membership shares were enough for him to achieve financial independence.
Last year, two of Liao Fei’s songs were selected by the production team of a small variety show as background music for post-production. Sold through the Light Music platform at the cheapest bundled price, he received a one-time licensing fee of just over ten thousand yuan.
More importantly, after the variety show aired, it caused the streaming numbers of his two songs to multiply several times over. He was so happy he treated all his dorm mates to a lavish meal at a famous, expensive buffet in Yanhai during the high school monthly holiday.
Liao Fei was only 19 this year. At the age when most people are just starting university, he had already achieved financial independence on his own. Yet, after coming to “NS”, he was placed in F class. Was it because he wasn’t excellent?
Of course not. As he said to Liang Yao, every trainee who got a ticket to “NS” had their own specialties and skills. In their past social circles, they were all number one or two, the prominent figures.
But there was no helping it, this was a boy group survival show, destined to rank their “excellence” in front of a national audience.
Comparing people to others can be frustrating, and in their line of work, talent was paramount.
Being good-looking was a talent, having a pleasant singing voice was a talent, being an amazing dancer was a talent, having audience appeal was the greatest talent of all.
The most frightening thing was that the more talented people were, the harder they worked themselves to death.
The feeling of helplessness from not being able to catch up no matter how hard you tried was truly despairing.
However, Liao Fei had a very grounded mindset. Before coming, he had already decided that no matter the outcome, he would strive forward with all his might.
There were only about three months on this show, yet it was very likely to be the three months of his life where he received the most attention.
He wasn’t sure if he would ever encounter such a rare opportunity again in the future like to appear on a major Youth TV variety show as a complete amateur with no background.
Liao Fei understood deeply how difficult it was for ordinary people like him, who had some talent but no background, to make their way in the entertainment industry. He wasn’t afraid of hardship, but he didn’t want to waste effort on an elusive goal.
He planned to return to campus after leaving the program, study hard, focus on making music steadily in the future, and become a behind-the-scenes musician confined to his comfort zone.
However, not everyone was as clear-headed and transparent as Liao Fei. Holding onto unwillingness was only human nature.
Liang Yao coughed dryly, and said with embarrassment: “Hey, I understand what you’re saying. I just had a lot of psychological pressure during the theme song assessment period, but I’m much better now.”
As he spoke, he looked at the other three Class B members, winked and hinted: “Last week’s situation in our class, you guys should understand, right… Especially you, Cui Yan, you had it the worst!”
Liao Fei also looked at Cui Yan, momentarily confused about the situation, and asked hesitantly: “What… do you mean?”
Cui Yan crunched the throat lozenge in his mouth with a “ka” sound, humming in confusion: “Me? What about me?”
The tall young man with downcast eyes sat against the wall, his two long legs stretched out openly, the deep wheat-colored skin exposed on his neck and arms even and smooth, like melted chocolate.
His hair was cut relatively short, and the texture was very coarse, sticking up in tufts.
The muscles bulging from the high-intensity dance practice stretched his white T-shirt, and his well-developed chest muscles were quite eye-catching. Dressed in the red and white training suit, he looked very much like the sunny, energetic male lead in a sports anime.
Liang Yao looked at Cui Yan’s confused, innocent face in shock: “Are you serious?? You really didn’t notice? Those people were forming cliques so obviously, you were squeezed into the corner and almost couldn’t even see the practice room mirror… Brother, are you a Ninja Turtle?!”
Cui Yan retorted vaguely through the candy: “It wasn’t that serious… I felt fine.”
“…Whatever makes you happy.”
Liang Yao looked up at the ceiling speechlessly, and shook his head with a sigh: “But how things were last week actually doesn’t matter anymore. What I’m most grateful about now is that when we were choosing teams a couple of days ago, I wasn’t scared off by ‘Black Umbrella’ and firmly joined our team. Finding teammates as easy to get along with as you guys is truly not easy.”
“The way you’re putting it… why are you suddenly sentimental…”
“Ahem, actually, I also think our team is great. Other teams all have some conflicts, like dividing parts or choosing the center… I heard the team next door even had a quarrel… but ours went so smoothly, the atmosphere is top-notch!”
Cui Yan, who had finally swallowed the candy in his mouth, looked over upon hearing this, licked the candy residue from the corner of his lips, and said with a smile: “Probably no one in our team came specifically for the song ‘Black Umbrella’.”
Liang Yao: “Ahem! Uh… that…”
Liao Fei analyzed quietly: “Indeed… unless your ranking was low and you had no other choice, you really shouldn’t have chosen ‘Black Umbrella’… This song is more suited for an opera house with a live band, not an idol stage that focuses more on singing and dancing.”
Another Class B member muttered in agreement: “Exactly, who in their right mind would choose ‘Black Umbrella’… If it wasn’t for the desire to be in the same team as…”
Liao Fei pursed his lips shyly and continued: “But Quentin’s adaptation is really good. Cui Yan and Fang Xu’s choreography is also amazing. Even though we don’t know how the other teams are doing… I believe our team is definitely not inferior!”
