Chapter 411: A Heaven-Sent Opportunity!

Chapter 411: A Heaven-Sent Opportunity!

Li Ruobing gave Wu Chen a long, dark look.

She was reacting a little more strongly than usual. It wasn’t because An Menglan had called him. Nor, on its own, was there anything wrong with his going to Modu.

The point was this.

An Menglan had only just left today.

And Wu Chen was going to Modu tomorrow, saying something had come up with her. He was obviously going to help her sort it out. That… made Li Ruobing a little angry.

“I wrote eight songs and sold them to her. Seven are going on one album,” Wu Chen said, looking at her. “We finished the demos a couple of days ago. And just now… the audio leaked.”

Li Ruobing paused, and her expression shifted.

An audio leak.

She knew what that meant for a singer. If ordinary fans all over the internet understood it, there was no way she didn’t.

For a singer, this was serious.

“How did it leak? Did An Menglan say?” she asked once she’d collected herself, frowning slightly at him.

“She…” Wu Chen suddenly smiled. Perfectly calm, still smiling, he gave her a brief account, from his disagreement with An Menglan over how to sing the songs to her going back and having her staff do a blind comparison.

To be fair, it couldn’t really be called some enormous blunder on An Menglan’s part.

In the normal course of things, from the moment production formally began on an album until its release, a large number of people at the music company would come into contact with it. In a finely produced song, every instrument would be played by a real person rather than simulated by software… The band alone would take at least a dozen people, and possibly dozens.

That was a production standard of the very highest level, and it was the standard An Menglan had used from her debut to this day.

Backing vocals took people. Tuning and mixing took people… Post-production took even more.

So before a new album came out, its so-called secrecy only applied to the outside world. Internally, there was simply no keeping it secret. Making a top-tier album took far, far too many hands.

There was nothing wrong, then, with having company employees do a blind test. What no one had expected was that a company that had never once had a leak would suddenly have one now.

“…She’s blaming herself right now and keeps apologizing to me, because my contract with her gives me fifty percent of the net revenue. The leak will hurt the album’s final earnings. She feels like she’s screwed me over…” Wu Chen finished with a smile.

Li Ruobing was still frowning slightly when he was done.

But her anger had vanished.

Because this really was serious. And it wasn’t just An Menglan’s problem. It was Wu Chen’s too.

“So… what are you going to do once you get there?” she asked.

“Find the leaker and release the album early, I suppose,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

Li Ruobing looked at him and suddenly narrowed her eyes.

Something felt off.

It was his attitude.

That was what was off.

He wasn’t angry at all. He was smiling, not the least bit bothered. Why was he so calm? Why was he smiling when trouble had just landed in his lap?

It was a very subtle feeling.

“You… You couldn’t have… You…” As she spoke, her eyes went wide. A frightening possibility had occurred to her.

What if this wasn’t an accident for him at all?

“You had someone leak the audio on purpose? You… you argued with An Menglan on purpose, to provoke her, to make sure she wasn’t convinced… so that when something went wrong, you could help her and leave her owing you?!” Li Ruobing tied it all together and voiced the most impossible possibility of all.

A scheme so outlandish, and yet, once she’d said it aloud, she felt certain she’d guessed right. It had to be that.

Because Wu Chen himself was that outlandish. The schemes he came up with were things ordinary people couldn’t even imagine.

“You’ve got some imagination,” Wu Chen laughed.

“It’s not that?” She paused.

“Of course not. This really was sudden. It was an accident,” he said.

She couldn’t find the slightest crack in his expression. But she chose to believe him all the same, because she knew he wouldn’t lie to her about something like this.

“It really was an accident?” she asked again, then frowned. “Then why… You don’t seem angry at all. Not even irritated. You can actually… smile?”

“Because it’s fun,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

Li Ruobing’s eyebrow went up. She knew instantly that he was brushing her off, the same way he did with his habitual “Guess.”

He was up to something.

He just didn’t want to tell her ahead of time.

“You’re… going to Modu to play An Menglan?” she asked outright.

“Don’t put it so ugly.” Wu Chen smiled, then added, “Besides, you’ve got it wrong. You can… guess a little bigger.”

“Bigger?” It took her a moment to grasp what he might mean. She looked at him, softened her voice, and said, “The An family?!”

“More than that.”

That was all he said.

Li Ruobing narrowed her eyes at him again. She was trying to see how he could possibly use this to “move” the An family. And more than just the An family?!

For a singer, this was a big deal. For the An family, it was nothing. At the very worst, An Menglan would earn a little less money. It hardly even counted.

So how could Wu Chen possibly pull off what he was hinting at?

She couldn’t see into his mind.

There was no way she could.

Because the first thing she didn’t grasp was just what this sudden turn of events meant to Wu Chen.

A heaven-sent opportunity!

Strictly speaking, if all he wanted was to fix the leak itself, he had any number of options. Including the simplest, most direct one of all.

Reset today.

But Wu Chen had no intention of doing that. He had never even considered it.

Because the moment An Menglan finished explaining, he had realized this was an opportunity. One whose downsides were negligible and easily smoothed over, and whose upside was immense.

Li Ruobing had gotten one thing right. Leave An Menglan owing him.

Wu Chen didn’t like owing anyone. But he had always especially liked having others owe him. He solved problems for people who already had them, and that was how such relationships were formed.

Li Ruobing was like that. So were Li Ruotai, Su Qingying, and Lu Guangnian. So was Lei Cheng.

With people who didn’t have any serious trouble to begin with, Wu Chen could still steer things along: build a relationship first, then bring about a situation in which they owed him. Wu Yurong, for one, as things stood now…

But not everyone made it easy to establish that kind of relationship.

An Menglan didn’t.

Wu Chen understood her. He knew she was all but unassailable.

A formidable family background. Fame and success already secured. Her musical dream already fulfilled. No great reluctance to inherit part of the family business someday. Parents who weren’t pressuring her to marry… She lacked nothing, and no one dared cross her. So she would never run into a problem she couldn’t solve.

Even the paparazzi photos: had Wu Chen not stepped in, she could have settled that with money.

That was why…

He had never used any elaborate schemes on her.

He knew that unless he deliberately created some major problem for her himself, the two of them would never form a relationship where one owed the other.

He wrote songs for her, and she paid for them. She had even agreed to his outrageous demand for fifty percent of the net revenue. That was a transaction. Neither owed the other anything.

He had originally meant to set his further plans for An Menglan aside for a while. And when it came to anything involving the An family, he was in even less of a hurry.

He hadn’t expected that this time, without his lifting a finger, heaven itself would drop an opportunity into his lap.

If he didn’t make use of it, he’d be a fool.

“The An family… the An family…” Li Ruobing murmured twice, thinking. She looked at him again but didn’t press him on what exactly he intended. She only teased him. “My dear Mr. Wu, when you go to Modu this time, you’d better take care of your health…”

“Were you jealous just now?” Wu Chen asked with a smile.

“I was!” She leaned straight into him, shifted closer, and hooked an arm around his neck, her voice gone soft and sweet. “I knocked over the whole vinegar jar.”

“A bet’s a bet. You’re not allowed to be jealous.”

“Well, I am anyway. What are you going to do about it, my dear Mr. Wu? Punish me?”

“Sure. Just don’t cry…”

—

A new day.

July 29, 2020.

At seven sharp, Wu Chen woke briefly. He hadn’t had enough sleep, but he didn’t go straight back to it. First he looked at Li Ruobing, asleep in his arms, then turned to glance at the alarm clock on the table, and carefully eased himself free.

Without waking her, he got out of bed and put on his robe.

He took his phone out to the balcony and slid the door shut behind him.

Standing there, he dialed a number.

It connected quickly.

“Hello, Mr. Wu.”

“I need you to look into a few people. I’ll give you the addresses. Send people to get photos…”