Chapter 158: Release the Song! The Data Explodes!

Chapter 158: Release the Song! The Data Explodes!

Around two in the afternoon, Siye Building on Huijin West Road, Donghai.

An older office building. Microflash Music Studio was inside it.

Wu Chen parked outside and walked straight in. The building was old and management was not strict; unless someone was carrying things down from the upper floors, the guards neither stopped them nor asked questions.

He took the elevator to the eighth floor, reached the studio shortly, and pushed the door open.

Microflash Music Studio occupied a large space. It had only one recording room, but both its fittings and its equipment ranked among the best in Donghai, the equal of the studios at some major music companies.

Which was also why its rates were so high.

Studios charged by the hour. An ordinary one might cost a few hundred yuan an hour.

Microflash charged eighteen hundred.

And that was the individual rate for recording a song. If a symphony orchestra or other orchestral ensemble came in, the hourly rate ran past five thousand.

Wu Chen had offered ten times the price: eighteen thousand an hour, fifty-four thousand for three hours.

To Wu Chen, with tens of millions sitting in his bank account, it hardly counted as money.

The entire studio staff was already waiting when he came in, everything prepared. A high-end studio like this kept every sort of professional on hand—sound engineers, mixing engineers. Wu Chen did not need to bring anyone. He only had to tell them what he wanted.

Once he had written out again the lyrics, the composition, and the mixing arrangement he had prepared for Song Xuan, recording formally began.

Time passed quickly.

Five in the afternoon.

The recording finished, Wu Chen walked out of the studio.

He now carried two additional items: a USB drive and a Blu-ray disc in a protective case. Both were courtesy of the studio, and both held the song he had recorded. Apart from audio quality, there was no difference between them.

Downstairs, into the car.

He set the two items aside before taking out his phone and switching it on.

He had turned it off when recording proper began and had left it off until now.

The moment the phone booted, several text messages arrived.

Missed-call notifications.

Wu Chen skimmed them. Three people had called while the phone was off, and he recognized the numbers at once: Li Ruobing, Su Qingying, Mu Qianqian.

He drove out and called Li Ruobing first.

“Why was your phone off just now?” Li Ruobing asked the instant it connected, not waiting for him to speak.

“I was busy,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“Busy with what? With whom? Song Xuan?”

“No. Something else.” Then he laughed and teased, “What did you think I was doing? With Song Xuan? We parted ways ages ago. Did you think I was… with her?”

Li Ruobing relaxed.

She had been worried ever since he left her to go and meet Song Xuan. She could not stop him, and she was terrified he would cause some kind of trouble. Now he said the two of them had separated long ago.

She believed him.

She did not think Wu Chen would lie to her about something like that.

“Qingying was trying to reach you. She couldn’t get through, so she called me,” Li Ruobing said, changing the subject decisively.

“Mm. I know.”

“Nothing else, then. I’m working late tonight.”

She said no more. She wanted to ask how far things had gone between him and Song Xuan, but she knew he would not tell her, so she did not ask.

After hanging up with Li Ruobing, Wu Chen called Su Qingying.

“Honey, why was your phone off?”

“I was busy.”

“Mm… I’ve dealt with Qianqian’s problem.”

“How?”

Su Qingying explained.

The business of Mu Qianqian being sent abroad was in fact extremely difficult to interfere with. It was Mu Sihai’s family affair, and Mu Qianqian was still a student. No outsider had any standing in it.

But that did not make it unsolvable.

Su Qingying had used an extremely simple method. She had arranged for Mu Qianqian to intern at Jinfu.

Not a formal position, of course. Mu Qianqian would be going back to school; she only had the summer free.

In effect she was a high school student working a summer job.

But the job she was working sat extraordinarily high.

She had become assistant to Jinfu Group’s executive vice president.

The reason Mu Sihai wanted his daughter out of the country in the first place was that Mu Qianqian was too wild and forever landing in trouble—serious trouble.

If she could be made to settle down, he certainly would not send her away.

A summer job was an excellent solution.

And more importantly—she would be interning at Su Qingying’s side.

Nobody dared treat Su Qingying lightly.

So this was not merely a matter of Mu Qianqian working and doing something serious with herself. It was also an opportunity for Mu Sihai to draw the Mu family closer to the Su family.

Su Qingying said she had already met Mu Sihai that afternoon and spoken with him.

He had been astonished to learn his daughter was on terms with Su Qingying close enough for this. Su Qingying never mentioned sending Mu Qianqian abroad, and neither did Mu Sihai. To the short-term internship at Jinfu he agreed at once—he even told Mu Qianqian, with Su Qingying standing right there, that she must study hard at her side, stressing how rare such a chance was.

Su Qingying was a businesswoman whose ability was widely praised. Naturally Mu Sihai was glad to have his daughter learning beside a woman like that.

“Honey, how did I do?” Su Qingying asked at the end, plainly waiting to be praised.

“Very well. Qingying is amazing,” Wu Chen said.

Su Qingying truly was intelligent.

On the surface, what she had done gave the Mu family an opening to move closer to the Su family.

Looked at from the other side, was it not equally an opening for Su Qingying to build a powerful network of her own?

At the praise Su Qingying laughed, delighted.

“Honey is even more amazing.” Then she lowered her voice. “Honey, I can’t come and see you today. I have to go home. I can’t be away every night—people will start to wonder…”

“That’s fine. I have something to do anyway.” Wu Chen smiled, then asked, “Is Qianqian still with you?”

“Mm. She’s studying so seriously. I’ve got my secretary showing her the ropes. I think she’s afraid she’ll go home and be asked how work went and have nothing to say, so she…”

Wu Chen chatted with her a line or two more and hung up.

He did not call Mu Qianqian afterward.

She and Su Qingying had both called earlier about the same thing. Now that it was settled, Su Qingying would tell her.

Wu Chen put the phone away and pressed down on the accelerator.

The car surged forward.

Home, to release the song.

More than ten minutes later, Wu Chen frowned faintly and glanced at the rearview mirror.

He had picked up a car following him.

It was not the first time that day he had felt himself being followed, but until now he had never been able to confirm it.

Now he could.

The other side had changed vehicles, but Wu Chen had seen through the habitual driving patterns in their tailing technique.

They were experts.

Experts with top-tier surveillance skills.

Nothing like the idiots under Wang Zhuangyuan.

And Wu Chen “didn’t know” them.

Which meant they were certainly not from Donghai.

From that, Wu Chen could work out the answer.

Ding Ruilong had sent them.

Outsiders, tailing him like this—apart from Ding Ruilong, there should be no second possibility.

Meng Junhao probably knew. But Wu Chen had already told him that even if he knew, he did not need to report it. Whatever Ding Ruilong told him to do, he should simply do. If Ding Ruilong’s trusted men needed his people to cooperate, he should cooperate without a word of warning.

Nearly ready, were they?

The thought made Wu Chen smile.

He made no attempt to shake the tail and simply pretended not to notice.

More than half an hour later, Wu Chen arrived home at Donghai Mansion.

He would not go to the old house today. There was no computer there.

Back at the villa, he went into the study.

He switched on the ultra-high-spec computer Li Ruotai had prepared for him long ago and that he had never used, and after some work uploaded the single he had just recorded, “Antidote for the Soul,” to all the major online music platforms.

Every account was newly registered.

The artist name he used was Morning Mist—Chenwu, the two syllables of his own name reversed and matched by sound.

Afterward Wu Chen sent private messages to a number of major music influencers across the public social-media platforms. Where anyone was slow to reply, he simply called them.

Naturally, what he was discussing was promotional “business cooperation.”

By about seven in the evening it was all arranged.

Then Wu Chen ordered takeout, ate, and went down to the basement gym for a workout.

Around ten that night, showered and in a bathrobe, he returned to the study.

He checked the computer.

A quick look at the detailed backend data on the accounts, and the smile came back to his face.

The numbers were exploding.