Chapter 356: Is This a Routine, or Are You Just Trying to Fool Me?!

Chapter 356: Is This a Routine, or Are You Just Trying to Fool Me?!

The air between them turned a little wrong at once.

An Menglan had called out Wu Chen’s “routine” outright.

That was simply her character. And she did not think Wu Chen needed to use a trick like this on her. He was already enough of a genius. No one was going to deny his talent. Why bother?

In fact, the reason An Menglan had concluded straightaway that it was a routine, rather than merely wondering or suspecting, was that she had thought about this before.

It was not the first time Wu Chen had used it.

The last time, he had used it on Song Xuan.

After Song Xuan met her, the two had spent most of the previous day together, and they had talked at enormous length about Wu Chen. When it came to Senior Wu Chen’s musical gifts, Song Xuan had praised him to the skies.

She had told An Menglan about him composing on the spot.

Those two songs that had gone viral online almost the moment they were released had both supposedly been written on the spot when Wu Chen met Song Xuan.

For Wu Chen to produce two songs in succession, each capable of causing a sensation online, was already a miracle.

And composed on the spot? Written that fast? Without thought, without polishing?

Impossible.

That was the conclusion An Menglan had reached after turning it over again and again. It made no sense.

Even the greatest musical master in history might be able to create good music with ease.

That did not mean anything he tossed off casually would be embraced by the public.

Those were two different things.

Write something casually on the spot, release it, and watch it explode. Twice running. A hundred percent success rate.

Only a god could do that.

It was impossible.

An Menglan was herself one of the music industry’s very finest. She was a singer, a songwriter, and a producer.

The more one understood music, the more clearly one understood how hard it was to create something that could be called musical art and win mass popularity at the same time.

Creation required inspiration.

Even a once-in-a-thousand-years musical genius needed inspiration.

An Menglan did not deny Wu Chen’s talent. From the beginning she had considered him a prodigy.

But she did not believe those two songs had simply been tossed off on the spot.

They had been prepared in advance. He had surely spent a long time polishing them.

It was a routine.

Wu Chen must have researched Song Xuan’s current musical tastes and creative direction beforehand, then prepared accordingly.

As for why he had approached Song Xuan himself and gone to all that trouble, An Menglan had not understood before.

But after yesterday, she thought she did.

Wu Yurong was Wu Chen’s lover.

So perhaps Wu Yurong, wanting to help her daughter fulfill her musical dream, had asked the immensely talented Wu Chen to step in. Wu Chen had then put on an act, sought Song Xuan out himself, and given her a surprise.

An Menglan did not know whether that was truly what had happened.

But it was the only reasonable explanation she could think of.

“Mr. Wu, I think… if we’re going to work together, we ought to be a little more sincere with each other, don’t you?” An Menglan said with a smile, her words poised and gracious. “I don’t think you need to… package yourself for me. I believe in your musical talent. But there’s no need to pretend you’re composing on the spot, is there?”

Said to a man with a thinner skin, those words might have provoked an embarrassed rage.

Wu Chen, of course, was not that man.

And An Menglan was right about all of it.

He really had prepared the songs in advance and pretended to compose them on the spot. It was indeed a routine.

But.

There was one thing An Menglan had wrong.

Wu Chen had not prepared several songs.

He had prepared more than three thousand.

Most of those three thousand and more would never become hits, but sixty-seven of them were guaranteed to explode in popularity within a single day.

He had already used two.

That left sixty-five.

And beyond those, among the three thousand-plus songs Wu Chen had created across his thousand years in the loop, there were another two or three hundred that might not become enormous hits in one day but could at least pick up some modest traction within a day.

A modest hit on day one, with several days of momentum after it. How could it not become a major hit?

It would.

During the stretch when Wu Chen had devoted himself to composition, there had been periods when inspiration came in continuous bursts. Later on in particular, the quality of what he wrote grew extremely high.

He had grasped what the public of this era liked to hear. He had taken hold of the pulse of music in this age.

In other words, if the standard was simply “becoming a major hit” rather than “becoming a major hit in one day,” then Wu Chen had at least three hundred such songs in his head.

Every genre. Every style.

And that was assuming unknown singers performed them.

If superstars with their own gravitational pull sang them, then every one of those songs would inevitably explode online, spread through streets and alleys, and become classics of a generation.

So.

Everything An Menglan had said was correct, and Wu Chen would never admit it.

Never.

If his identity as a musical prodigy lasted only a while before being exposed, then he was a fraud.

But if he could maintain it for a lifetime, then he was the God of Music.

“Miss An, I’ve always been a sincere man,” Wu Chen said, looking at her with a smile. “If I weren’t sincere, I wouldn’t have told you I wanted fifty percent of the equity. I say exactly what I mean. Since we’re going to work together, and since I can write it right now, why shouldn’t I?”

He did not say whether he had prepared anything beforehand.

He said only that he could write it now.

An Menglan looked at him and pressed her lips together, visibly annoyed.

She said nothing.

She genuinely did not know what to say.

Her view of Wu Chen shifted yet again. Now she simply felt that he was determined to run his routine on her and refused to admit it even after being caught.

“Mr. Wu, why insist?” An Menglan asked at last, after a pause. “I sincerely want to work with you. Your music is… extremely good. But there’s no need for you to behave like this.”

“Miss An.” Wu Chen cut in, still smiling. “You’re welcome to doubt me. But there’s no need for us to keep discussing this particular point, is there? It serves nothing. Of course, you’re also free to reconsider whether you want to work with me. Either way is fine.”

Again An Menglan was left with nothing to say.

She sat straighter, leaned back a little, and turned to look out the window with a faintly troubled expression.

Wu Chen simply refused to admit it.

There was nothing she could do.

By now she no longer merely thought he was running a routine on her. She had also begun to see him as arrogant on the strength of his talent.

Far too showy.

Were all geniuses like this?

“Miss An, have you decided? Do you still want to collaborate?” Wu Chen asked with a smile.

“Of course I do!” An Menglan turned back from the window and looked straight at him.

Naturally she was not going to abandon working with Wu Chen over one small “problem.”

Geniuses all had their quirks.

Whatever else could be said, Wu Chen remained a man capable of creating musical miracles.

“If we’re working together, what kind of song do you want?” Having asked, Wu Chen turned and signaled to a waiter nearby. “Excuse me, do you have paper and a pen? A4 paper is fine… yes.”

The waiter asked for a few details, then hurried off to fetch them.

The look An Menglan gave Wu Chen changed again.

Again?

He really meant to write it immediately, right here?

Was this another routine, or was he simply trying to fool her?

An Menglan was beginning to get a headache.

“Miss An…” Wu Chen looked back at her and asked with a smile, “Have you decided? Theme? Style?”

An Menglan gazed at him, her expression complicated, and took a moment to collect herself.

She had already decided the collaboration would continue.

But before that, she wanted to make things difficult for him, expose his routine, and knock down some of his arrogance.

She simply could not let it go.

Wu Chen insisted on putting on this act for her.

“…All right…” An Menglan said, smiling at him in turn. “Mr. Wu, for the first song we work on together, I want… an anti-war theme, a call for peace, something reflective. As for the style… expressionist music. You can add some soaring passages, but… I don’t want any screaming high notes. Nothing too high.”

She smiled herself when she had finished.

Everything she had asked for lay outside the territory she usually explored. She had never sung an anti-war song before. And her high register was terrifyingly powerful; high notes were one of her specialties, yet she had deliberately told him not to build the song around them.

With a “test” like that, anything Wu Chen had prepared in advance could not possibly match.

“Hm…” Wu Chen murmured, thinking a moment.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Wu?” An Menglan asked with a smile.

“No.” Wu Chen smiled too.

The waiter soon returned with the paper and pen, several sheets of A4 and a ballpoint.

“Anything else you’d like to add?” Wu Chen asked as he uncapped it.

“No.” An Menglan smiled.

Wu Chen began to write.

At the top of the blank sheet he first drew a pair of title marks. Then, between them, he wrote the title.

Sound the Bell.

An Menglan could not help leaning forward to look.

Her brows rose slightly.

For the moment she could not see what the words “Sound the Bell” had to do with opposing war.