Chapter 359: The World Shouldn’t Allow a Genius as Ridiculous as Wu Chen to Exist!

Chapter 359: The World Shouldn’t Allow a Genius as Ridiculous as Wu Chen to Exist!

Satisfied?

Still staring blankly at her damp fingertips, An Menglan whipped her head around toward him.

She looked dazed all over again.

Now that she had surfaced and was running the song back from the beginning, she simply could not believe it.

How could something composed on the spot be this good?

It was music that struck straight into the deepest part of a person.

How could this man possibly be this incredible?

“Mr. Wu, excuse me. One moment…”

She spoke, then hurried out of the piano room.

She was going for a tissue, and a moment to steady herself.

Wu Chen did not follow.

He stayed where he was and waited for her.

Several minutes passed.

She had not come back.

That was a little strange.

He rose and left the piano room. Looking out across the suite’s living room, he saw An Menglan on the sofa with her back to him, head down, studying something.

“Miss An?”

He walked over and called to her with a smile.

“Ah?”

She seemed startled. Her head jerked up and she stared at him blankly before recovering and offering an apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wu. I got lost in thought…”

The manuscript was still in her hands.

After leaving the piano room she had wiped her eyes, sat down to settle herself, and started reading the pages again.

The more she thought, the more impossible and wrong it all seemed.

The song was simply too good.

And while thinking she had forgotten he was there at all.

An Menglan had suffered another “mental shock.”

She was not quite herself.

Wu Chen understood how she felt. Smiling, he went to one side and sat in an armchair, then looked at her again.

“Miss An, are you satisfied with the song?”

He asked again.

“Very satisfied!”

She nodded at once.

The song had moved her deeply. She also had a feeling that once it was released it would be a hit.

And its impact would be enormous.

But.

Having said it, she shifted direction.

“Still, Mr. Wu… did you really compose this on the spot?”

She had spent some time turning it over.

As she saw it, it was more reasonable to believe he had written the song some time ago and had simply been extraordinarily lucky, that an existing song happened to match the challenge she gave him.

Neither explanation was reasonable.

Both were incredible.

But between the two, An Menglan was readier to believe he had gotten lucky and happened to have something that fit.

“Miss An, why do you keep fixating on this?” Wu Chen said with a smile. “It isn’t important, is it?”

He no longer wanted to discuss it with her.

There was genuinely no point.

An Menglan, however, felt he was simply refusing to admit it.

“Mm… how about this, Mr. Wu.” She thought a moment, then said, “This song is exceptional. I’ll take it. Your old price. A hundred thousand yuan cash plus a fifty-percent share. No objection?”

“Of course not.” He smiled and nodded.

“However,” she went on, “it’s an anti-war song, and releasing something like this needs the right occasion. So I don’t plan to record and release it for now. I think we can move straight on to a second collaboration. What do you say, Mr. Wu?”

“Sure.”

He agreed readily, still smiling.

“Then… can we start right now?”

When he nodded she continued, “Mr. Wu, you know my situation. I haven’t released a new song in a year or two. So for a new album, the lead single… what style do you think would be best?”

“Sing whatever you want to sing,” Wu Chen said with a laugh. “Tell me what you want. I’ll write it.”

“Now?” she asked.

Something in the way she looked at him shifted.

“Yes. Now.” He nodded.

That was exactly what she had been waiting to hear.

The real reason she was so eager to begin a second collaboration was that she wanted to test him.

She wanted to see whether he could compose a second song on the spot.

Geniuses were proud.

And An Menglan was herself one of the most celebrated female talents in Chinese-language music in recent years.

With her understanding of music, she simply felt the world should not allow a genius as ridiculous as Wu Chen to exist.

He could toss off something at that level?

Impossible.

She could not accept it.

She bore him no ill will.

If anything she admired his talent more with every hour.

But at this moment she had gotten hung up on the question.

“Well… I’ve been in the industry a long time, and I’ve sung most styles. Youth, dreams, love… And if I release another album it will very likely be my last. So I was thinking…”

She spoke slowly, weighing each thought as she gave it voice.

“If it’s the lead single of my last album, it should be… different.”

“Sound the Bell has a very unusual theme, and it doesn’t really belong on an album. I’ll release it separately later. So… Mr. Wu, could you write something distinctive? Something unlike my earlier style?”

She was handing him another difficult problem.

She was also telling the truth.

She had already been thinking this way.

If this was to be her final album, she wanted it to be special.

“No problem.” He smiled and nodded.

“Start now?”

“Sure.”

“Then I’ll get you paper and a pen…” she began, then paused. “Actually, use the computer. My laptop…”

She had used it that morning. It was still on the living-room table.

She brought the laptop over, bent sideways toward the screen, and gestured as she spoke. “You know how to use these programs, don’t you, Mr. Wu? And these…”

Her machine had professional software for lyrics, composition, and arrangement.

Extremely convenient to work with.

“I know all of them,” he said.

She straightened, crossed to the long sofa, sat down, and picked up the handwritten manuscript she had set aside.

The first time Wu Chen wrote a song in front of her, she had watched him closely.

This time she did not.

For one thing it was awkward. He was in an armchair, with nowhere beside him for her to sit.

And there was no need.

Watching over his shoulder was tiring. She would have to read the finished work afterward anyway.

Besides, Sound the Bell still occupied part of her mind. She was no longer quite so curious, or so impatient.

Soon the living room filled with the rapid clatter of keys.

Wu Chen typed.

An Menglan kept studying the manuscript, turning the pages over and over.

Both were deeply absorbed.

A few minutes later she stood abruptly and left the living room.

She went back to the piano room.

Before long the introduction to Sound the Bell drifted out.

She had gone to familiarize herself with the song again, playing and singing together.

She was not giving it her full voice, though. She sang far more softly, simply feeling her way through.

It was about time she practiced anyway.

He was composing. She needed something to do.

She could hardly sit and wait.

Dong—clang!

The piano stopped short.

“Mr. Wu, am I disturbing you?” she called from the piano room.

She was afraid the sound might interfere with his work.

“No.”

He answered without looking up, fingers still flying across the keyboard.

“There are headphones on the table. You can use them,” she called again.

“Got it.”

He did not go for them.

He simply kept typing.

Soon the introduction to Sound the Bell began again from the piano room.

An hour and a half slipped by.

Wu Chen still had not finished.

He could complete a song by hand in half an hour, yet with a computer it was somehow taking longer.

Which made no sense at all.

At his typing speed, more than two hundred Chinese characters a minute was nothing.

But An Menglan found nothing strange in it.

On the contrary, this was what she considered normal.

How could creating music possibly be easy?

Sound the Bell must have been something he had written before.

This, what he was doing now, was real composition on the spot.

Which was why it was taking so long.

The hour crept toward one in the afternoon.

Neither of them had eaten lunch.

Neither had thought of it.

Both were pouring enormous enthusiasm into the music.

“All right, Miss An.”

Wu Chen clicked the mouse and finally stopped, raising his head to call to her.

“Finished? Coming.”

An Menglan, still in the piano room, answered at once.

Footsteps followed.

Still in her slippers, she came hurrying into the living room, anticipation plain on her face as she approached the coffee table.

“Let me see…”

“Seven songs in total,” Wu Chen said, turning his head with a smile. “Choose whichever one you think works best as the lead single.”

Her steps slowed abruptly.

A trump card.

Wu Chen genuinely did not want her obsessing over whether he composed on the spot.

So he had written seven songs in one sitting.

That was why it had taken him more than an hour and a half.

He had not written her a song.

He had written her an album.

A trump card, straight onto the table.

“Seven songs?!”

An Menglan stopped short, her face going blank as she stared at him.