Chapter 468

PS. Tomorrow is June 1st. I wish everyone a happy Children's Day in advance, though I wonder how many of you reading this are still in that stage...

By comparison, the week after Children's Day is likely the most important time in the lives of many book friends. The college entrance exam is approaching; I hope those participating in the exam prepare diligently, perform as usual, achieve satisfactory results, and get into their ideal universities!

Main text:

Before the donations began, the host first stated the situation of the ZD region suffering from the ravages of war and played some videos and photos of children covered in dirt amidst the ruins.

In the YouTube livestream, when the audience saw these videos and photos, the previously relaxed mood immediately became heavy.

Although so many handsome men and beautiful women were present today, the theme was to donate for children displaced by war.

In the West, speaking up for disadvantaged groups has always been something many white people like to do, and the proportion of "saints" is quite large.

Some are truly kind-hearted and want to help these poor children, while others are just pretending for their own interests.

"Saint" is not a derogatory term, but "saint-bitch" is.

If one can use their own strength to contribute to charity and hold the greatest kindness for this world, then Luo Quan hopes everyone in this world is a "saint."

But if one cannot distinguish between good and evil, is kind just to show off their own benevolence, and uses moral kidnapping on others, then Luo Quan absolutely cannot associate with such "saint-bitches."

In the hall at the venue, Luo Quan didn't know how many "saint-bitches" there were, but whether they were men or women, everyone walked onto the stage with substantial checks, contributing their own share of kindness to charity.

Although that auction just now had the suspicion of fleecing fat sheep, the destination of these charitable funds was relatively transparent, so there was no need to worry about everyone's kindness flowing into one person's pocket.

The donations proceeded in turn, with each person's donation amount ranging from over a hundred thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands, and even up to a million dollars. Compared to those rich second generations, celebrities, and influencers, the nobles seemed a bit stingy.

In this world today, it is ultimately different from a few hundred years ago; the royal family might be very wealthy, but the nobles below them are not necessarily so.

And as long as they are celebrities or influencers above the second tier, they never have to worry about money.

And Gao Liang seemed quite special; he was both a noble and a celebrity. Although he, like his sister, had sat in his seat at this ball without moving much, he still attracted quite a few camera lenses.

This time, when he went up, he also directly wrote two checks for two million dollars each—one donated in the name of the eldest grandson of the Albert family patriarch, and one donated in the name of the artist Gao Liang.

"I don't know what else to say, I just hope for world peace." Gao Liang said a hollow, grand-sounding platitude, winning a round of enthusiastic applause.

The wish is certainly good, but it is almost impossible to achieve.

After Gao Liang, it was Luo Quan's turn to go up.

The young masters who had already fixed their attention on her immediately straightened their clothes and sat up straight in their chairs, hoping to leave a good impression on her.

Luo Quan, who walked onto the stage, held half a sheet of A4 paper in her hand, densely written with letters. Was this a prepared speech draft? It was a bit too much.

Just when everyone thought Luo Quan was going to deliver a long-winded speech, they saw her fold the half-sheet of A4 paper and stuff it into the donation box.

"Everyone must be very confused about what I am doing." After stuffing it in, Luo Quan faced everyone and all the cameras, "Actually, what I put in was not a check, but the lyrics to a song.

I have always felt that music can heal the mind, comfort wounded souls, and bring all strife to tranquility.

So I wrote this song in English and Arabic. I don't ask for this song to bring peace, but I hope to use this song to make more people pay attention to this cause and take action.

Of course, no matter how good or great the power of music is, it ultimately cannot satisfy material needs. Money is not everything, but without money, nothing can be done.

So tomorrow night I will upload this song, and all its sales proceeds will be donated in full to the people in need in the ZD region."

A very unique way of donating, and it also fits Luo Quan's personality very well, but I don't know how this song will turn out.

Although curious, the answer can only be revealed tomorrow night.

However, public opinion on the internet reacted quickly to Luo Quan's actions.

In any era, artists who are passionate about charity are objects loved by the public. Although the media often does things without a bottom line for traffic, they have always held an encouraging attitude toward such positive energy behaviors.

Not to mention that the subject is Luo Quan, the darling of most media outlets. Anyway, reporting on her brings traffic and promotes a positive image—killing two birds with one stone, so the media increased their efforts.

It is worth mentioning that although so many people donated so much money before, only Luo Quan was the one who received the most exposure in the end; even Gao Liang, who was ahead of her, only received a few sparse lines of description.

It must be said that a unique approach can indeed better capture the public's attention. Others donated money, while she directly donated a song—this perspective immediately widened the gap.

As for whether the final selling price of this song can be worth more than others' checks... that is simply not a question at all.

Luo Quan has occasionally stumbled with Chinese albums, but so far, not a single English one hasn't been a massive hit!

The reputation of this charity song is now known across the entire internet; whether they are fans or passersby, they will definitely come to support it.

And Luo Quan would not slack off on the production of the song just because everyone would support her. Because the song itself is quite special—it is her first song written for peace and charity—Luo Quan actually invested even more energy into it.

The next night, the song "One Day" was released as promised.

In the song, there was no voice of Luo Quan; the song was sung by a children's choir synthesized by a synthesizer, and it was a children's chorus.

Luo Quan has always felt that children's voices are purer and more infectious than adults' voices, and a children's chorus is also the version she imagined most suitable for this song.

This voice had no impurities, only a longing for peace and love, especially the grand chorus in the second half of the song, which made people's scalps tingle upon hearing it, and an uncontrollable urge to weep welled up in their hearts.

After the song was released, it immediately topped the charts of major music apps, including the sales charts!

While "Eternal Love" was still ravaging the charts with sales of over a hundred thousand per day, the sudden arrival of "One Day" meant that it had garnered over two hundred thousand in sales just at the first moment of its release!

This is a quite exaggerated figure, reflecting the enthusiasm and trust of the fans.

And Luo Quan did not let them down. The song can be said to have completed its mission very well. After its release, "love and peace" climbed to the top of Twitter's trending topics.

Overnight, the number of related tweets reached a massive million!

Most people's hearts are actually kind; no matter which country or region they live in, they must all yearn for peace in their hearts.

And Luo Quan's song can be considered to have directly driven this huge topic that no one had taken the lead on.

What she did was just let a spark appear under the haystack, but it was precisely this spark that ignited a prairie fire.

Overnight, the anti-war enthusiasm of people around the world became quite high, and they expressed their yearning for peace and hatred for war on the internet one after another.

Perhaps such discussions cannot make major changes to the status quo, but people have voiced their opinions and clarified what they should do as human beings.

There is a line in a movie: We fight all the way, not to change the world, but to keep the world from changing us.

Using this to summarize the anti-war craze on the internet could not be more appropriate; whether it is useful or not, at least one cannot remain silent.

Undoubtedly, the organizers of the noble charity ball never expected that the impact caused by this ball could be so great.

If Luo Quan had donated money like everyone else, at most it would have been on the Twitter trending list for ten minutes or so, and then there would have been no movement.

But she chose to write a song, and releasing a new song with such a theme with her current fame, the influence is almost immeasurable.

To be honest, whether it was written for this ball or not is no longer important; what is important is Luo Quan's fame and the meaning carried by this song.

Even without this ball, if Luo Quan had simply wanted to write this song for anti-war purposes, it would have caused a huge sensation all the same.

It's just that this ball served as a suitable platform, giving her a reason to write this song.

But regardless, the song came out, a large amount of charitable funds were raised, and it resonated with and attracted the attention of so many netizens—for the vast majority of people, this is a good thing.

However, Luo Quan herself was of mixed joy and sorrow.

The problem was not with the song itself; in fact, the song was very good. After its release, the reviews from both fans and music critics were quite satisfied, praising it as a very excellent anti-war song with considerable educational significance.

At this point, Luo Quan had gained fame and made a contribution to peace, which should have been a happy ending for all, but the system's reward plunged her into worry.

The matter has to go back to the night she released the song. After "One Day" achieved its results, the system prompt suddenly sounded:

Congratulations to the host! You have released an anti-war song and gained worldwide attention, completing the hidden achievement: Pioneer of Peace!

Reward obtained: One random upgrade card!

For Luo Quan, this item is quite rare and practical. Having done so many tasks in the past two years, she hasn't even obtained a few of them in total.

Now that she completed a hidden achievement and directly got one, she was also overjoyed.

After getting the upgrade card, Luo Quan didn't think much and directly chose to use it.

And then, the problem appeared.

The random cursor jumped back and forth between attributes like appearance, acting skills, and singing ability—most of which were attributes Luo Quan needed to improve—but in the end, the cursor stopped on the column she needed to improve the least, which was appearance!

She was already this beautiful; her appearance was already at the "?" level. She didn't know what level it would be if it improved further.

But the system gave her the answer. First, the appearance level changed from "?" to "!", and then her face underwent some slight changes.

It is worth mentioning that her facial contours had already reached perfection, so this improvement did not change her face shape at all; what changed were some details that were very difficult to notice.

But it was precisely these changes in details that gave her some temperament that had rarely appeared before.

First of all, Luo Quan herself didn't notice anything unusual when she looked in the mirror at first. After all, she looked at it every day and had long since developed aesthetic fatigue; it was indeed not easy to discover any changes.

But although she didn't know what had changed, it did indeed seem a bit more beautiful.

At first, she just attributed it to her own psychological factors, but after looking carefully for a while, she confirmed it was not psychological factors.

It was just that she had become more beautiful, but she couldn't say exactly where it was beautiful.

Although becoming more beautiful is a good thing, she was not sure if it was a good thing for others.

She was quite afraid that she had now become a succubus like those in fantasy novels, possessing a natural magic that makes people uncontrollably obsessed.

Although she was already very easy to make people obsessed before, at least when others were obsessed with her, they could still maintain rationality and would abide by legal order.

But the charm of a succubus doesn't have so many restrictions; this kind of supernatural power would make ordinary people do quite crazy things.

What if she had now reached the point where she could make people commit crimes? Then how would she live her life in the future?

In an instant, Luo Quan imagined how she would spend her future life.

First, she would cause a huge riot at a live event, making countless male fans fall into madness, and her acting career would be declared over.

Then, special departments would find her, control her, and propose to lock her in a room isolated from the outside world to conduct research.

Then, the rest of her life would be spent miserably in loneliness and imprisonment.

This was a plot from a sci-fi story she had once read. Although it was absurd, she always felt that she was about to face such a situation.

Of course, this was just her wild imagination in a panic; there was no scientific basis at all, and there were no special containment agencies like the SCP in the world, so she didn't need to be overly nervous.

However, disappearing for a period of time was still necessary. After all, she had attended a charity ball a few hours ago; if she livestreamed the next day, it would definitely be discovered that she had undergone changes.

With such a small time span, no matter whether the change was big or small, it would definitely cause some controversy. After all, the gossip soul of modern people has always been quite vigorous.

So for the sake of safety, Luo Quan decided to hide for a few days and temporarily not let others see her.

After a while, when she came out, even if others saw her, they wouldn't feel it was abrupt.

How does that saying go?

It seems to be: work hard in silence, and then amaze everyone.

And what she has to do now is to plan to hide quietly and try her best not to scare everyone.

PS. Thanks to book friend Xiao Ye Niao Ye Niao for the book coins, thank you very much!