Chapter 492: Sun Yanzi Hehehe → Sun Yanzi Not-Hehehe

"If you want to learn, sure—thirty million. Guaranteed to teach, guaranteed to master."

"Why don't you just go rob someone? That'd be faster."

"You probably don't know this, but in our China, robbery is actually illegal." Zhou Yi, tactfully clearing his throat, earnestly lectured on the law.

"In your China—"

Sun Yanzi, who hadn't caught on at first, finally got the joke and immediately raised the international gesture of goodwill at the man: "If you've got the guts, say that on a Singapore show."

"How could I? I'm not you."

"Get lost!"

Sun Yanzi lunged at Zhou Yi like a tiger pouncing on prey, but—as expected—missed completely, laughing and cursing as she grabbed Cheng Hao to complain about how inhuman he was; her rambling chatter left Cheng Hao in stitches.

"Actually it's not that bad. If you practice enough, you can learn it too. Zhou Yi couldn't do it before either—it took him about four or five months of practice, if I remember right?" Cheng Hao, who had still given a little cover, trailed off as she turned to look at Zhou Yi, who rolled his eyes speechlessly.

Sun Yanzi, hearing this, immediately grew curious: "Really?"

"Of course…"

Watching the two girls chat away happily, Zhou Yi—who really didn't want to listen to his own youthful embarrassments being dug up—smiled, dropped a "I'm going to write a song," and left the fitness area.

Everyone has a black history.

His wasn't that dark, but hearing Cheng Hao, as a bystander, recount those days of being a happy, idiotic youth still made him—now—somewhat embarrassed enough to curl his toes into the ground.

Tencent's Pony Ma was still eagerly waiting for his June promotional track.

Because of the fees, Tencent—already lambasted for "forgetting its original aspiration" for over a year—was under immense unfavorable public and competitive pressure from the market, and was desperate to pick back up that "original aspiration" all users had cursed at: OICQ.

That was QQ's name when it was first born, and the name through which many netizens first came to know it. It's fair to say that among those now cursing QQ for charging fees and forgetting its roots, a large portion were the early OICQ users.

The ever-declining user growth rate and the rise of competitors finally made Pony Ma recognize the mistake. They would announce QQ's return to free service at its third anniversary, and also use a news bulletin to declare to all past users that their "original aspiration" had returned.

From this angle, the lyric in "Grey Avatar"—"opened up OICQ"—was quite fitting, because many old users had originally opened that very software.

OICQ meant their shared beautiful memories of the past, even though it had now been simplified to QQ.

"Your grey avatar will no longer bounce, not even a simple greeting"—this could refer to the male and female leads in the MV's story, or to those old users who had abandoned their OICQ accounts; the aim was to stir their nostalgia.

Yes, "Grey Avatar," as Tencent's third-anniversary song, did have a big-budget MV—except Zhou Yi himself didn't need to appear on camera acting out any plot.

The male and female leads were other people; Zhou Yi only needed to show up as an onlooking spectator, singing in the MV—much like a narrator.

And the MV's plot was, in fact, a very simple online romance story.

As for the plot content…

Step one: open sites like Tianya and Maopu; step two: copy online romance failure stories; step three: synthesize and distill them a bit.

Never doubt netizens' ability to stir things up and their urge to vent—Tianya's Story Collection truly lives up to its name.

Only when Zhou Yi opened Tianya today looking for fun did he unexpectedly see a recommended post—

"Recommending a good music player—Tang Qianqian Listening, pretty nice to use."

A name Zhou Yi had once been intimately familiar with crashed into his sightline in a way that caught him completely off guard.

In early May 2003, software developed by Shanghai-born post-70s programmer Zheng Nanling, after several rounds of testing and renaming, was officially uploaded to the internet. Because the developer himself loved the song "Tang Qianqian Que Ge," the software was ultimately officially named Tang Qianqian Listening.

Thanks to Baidu MP3's powerful search and download capabilities, Tang Qianqian Listening—as a digital music player that could freely import MP3 songs—would, within the next six months, spread at an unimaginable speed to every computer-owning household and internet cafe across the country.

After that, the following year, imitators like KuGou Music and other music sites would gradually go online, taking over the desktops of countless households.

"The good days are really over…"

Leaning back in his chair, Zhou Yi downloaded the earliest version of Tang Qianqian Listening onto his own computer. It was a version he'd never encountered in his previous life—even the interface felt strangely unfamiliar.

The emergence of Tang Qianqian Listening signaled that the domestic physical album market would officially enter a phase of collapse.

Going forward, singers who could sell real album sales of several hundred thousand copies could be considered top-tier superstars; first-tier singers selling a hundred or two hundred thousand would be commonplace.

Zhou Yi estimated that, given his current popularity and fanbase, his real domestic album sales over the next few years would probably just barely brush the million-copy mark—a cliff-drop compared to before, directly cut down to only one-third of previous sales.

Even that could only be sustained for two or three more years at most.

It was a good thing he'd already opened up sales channels in foreign markets.

Though the overseas album market was also on the decline, its volume was large enough to still feed him—plus there was the Apple Store, that killer paid online music platform.

Having broken down the numbered musical notation of "Grey Avatar" from memory, Zhou Yi picked up his teacup for a sip, and while reflecting, received another call from Qian Jiang—

"Ayi, your upcoming work schedule is already full. Because of SARS, the company won't arrange intensive offline runs for you—mainly it's the engagements that were agreed at the start of the year but kept getting postponed because of SARS.

"For example, CCTV's 'Art Life' and the Peking University freshman orientation talk."

CCTV's "Art Life"—Zhu Jun had already come up to chat with him about it backstage at the Spring Festival Gala; the other party reaching out now clearly meant they'd finished gathering materials.

As for the Peking University freshman orientation talk, one had to mention the gold content of his honorary alumnus status, with his full name hung on the wall.

"Also, there's a new public service ad shoot that came your way."

Zhou Yi, who had been twirling his pen, paused at this, his tone slightly puzzled: "A public service ad? Anti-drug?"

He couldn't really be blamed for thinking that.

Considering the stir he'd caused outside by teaming up with Microsoft, it was entirely reasonable for domestic parties to invite him to be an anti-drug ambassador and shoot a public service ad.

"Not this time—it's about the college entrance exam."

Qian Jiang, who knew Zhou Yi would think exactly that, laughed twice: "Originally CCTV only invited Yu Hua—you know, the Yu Hua who wrote 'To Live' and 'Chronicle of a Blood Merchant.'

"Because the original intent of this PSA was just to ease the burden on gaokao students, they found Yu Hua—who failed the gaokao twice and never got into college—to tell his own story of not getting into university, to take pressure off the test-takers.

"But this year your popularity is really too high, and it just happened to coincide with the gaokao approaching. Considering that you studied law yet unexpectedly achieved such great success in music, they also wanted to invite you to shoot this PSA—

"To encourage those who feel they might not get into their desired major to ease up a bit.

"Yu Hua and you represent the two paths that cause the most pressure for gaokao students—failing the exam and choosing a major…"

For the 2003 gaokao, the state changed the traditional exam date, moving it up to June 7–9.

This was a very big change.

The earlier timing would certainly put psychological pressure on this year's test-takers, and CCTV's stress-relief PSA was born in response.

"Alright, sure. No problem with that."

Zhou Yi agreed readily.

Cheering for the college entrance exam was familiar territory for him — no complacency in victory, no despair in defeat, just believe in boundless possibilities and you're good.

After finishing the numbered notation, Zhou Yi sent a text message to Qian Jiang to arrange the recording studio session, then stood up and stretched his back. Walking out of the room, he saw the two in the fitness area hadn't left — instead, they'd started working out right there on the spot…

To be precise, it looked like Sun Yanzi was leading Cheng Hao in a workout?

"Let me tell you, pull-ups are actually really simple. You just do this, then this, and finally this, and you're done. See? Very simple, right?"

After doing several quite standard pull-ups on the bar, Sun Yanzi landed and explained to Cheng Hao, who was eager to try, striking the exact same posture as when she'd explained vocal techniques to Zhou Yi in Taiwan back then.

As she spoke, afraid her explanation wasn't detailed enough, she also demonstrated in slow motion three more times.

The moment she landed, she caught Zhou Yi standing at the main entrance out of the corner of her eye. She couldn't help but grin, bared her teeth at him with a smile, and swaying her head, proudly showed off her side as a master instructor.

Cheng Hao, who had also seen Zhou Yi walk in, bit her lip when she noticed the amused expression on the man's face: "Maybe I should just forget it. I've never even touched pull-ups back at school."

She still had to mind her image — after all, she was a business elite now.

Playing around with Sun Yanzi like sisters was fine, but once Zhou Yi was present, she felt the nature of it changed.

"No, it's fine, you can go right up. Just like Yanzi said, it's actually very simple." After miming a grip-and-lift motion in the air, Zhou Yi said with a smile at the corner of his lips: "If you're worried about me, I can close my eyes and not look."

"Exactly, exactly! I'll help cover his eyes for you."

Sun Yanzi, seizing the opportunity, darted behind the man like a rabbit, rose on her tiptoes and pressed her hands against his eye sockets, then poked half her head out from behind Zhou Yi's shoulder, grinning: "Now he can't see."

Sun Yanzi's fingers were very soft and smooth.

Thanks to her privileged family background, having hardly suffered since childhood, her skincare routine had reached new heights after becoming a star. Combined with no high-intensity work wearing her down, Zhou Yi felt his face getting all slippery from her touch.

Cheng Hao, however, was amused by the two of them: "Does your 'hiding silver three hundred taels right here' routine even mean anything?"

"Hehe."

Grinning, Sun Yanzi lightly tapped a few spots around Zhou Yi's eye sockets with her fingers, then let go and dropped her hands behind her back: "Then I won't cover them anymore."

Having regained his sight, Zhou Yi faced Cheng Hao's gaze and simply shrugged: "I'm already here."

"Let me say this first — just this once."

Seeing that the phrase engraved in every Chinese person's DNA had been brought out, Cheng Hao could only secretly encourage herself, grit her teeth, and force herself to go for it—

The instant she leapt up, her hands grabbed the high bar directly, and her body, using momentum, completed a standard pull-up in one go.

"Nice!"

Sun Yanzi clapped enthusiastically, like a seal applauding as always.

Zhou Yi, his eyes full of amusement, also nodded in approval.

Cheng Hao's face was full of pleasant surprise that she could actually do it. As her body slowly lowered, just as she was preparing to do another one, she immediately felt the difficulty—

She couldn't muster any more strength.

"Wait a second, no, I can't, help me—"

Because of her body's heaviness, Cheng Hao felt her arms and palms growing increasingly sore as she hung in the air struggling, her tone suddenly turning urgent.

The bar was too high.

"Don't rush, don't rush, I'm here, don't rush, steady."

Zhou Yi's reassuring words reached Cheng Hao's ears. Zhou Yi, who had somehow arrived beneath her, raised both hands and directly supported the two sides of her waist and abdomen — the fair skin exposed by her raised arms.

The man's rough fingers, with their unique texture, happened to slide upward and caress along with her slowly descending motion. The two were so close that at the end they could even hear each other's breathing.

Sun Yanzi, who had witnessed this scene firsthand from the side, couldn't laugh about it anymore.

Sun Yanzi giggle → Sun Yanzi no-giggle.

(End of chapter)