Chapter 503: What? Zhou Yi's Girlfriend Died Again?

"Warner has officially announced the date for Zhou Yi's Guangzhou concert: July 20th. Jiafeng, I want to go. Let's work part-time together to save up some money and see Zhou Yi's concert."

Guangzhou, Yuexiu District, Yuexiu Park.

The girl who had gone to a hair salon the very first day after the college entrance exam to get a small wave perm was now nestled in the boy's arms, her eyes full of infinite longing for the future: "I've already asked my cousin to check for us. We can work in a factory in Xintang, or directly go to Tianhe to be a restaurant waiter."

"Okay."

The boy named Jiafeng nodded without hesitation: "Anyway, we have nothing to do right now, but the premise is that we have to grab tickets."

Zhou Yi's concert is currently the hottest concert in the entire Chinese music scene, bar none.

Not only is it hard to get a ticket, but the scalping prices have gone off the charts.

Even the cheapest tiers of 288 and 388 are hard to buy at face value; doubling the price is a foregone conclusion.

Fans who went to the Shanghai show last year were almost going crazy with excitement after the event ended, and their various shared experiences online made countless others green with envy.

This time, having finally survived SARS, the concert is right here in Guangzhou. If possible, he really wants to go see this Zhou Yi concert with his girlfriend.

Warner has even issued an announcement that they will arrange overseas dates for Zhou Yi, just to soothe the restless fans overseas. If they miss this chance, who knows when another opportunity right at their doorstep will come around again.

"Ah! I think I see our homeroom teacher!"

"What's there to be afraid of? We've graduated now."

Facing his girlfriend's visible panic, the boy with the thin skin was not afraid at all—

For Li Jiafeng, who had just finished the college entrance exam, the most obvious benefit of graduating high school was that he could go out shopping with his girlfriend Fu Yuqin openly, without having to worry about being discovered by teachers or beaten by parents anymore.

Looking back, the reason he was able to start dating was because when he went to another school to visit a friend, he bumped into his girlfriend and had no choice but to add her QQ, promising to repay her for the tire repair—

Then, every few days when he went to the internet cafe to surf the web, bored and idle, he started chatting with his girlfriend, who was playing on her computer at home, via QQ. After going back and forth for a long time, he won her over.

Back then, QQ wasn't even called that yet; it was still called OICQ.

Unknowingly, this relationship had already lasted four years, from the third year of junior high to high school graduation.

"Opened OICQ, the chat log stopped in late autumn last year~

"The final plea, never spoken out loud~

"We are still friends, the kind of friends who are furthest apart..."

On a bench at the corner of the park, a girl fiddling with an MP3 player clearly had little experience; she had probably just bought it from her parents after the college entrance exam. With the volume turned all the way up, Zhou Yi's voice came out of the machine, directly startling Li Jiafeng and Fu Yuqin, who were nearby.

Was that Zhou Yi's voice just now?

Why is it a song I've never heard before?

Li Jiafeng could recite "Ghost," the most obscure song in all of Zhou Yi's discography, backwards and forwards. Therefore, the moment he heard Zhou Yi's voice and unfamiliar lyrics, several doubts immediately popped into his mind.

"Could it be a new song by Zhou Yi? Today is the 10th. If I'm not mistaken, Tencent announced it would be today, right?"

"Damn, I forgot about that."

Slapping his forehead, Li Jiafeng was full of regret: "Yuqin, let's go, let's go. I'll take you to the internet cafe to download that new song onto the MP3."

"... No, no need."

Hearing that they would have to use a computer, Fu Yuqin's ears turned slightly red as she thought of something, and she muttered softly: "Let's go to my place and download it on my dad's computer. They aren't home these two days."

"..."

—?!

Li Jiafeng, whose mood was also somewhat stirred, scratched his head, but his body instinctively walked in the direction of the girl's home, his steps a bit unsteady.

The weather was very hot, but the clumsy young man and woman kept holding each other's hands tightly.

After returning home, Fu Yuqin, who had specially washed some fruit for her boyfriend, then brought it over to him in front of the computer, curiously poked her head out and found that a song called "Gray Avatar" had already been added to the Qianqian Music list on the computer desktop.

"Last night I had a dream, in the dream we returned, hand in hand

"The disappointment upon waking, unspeakable~"

A prelude that sounded somewhat... melancholy?

Fu Yuqin blinked, skewered a piece of the sliced apple with a toothpick, and fed it to her hardworking boyfriend.

Due to the broadband internet speed, the MV wasn't downloading that fast; it was crawling like a turtle in the small window.

The two of them, who could only listen to the song and read the lyrics, strangely felt a sense of immersion because of that one extremely familiar line "OICQ" in the lyrics—

Because strictly speaking, the two of them had started from OICQ, from online dating.

Combined with Tencent's nostalgia card, openly stating that this marked the third anniversary from OICQ to QQ, while attracting new users, they were also constantly playing the emotional card for old users, easily giving people the feeling that these lyrics might be adapted from something that actually happened in the past.

"We are still friends, the kind of friends who are furthest apart

"The tenderness you gave, within the records, is all preserved~

"Your gray avatar will never flash again, not even for a simple greeting

"Heart-to-heart communication, page by page, how sad; what is it, falling or rising~~"

This song didn't have many flashy techniques; it only had simple vocals combined with an emotional progression that produced a tiered explosion, with the emotional buildup in the two choruses getting stronger each time, until a final, thunderous release at the end.

Just through the singing, the two of them, who had also experienced the OICQ era, automatically imagined a story—

An online romance that ended without result.

The account avatar in the male protagonist's friend list that would never light up again might represent the female protagonist giving up on him, or it might mean the female protagonist had already... died?

And after the MV, which Tencent hired people to shoot, finished downloading, the two of them chose to play it and were utterly devastated by the plot of that short song—

Perhaps to show respect for Zhou Yi, or perhaps because the tragic romance was too intense and they feared being scolded, the director had specifically added a script supervisor in the script column: Zhou Yi.

The catchy, melancholy melody, the extremely life-like lyrical atmosphere, combined with the tear-jerking MV, truly made Fu Yuqian's eyes sparkle with tears.

Even though the male lead in this MV was no longer Zhou Yi, and he merely served as a role akin to a storyteller, narrating this story through his singing, under the director's technique, Zhou Yi, who was simply singing quietly, unexpectedly had a desolate feeling of recounting the past.

"Jiafeng, will we break up in the future?" The emotional girl sobbed a few times, sat on her boyfriend's lap, and asked him.

"Of course not. We will never be separated." Li Jiafeng brushed aside the slightly long bangs on his forehead and answered with absolute conviction.

"Then you must marry me."

"When we graduate from university, we'll get married!"

As an R&B song, it cannot be denied that "Grey Avatar" possesses an extremely catchy melodic rhythm, which is one of the most fundamental reasons this song was able to explode in popularity nationwide.

Combined with the unique sense of story and mood found only in Chinese lyrics, the two together directly produced a return-rate and new-user acquisition speed that left everyone at Tencent, top to bottom, struggling to believe it—

The 11th, the 12th, the 13th…

In just three short days, relying on Zhou Yi's powerful fan appeal and the song's continuous fermentation, millions of users returned to QQ's embrace, directly giving the executive team led by Boss Ma a reassuring pill—

This further stimulated their resolve to throw more money into promotion.

By the 16th, on the foundation of Zhou Yi's own fame, the heavily promoted "Grey Avatar" could completely be said to have swept through internet cafes, KTVs, street-side shops, and barbershops in first-, second-, third-, and fourth-tier cities nationwide with the momentum of an overwhelming force.

The newspaper "Southern Weekend," which had already begun gradually transitioning toward entertainment and livelihood coverage, dubbed Tencent's surging data the "Zhou Yi Effect"—

"The internet is changing our lives.

"After the rapid development of the internet era arrived, the connections between people became more and more convenient, but at the same time, more and more fragile.

"'Grey Avatar' is precisely a microcosm of this era. Zhou Yi used music to record people's emotional changes and inner journey after the arrival of the internet age…"

The editorial department of "Contemporary Music Scene" even collectively endorsed this advertising song—

"As a custom-made advertising song, Zhou Yi can be said to have delivered an extremely dazzling performance, once again demonstrating his overflowing talent. This is absolutely the most widely circulated advertising song since the new millennium—bar none.

"The song's melody is graceful and deep, like a slowly flowing river, carrying a faint melancholy and endless reminiscence. Every note is like a meticulously crafted work of art, immersing listeners, making it hard to extricate themselves;

"The lyrics are concise yet profound, every line as if telling a story about loss and memory. Through the vivid image of 'grey avatar,' it cleverly expresses the deep longing and inexpressible emotion people feel after losing contact.

"The most outstanding point of this song is: it touches the heart, evoking a strong emotional resonance in listeners.

"It is not merely a song, but more like an emotional outlet, allowing people to find resonance in the singing and release their inner feelings.

"It is not merely a song, but a vessel for emotional sustenance and memory…"

Judging from this article alone, it's hard to say Tencent didn't pay for it.

But on the internet, it surprisingly didn't draw backlash from most netizens—because this song is fucking genuinely popular!

Especially among students and young people.

This group is the most willing to embrace new things like QQ, the most able to 'empathize,' and also the loudest voice online.

"Damn! A big guy like me ended up smoking two extra cigarettes listening to it."

"One for me."

"Zhou Yi is still that Zhou Yi—even an advertising song and he doesn't slack off. China Mobile's 'My Territory,' the one by Jay Chou, is also super catchy."

"I like 'Grey Avatar,' I don't like 'My Territory.' Jay Chou sings terribly, it's like chanting sutras where you can't hear a word, the melody alone is saving the whole thing. Such a waste of Zhou Yi's lyrics and composition."

"Agreed, at the very least with 'Grey Avatar' I can actually hear what the lyrics are saying."

"Disagree, I prefer 'My Territory,' it sounds cool."

"Why can't we like both?"

"…"

As time went on, when mainstream entertainment magazines led by "Southern Weekend" and "Contemporary Music Scene" all began jumping in to analyze and hype Zhou Yi's advertising song, the majority of netizens, who had always claimed to hate marketing, instead cried out 'so good.'

So much so that when some clear-headed passersby pointed out that this song was obviously at the very bottom tier among all of Zhou Yi's works, enraged Zhou Yi fans fired back directly: "That's because he's Zhou Yi! Any random advertising song of his can have this kind of reach—can your idol do that?!"

Even quite a few passersby chimed in: "An advertising song is certainly not as carefully crafted as an album track or a single, but even something Zhou Yi tossed off casually—this level of catchiness isn't something other singers in the music scene can touch.

"Why is it written simply? Because it's an advertising song, so everyone has to understand it. Otherwise if they played you something as niche as niche gets, like 'Ghost,' wouldn't you be cursing them out?"

In the entertainment circle, to have good public rapport, well-known strength is ultimately what matters most.

And as a singer in the public's eyes, as long as Zhou Yi's new song sounds good on a mainstream level rather than being a niche-circle party, that's enough.

What's more, Zhou Yi isn't just ordinarily good. This year, following "SuperStar," "My Territory," and "Li Bai," yet another of his songs has gone viral nationwide—truly a hit-making machine, making every record company except Warner drool with envy.

Precisely for this reason, many people were discussing whether Zhou Yi's Chinese fourth album in the second half of this year would include the four songs he wrote himself—"SuperStar," "My Territory," "Li Bai," and "Grey Avatar."

Especially the first one.

"Honestly speaking, this probably isn't possible. That bastard Zhou Yi is famous for killing off songs and never collecting them."

"'Yellow Race' and 'Young China's Declaration,' those two songs that went viral across Dajiangnanbei after being performed at the China-Korea Song Concert and the Spring Festival Gala, haven't had any rumors of being included in an album. The songs from before his debut are a cautionary tale."

"But 'SuperStar' is so popular—if he doesn't sing his own version, wouldn't that be a waste?"

"When has he ever cared about that stuff?"

"…"

The 18th, Shenzhen.

Zhou Yi, who had attended QQ's third-anniversary celebration in his capacity as spokesperson, was naturally asked this question by reporters. He smiled and shook his head: "Including 'Grey Avatar,' these songs clearly will not be included in my album, because they've already been released.

"Maybe when I have time in the future I might remix them and stuff them into a commemorative album, but definitely not now."

"Then, Zhou Yi, what do you think about the rumors that have started circulating online again?"

"Rumors? What rumors?"

"Many netizens believe that 'Grey Avatar' was adapted from your own personal experience—that the girlfriend in your story actually died of cancer. Do you have anything to say about that?"

"??????"

Zhou Yi was stunned, his eyes visibly widening a full circle, his head full of question marks.

What the hell, since when do I have a girlfriend?

And my girlfriend died again?

Soon, Zhou Yi tracked down the culprit—

The entertainment magazine "Entertainment Weekly," known for being "cheap and sensational."

For the sake of so-called "sensational content," they directly got into the business of interpreting the meaning of "Grey Avatar"'s lyrics—and then concluded that Zhou Yi had once again lost a girlfriend, which was why he wrote this kind of song.

What?

You want evidence?

"This album, 'Warner Love Story: The Collection,' is the evidence!"

Whether truly stupid or pretending to be stupid for clout, "Entertainment Weekly" editor-in-chief Wang Jianjun directly pulled out that Gemini album whose cover still bore the introductory blurb—

"Warner Music's brand-new masterpiece from the end of 2002! Zhou Yi and Sun Yanzi officially form a duo, releasing their first compilation album 'Warner Love Stories: The Best of' for the first time!

"A re-conceptualized arrangement, an extraordinary spiritual cleansing—let us make a pilgrimage to love!"

In this compilation, Ding Xiang Hua is prominently featured!

(End of this chapter)