Chapter 16: "When in Doubt, Turn to Li Mi"

After Zhou Ran finished recording and returned to the hotel, he immediately called Li Mi.

“Hello? Mi-jie?”

“Huh? What is it?” On the other end of the line, Li Mi sounded as if she had just woken up, her voice still drowsy and muddled.

Zhou Ran honestly recounted what Ning Wei had said to him, telling Li Mi everything: “Director Ning was acting so strange today! At the end, he suddenly pulled me aside and told me to perform well in the upcoming period, said there would be an opportunity waiting for me, and told me to do my best!”

“Director Ning said if there’s anything I don’t understand, I should ask you directly, that you would know.”

“Huh?” Li Mi paused after hearing Zhou Ran’s explanation, as if she had fallen into deep thought, and only after a while did she react.

“He told you to perform well, that there’d be an opportunity waiting for you?” Li Mi’s tone carried a trace of surprise.

“Yeah. What’s going on? Why are you both being so mysterious!” Zhou Ran was a little bewildered by this riddle-like conversation.

After hearing Zhou Ran’s description, Li Mi understood what was actually happening.

The opportunity Ning Wei mentioned was a plan by Tianyu Media, the top entertainment company in the country—a project called the Anti-Dumping Initiative.

Tianyu Media planned to cultivate two newcomers, one male and one female, pouring all their resources into them and then promoting them abroad, aiming to outdo foreign competitors on their own turf.

Although the plan had been proposed three years ago, it had yet to be officially launched because the selection process for candidates was extremely strict.

The requirements were: original singer-songwriters, background and appearance checks, and they had to be newcomers.

Any single requirement was easy to meet, but putting them all together made it exceedingly difficult, and until now, no candidates had been chosen.

Li Mi hadn’t expected Ning Wei to recommend Zhou Ran for this project, since it was such a rare opportunity.

However, after understanding the situation, Li Mi chose not to tell Zhou Ran the truth directly, fearing it would put too much pressure on him. Instead, she decided to be vague.

“Just do your best. It’s a good thing, so don’t worry. Besides, if anything goes wrong, you’ve got me to shield you.”

After hearing Li Mi’s words, Zhou Ran felt relieved and quickly let the matter go, shifting to another topic.

“Mi-jie, do you know of any good publishers? I wrote a novel and want to get it published.”

“Oh my, you can write novels too? What kind did you write?” The fact that Zhou Ran could write novels had never crossed Li Mi’s mind. But on second thought, it made sense—after all, Zhou Ran was an original singer-songwriter, so it wasn’t too far-fetched that he could write both lyrics and fiction.

“I wrote a fantasy novel,” Zhou Ran replied.

“Fantasy? Fantasy!” Li Mi repeated to herself, pondering if she knew any way to help him submit his work.

Suddenly, a lightbulb went off in Li Mi’s mind. Her younger brother had recently asked her to look out for good fantasy novels, and she’d been at a loss on how to find one—now Zhou Ran had delivered himself right to her door.

Li Mi and her brother had grown up together and were very close. Since her brother rarely needed her help, she didn’t want to refuse him, and Zhou Ran’s appearance had conveniently solved her problem.

She could use Zhou Ran’s work to do her brother a favor, helping both sides at once.

Li Mi didn’t hold high expectations for Zhou Ran’s novel—she just wanted to lend a helping hand.

“I actually know someone in publishing. You can send your manuscript to this email address. I can’t guarantee it’ll get published, though,” Li Mi said, sending Zhou Ran her brother’s email address.

“Great, great,” Zhou Ran replied, delighted by the outcome. He’d only asked on a whim, never expecting Li Mi would really have a way. This stroke of luck made him overjoyed.

Truly, whenever he was in doubt, Li Mi always had the answer—she was like a treasure chest.

Zhou Ran sent his manuscript to the provided email address, awaiting their review.

He wasn’t worried that the recipient would try to steal his work; firstly, because the contact came through Li Mi, and secondly, he’d already registered the copyright, preparing for the worst-case scenario. If anyone did try to take his work, the strict intellectual property laws of Blue Star would set them straight.

In this respect, Blue Star was far better than Earth. There was virtually no piracy in the market, people had strong awareness about music rights, and with legal protection, getting caught for plagiarism meant a minimum of eight years in prison.

After finishing the call with Li Mi, Zhou Ran had intended to shower and go to bed early.

But as soon as he hung up, his phone buzzed with a new text message. Zhou Ran had a compulsion to read every message; leaving even one unread notification would bother him.

After checking the message, Zhou Ran couldn’t help but exclaim, “Nice!”

It turned out to be a notification from his bank, showing two deposits: one was his appearance fee from the show, and the other was a bonus from the music chart.

On Blue Star, every new song chart had a rule: as long as you held the number one spot for a day, you earned a cash prize of ten thousand, with no cap. If you had the talent, you could dominate the charts indefinitely.

This was Blue Star’s way of supporting singers—a form of encouragement, really.

It made the new song chart a fiercely contested battleground.

Normally, the top spot would change hands daily due to the intense competition, but then Zhou Ran appeared—a monster, dominating the chart for two weeks straight with his song “Clear Sky.”

“Clear Sky” had already surpassed sixty million plays.

In this world, play counts were meaningful and couldn’t be artificially inflated, as each person only counted for one play, no matter how many times they listened.

Thus, there were none of the absurd situations found on Earth, where a song could top the charts purely through fan purchases, regardless of its actual quality.

With this money, Zhou Ran could finally solve his most pressing problems. He could send it home and help ease the burden on his—well, the original owner’s—parents.

In a sense, he was helping the original owner fulfill a dream.

Since crossing over, Zhou Ran had often wondered how to face the original owner’s parents. After much thought, he realized he simply couldn’t bring himself to call them Mom and Dad—the words just wouldn’t come out.

So, he decided to help them financially, providing whatever support he could.

For now, that was the best solution Zhou Ran could think of.