"Are you done? If you're done, I'm leaving."
Zhou Chen handed the guitar and microphone back to the assistant.
"What? You're leaving?"
Tang Tang gasped in surprise.
Everyone in the livestream chat was left in a daze:
"What?"
"No—"
"Don't leave!"
They were all begging Zhou Chen to stay.
Not only the livestream viewers, but even the onlookers on the street were reluctant to let him go, crying and pleading with Zhou Chen to sing another song.
Even if it was just singing "Ten Years" all over again!
"No."
Zhou Chen had already noticed that quite a few people on the outer edge of the crowd were heading this way.
And there were already far too many onlookers.
For safety's sake, Zhou Chen put on a mask and waved to Tang Tang and the others.
"Stay safe."
"Until we meet again."
With that, Zhou Chen didn't wait for anyone to react, turning around and walking away immediately.
His car was parked not far away.
He sprinted to the car.
Stepping on the gas, he quickly shook off the onlookers following behind him.
Zhou Chen blew up!
Starting from Tang Tang's livestream, the buzz spread and finally surged onto the trending search lists of various platforms!
#Ten Years#
#Brought to tears by Ten Years#
#Slacking off doesn't mean I'm incompetent!#
#Lovers inevitably end up as Friends#
#Wind and Moon Legend Zhou Chen#
...
Yet Zhou Chen was completely oblivious to all of this.
He only felt that on his drive home, his phone kept buzzing incessantly with notifications for junk messages.
It made him wonder if Zhao Min had leaked the news of their divorce.
That would explain why there were so many harassing spam messages.
Zhao Min's fans were probably lining up to call and text him to "celebrate"!
A cynical smile crossed Zhou Chen's face.
It wasn't until he parked his car in the garage that he finally had time to check his phone.
Surprisingly... these weren't threatening messages from Zhao Min's fans?
Zhou Chen looked at the screen notifications.
They were actually follower notifications from Doukuai!
Ding-ding-ding!
Notification alerts flashed past rapidly.
Like a machine gun.
So fast that Zhou Chen didn't even have time to read them.
!
His personal Doukuai follower count had suddenly surged by nearly four hundred thousand active fans!
And it was still climbing!
How does the saying go?
In the entertainment industry, as long as you have twenty hundred thousand active fans, you can walk sideways without a care.
You have to know that Wind and Moon Legend, who dominated square dances, only had three million Doukuai followers to begin with—and that was after stripping away the zombie accounts bought by the company; their actual active fans were very few.
And he, in just half an hour, had gained four hundred thousand followers!
It seemed that the song "Ten Years" he had sung in the livestream was starting to make an impact!
Zhou Chen opened Weibo.
To his shock, he found his own name hanging on the trending search list.
"Ten Years" even aggressively occupied the top three spots!
Zhou Chen clicked into the first trending topic:
"Holy crap, I completely didn't expect Zhou Chen to sing so well!"
"I genuinely always thought Zhou Chen was the one slacking off in the group, but now I see his vocals aren't bad at all! He's got real substance!"
"Who was it saying before that Zhou Chen was dragging Zhao Min down? Come look at how hard your faces got slapped! Such solid vocals!"
"I don't care who sings it, but the lyrics to 'Ten Years' are seriously so well written!"
"After listening to this song, I've found peace. Zhao Jiang, let's just be friends!"
"After listening to this song, everything that needed to be said has been said. Without any lingering knots in my heart, I can finally face all of this."
"Zhou Chen sang about that regretful ending where two people know and love each other, yet still have to walk separate ways to break up. Yesterday we were still holding each other tight, and today we have to brush past one another in passing. Someone ultimately has to be the first to say those two words."
"Did nobody see Zhou Chen asking the host about copyright before he sang?"
"Hahaha I watched the whole thing, copyright bro!"
"Zhou Chen is really rigorous, copyright bro!"
"Hahaha, savage."
"..."
Zhou Chen took in all the netizens' comments.
It seemed his choice to go to the riverside today was the right one.
As for those three words, "copyright bro"... supporting original works is everyone's responsibility, hey!
Watching everyone gradually start to change their impression of him,
a slow curve formed at the corner of Zhou Chen's lips.
The first counter-offensive battle.
Not bad at all.
Only very soon,
Zhou Chen began to notice out-of-tune voices appearing in the comment sections:
"Please? What kind of garbage is he singing, way too melodramatic!"
"You call this good-sounding? Then your ears must be really crude."
"Isn't this a new song? Even our Minmin hasn't sung it yet, how could Zhou Chen sing it first in someone else's livestream?"
"Copyright bro, really good at building a persona for himself, do you even have the copyright for this song?"
"Getting this many trending searches, Minmin must have spent a lot of money on him, right?"
"Minmin, don't spend money on men, you'll bring bad luck!"
"Minmin is so loving; knowing we cursed him for slacking off, she immediately made him sing the whole song."
"If this song had been given to Minmin to sing, the buzz definitely would have been even higher than it is now! What a pity."
"..."
Looking at the sudden influx of negative reviews,
Zhou Chen knew this was a coordinated, organized comment campaign by Zhao Min's fan club.
Every time their group finished a stage performance, stepping down was inevitably followed by a campaign against him.
Weibo, Doukuai, and even his personal text messages and phone calls.
They stopped at nothing.
In the past, Zhou Chen wouldn't dare say a harsh word to them because of Zhao Min, and even racked his brains all the more to make Zhao Min shine brilliantly and reach the peak.
Unfortunately, the harder he tried, the louder the fans' abuse became.
He didn't even know where he went wrong when clearly they all just wanted Zhao Min to do better and better!
And now, Zhou Chen merely responded with a carefree smile.
His capability wasn't going to be defined by a few words from these brainless fans.
Sure enough,
the malicious reviews from Zhao Min's fans couldn't stop netizens from loving "Ten Years".
How could the massive malicious review campaign by Zhao Min's fans go unnoticed?
Onlookers who resonated with "Ten Years" stood up righteously:
"No way, no way? I really want to know if these people bashing 'Ten Years' are even adults yet?"
"Zhao Min sing it? Her vocal technique is fine indeed, but you'd better not let that voice ruin this kind of love song, okay?"
"Doesn't the fandom reflect the idol? Zhao Min's vocals are so vast and free, how come her fans are so petty?"
"Did this song even need to be bought onto the trending list? Go look at the comments from the general public!"
"It definitely bought trending searches, I bought data traffic the moment I finished listening to it. I just have to share a song like this."
"Based purely on the feeling this song gave me, Zhou Chen going solo can live off 'Ten Years' for the rest of his life."
"Yeah, go listen to Wind and Moon Legend's songs again. No matter how high the female lead singer goes, you can always hear Zhou Chen's voice, and he's not inferior at all!"
"Holy crap, I thought I was the only one who noticed? It's painfully obvious their group songs are designed to let the female lead shine while Zhou Chen willingly plays the supporting role!"
"I thought 'Ten Years' was sung by some up-and-coming singer, I never expected it to be Zhou Chen! After digging into his background, I found out Zhou Chen's strength is actually this hardcore—I used to only know him as a slacker."
"Me too! It felt like everywhere I went, people were saying he slacked off."
"I don't know why, but him slacking off seemed permanently etched in my impression. Still, this 'Ten Years' is really, really good."
"It sounds so good. My boyfriend and I were literally fighting earlier, but the moment we finished listening to this song we hugged and cried, and we're back together!"
"..."
Seeing the comments in the square shifting back to Zhou Chen's song,
Zhao Min's fans felt a sensation like punching a cotton ball.
We curse Zhou Chen, you say the song is good.
We curse the song as terrible, you say Zhou Chen is talented.
It was just...
rather distressing.
They were used to Zhou Chen bearing their unilateral abuse in silence.
After all, how could anyone like a freeloader who just slacked off?!
Consequently, several of Zhao Min's fan leaders began rallying more fans to jump into the fray and do damage control.
For a moment,
what should have been a discussion about "Ten Years" directly turned into Zhao Min's fans unilaterally attacking Zhou Chen's character, while praising how hard-working and amazing their goddess was.
Yet those who could truly resonate with "Ten Years" were people who had experienced a thing or two themselves.
They simply wanted to listen to the song!
They simply wanted to share their feelings!
Not to watch fans brainwash them with a foul atmosphere.
Did they lack ears or eyes to judge whether a song sounded good or if someone had real talent?
Some fans were just trying way too hard!
The fandom reflects the idol.
This thought flashed through the minds of the onlookers who were just listening to the music.
For Zhao Min, whom they previously felt indifferent toward, the scales in their hearts slowly began to tilt toward Zhou Chen.
To be able to create a song with such deep resonance, Zhou Chen must have been through a lot, right?
I heard he and Zhao Min are still husband and wife!
Seeing how his fans act, he must have endured tremendous pressure!
Clearly a powerhouse, clearly a genius creator, yet he chose to be the man behind a woman—what a great love that is!
I just hope Zhao Min herself won't fail him.
Netizens had no idea that they had already agreed to a divorce.
Today, Ye Nan and Zhao Min had originally intended to have PR accounts quietly leak the news that the two of them had already signed divorce papers, serving as preliminary hype for the divorce.
After a night of fermentation, not only did the heat around Zhou Chen's "Ten Years" not die down, but it firmly occupied the top spots across various platforms.
The moment you opened an app, the first thing to greet your eyes was bound to be Zhou Chen's song "Ten Years."
Such a massive wave of popularity caught both of them completely off guard.
Watching Zhou Chen's name blazing red across every platform, Ye Nan couldn't believe it.
"When on earth did he write this song?"