088 The First-Generation Working-Class Heartthrob Idol

At five thirty in the morning, it was still dark in Jiankye in the twelfth lunar month, though the breakfast shops were already open. Lee Jie, jogging all the way home, even exchanged greetings with a few foreigners out for their morning run outside the school’s talent apartments.

Back home, Su Mengyao was sleeping soundly, hugging a pillow embroidered with Lee Jie’s face.

Pervert.

Gan Xingru was a little better, but because she had been thoroughly worn out, she slept with her legs spread wide apart, probably because it was more comfortable that way. The problem was that she wasn’t wearing any underwear, and that was a bit too much.

Still a pervert.

Lee Jie sat in the living room and switched on the fully enclosed massage chair, the kind that simulated a floating aviation seat. In no time at all, his whole body was completely at ease.

Though he still did not know exactly what condition his body was in, his dependence on sleep had been dropping more and more. Only when he slept with Su Mengyao did his sleep return to a normal duration.

Yet he did not feel tired at all, and after several physical examinations, everything had come back normal.

He did not know whether his metabolism was beginning to become “superhuman,” but that damned system had strengthened everything except his acting and singing. What an absurdly overpowered piece of trash. And this was what it called a “Superstar System”?

These days, his fluctuating reputation points were rising like mad. The value of the “Calabash Hero” intellectual property was simply too good.

As usual, he drew a song from the “reputation prize pool.” Most of the songs he had drawn before were foreign-language tracks and soundtracks; he had even drawn a song called Eternal Loneliness, sung by a female vocalist named Yumiko Kosaka.

Unfortunately, he could not understand it, so he had only been able to arrange it himself on the computer first.

Today was a little different. He drew a Chinese song: the original was sung by Li Lifen, with lyrics and composition by Xiaochong. It was called Love Beyond My Grasp.

“Damn it! I know this one!”

He slapped his thigh in frustration, but what could he do if he could not remember it?

Still, once he started recreating Love Beyond My Grasp on the computer, Lee Jie quickly let it go, because he could not remember the first verse at all. He could only hum the line, “I would bow before you and offer the rivers and mountains to win your smile; let the world sing it aloud, to be passed down through the ages.”

All that could be said was that if one was mediocre, one was mediocre. More practice was needed.

“I’ve hoarded so many songs lately, and they’re no use at all. They’re too messy to make an album out of.”

Boss Lee felt a little bald-headed. Previously, War With No Glory or Humanity had made a small splash, mainly because it paired extremely well with his show-off shots.

Especially the commercial he shot for Divine Ledger Apparel. Liu Yi, the boss, was quite interesting; he had directly spent heavily to place ads on several border-region television stations.

There was also a twenty-second spot on one of the seven major satellite channels, Huatin Television. Lee Jie, in sunglasses and a cape, riding a motorcycle with outrageous swagger, had struck a nerve with countless men in the frontier regions.

The Divine Ledger Frost series trench coats from Divine Ledger Apparel had already sold like wildfire in the Northern Plains frontier region and the Western Frontier region, becoming a true smash hit among smash hits. Of course, that also had a lot to do with Divine Ledger Apparel’s strong distribution network in the northern high-latitude regions, but the fact that trench coats were selling almost entirely from the Divine Ledger Frost line clearly showed that Lee Jie’s flashy ad had worked.

Especially all those short videos made by the so-called “spirited youths,” all set to War With No Glory or Humanity, with sunglasses on and trench coats fluttering as they strode in slow motion out of classrooms or bathrooms. They could not have looked cooler if they tried.

The key point was that these “spirited youths” usually could only afford the sunglasses. The trench coats were not bought by them; their fathers had secretly bought them.

Everyone had some spiritual needs, after all.

When their wives asked, they said it was for warmth. Asked again, they said it was windproof and waterproof. Asked a third time, they said it was genuine leather, and if disaster struck, it could even serve as emergency rations.

So now War With No Glory or Humanity, as background music for short videos, had stormed into the top five on multiple platforms, including Douyin and Kuaishou.

Boss Lee sat at home, tearfully and indignantly raking in more than seven million yuan from short-video platforms. And this was only because he had not joined a music collective rights pool, which meant that under the audiovisual platform rules, each use paid one tenth of a yuan per minute, capped at two hundred yuan per day.

The real money was in the shares: ad revenue splits, on-demand splits, streaming splits, and so on. Some small ad placements offered sales commissions as high as thirty percent.

Because “Creative Ability” still did not have its own independent copyright operations department, this part had been entrusted to a law firm in Jiankye that specialized in copyright contracts.

Now a lot of music libraries and forums were filled with hot posts asking, “Who is Hotei Tomoyasu?”

At present, the only traceable copyright for Hotei Tomoyasu’s War With No Glory or Humanity belonged to this bizarre company that made live-action animated films, Creative Ability.

They were obviously not a music company, yet they somehow possessed two top-tier composers, Lee Jie and Hotei Tomoyasu. How could the industry not envy them?

But when people called Creative Ability to ask whether they could arrange a meeting with “Mr. Hotei Tomoyasu,” customer service would flatly say no such person existed. Ask further, and they would say they had no comment.

Some people also discovered that Creative Ability had registered a song called Hideout, but the information was hidden. All they knew was that the original author was named Rob Simonsen, so several music companies took the opportunity to investigate who exactly Rob Simonsen was, and in the end, naturally, they found nothing.

Still, because the soundtrack War With No Glory or Humanity was so powerful, it inevitably stirred the curiosity and anticipation of many music fans. Could Hideout be of the same caliber?

There were even some rather formidable producers who tagged Lee Jie on Weibo: Boss Lee, what kind of style is Hideout? Who is this Mr. Rob Simonsen?

Unfortunately, Lee Jie’s personal Weibo was now no different from a cesspit. Good posts could not rise to the top at all; it was all fights between fans of “Goddess Wang,” ten-year anti-fans, and a newly added group of “migrant-worker fans.”

Whenever a photo comment saying “Lee Jie, awesome!” was pushed up, Goddess Wang’s fans would immediately drag it back down.

The spectacle of the fan war made many uninformed bystanders think Lee Jie must be some huge celebrity.

Only after looking deeper did they learn that Lee Jie was a non-mainstream practitioner with no acting skills, no singing ability, and no standards, someone with all three deficiencies, who made live-action animation. Goddess Wang, on the other hand, was different: a top-tier megastar.

“Wait, why are these two groups even fighting?”

“New here, brother? That’s a long story. It starts with the Flying Naked Man overpowering Goddess Wang.”

“Damn, Goddess Wang got beaten by some Flying Naked Man?”

“I mean the trending topic!”

“Disappointing.”

“...”

Two stars from completely different lanes had been forcibly tied together by a trending topic.

Goddess Wang’s fans had even entered a state of circular contradiction: on the one hand, they furiously cursed Lee Jie not to keep coming over to step on their beloved goddess, not to ride her fame; on the other hand, they desperately wanted to crush every last one of Lee Jie’s low-quality black fans.

No choice—just looking at it made them furious.

On top of that, Du Yao’s fellow townsmen had also joined the excitement without understanding what was going on. They had initially just wanted to support Lee Jie, only to find themselves in a situation like “poking a monkey nest,” with these deranged obsessive fans scratching after them in a frenzy.

They even came up with a clearly malicious group nickname, “migrant-worker fans.” Yet no one expected Lee Jie to be even more shameless than the white dog god he played. In his profile, besides “a non-typical orphan,” he had also added “the original migrant-worker fan idol.”

That move instantly sent a bunch of internet-mutated demons into a red-hot rage. So you actually read Weibo, huh?!

Thus the carnage on Lee Jie’s social accounts escalated further, and it was a spectacle indeed. No matter whether people @-ed Lee Jie or sent him private messages, it was all pointless.

Every day, no matter the message, it showed “99+,” and the operations guy had already given up.

Could not delete them all, simply could not delete them all.

Fortunately, the musicians were not stupid. As long as they properly went through business cooperation channels, there was generally no problem, and at least they could communicate with Lee Jie’s side one way or another.

Some even went more directly and approached Ai Shoujin. After all, Director Ai was the useless old father of his precious son Lee Jie, so he shamelessly went to discuss with his son whether they could arrange a meal with “Mr. Hotei Tomoyasu” or “Mr. Rob Simonsen.”

Several record companies were preparing to commission works.

Boss Lee thought that arranging to set something up might be possible, but commissioning work was out of the question. Until he found a way to travel back in time, he definitely would not be able to meet the real Hotei Tomoyasu or Rob Simonsen.

After exporting Love Beyond My Grasp, Lee Jie hummed it for a while and still felt it was missing something. Without Li Lifen’s level of vocal ability, it would be ruined in anyone else’s hands.

So he went through the collaboration emails in the company inbox. There were quite a few requests for commissioned work, and some were specifically for custom pieces. The most common request was for “Mr. Hotei Tomoyasu,” followed by “Mr. Lee Jie.”

Nothing could be helped. Ten years ago, Boss Lee had also been a “child star of the creative type,” and a pretty impressive one at that.

“Mm... this one won’t do, too flashy. You’re not worthy.”

“Ooh, this one’s not bad. Such a big chest... tsk, fake boobs. A fraud. Blacklisted.”

“Oh? An older lady favored by Sister She? She hasn’t retired yet? Let me see... she wants to collaborate on a song expressing maternal love with ‘Mr. Lee Jie’? If I had that kind of ability, would I still have spent ten hard years?”

“Mmm... this one is practical. She wants to cover The Vastness of Heaven? Approved.”

Every year, people covered The Vastness of Heaven. It was one of those songs that spanned all age groups: elderly singers, child singers, all would contribute a track to some cover MV album or another.

It was a very steady earner, bringing in around three hundred thousand yuan a year.

Thanks to a single song, The Vastness of Heaven, Boss Lee had helped countless people realize their dreams of going to college and pursuing education. Among the students who had received his support, “Uncle Lee” was an astonishingly powerful boss, the kind with a truly kind heart.

They would never imagine that if “Uncle Lee” stood right in front of them, their jaws would drop to the floor and never be able to be put back.

“Huh? Brother Jie, when did you get back?”

Su Mengyao woke from needing to pee and got up to use the bathroom, only to hear noise from the study. At a glance, she knew Lee Jie was home.

“I’ve been back for a while. Yao Yao, want some soy milk?”

“Brother Jie finally wants to let me drink soy milk?”

Su Mengyao, who had still been half-asleep a moment ago, immediately lit up. Then she rushed over, hugged Lee Jie, and kissed him wildly. After kissing him for a while, she began tugging at his pants.

“Yao Yao, what are you doing?”

“Drinking soy milk.”

Su Mengyao crouched on the floor and looked up with an innocent expression, her eyes full of confusion.

“I meant real soy milk. On the table.”

“Oh...”

Su Mengyao’s face fell at once, disappointed to the core. She reached out and patted the crab-roe injector, then pouted as she sat down in Lee Jie’s arms and cooed, “Brother Jie, I’m hopelessly devoted to you.”

“Thanks.”

Lee Jie replied expressionlessly, stroking her as he said, “By the way, Yao Yao, from now on be careful on your own. Don’t get shot dead by someone else.”

“...”

Su Mengyao stared at him in astonishment. “Brother Jie, you’re not going to protect Yao Yao anymore?”

“Tsk, once the fighting starts, who has time to care about all that? Bullets and shells have no eyes. At most I’ll burn you a few paper offerings during festivals.”

“Thank you, Brother Jie. Brother Jie still loves me~~”

“Yeah, right...”

Then Lee Jie talked with Su Mengyao about what the Kaihuang Group was, what the Daxing Consortium was, and so on. In short, the aristocratic and financial families of this sort... were insanely powerful.

Fortunately, Su Mengyao was a lunatic, and her concern was not at all why they had to offend a major conglomerate. What she cared about was that if she died, another fox of a woman would rise to take her place, not only sleeping with her Brother Jie, but perhaps even developing all sorts of positions she herself had never used.

How could that be allowed?!

She had to be strong, had to struggle on, had to absolutely not become a weakness.

Her brother’s “crab-roe” absolutely could not be casually shared with those seductive foxes and cheating cats outside!

“Anyway, after a while I’ll hire a few bodyguards too. Better than nothing.”

“Brother Jie can rest assured. From now on, my aunt and I absolutely won’t run around. Straight between the factory and home, two points and one line!”

Su Mengyao clenched her little fist and swore to Lee Jie.