Chapter 50: July New Song Rankings

After finishing her conversation with He Zhuoqun, Jiang Qin chatted for a while longer with the individuals chosen for the other two songs.

Ensuring they had no objections to the contract, she had them sign it and then sent over the tracks for *Joyful As Long As You're Happy* and *The You of the Past*.

As it turned out, it was quite a coincidence.

The chosen candidates for both songs happened to be artists signed under Tianwen Entertainment.

However, neither of them possessed any real fame.

Interstellar inhabitants were not particularly fond of their slightly rough and rugged vocal tones, favoring instead the softer, youthful voices of teenage boys or young men.

Consequently, despite releasing several songs in the past, they had never gained any traction or popularity.

It was only because upper management within the company shared Jiang Qin's livestream recording in the group chat that they had heard these two songs.

Yet, they hadn't come with high expectations of securing the tracks.

Instead, they simply submitted a vocal recording and left it to Jiang Qin to choose. If she felt they were suited for either song, they requested a chance.

If not, it didn't matter; they hoped she would keep them in mind for future opportunities.

After reminding them that they could reach out if they had any questions, Jiang Qin stopped paying attention to the matter.

***

Fans who had spent the entire night buzzing with excitement eagerly rushed online the moment dawn broke.

As the first day of July, it was guaranteed that numerous new songs would debut to climb the monthly charts, meaning they needed to start panning for gold among the new releases!

After all, they had already looped the previous month's songs to the point of boredom and desperately needed fresh favorites to save their ears.

Those quietly following Jiang Qin searched her name directly.

A multitude of songs instantly appeared.

*Thank You, My Lover*
*Loving You*
*Honey*
*Burning*
*Princess Changping*
*Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star*
*Ode to a Beauty*
*Tomorrow Will Be Better*
*Floral Scent*

As a loyal fan of Jiang Qin, Wen Xueli, who was stationed far away on the Capital Planet assisting at the Research Institute, was the first to randomly click on a song.

It happened to be the last one, *Floral Scent*.

The song opened with a very melodic accompaniment. Wen Xueli did not recognize the instrument being played, but she found it remarkably pleasant to listen to.

"The wind blows without direction,
And the rain begins to grieve.
No one can tell me,
When love quietly slipped away."

Jiang Qin's voice was as captivating as ever.

More importantly, the uploaded song this time even came with a music video!

At the beginning of the video, a young girl is seen wearing a white top and black trousers, a floral apron tied around her waist, and her hair secured with a yellow ribbon.

She stands amidst a sea of flowers, dandelion seeds dancing in the breeze.

In the distance, a male rides a vintage-style bicycle, heading straight into the wind.

The moment their eyes meet and they smile at each other, it felt as though love had materialized right before her eyes.

The subsequent plot roughly depicted the girl as a pure-human female running a flower shop, while the boy was an orc male from a prestigious family.

Their love was not accepted by their families, yet they still secretly met in that sea of flowers.

They did not need to do anything; simply sitting quietly together, a single glance, was sweet enough.

They had never even held hands, yet one could feel the overwhelming love filling their hearts.

Listening to the song, Wen Xueli cupped her cheeks with a maternal smile.

"Oh god, what a perfectly matched pair. Who are the people in this music video?"

Her partner sitting beside her could not answer the question and quickly searched the interstellar network, only to find no matching profiles.

Such a result indicated that both individuals were ordinary citizens rather than celebrities.

"Nothing came up. They must be regular people."

Wen Xueli nodded in agreement, her eyes practically turning into hearts.

"Probably. They look like students. I wonder if they'll star in a romantic drama together in the future; I'd definitely watch it!"

However, the ending of the music video took a tragic turn: the pure-human girl, plagued by poor health, eventually died of illness in that sea of flowers, while the orc male was dragged away by his family...

He could only take away the dried flower necklace the girl had given him, unable to take her.

...

Consequently, Wen Xueli burst into tears like a sorrowful deer, even jolting her spiritual form right out of her body.

Upon emerging, her spiritual form did nothing else but collapse into her arms and weep...

Wen Xueli's partner: ...Wishing to offer comfort, yet completely clueless about how to begin.

***

This exact scene was playing out elsewhere as well.

Wen Jiaqi's absolute favorite was *Princess Changping*, which made her wait for Jiang Qin to upload the song an agonizingly long time.

Just as she was waiting, Jiang Qin was actually abducted by space pirates!

Those were space pirates!

Females who got captured practically never returned alive. She panicked, terrified of a world without Jiang Qin.

How many years had the Federation existed before finally producing a single Jiang Qin!

She never wanted to listen to those messy Cantonese songs ever again.

Determined to rescue Jiang Qin, she contacted bounty hunters, later realizing many others shared her sentiment.

Thus, she impulsively launched a crowdfunding campaign.

The funds raised were sufficient to hire twenty bounty hunters, five of whom were S-rank males.

She figured a team with that configuration would be more than enough to rescue the person.

Unexpectedly, before the bounty hunters even arrived, the location of those space pirates was leaked.

Jiang Qin was rescued in no time.

The bounty hunters hadn't had to take action, but since they had dropped everything and traveled from various places, they kept half the fee and refunded the rest.

She had worked late into the night yesterday finally refunding half of the crowd-funded money to everyone.

Therefore, the moment she woke up this morning, she immediately logged onto the interstellar network to search for the song.

She searched directly for *Princess Changping*.

"Huh, Jiang Qin actually made a music video for this song too."

Wen Jiaqi did not think much of it, assuming Jiang Qin had arranged for someone to shoot it before her abduction in preparation for the July chart battle.

As for whether it was filmed just today, she deemed it impossible, considering even the fastest music video production would take several hours.

The video opened with a classical beauty pressing red paper to her lips in front of a mirror, an elderly matron combing her hair from behind.

The bride in red wedding robes wore a phoenix coronet, her face uncovered, and was supported by the matron as she entered the wedding hall.

There were no guests, no elders, only the groom, the bride, and two servants.

The groom was likewise dressed in red robes and wore a golden crown.

Female voice: "Falling petals fill the sky, obscuring the moonlight,
Lending a cup of wine to offer upon the phoenix terrace,
The princess of the dynasty ascends the steps, shedding tears..."

A duet between a male and female voice, with Jiang Qin seamlessly singing the male counter-role without any sense of dissonance.

In the music video, the princess and the consort quickly reached the scene where they drank the parting wine and collapsed together.

Wedding night, the moment of death.

Finally, there were detailed plot elements of the background story.

Wen Jiaqi's eyes were red, her tears falling uncontrollably.

She seemed to witness the defeated nation, and that pair of princess and consort who should have found happiness.

Actually, ending this way was also fine; the princess and the consort died together, meaning at last, they were still together!

Yet... yet...

"Waaah..."

Bang, bang, bang—

Someone began hammering frantically on her bedroom door, shouting, "Wen Jiaqi, what on earth are you doing in there? You're crying like a boiling kettle!"

"Open the door! Who bullied you? Tell me, I'll go beat them up!! What's the use of just hiding in there and crying?!"

Wen Jiaqi opened the door, wailing, "Waah... both the princess and the consort are dead."