Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Filth Within the Heart

Ever since his transmigration, Lin Jianlu had made this kind of exclamation countless times: It feels so good to have nothing to do!

He had rushed through the hustle and bustle—submitting demos, signing contracts, releasing albums, shooting music videos, running promotional campaigns, holding autograph sessions, and even taking commercial performances. In short, his hard work to make money had a very simple and unpretentious purpose: to finally be able to do nothing!

This had been his greatest dream in his past life.

Going to classes, rehearsals, and live-streaming right after class, sometimes even doing two streams a day—it would be bullshit to say he wasn't tired. No matter how young you are, exhaustion catches up. If it weren't for a few stinking bucks, who the hell wouldn't want to just idle away the days!

August 6th: Idling.

August 7th: Accompanied Gao Yuanyuan shopping, had lunch and drinks with people, spent 3.5 million.

August 8th: Idling. In the afternoon, Gao Yuanyuan called again, saying she had finally decided to buy the beige dress she had looked at yesterday and asked for company. Company. Not only company, but she also promised to treat him to something delicious that night.

Her little hands were soft, and she even changed into the new dress for him to see. The crucial part was that it wouldn't trigger any censorship, how wonderful!

By August 9th, Lin Jianlu had just returned home after buying groceries and hadn't even had time to turn on the air conditioning when old Xue, Xue Zhongding, suddenly called—the money was about to be paid out!

Thank goodness, the album had been released on March 1st. After more than five months, Xinhua Bookstore was finally going to settle the first phase of sales revenue. Moxiang was going over there today to settle the accounts, and once settled, they would go through the procedures with the Beijing branch of Rock Records, and the money would be sent to Lin Jianlu at the earliest opportunity.

This settlement would amount to a total sales value of over 36 million RMB. Moxiang would probably get about two-thirds of it, while the remaining one-third would go to Xinhua Bookstore as distribution fees. However, when the funds were settled and transferred to Rock Records, Moxiang's own distribution and promotional fees would be deducted, leaving around 20 million or so.

Still, those matters had little to do with Lin Jianlu. He directly took 15% of the sales volume, which came out to a little over 5.4 million! After Rock Records declared agency taxes according to author royalties, he would still net around 4.8 million.

Ah... the money he had previously invested in *Spicy Love Soup* and the decision to invest in *The Eloquent Ji Xiaolan* (Note: *Kangxi Microscopic Travel*) was all earned back in one fell swoop!

Of course, the domestic market was just like this nowadays. This settlement certainly wasn't the final figure, but the lion's share was right here. Even if there were subsequent earnings, they wouldn't amount to much.

The period of frantic genuine sales lasted less than half a month!

Of course, Xue Zhongding had mentioned something else. Back in April, downstream distributors returned goods one after another—items that were unsold or expected to remain unsold were all sent back. By May, the number of returned cassette tapes of this type had accumulated to over a million boxes. Piling them up in the warehouse made one's heart ache, as all those costs were tied up in them. So, Zhang Peiren came up with a cunning scheme: he wholesale-priced that batch of cassettes back to downstream distributors at three yuan per box—genuine products, but sold at pirated prices!

They sold quite well!

While everyone else was selling cassette tapes in audio-video shops for five yuan a box, the genuine ones obviously had exquisite printing, included genuine lyric pages inside, and even came with a complimentary 16-open exquisite mini poster of Lin Jianlu. Naturally, they sold much better than pirated copies!

This was a measure of last resort.

Under normal circumstances, genuine products would never be shipped out using this method at this price. They would rather destroy the cassettes than use such low prices to disrupt the market—yet, over a million boxes represented a truly substantial cost. Moxiang was a small operation and simply couldn't bear such heavy losses.

Lao Duan over at Rock Records tacitly approved of this approach.

Moxiang would only recover cost price for this portion of sales, and by the time the funds reached Rock Records, there wouldn't be much money left. A genuine cassette brought back less than two yuan, but Lao Duan said they would still count these toward the genuine sales figures and distribute normal royalties to Lin Jianlu—which might bring in another one to two million.

After that, the money from the mainland would basically dry up.

Unless Lin Jianlu was willing to start running commercial performances in the mainland. At first, he thought the mainland was poor and hadn't planned on making much money from it. Later, as he made more and more friends both inside and outside the industry, he gradually came to understand the going rates, and by now, he was starting to feel somewhat tempted.

As an Asian Heavenly King and a diamond-selling song king, his single-show commercial performance quote in the mainland had already reached as high as 120,000 yuan!

Mainly because it had always been a case of high demand without enough supply, keeping him constrained.

But that didn't matter. What mattered was that the mainland was simply too vast. As long as he was willing to accept the gigs, he could easily hop between two or three places in a single day, taking gigs at 80,000 or 100,000 yuan each. He would just go on stage for ten minutes, step down, and leave, steadily pocketing several million yuan a month. If he weren't certain that as long as he recorded his next album, he could effortlessly earn far more than that at any time, he would have already given in to making this money.

For now, he'd rather pass. He preferred to continue idling away.

…………

That night, he suddenly felt a bit restless.

Well, just that kind of restlessness.

How should he put it? For more than half a year since transmigrating, as a vigorous twenty-year-old young man, he had been hovering among one great beauty after another. The crucial part was that the beauties all carried an attitude of "if the lad has the intent, the maiden shares the sentiment." No one could possibly withstand that.

Before, it was fine; Lin Jianlu had held his breath to make money, keeping a clear goal in mind: earn enough to retire, and let our family of five live a leisurely life.

But over the past few days, he clearly felt himself getting a bit stirred up.

The path had opened up, he already had plenty of money, and the upcoming royalties would be settled successively, making the funds arrive in even greater amounts. As long as he continued recording albums—or even just recording albums for others—the money would continue to multiply.

He had bought a courtyard house, and he could move in by winter.

He had already found one of his four wives, and he had even held her little hand.

His heart suddenly grew agitated—should I really just keep waiting like this?

This one is still in high school, but she should be the oldest among them. My Faye is probably still in elementary school, don't even count on it. My Bingbing feels like she should be a bit younger than Yuanyuan, still too early. As for my Tian, my Shi, and my Mi, who knows if they've even graduated from kindergarten yet...

Oh dear, it was agonizing, tossing and turning.

Normally, he would definitely lie down around nine-thirty and fall asleep within minutes. Even if there was a drinking party at night, he wouldn't hit the bed later than eleven. His routine couldn't possibly be more standard, but tonight was different. Tossing and turning for a long time without falling asleep, he got up to check the time—good grief, a record-breaking half an hour and he still wasn't asleep.

He simply got out of bed and took a cold shower.

Fortunately, the heat subsided, but his heart still felt empty.

Most of his sleepiness had also vanished.

Lapsing onto the sofa, his mind began to wander wildly—face after face flashed before his eyes almost uncontrollably, and at a certain sudden moment, he inexplicably thought of a face he had long forgotten.

His mind grew unexpectedly much cleaner.

Whoever said that the hearts of seventeen- or eighteen-year-old boys are no cleaner than an outhouse that hasn't been cleaned in years—yet at the thought of her, a warm feeling inexplicably stirred in his chest.

Alyssa Chia.

He hadn't been very familiar with her originally, just holding some vague impressions in his mind, and the various messy scandals surrounding her later on were probably quite numerous—but at least for right now, this girl was worth a certain level of respect.

A twenty-year-old girl carrying a family on her shoulders independently was strong enough.

With an unexplained stirring in his heart, he picked up his phone, dug out his small phone book, and dialed her number. To his surprise, the moment the connection tone rang, she answered right away.

"Hello? Brother Alu?"

She sounded very excited.

"It's me. Not asleep yet?"

"No! Wow... I don't know if you understand how I feel right now. You know what? Just a moment ago, right now, I was holding my phone, hesitating whether I should call you!"

"Huh? Why? Is something wrong?"

"I went and paid off another 300,000 today. Including principal and interest, I now only owe 2,740,000 in total! After paying off the money, I was so happy. Tonight, my mom, my younger brother, and I had a delicious meal together! But lying in bed, I couldn't fall asleep no matter what. I just... I don't know why, but I especially wanted to give you a call and share this good news... But I never expected that I hesitated for nearly half an hour, feeling too embarrassed to disturb you, and yet you called me instead... Brother Alu, Brother Alu... I..."

As she spoke, a hint of crying unconsciously crept into her voice.

On this end of the line, Lin Jianlu instead burst out laughing, suddenly recalling her bright, radiant smile with crystal clarity—my Yuanyuan was still too young and naive; Charlie Ye was pretty indeed, but seemed too plain, lacking that vibrant brilliance. If Lin Jianlu had to evaluate them, among all the girls he knew, she was the prettiest one.

Brigitte Lin and Rosamund Kwan didn't count; the former was already past forty, while the latter always gave Lin Jianlu an inexplicable sense of distance—she didn't feel like a fellow traveler who would appreciate plain living.

It seemed only Jiang Qinqin could barely match Alyssa Chia on equal terms.

"Congratulations! You've taken another huge step forward!"

"Mm-hmm."

"I'll be taking a trip to Taiwan sometime soon. We'll have a meal together then."

"Okay! This time I'll treat you to a different restaurant! Uh... do you think just treating you to a bowl of noodles is a bit too perfunctory?"

"Of course not!"

"That's great! It's on that same street. There's a noodle shop, not expensive, but their noodles are so delicious. Whenever I finish work, I'm always willing to go there for a bowl of noodles! My treat!"

"Deal!"

"It's a deal, then!"

"A deal."

She giggled and fell silent. After a long while, she spoke again: "Brother Alu, you're so nice!"

"Mm. Can you... sleep peacefully now?"

"Mm-hmm, I can sleep now."

"Then good night."

"Good night."