Chapter 52: Submitting the Track

After a night of pleasant dreams, Lin Xiyue arrived at the company early and once again began her daily vocal practice. After all, singing ability is a hard requirement no singer can avoid, and she also needed to fully prepare for the upcoming heavyweight single.

About a week later, the production team sent Lin Xiyue an email, informing her that she could now view the newly composed version on Fanxing.

Full of anticipation, Lin Xiyue opened Fanxing, logged into her account, and immediately saw a recently scored track titled Those Hasty Years.

She clicked into the song and froze the moment she saw the rating.

“Work Score: 6123, Work Rating: A.”

Six thousand points?! What level was six thousand points? That was already well past the midpoint of an A rating!

She had to know that her original composition paired with these lyrics had only scored 3990 points. In other words, this rearrangement alone had added more than two thousand points. And this had been rushed out in just about a week. How profound did the composer’s foundation have to be to achieve this?

She glanced at the credits. The lyricist was indeed listed as herself, while the composer was named “Shang Yingying.”

“Never heard of them. Probably some industry bigshot?”

Lin Xiyue shook her head. She likely only had a fleeting connection with this person at most, so there was no need to dwell on it.

Right now, there was a far more crucial issue to consider: how the song would be performed.

A song that scored over six thousand points was extremely high in quality, but it also placed tremendous demands on the singer’s technique.

The higher the score, the richer the details and the fuller the emotional layers of the composition.

Given the current situation, no matter how hard she and Jinnian prepared, their abilities were still insufficient to perform it perfectly. There would inevitably be some loss in execution, only differing in degree.

Of course, with the numbers standing there, even a slightly compromised performance would still land at over five thousand points, making it an outstanding work even among A-rated songs.

Most artists never get the chance in their entire careers to sing even a single A-rated piece, and many struggle to reach B-rank at all. Yet Lin Xiyue debuted with B-rated songs as her baseline, and her second song had already reached A-rank. This was both luck and the result of ability and effort.

Shangjiang City, Those Hasty Years Film Crew.

Li Yibai sat in his office, listening to the demo through his headphones, nodding repeatedly.

This version had not disappointed him at all. Whether in lyrics or composition, it perfectly matched the theme of the film, and its raw quality was exceptional.

“To be able to produce something at this level in such a short time—no wonder they’re called that ‘Little Grandmaster,’” he muttered to himself after taking off his headphones.

The so-called “Little Grandmaster” was actually the nickname of the composer he had commissioned.

As the saying goes, there are wrong given names but never wrong nicknames. Anyone called a “Little Grandmaster” was bound to be extraordinary.

This person, just in their early twenties, was already an A-level producer. Judging by the fact that they could rush out a six-thousand-point work in a single week, they were a heavyweight even among A-level producers.

To reach this level at such a young age—if that wasn’t a Little Grandmaster, what was?

Moreover, their personality was rather eccentric. When taking commercial commissions, their pricing fluctuated wildly depending on their level of interest.

For example, this time they were extremely interested in Lin Xiyue’s lyrics, so they only charged the production team one million yuan for the buyout fee.

Six thousand points, rushed in a week, for just one million—this was practically charity. You had to know that earlier, they had even considered declining the commission altogether.

That said, they did make one special request: they wanted the contact information of that girl surnamed Lin.

Since Lin Xiyue had been communicating with the production team via an official email address, it wasn’t difficult to track her down with a bit of effort, so the crew provided it.

However, over the following week, Lin Xiyue received no contact from any strangers. She remained fully immersed in practicing the song, striving to deliver the best possible performance.

The production team was pressing hard for time. In fact, the entire film was only missing its theme song before release. Even the theme song’s MV had already been edited, waiting only for the audio to be inserted.

Because Lin Xiyue had written the lyrics herself, she naturally had a deep sense of immersion. What surprised her was that although she hadn’t composed the melody, the coordination between lyrics and music was outstanding, and she still felt fully drawn into it.

This was her first time experiencing so directly what people meant by a “high-quality work,” and where that quality truly lay.

Under Xu Wei’s guidance and supervision, the two of them spent a week recording the first official version and then sent it to the production team.

Whether because the schedule on the crew’s side was simply too tight, or because the quality of this version was already excellent, there was no round of revisions at all. The team accepted it directly and transferred the one million yuan fee at lightning speed.

As for the previously promised 0.5% of the film’s box office revenue, that would have to wait until after the movie’s theatrical run to be settled.

During this period, Lin Xiyue also received quite a few commercial offers, including magazine cover shoots, product endorsements, and variety shows.

These weren’t actually brought about by the theme song, but rather by the small-scale popularity of Meteor Shower. Brand-side decisions usually lag behind; it wasn’t as if offers poured in the moment you got popular. Internal evaluations also took time.

In the end, Lin Xiyue chose several short-term commitments, such as magazine cover shoots and product endorsements.

She didn’t take on variety show offers not only because they were more time-consuming, but also because she wasn’t particularly lacking in online exposure. What she needed more was offline exposure, which physical magazines and tangible products could provide.

“Lady Xiaoxi! Our publicity department just landed another offer, specifically requesting you, and I took a look—it seems pretty suitable!”

At that moment, Bai Lulu ran over and handed Lin Xiyue a printed contract. Lin Xiyue took it and glanced through it.

It appeared to be an offer from a website specializing in anime and fandom-related content, inviting her to do a cosplay shoot as the site’s front-page feature to attract traffic.

Originally, Lin Xiyue wasn’t very interested, because this type of online contract didn’t bring much return for her.

However, when she saw that the requested role happened to be the older-half character of her favorite yuri CP, she suddenly changed her mind.

Perhaps for young people, interest could sometimes make up for economic returns. Just like that Little Grandmaster, she revised her decision.

“Alright, let’s take this one. I don’t really have much going on lately anyway~”

“Yay!”

“Hm? Why are you so happy?”

“Oh, nothing, I’m just happy that Lady Xiaoxi got another offer.”

“Really?”

“Really~”