The Genius Cannon Fodder's Counterattack 1

Chi Xiaochi leaned against the car, smoking.

The sky had dimmed toward black, and the small ember at the end of his cigarette threw a faint glow across half his face.

He smoked a little less than half of it, then checked his watch, and, cigarette still between his lips, turned and leaned in through the half-rolled-down window. He pulled out a mineral water bottle drained down to its last swallow, tipped the better part of the cigarette and its unbroken ash into it, then dug a piece of chewing gum out of his pocket, chewed it a couple of times without much care, and spat the wad into a napkin.

He'd meant to toss the trash into a bin, but just as he turned around, the person he was waiting for arrived.

The man walked out of the software company's front gate looking a little tired, his eyes landing first on the shiny new car parked by the curb, and only then on Chi Xiaochi.

His expression turned complicated. "...Xiao Cheng."

In this world, Chi Xiaochi went by the name Cheng Yuan.

Catching sight of that face, Chi Xiaochi froze for a moment, forgetting to step forward to meet him.

The man stood where he was, waiting out of habit for "Cheng Yuan" to come to him, and when he noticed "Cheng Yuan" showed no sign of moving, he frowned in confusion.

Right on cue, a reminder sounded in Chi Xiaochi's head, half human voice, half mechanical, its tone strictly businesslike, which made it come across a little cold.

The system reminded him: "Mr. Chi, your mission target is calling your name."

Ignoring the affection points that had just dropped from 72 to 70, Chi Xiaochi snapped back to attention and offered his assessment: "Not bad-looking."

Then he straightened up and sighed to himself, "Guess I've really been single too long. Even a bastard starts looking handsome."

System: "..."

Chi Xiaochi then pretended his eyes hadn't adjusted to the dark yet, squinting as if just now making out who it was, and the vague, unfocused look in his eyes lit up instantly with delight, the dimples in his cheeks turning so sweet it was infectious. "Old Yang!"

System: "..." In character in under a second. Impressive.

The bastard Chi Xiaochi had been assigned to win over was named Yang Baihua.

As it happened, this "Old Yang" wasn't actually old; he was only four years older than Cheng Yuan. He kept himself tidy, his cuffs folded to an even height on each side; he carried a clean, fresh air about him, his hair and nails always neatly kept, never unruly, with a faint woodsy scent clinging to him, and a sturdy, steady quality rare in young men. The line of his chest, half-hidden beneath a white dress shirt, wasn't exaggerated, but its shape alone was enough to set hearts racing.

As he closed the distance toward his mission target step by step, Chi Xiaochi quietly ran through the worldline information he'd received in his mind.

This world was the first mission Chi Xiaochi carried out after entering the system's world. According to the system, in order to help task performers adapt more quickly, the first mission any task performer undertook after binding with their system always had a worldline highly similar to the one they'd originally lived in, and its difficulty was set to easy mode.

In plain terms: a tutorial level.

This tutorial showed that his mission target, Yang Baihua, was a golden phoenix who had flown out of a mountain gully in the southwest, a college student the whole family had pooled everything to support, majoring in software engineering. From not even knowing how to turn on a computer to successfully earning a spot in graduate school without exams, nearly seven years of studying far from home had worn away every trace of the countryside from Yang Baihua. At a glance, he looked every bit like a young man who'd grown up in the city.

As for Cheng Yuan—to put it simply, his family had money.

As for exactly how much money, Cheng Yuan had never bothered to care; that was something his older brother was supposed to worry about.

Cheng Yuan had loved music since he was small, the kind of love where you dive in headfirst and don't care if you drown. And he did have the talent for it—any instrument he picked up, he mastered with ease, and his voice alone carried the polish of a fine instrument. Singing, composing, playing—he could do it all, and do it well.

Cheng Yuan had run into Yang Baihua by chance on campus after he started at the music conservatory, when he'd gone to visit an old high school classmate.

At the time, Yang Baihua had just started his senior year, right in his prime—spirited, full of drive, that crisp, sturdy air about him pulling Cheng Yuan in headlong, until Cheng Yuan found himself chasing after him without letup.

At first Yang Baihua found it almost comical, but little by little he too was drawn in by this soft-skinned, tender young master, easy to lead around by the ear like some pet rabbit.

From the day they met to the day they confirmed their relationship and fell headlong into love, a full three years passed.

One day, drunk and acting on impulse, Cheng Yuan went and came out to his family.

Cheng Yuan's father and mother couldn't accept that the son who, as a child, used to chase after girls was now infatuated with a man—and once they looked into Yang Baihua's background, their objections grew even more fierce.

It wasn't that the Cheng family looked down on Yang Baihua for having fought his way up from nothing; they themselves had come from a rural background and built everything from scratch, so they understood how hard that struggle was.

But Yang Baihua had four older sisters of varying ages, and their names, laid out one after another, were Zhaodi, Pandi, Niandi, and Wangdi—each one meaning, roughly, "bring a little brother," "hope for a little brother," "long for a little brother," "wish for a little brother." Seeing those four names lined up like that convinced Cheng Yuan's parents beyond doubt that a family like that would never accept a man who would cut off their own family line. That hopeless love affair, they were certain, was doomed from the start.

But love makes people blind.

Once he sobered up, Cheng Yuan wouldn't listen to his parents' well-meaning advice at all, and instead dug in and fought back on every point, terrified his parents might make things hard for Yang Baihua.

Cheng Yuan's parents weren't so low as to make trouble for a boy who'd worked his way up through his own effort, but Cheng Yuan's whole uproar genuinely wounded them.

For Yang Baihua's sake, Cheng Yuan broke with his parents and moved out, moving in with Yang Baihua instead.

To save money, Yang Baihua rented a place more than twenty bus stops from the city center, where there weren't even many delivery options. The upside was that it was quiet, and the vegetables were cheap.

Cheng Yuan taught himself to cook for Yang Baihua's sake, and did well enough at it that once Yang Baihua complimented him a couple of times, he started making lunch and delivering it to his office every day.

A friend once cursed Cheng Yuan out: Xiao Yuanzi, are you out of your damn mind? Giving up the good life for some country bumpkin?

Cheng Yuan just smiled and said, he's so good to me. We already made plans—tomorrow we're having hot pot.

Cheng Yuan really was a romantic dreamer at heart. Every tiny hope of his, he wrote down, hopeful, on sticky notes on his desk, one after another, like lines of poetry.

"Tomorrow morning, write songs; midday, cook; afternoon, come back and write more songs; evening, go for a walk with Old Yang; buy two cups of Sun's soy milk, extra sugar in Old Yang's; run the AC for half the night, sleep under the quilt."

He never wrote down the bad things, because he genuinely believed his life was going well.

He'd turned down his older brother's quiet attempts to help him out financially. The one time Cheng Yuan accepted his brother's kindness was when he accepted a car to get around in—a BYD his brother had just bought for him. That was because Cheng Yuan got carsick on buses. Every time he crossed half the city to bring Yang Baihua his lunch, he didn't dare eat breakfast first, afraid he'd throw up.

But Yang Baihua didn't like the gift. He said it was his older brother's way of handing out charity, trying to remind Cheng Yuan of the comfortable life he'd left behind, using it as a way to pull him back home. Cheng Yuan thought that made sense, and obediently returned the car.

Taking it and then giving it back—that gesture wounded his older brother.

After that, his brother's check-in texts went from once a day, to once a week, to once every two weeks.

Beneath his hurt, Cheng Yuan told himself his parents and brother only wanted him to be happy. If he stayed with Old Yang and things kept getting better for him, maybe they'd come to accept Old Yang eventually.

Yang Baihua had passed the systems analyst exam back in his undergraduate years, and after graduating went to work at a software company, where, by his own account, he was well regarded by his manager. As for Cheng Yuan, his career was going decently enough too.

In the past, Cheng Yuan had never needed to think about earning a living; he'd devoted himself entirely to music, writing experimental pieces that had no market to speak of at all. His parents had worked connections to package up and sell those pieces, but it amounted to nothing more than a small circle amusing itself.

Now, though, this Cheng Yuan needed to make a living. The record market had shrunk badly over the years, and there was no room left for Cheng Yuan to keep indulging in the experimental music he loved.

Cheng Yuan had no trouble swallowing his pride on that front. He was happy to write a bit of everything—classical, pop, punk, rock, none of it was beyond him—though he had an artist's particular fussiness when it came to quality.

He spent three months of effort carefully recording three original pop-style demos and sent them off to several record companies.

For most music companies, demo submissions piled up by the hundreds, and Cheng Yuan had braced himself to be ignored entirely. But to his surprise, his luck held, and he soon got a reply: a small company had picked up his submissions, five thousand yuan per song.

The small company said they were quite impressed with Cheng Yuan's songwriting talent and offered him an artist contract. In his excitement, Cheng Yuan signed without even looking at it.

Cheng Yuan was so happy he practically bounced off the walls. The money hadn't even arrived yet, and he'd already mapped out exactly how he'd spend the fifteen thousand yuan, down to the last detail—and every single plan had Yang Baihua in it somewhere.

If time could be turned back, Cheng Yuan would have cursed that overjoyed version of himself for a fool.

The small company's production was slow, and the final result wasn't all that satisfying either, but Cheng Yuan watched the rankings of his three songs—"Autumn Thoughts," "Words from the Heart," and "Love You"—climb on the music apps, and every time one of them rose a spot, sweet with pride, he'd take a screenshot and send it to Yang Baihua.

Then, scrolling through the comments one day, he came across one that read: "Does anyone else think 'Autumn Thoughts' sounds exactly like a remake of Goddess Tang's 'Longing for the Secular World'?"

Soon after, someone replied: "Not just 'Autumn Thoughts'—'Words from the Heart' sounds a lot like Tang Huan's new song too."

...Tang Huan?

Cheng Yuan's hand slipped, and he closed out of the app.

He sat there clutching his dark, blank phone for a long while, hot sweat beading all over him, as if a nest of ants had burst open at every joint in his body.

With trembling hands he opened the app again, and there, on the splash ad, was the newly popular singer Tang Huan's pretty face, smiling right at Cheng Yuan.

That day, Cheng Yuan's Weibo account, which had only a few thousand followers, was buried under a swarm of millions of Tang Huan's fans mixed with paid online trolls.

"F*** your mother, you plagiarizing dog! Plagiarists deserve to have their whole families die!"

"Found one sheep to shear and you can't help yourself, can you, you little leech?"

"For the full story and score comparison on nobody Cheng Yuan's plagiarism scandal, see the long post, link http://t.cn......"

"Poked around in Cheng Yuan's old work out of curiosity—curiosity got me in, survival instinct got me out."

"Hahaha, what the fuck kind of dick-ass shit is this? Whining like a ghost, and this fucking counts as good singing? Her fans are still kissing her ass."

"Wow, impressive, even the song title matches Goddess Tang's new album cover word for word? A full-set copy job?"

Cheng Yuan couldn't spare the energy to deal with the hate comments.

Headphones on, he played Tang Huan's new song over and over like a man possessed, his eyes shot through with blood, cold sweat pouring off him.

...It really was the same.

Only the details had been adjusted. You didn't need any professional musical training—anyone with ears and a decent sense of music could tell it was a note-for-note copy.

...But who had copied whom?

Cheng Yuan could swear to his own innocence. Before today, he'd barely even heard more than a few of Tang Huan's songs, because he remembered a sharp-tongued music critic's assessment of her, and however harsh it sounded, it had been right on the mark:

"Tang Huan specializes in 'saliva ballads.' What is a 'saliva ballad'? The song itself is drivel, and she also sounds as though she's singing with a mouthful of spit."

Tang Huan's smiling face turned before Cheng Yuan's eyes, and printed across the digital cover of her new album was the line: "The queen of love songs makes a gorgeous comeback, singing out the words from your heart."

—"Wow, impressive, even the song title matches Goddess Tang's new album cover word for word? A full-set copy job?"

Cheng Yuan remembered clearly—the title "Words from the Heart" was one he'd come up with himself, the very words he'd wanted to say to Yang Baihua, that restrained yet overflowing, forbidden kind of love. And Tang Huan had turned it into some sugary little schoolgirl's crush.

Cheng Yuan felt an insult unlike anything he'd ever experienced.

The worst blow he'd suffered before this was how badly his coming-out had gone. He'd never known what it felt like to be utterly disgraced, condemned by thousands of voices at once.

Amid the roaring in his ears that seemed to fill the whole sky, there was only one person on his mind: Yang Baihua.

He called Yang Baihua, and the moment he heard that voice, the emotions he'd been holding back broke like a dam bursting, and all he could do was cry out, voice cracking: "Old Yang, Old Yang, come home." Like a child who'd suffered some terrible injustice.

When it came to dealing with people, Cheng Yuan really was still a child—his family had protected him too well.

And so, as he clung to Yang Baihua, crying that his songs had been stolen from him and that people were pointing fingers at his back and cursing him, Cheng Yuan failed to notice the flicker of panic that crossed Yang Baihua's eyes.

But Cheng Yuan never imagined, not even close, that this was only the beginning of his nightmare.

And now, Chi Xiaochi, playing the part of that iron-fanged white rabbit Cheng Yuan, stood before Yang Baihua.

The former smiled up at the latter, eyes bright with light.

Yang Baihua looked instead at the car, frowning. "You bought this car?"

Cheng Yuan turned to glance at the car, his tone childishly boastful. "Pretty, right?"

Yang Baihua asked, "How much did it cost?"

Cheng Yuan's eyes curved into a smile. "Guess?"

Up to this point, every line of this exchange had already happened, word for word, in the original host's memory, without the slightest change.

Yang Baihua's brow creased, and in Chi Xiaochi's mind, the affection meter dropped another two points.

Yang Baihua swallowed his irritation and decided to reason with this young master who had no idea what things actually cost. "Xiao Cheng, you and I are supposed to be in this for the long haul. You broke with your family for my sake, and I'm grateful for everything you've given and how sincere you've been. But you grew up comfortable, and you don't understand that a good life has to be managed carefully, bit by bit. If you keep spending like this..."

The argument sounded perfectly reasonable. According to the original script, the original host should have lowered his head in shame at this point and admitted he'd only been joking—that the car was actually a gift from his older brother, Cheng Jian.

Right on cue, Chi Xiaochi put on a wounded expression. "...My brother gave it to me. I get carsick on buses."

Yang Baihua gently stroked Chi Xiaochi's hair. "Xiao Cheng, you're grown now. You can't keep depending on your brother for everything. He has his own life, and you have yours. Him interfering with your life like this, spoiling you like this—it'll only make it harder and harder for you to leave that gilded cage. Don't you think so?"

Chi Xiaochi said nothing, just looked at him.

Yang Baihua was full of confidence.

Once before, Xiao Cheng had a friend who'd strongly opposed the two of them being together, and after Xiao Cheng got this same lecture, he'd cut ties with that friend.

...Xiao Cheng didn't understand anything; he was better off just listening to him, or he'd end up being led around by the nose by someone else.

It was at this point that Chi Xiaochi finally spoke.

His voice was lovely to listen to, soft and gentle, just the way it always sounded whenever he used to whisper sweet words—so much so that for a moment Yang Baihua didn't even register what he'd said: "...My brother's good to me. Did that cost you money?"