I Became an All-round Artist

The villa was still a bare shell, needing a lot of renovations, but the handover date was coming up soon. In the meantime, Lin Yuan and the others would continue living in their current home.

After settling the villa matter, Lin Yuan, Lin Xuan, and Sun Yaohuo found a nearby restaurant for a meal. As they ate, Lin Yuan casually mentioned, “Senior, I’ll be going to Qi Province Arts Academy for a semester as an exchange student.”

Since Lin Yuan now considered Sun Yaohuo a friend, he naturally shared this news with him.

“Qi Province?” Sun Yaohuo froze, a hint of disappointment flashing across his face. But remembering it was only for one semester, he felt a bit better. “Well, I hope you enjoy your time there! I’ll come visit you if I have the chance.”

“Sure,” Lin Yuan nodded.

Still, Sun Yaohuo seemed concerned. “But, Lin Yuan, will the company assign you work at the branch office in Qi Province?”

“Yes,” Lin Yuan confirmed.

Sun Yaohuo’s expression shifted slightly. “Do you know what it’s like over there?”

“What do you mean?” Lin Yuan asked, curious.

With a sigh, Sun Yaohuo explained, “The music scene in Qi Province is nowhere near as good as in Qin Province. After all, Qin Province is known for being the birthplace of music, while over in Qi Province, composers have a tough time.”

“Why is that?” Lin Yuan had heard people refer to Qi Province as a tough place for musicians, but he never really understood why.

“Qi Province is dominated by the film and gaming industries,” Sun Yaohuo said. “Their music industry revolves around creating custom tracks for those sectors. Composers there don’t have much creative freedom; they have to cater to the needs of their clients.”

“Custom tracks?” Lin Yuan started to understand.

Unlike free composition, where creativity knows no bounds, custom tracks are more restrictive, tied to specific themes and client expectations. It reminded him of how Qi Province once commissioned a theme song for the film Dance of the Dragonfish. Lin Yuan wouldn’t have been able to submit a song like Red Rose for that—it didn’t fit the theme, no matter how good it was.

No wonder composers from Star Entertainment avoided going to Qi Province. Most artists preferred the freedom of composing based on inspiration rather than being constrained by clients’ demands.

However, Lin Yuan wasn’t too worried. With the vast resources of his system, he could pull from an extensive library of pre-made tracks, making custom requests far less daunting.

“There’s another issue,” Sun Yaohuo added with a sigh. “Can you speak the Qi dialect?”

Lin Yuan blinked. “Don’t they speak Mandarin there?”

Sun Yaohuo shook his head. “Of course, everyone in Blue Star speaks Mandarin. But the main issue is that a lot of the popular music there is sung in the local dialect. Let me give you a taste…”

Sun Yaohuo cleared his throat and sang, “I love pineapple, and you love my eyes.”

Lin Yuan was speechless.

Believe it or not, that’s just Cantonese!

So, the infamous “Qi dialect” was actually Cantonese in this parallel world? Lin Yuan couldn’t help but laugh inwardly.

Sun Yaohuo finished his impromptu performance and looked at Lin Yuan. “Since you usually handle both lyrics and composition yourself, you might need to collaborate with some expert lyricists over there.”

Lin Yuan remained noncommittal.

Sun Yaohuo, meanwhile, put on a pair of disposable gloves and peeled a shrimp for Lin Yuan. “That said, Mandarin songs do have some presence there. Your song Big Fish was well-received in Qi Province, and Jiang Kui even went there to perform it at several events. But overall, Cantonese songs still dominate the scene.”

Lin Yuan nodded. If that’s the case, Qi Province didn’t seem like the "hellhole" everyone made it out to be.

“Just don’t take things too seriously while you’re over there,” Sun Yaohuo advised. “I don’t know much about the company’s branch office in Qi Province, but from what I’ve heard, it can be a tricky place to navigate. There were even legal disputes with clients in the past, where composers couldn’t deliver tracks that satisfied the client’s demands. In the end, they had to turn to our main office and deploy the big guns to fix the situation.”

Lin Yuan nodded again and ate the shrimp.

Seeing this, Sun Yaohuo quickly peeled a few more shrimps, leaving Lin Xuan slightly surprised.

Someone had once done the same for her in the past—a guy trying to win her over. But unlike Sun Yaohuo, he wasn’t as thoughtful, forgetting to use disposable gloves.

“Here, have some,” Sun Yaohuo said, peeling a few shrimp for Lin Xuan as well.

Seeing the dazed look in her eyes, Sun Yaohuo coughed lightly and said, “I just… like peeling shrimp for people. Yeah, that’s it.”

Lin Xuan didn’t know what to say.

Well, it’s a nice habit—please keep it up.

Quickly returning his attention to Lin Yuan, Sun Yaohuo continued, “Anyway, in Qi Province, clients are everywhere. Composers who’ve been there always complain about how the clients know nothing about creativity but still want to dictate everything. If you encounter any difficult clients, just ignore them. There’s no need to get frustrated—just think of them as your kids… no, as your grandkids!”

“Oh,” Lin Yuan responded, amused. “But why did Yang Zhongming go to Qi Province before?”

“Well…” Sun Yaohuo pondered for a moment. “Even though Qi Province isn’t composer-friendly, Cantonese songs are really beautiful. That’s probably why Yang Zhongming went—to study the language. Like you, he prefers handling both lyrics and composition himself. A lot of composers try their hand at lyric writing too because, let’s face it, no one understands their own music better than they do.”

Lin Yuan nodded, fully aware of how demanding some clients could be.

Sun Yaohuo was right. Many composers tried to write their own lyrics, but if the lyrics weren’t good enough, the company would step in and assign a professional lyricist. There was nothing composers could do if their lyrics didn’t meet the mark.

Luckily for Lin Yuan, he’d never run into this issue. His lyrics always hit the right notes, so the company had never needed to intervene. The compatibility between his lyrics and melodies was consistently spot on.

As for the complex tonal system of the Qi dialect… Sun Yaohuo wasn’t exaggerating.

In fact, in Lin Yuan’s past life, Cantonese did indeed have a more intricate tonal system than Mandarin. While Mandarin had just four tones, standard Cantonese retained the entering tone and featured a total of nine tones. This gave Cantonese songs a richness and nuance that many people found more appealing than Mandarin songs.

Now that Lin Yuan knew the "Qi dialect" was essentially Cantonese, he realized there was much more to explore in this parallel world. Could languages like English, Japanese, Russian, or Korean also exist here as regional dialects?

He made a mental note to investigate further.

After all, many of the songs stored in his system were in different languages. He had initially planned to rewrite the lyrics into Mandarin, but now it seemed like there might be other possibilities. Some songs could work with new Mandarin lyrics—like The First Dream, originally a Japanese song—but others would lose something in translation, especially when the rhyme and rhythm were intricately tied to the original language.

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