I Am A Prodigy

Ye Lingchen smiled, then walked up to the tuner[1] and arranged his own accompaniment.

“Wow, Y-God knows how to arrange his own accompaniment. Amazing!” Dalei could not help but praise.

The accompaniment was the background music of a song. It required a professional tuner to arrange it properly to avoid clashes. In singing, apart from the vocals, the accompaniment also played an important role. A good tuner could even salvage a horrible voice.

Although Dalei and the rest were good at singing, they knew nothing when it came to tuning. They were different concepts.

“Camera! Camera!”

Zhang Yong was impatient, frantically signaling at the cameraman. Such a good gimmick must be recorded.

Ye Lingchen’s skills were good. With one look they could tell that he was a pro. However, it took quite some time for him to tune. After watching him do it for some time, the tuner beside him felt his brows twitch, exclaiming in surprise, “These adjustments aren’t for any songs out there! Are you trying to tune a new song and sing it live?!”

His words immediately caused those around him to gasp in surprise, then walked up to him.

Ye Lingchen remained silent, quietly acknowledging the tuner’s words.

The cameraman held onto that chance and intentionally made a closeup scene of Ye Lingchen in the tuning process. Not only those at the scene, but those in front of their TV screens could feel their hearts pumping, the excitement building.

[F*ck! F*ck! Live tuning and performance! I can’t wait!]

[As expected of Singer Y. Stir things up. Any disagreements, make a new song!]

[It seems a new song will appear to dominate the charts soon. My recorder is ready to record and play on loop.]

[Hahaha, what a surprise. I hope Singer Y won’t let me down!]

[Awesome. Singer Y’s tuning speed is so fast. Although I don’t understand, it seems amazing.]

…

Under everyone’s scrutiny, Ye Lingchen stopped his movements. The tuning was completed.

“All cameras! Broadcasters get ready!” Zhang Yong’s face went scarlet from the excitement. He could even feel a small compulsion to cry. This surprise caught him off guard, as though the heavens were dropping a prize on him, hitting him so hard that it caused his head to spin.

The speakers played back a rhythm. It was a new song!

“Miss Arnelle, please listen carefully. What about this? If you can write down my lyrics, it’ll be my loss,” Ye Lingchen said with a smile.

“Hahaha, how hard is that?” Arnelle thumped her chest. One of the crew immediately passed her pen and paper.

At that point, the screen was split into two halves. On one side was Ye Lingchen singing, while the other side was Arnelle preparing to write the lyrics.

Finally, Ye Lingchen’s voice sounded.

“Our Chinese characters.

The characters are like art, written in 5000 years of history.

Let all the world know.

Our Chinese characters.

Every stroke tells a story.

Holding the torch, devotion bright as light.

A square field, abundant harvest.

Ancients use the characters to separate good and evil.

…”

The opening rhymed well in typical Chinese fashion. Everyone felt a twinge in their hearts, feeling a shred of cultural pride within them. At the same time, the beautiful melody immediately captured their hearts.

Arnelle, on the other hand, was hastily writing the characters down. In order to catch up with the progress, her writing was very messy. However, on her face was an expression filled with confidence. “Tch, it’s not that hard. These are all common characters.”

When the viewers saw the characters Arnelle wrote, they nodded lightly. They did not expect this foreign lady to write the characters down. She was good!

Then, they heard Ye Lingchen continued to sing,

“Ba xiao kui ji chi mei wang liang[2].

Wu~ you shuang ruo zhuo.

Wu~ huo yan yan yi.

Wu~ shui zhui miao man.

Kui bao.

…”

Arnelle’s hand that was scrawling away stopped immediately, looking up at Ye Lingchen with a dumbfounded look. The only characters that she wrote was “you, huo, and shui.”

‘WTF? Are you sure those characters exist?’

However, Ye Lingchen showed no signs of stopping. He continued.

“Qiong qiong jie li, hang xie yi qi.

Ju ju du xing, ti hu guan ding.

Mian mian gua die, feng wei gui nie.

Long xing da da, ji jiao ga la.

Ping ting niao na, ti si pang tuo.

Nao nao bu xiu, bu lang by you.

Ang ~

Ling yu, ying yu, ji yu, ju yu.

You e wu xuan, hu e bu quan.

Qi lei hui hui, a za jie jue.

Zhi fa zang pi, zhen bian shi bi.

Lin ci zhi bi, yi zhang yi xi.[3]

…”

‘F-f-f*ck!’

Everybody was stunned.

They all took a deep break at the same time, their faces filled with terror.

Arnelle’s mouth turned into an “O” shape. It was obvious that she could no longer write anything down. She could only gawk at Ye Lingchen.

The song ended, but everyone was still stuck in a daze.

At that moment, they were questioning themselves deep down, ‘Am I a fake Chinese?’

More time passed.

[A-a-amazing! Other than amazing, I can’t find another word to describe Y.]

[Hahaha, look at Arnelle’s expression. It’s as though three huge question marks are printed on her forehead. A new sticker is born.]

[A blank face. These people can finally experience fully what it means to have a blank face.]

[I’m a Chinese and I can’t understand these characters. I wonder what’s the surface area of Arnelle’s trauma at the moment. Hahaha…]

[Let’s not mix things up. This song is really nice. Furthermore, it brings out our culture’s pride. Chinese characters are deep and meaningful. Simply put, it’s amazing!]

…

The people on the ship slowly recovered from their daze. They all looked at Ye Lingchen in profound shock.

“Y, you’re just too amazing, too talented! To think that you could create such a song!” Dalei felt compelled to go down on all fours and pray to him. When he was still frustrated over writing a song, Ye Lingchen was already done creating such a great piece of music. The difference was immeasurable.

“I don’t even recognize these characters, yet you can write a song with it? That’s too monstrous,” Little Mo joined in lamentations. “Your musical talent is just too much. I’m humbled!”

Chen Xiaoyan was also looking at Ye Lingchen with a smile, her gaze overflowed with joy. Seeing Ye Lingchen stunning the crowd, it felt better than her gaining fame.

“Little Mo, do these characters really exist?” Arnelle suffered a strong blow to her confidence. “I’ve put in so much hard work on Chinese culture, but I’ve never heard of them.”

“If you admit defeat, I’ll write those characters out,” Ye Lingchen said with a smile.

“Fine, you’re good. I’ll admit defeat, okay? Quickly write it out!” Arnelle impatiently passed the paper to Ye Lingchen, with a hint of embarrassment on her face.

Apart from the characters in the beginning, she could not write a single character later on. That was just like getting zero for dictation. It was too embarrassing.

Ye Lingchen took the pen, then started scribbling on the paper.

His writing speed was very fast, but at the same time extremely smooth. His pen drew across the paper, the characters were then printed on the paper. One by one, the weird character appeared, causing a great sense of shock in Arnelle.

[Such beautiful handwriting! F*ck! It’s even more beautiful than those printed by the computer. So nice to look at!]

[I finally know why they describe things with “floating clouds and flowing water”. His writing is just too beautiful!]

[OMG, my eyes are getting pregnant. It’s too beautiful!]

[I’m not joking. Look at that writing. I think I can have a telepathic relationship with Y…]

—

[1] 调音师 (Tiao Yin Shi / tuner) – apparently, the author here is having the tuner do the work of a music arranger, a DJ , and sound engineer all in one. We’ll just be sticking to tuner since that’s what the author wrote in the raw.

[2] This section of the lyrics is just a bunch of characters that were composites of each other. For example, 又双叒叕 (you shuang ruo zhuo) which the meaning is really out of context in terms of lyrics, but in this case, it’s more for the complexity of the characters rather than the meaning behind it. On its own, these characters are a compounded form of 又 (you) which means “again”. Due to the compounding of the word “again”, this phrase is now being used to indicate something that was bound to happen repeating itself again.

[3] Continuation of the song, but this time it’s a compilation of idioms or sayings that were difficult to write, mostly using uncommon words. For you readers that are curious as to how this song sounds like, please feel free to listen to this youtube video that provided the pinyin to each of the words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL-KDRyGv1Y