Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I went somewhere no one knew me.

It was remote, a village with a very underdeveloped economy.

Even the internet here was not particularly fast.

Before moving here, I had actually spent some time preparing.

I bought a house here, renovated it, purchased everything I would need, and hired people to move it all in.

Housing prices here were very low.

Moving in went smoothly.

At last, I was living a quiet life.

There was no noise, no clamor.

The villagers were curious about me, an outsider, but they generally did not bother me much, and I did not like going out either.

The village was full of elderly people and children left behind by family members working elsewhere. Most of them did not pay attention to the entertainment industry.

My house sat in a secluded corner of the village. Not many people passed by on ordinary days, so I could focus on tinkering with my Little Courtyard and writing songs.

After returning to the Jiang Family, I studied music for a while.

With the Jiang Family’s financial resources, they were willing to spend money cultivating their children’s artistic skills. Unfortunately, my piano had been accidentally damaged by Jiang Yiming a few years ago, and I had never found another piano I liked.

In the house I lived in now, there was a piano inlaid with a red rose emblem. I had specially commissioned it in Italy in the past, and it had only been completed at the beginning of this year.

Here, I could write songs, compose music, and sing as much as I wanted. From time to time, I followed the village aunties to the market, then came back to dress up my Little Courtyard.

I planted many flowers and deliberately set aside a patch of land for vegetables.

Some of the aunties in the village who had become familiar with me did not understand. Speaking in their local dialect, they told me planting these useless things was worse than planting more vegetables.

I just smiled and said nothing.

I had a set of filming equipment, and I recorded the entire process of how my Little Courtyard became beautiful.

With my inner world enjoying such immense peace, I felt satisfied on some level. I even stopped taking my medication.

There was a paper calendar at home. I tore off one page a day. For a long time, I barely used my new phone.

After living like that for about five months, I registered a new account online.

The online popularity of the person called “Jiang Cheng” had been shrinking more and more. Occasionally, someone would bring him up, but it was harmless.

Sometimes these topics would be recommended to me. For example, people were very curious why “Jiang Cheng” had left the industry, and whether it was really because he had offended someone and been forced out.

I did not give myself any special ID. It was a very common sort of name.

Nameless.

My first work was a song I played and sang myself. I had written it a long time ago and only recently set it to music.

After recording it, I taught myself how to edit the video, combined the audio source and footage, and finally merged them into one work before posting it on my new account.

After posting it, I did not pay it any more attention. The account existed just to keep a record.

I had never sung in public before, and a singing voice could be quite different from a speaking voice, so I did not need to worry about my identity being exposed.

After that, I looked at my Little Courtyard and simply registered another account to share its construction.

At first, the singing video made no waves after I posted it. Occasionally, I saw it had a few hundred views. It usually took me several days to put together one finished work.

I really was not good at editing, so the edits were especially crude. As long as there were no problems with the vocals and accompaniment, it was fine.

I never expected my work to go viral.

When I posted my third video, a flood of notifications suddenly popped up one day. The likes, comments, and shares in the backend had all turned into 99+.

People in the comment section said my voice sounded nice and the song was good. The shares and private messages all felt unfamiliar to me.

My fingertips moved slightly. I saw some private messages from entertainment companies asking whether I had signed with any platform, whether I was interested in becoming a contracted streamer, and whether the song was my original work, if I could authorize it or sell the copyright.

I looked for a while, then put down my phone.

I could not be bothered to tap those little red dots either.

I understood traffic clearly enough. As long as I ignored it, it would pass sooner or later.

But I forgot that sometimes traffic made no sense.

Maybe my luck had been too poor before, so now it was being made up to me.

But clearly, I no longer needed it.

With my material needs reduced to the bare minimum, my current savings were actually still enough for me to live on for a very, very long time.

There were even people in my private messages asking whether I would sell my account.

By then, I had already posted my fifth work, and my follower count had exceeded five digits. In truth, it was not that many. It was still fewer than the number of haters I used to have.

But sometimes I wondered whether the netizens now saying they liked me were the same people who had cursed me before.

The other account clearly had average traffic. Occasionally, I posted videos of myself fussing over flowers and plants.

I actually paid more attention to this account. Now and then, people asked what flowers I was growing, where I had bought my tools, and some even asked me to just post the links directly.

If I saw the comments, I replied.

Because I wanted to film a before-and-after comparison of the Little Courtyard renovation, I filmed material every day and also studied editing.

Once I got busy, I did not even have the mental space to think about anything else.

I knew that after I disappeared without a word for nearly half a year, the Jiang Family would definitely look for me.

But in their eyes, I was not anyone important. They would probably give up once they could not find me.

Jiang Yiming wanted everything the Jiang Family had, so he could be their good son.

As for my old phone, I had no idea which corner I had thrown it into. It seemed I had accidentally dropped it while cleaning before, and after it broke beyond repair, I threw it away.