The richest man started taking advantage of loopholes after joining Alibaba.

"Let's learn to meow together, meow meow meow meow..."

"Let me act all cute and affectionate with you, oh my gosh, meow meow meow meow..."

Music director Lao Zhang sat in a chair, his hands pressed tightly against his temples.

Those three repeated monosyllables were like a dull knife, sawing at his nerves again and again.

He is a respectable person.

Graduated from the Composition Department of the Central Conservatory of Music, and a former producer at Sony Music.

His ears, accustomed to Mozart and Jonathan Lee, could not tolerate this industrial waste.

"It's off."

Old Zhang finally snapped.

He slammed his hand on the table, causing the coffee cup to jolt and spill a few drops of brown liquid.

"Mr. Lin, this song can't be promoted."

Old Zhang looked up, his eyes bloodshot.

"This isn't music, it's just noise."

"The melody plagiarizes children's songs, the chords are clichéd, and the lyrics... are low-brow." Old Zhang pointed at the speaker, his fingers trembling. "If we put something like this in the top recommendation spot, our competitors will laugh at us, and users will think that Weiguang has no aesthetic sense at all."

The music editors around him nodded silently.

In their hierarchy of contempt, this kind of internet hit song is not even as good as the background music for square dancing.

Lin Che sat in the main seat, twirling a fountain pen in his hand.

He didn't turn off the music.

The mesmerizing "meow meow meow" continued on repeat, forcibly penetrating the eardrums of everyone present.

"Old Zhang."

Lin Che spoke. His voice was steady, penetrating the noisy background.

Do you think the flu virus is elegant or vulgar?

Old Zhang was stunned: "What?"

"Viruses have no aesthetics, no morality, no hierarchy; they have only one purpose—to replicate, to spread, and to survive."

Lin Che stood up and walked to the whiteboard.

The black marker made a screeching sound as it scratched across the whiteboard.

He wrote down two words: conditioned reflex.

"You're into art, I'm into biology."

"In this fast-paced era, users' brains are already overloaded. They don't have the patience to listen to a minute and a half of intro, nor the energy to appreciate the metaphors in the lyrics."

"They need a direct injection of dopamine."

Lin Che pointed his pen hard at the whiteboard.

"Although the melody of this song is simple, it conforms to the most primitive memory curve of the human brain. Once you hear it, you will never forget it. Even if you hate it, you will find yourself humming it when you take a shower."

"This is the effect I wanted."

Lin Che turned around, his gaze sweeping over everyone's faces.

"TME has Jay Chou, he's a 'god'."

"If we can't invite God, then we'll create a plague."

The conference room was deathly silent, except for the speakers still playing "meow meow meow".

Old Zhang opened his mouth, wanting to refute, but looking into Lin Che's cold eyes, he swallowed his words.

"Relay my orders."

Lin Che's voice was cold and hard; this was a combat order.

"Operations department, immediately contact the top 100 beauty bloggers on the platform and give them the task—this song must be filmed."

"Don't just sing without actually singing."

Lin Che held up two fingers and gestured next to his cheek.

"Have the content department design a set of 'hand gesture dances.' The movements should be simple, silly, and cute, so that a three-year-old can learn them after watching them once, and an eighty-year-old can dance them while sitting down."

Make a fist and mimic a cat's paw, then circle it twice around your cheek.

"Technology Department"

The technical director, who was sitting in the corner, immediately straightened his back.

"Adjust the algorithm weights."

"In the next 48 hours, any video that uses this song as background music will have its traffic ranking increased by 300%."

"Likes double, recommendations double."

"I want this song to become a glimmer of light in the air."

Lin Che threw the marker on the table.

"Whether users like it or not, they have to breathe once they open the app."

……

……

Tongzhou, Liyuan Town.

This is a typical "urban village".

In a semi-basement room that never sees sunlight.

Xiao Fengfeng, wrapped in a military overcoat, huddled in front of the computer, slurping down a bowl of braised beef noodles.

He is the creator of this song, an obscure musician struggling on the fringes of Beijing.

He wrote this song two months ago.

I just hummed that melody randomly for fun.

After recording and uploading it online, it disappeared without a trace.

"Why……"

Xiao Fengfeng sighed and finished the last mouthful of noodle soup.

He glanced at the guitar hanging on the wall; the strings were rusty.

"Just one more month," he muttered to himself, staring at the computer screen. "If I can't even afford the rent, I'll go back to my hometown and take the civil service exam."

The screen shows his backstage at the Light Creator page.

Number of followers: 230.

Yesterday's views: 12.

It was so bleak it made you want to cry.

He picked up his phone, intending to watch some videos before going to sleep.

The phone was placed on the lid of the instant noodle cup.

Sudden.

The screen lit up.

hum.

That was a push notification sound from the Weiguang APP.

Then came the second one.

hum.

Then, the black cube started dancing on the table.

The vibration frequency increased, eventually merging into a continuous buzzing sound.

"broken?"

Xiao Fengfeng was startled and quickly grabbed his phone.

The device is getting hot.

The moment the screen lit up, countless pop-up messages suddenly appeared, causing the screen to lag so badly that it was almost impossible to operate.

Microlight Creator Backend: 999+

Private messages: 999+

New followers: 999+

"What's going on?"

Xiao Fengfeng's fingers trembled as he laboriously opened the Weiguang APP.

The opening screen features Feng Timo, a top internet celebrity with over ten million followers.

In the video, the usually aloof internet celebrity is facing the camera, wearing exquisite makeup, with his fists clenched next to his cheeks, swaying to a background music he knows all too well.

"Let's learn to meow together, meow meow meow meow..."

The video has over 250 million likes.

The top-rated comment in the comment section:

"It's so catchy! I've listened to it a hundred times!"

Xiao Fengfeng's fingers were stiff.

He slid down.

The second video features a high school girl in a school uniform performing the same hand gesture dance in a classroom.

Likes: 80 million+.

The third one was a muscular man, shirtless, with a serious expression...meowing like a cat.

Likes: 120 million+.

The entire recommendation feed was infected by some kind of virus overnight.

Everyone is meowing.

Everyone is using his songs.

"Holy crap..."

Xiao Fengfeng's phone slipped from his hand and hit his thigh. It stung.

He clicked on the song's details page.

Yesterday, this song was used 12 times.

Now, that number is jumping wildly.

10.

20.

50...

Each time the page is refreshed, the number jumps up a bit.

Those weren't numbers; they were a flood, a tsunami, an invisible giant hand that was forcibly dragging him from this moldy basement to the clouds.

My private message list is full of collaboration offers that I would normally be begging for.

"Hello, I'm from XX Commercial Performance Company. We'd like to invite you to sing this song. Your appearance fee is 5."

"Hey bro, I work at XX bar, are you free this weekend?"

"I'm an editor at NetEase Cloud Music. Could I have an exclusive interview with you?"

Xiao Fengfeng stared blankly at the moldy wall.

Ten minutes ago, he was still worrying about the 800 yuan rent.

Ten minutes later, he was selected by the algorithm.

……

……

Microlight Headquarters, Data Monitoring Center.

Lin Che stood in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the North Fourth Ring Road below.

The traffic flowed into a river of light, moving slowly.

On the large monitoring screen behind him, the spread curve of the song "Learn to Meow" is rising vertically at an angle that defies the common sense of physics.

S-level traffic contingency plan: Activated successfully.

Virus spread index (R0): 15.6.

This means that each person who hears this song will, on average, infect 15.6 other people.

This is a terrifying number.

In epidemiology, this is called "superspreading".

"Boss."

Shen Nan stood to the side, staring at the glaring red data, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"This is...too fast."

"It's only been four hours since it went live, and it's already been used over a million times. And..." Shen Nan glanced at the user profiles in the backend, "More than 60% of the users are from outside the Fifth Ring Road."

"That's not fast."

Lin Che took a sip of ice water. The ice cubes hit the side of the glass, making a crisp sound.

"This is called resonance."

He turned around and looked at the constantly changing trending topics list on the screen.

#EveryoneLearnsToMeow# has already climbed to third place.

"Shen Nan, do you know why those so-called elites look down on this song, yet it still became a hit?"

Shen Nan shook his head.

"Because this world is too tiring."

Lin Che's voice echoed in the quiet server room.

"White-collar workers in office buildings, assembly line workers, and food delivery guys, they have to pretend to be mature and composed adults during the day, face their bosses' grumpy faces, and face mortgages that they can't pay off."

"Only when they are scrolling through videos late at night do they dare to unleash the inner child within them."

"This song is not a song."

"It is the pacifier of this anxious age."

Lin Che put down his water glass.

"The real show is just beginning."

"When the sun rises tomorrow, the entire internet will be taken over by this cat."

"Go and notify the technical department to expand the server capacity."

Lin Che gazed at the dark night sky outside the window, his eyes deep and unfathomable.

"TME thinks it can strangle us by blocking copyrights."

But they forgot.

"When the flood comes, the walls cannot stop it."