Entertainment: A song that brought his deceased wife back to life.

I can't be bothered with you.

Xu Qing thought to herself, "That's what I'm thinking."

"Do you even know what pure love is?"

"You're just a cold, lifeless program."

"You simply don't understand this kind of bond that transcends worldly conventions."

The system fell silent.

A moment later, it popped up the light screen again.

"According to big data analysis, this kind of storyline will lead to a significant reduction in your income."

Xu Qing sneered.

He swallowed the last bite of the steamed bun.

"So what if it's scaled down?"

"If I'm writing books to cater to those trolls, I might as well go pick up bottles on the street."

The moment he finished speaking, the old cell phone on the table vibrated.

The buzzing sound was particularly jarring in the quiet basement.

Xu Qing picked up the phone and glanced at it.

It's a bank newsletter.

"Your personal account has been deposited with RMB 500,000.00 at 10:15 today. Note: Final payment for the copyright of the movie's theme song."

Xu Qing stared at the string of zeros for two seconds.

His expression remained completely unchanged.

Five hundred thousand.

This amount of money is enough for him to buy a large house with a balcony now.

It could even allow him to squander it for several years.

But he simply opened the mobile banking app with practiced ease.

Fingertips swipe rapidly across the screen.

Enter your account number.

Confirm transfer.

"Transfer successful. Amount: 500,000.00 yuan. Recipient: Sunshine Welfare Home."

After doing all this, Xu Qing threw her phone back onto the table.

His bank card balance has returned to three digits.

The system spoke again.

"Host, your behavior is a classic example of self-destructive tendencies."

"You could absolutely keep this money to improve your living conditions."

"The humidity here has exceeded the health standard."

Xu Qing leaned back in her chair, looking up.

He looked at the peeling paint on the ceiling.

"Money is enough to eat instant noodles."

"The roof over the dean's house needs repairing."

"Those little brats need to get new winter boots too."

He suddenly remembered something.

"By the way, is that movie released today?"

The system responded.

"Yes, the movie 'The Story of North City' premieres today."

"Your song 'Take Me Away' has been selected as the main theme song."

Xu Qing stood up.

He patted the dust off his pants.

"Since it's my song, I should at least listen to how it sounds."

He walked out of the basement.

The sunlight outside was a bit too bright.

Xu Qing squinted as she walked through the alleys of the old town.

A few young people were gathered together on the roadside looking at their phones.

"Holy crap, this Mingyue Qingfeng is a real jerk!"

"The scene where Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu practiced martial arts in the Ancient Tomb made me blush."

"This author is absolutely a pervert, how dare he write something like this?"

Xu Qing walked past them without looking to the side.

But in his heart he was secretly complaining.

These people may be verbally abusive, but their actions speak louder than words.

Otherwise, the number of collections wouldn't be increasing by tens of thousands every day.

The popularity of "The Return of the Condor Heroes" is now completely unstoppable.

Although half the comments section was saying they wanted to send razor blades.

But the other half is frantically urging for more updates.

The impact of this sense of taboo is something that those domineering CEO novels simply cannot match.

Xu Qing walked into a slightly larger movie theater.

He bought a ticket for the last row.

The theater was packed.

Most of them were young couples.

The movie has started.

It is a typical art film.

The pace is very slow.

The footage is beautifully shot.

The story revolves around two souls struggling on the fringes of the city.

They find solace in each other, yet are forced to confront the harsh realities of life.

Xu Qing felt a little sleepy while watching.

This kind of affected, sentimental art style bored him.

Until the climax of the movie.

The male protagonist chases after a departing train amidst a heavy snowfall.

The female protagonist leaned against the car window, tears streaming down her face.

At that moment, the background music in the movie abruptly stopped.

A deathly silence.

Followed by.

A clear, melodious piano sound slowly rose into the air.

The faint sound of popcorn being chewed in the theater disappeared.

Xu Qing saw several girls in front of her start to lower their heads and wipe away tears.

That feeling of loneliness and longing to be taken away was completely ignited by this song.

The lights in the theater went completely dark.

The snowflakes on the big screen fell in a very rhythmic manner.

Xu Qing leaned back in the last row of chairs, clutching a crumpled movie ticket stub in her hand.

The movie is called "The Story of the North City," and just from the title, it exudes a cheesy, pretentious vibe that's designed to trick the audience into crying.

The director clearly knows how to use visual contrast, with the gray streets paired with the dirty faces of the male and female protagonists.

The male protagonist, Raymond Lam, is a down-on-his-luck painter who has resorted to painting portraits under overpasses.

The female lead, Su Qing, works as a waitress at a hot pot restaurant until 3 a.m. every day.

The two first met in an alley during a torrential downpour.

Lin Feng clutched his drawing board tightly in his arms, while Su Qing carried two bags of leftover food.

Su Qing stepped into a puddle, splashing mud and water all over Lin Feng's face.

Lin Feng wiped the mud off his face and looked up at Su Qing.

"Don't you watch where you're going?"

Su Qing rolled her eyes and lifted the bag in her hand.

"Do you own this alley?"

"This painting of mine is worth several thousand dollars, can you afford to pay for it?"

"It looks like scribbles, I wouldn't even look at it if you paid me."

The two stood there in the rain, exchanging insults about each other's ancestors.

The background music then quietly switched in at that moment.

The piano intro is slow, each note precisely capturing the moment when raindrops fall in the movie scene.

I always walk alone.

"Living at the Crossroads"

As soon as the lyrics started playing, the audience members who had been quietly eating popcorn in the theater stopped what they were doing.

Xu Qing listened to her own voice echoing in the speakers.

It's a strange feeling, like watching a dead version of yourself dancing on a screen.

The movie scene shifts to Raymond Lam and Su Qing crammed into a small cubicle of less than five square meters.

The roof was leaking, so Lin Feng used a broken basin to catch the water at the head of his bed.

The ticking sound overlapped with the drumbeats in the music.

When Su Qing got home from get off work, she took off her apron, which was covered in the smell of cooking oil, and sat on the edge of the bed counting the tips she had earned that day.

Lin Feng squatted on the ground and used the remaining half of a pencil to sketch Su Qing's back on a piece of scrap paper.

"Stop drawing, can you change it to steamed buns instead?"

"This is art. You don't know anything about art."

Can art pay rent?

Su Qing slammed a stack of small bills on the table and glared at him irritably.

Lin Feng didn't say anything, but silently folded the drawing paper and stuffed it under his pillow.

"But this time you said you'd take me away."

"Just you and me in some corner."

As the lyrics reached this point, the two characters in the movie were crammed into a small single bed.

The north wind was howling outside, making the plastic sheeting on the windows rattle loudly.

Lin Feng pulled Su Qing's hand into his arms.

"When I have money, I'll take you away from here."

"Where to?"

Let's go somewhere deserted, just the two of us.

Su Qing smiled and buried her head in his old sweater, which smelled strongly of paint.

"Let's talk about it after you can afford two train tickets."

Looking at the dialogue on the screen, Xu Qing felt that the director had filmed something very heartwarming.

In reality, poor people don't have that much time to lie in bed and talk about their dreams.

The cold in reality can freeze your bones and crack them.

"Like the soil's allure that clings to the flower."

"Like the torrential downpour of the sky."

"The steps counted behind you"

"Every silhouette, every scene"

"We've all had these dreams."

As the lyrics moved into the chorus, the volume increased slightly.

The movie footage started flashing back and forth wildly.

Lin Feng was chased by urban management officers on an overpass, while Su Qing was slapped in the face by a drunk customer in a hot pot restaurant.

The two shared a 50-cent popsicle on the curb late at night.

Lin Feng carried Su Qing on his back, walking step by step through the snow.

Su Qing hummed a tuneless melody softly in his ear.

Xu Qing heard a girl in the row in front of her start pulling out tissues.

He thought that the girl might have never been poor, which was why she found such a hard life romantic.

"Take me to the far future."

"Take away the loneliness of my solitary journey."

"Take me with you, and that will be my freedom to love you."

"They will all become bubbles."

"I'm not afraid to take me away."

The sense of despair in the lyrics began to resonate with the growing estrangement between the two characters in the film.

Lin Feng's paintings still couldn't be sold, and Su Qing's back strain was getting worse.

An argument broke out.

The trigger was a bottle of spilled, low-quality red wine.

"Besides drawing these useless things, what else can you do?"

Su Qing pointed at the red liquid all over the ground, her voice sharp as if fingernails were scratching glass.

"I've been trying my best, why can't you wait a little longer?"

"Wait for what? Wait until I'm old, wait until I'm dead?"

Su Qing slammed the rag in her hand hard into Lin Feng's face.

Lin Feng stood there, letting the greasy cloth fall to his feet.

"I always travel alone."

"Keep quiet and don't frown."

The lyrics move into the second verse, and the melody becomes even more somber.

In the movie, Raymond Lam starts staying out all night, drinking in the underpass and burning his easel as firewood to keep warm.

Su Qing sat in that leaky cubicle every day, staring blankly at the ceiling.

She started packing her luggage.

That worn-out woven bag was filled with all the traces of her life in this city.

"But this time you said we'd go together."

"From this day forward, let us be gentle with each other."

Su Qing arrived at the train station.

Lin Feng caught up at the last moment.

He had a full beard and his clothes were tattered.

He frantically searched for that familiar figure in the crowd.

"Like the soil's allure that clings to the flower."

"Like the torrential downpour of the sky."

"The steps counted behind you"

"Every silhouette, every scene"

"We've all had these dreams."

The lyrics are repeated again, and the accumulation of emotions has reached a critical point.

Lin Feng saw Su Qing.

Su Qing stood at the ticket gate, clutching the train ticket to the south in her hand.

The two looked at each other across an iron fence.

"Take me to the far future."

"Take away the loneliness of my solitary journey."

"Take me with you, and that will be my freedom to love you."

"They will all become bubbles."

"I'm not afraid to take me away."

Xu Qing looked at Lin Feng on the screen and opened her mouth.

He didn't make a sound, but his mouth movements were calling Su Qing's name.

Su Qing turned around, her tears falling onto the cement floor.

She didn't turn around and walked straight into the dark platform.

Xu Qing felt that this scene was written too sentimentally.

If it were him, he would have snatched the ticket and torn it up.

Or just get on the bus with her, no matter where the destination is.