A Star Reborn: The Queen’s Return
chapter-170

A female singer listening from the side said, “How can you speak to Big Brother Zheng like that? He’s a heavenly king.”

“So what if he’s a heavenly king?” Xia Ling could not resist but retort. “If you’re afraid that I will be a burden on the team, then don’t pick me to join.” She had an idea and intentionally glared at Feng Kun. “Why don’t you kick me off the team now? I’ll join the revival round.”

Feng Kun rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on.

This little girl had a big temper, she could not take even the slightest criticism from others. He wondered how she was able to work with Wei Shaoyin at Skyart Entertainment, who was known to have a sharp tongue. However, he missed this a little… Imperial Entertainment was a hierarchical place, and ever since Xia Ling died, no one had dared challenge the authorities the way she did.

With this thought, Feng Kun looked at Ye Xingling with a gentler gaze. “Breathe, cool down, Chenhao had no malicious intentions. Since everyone is in the same team, we have to cooperate well.” He then turned to the female singer and said, “We’re in the same team, take it back a notch.” With that, he gave Zheng Chenhao a warning glare.

Feng Kun’s bias was clear as day.

Even the popular Zheng Chenhao did not dare offend the top producer in the industry. Everyone was aware that Feng Kun used to be Xia Ling’s exclusive producer, and one word from Feng Kun would weigh more than ten sentences from him. If he offended Feng Kun unintentionally, it could be the end of him, and he would not even know how it happened.

Zheng Chenhao seethed inside but gave a light laugh out loud. “I was only giving you a kind reminder, I didn’t mean to be mean.”

The female singer that was watching on astutely shut up as well after seeing Zheng Chenhao’s change in attitude.

Xia Ling was disappointed. She had almost successfully incited an argument, but Feng Kun saved the situation. Bastard, why was Feng Kun’s temper still as gentle and amiable as before? This spoiled her plan of being kicked to the revival round.

Xia Ling unhappily picked up the tea ladle and prodded angrily at the tea leaves.

Feng Kun narrowed his eyes as he watched her prodding at the tea leaves… this little action was so similar to that girl in his memories.

He lowered his gaze to hide the surprise in his eyes and passed papers and pens around to the team. “Everyone, listen up. You’re all aware of the rules of the Nebula Music Festival, which is: you can’t sing your own song. You have to sing someone else’s song, and you’re restricted to the list that the organizers have picked. There are more than three hundred songs on the list to pick from. Now, I want you to write down the ten songs that you’re most confident to sing from the list, as well as the ten songs that you’re the least confident about. I will then discuss with everyone on the best line-up for the competition.”

There were no objections from the team as they received the papers and pens and started writing as instructed.

Xia Ling was still dwelling in her unhappiness, but she took a paper and subconsciously wrote “That Summer When the Flowers Were in Full Bloom.” Wait a minute, wasn’t this her favorite song in her past life? Her pen stopped momentarily.

However, it was too late for her to change it.

She decided to stop writing altogether and scrutinized the list, taking her time to choose nine songs that she could sing well in this life but were songs that she did not like in her past life. She then carefully chose ten songs that she was not confident about, that were counter to her preferences in her past life.

Feng Kun looked impassive but was, in fact, observing Xia Ling closely the whole time. He saw that she wrote down the first song and then suddenly stopped, only continuing to write after taking time to scrutinize the list. After everyone had finished writing on the papers and he had collected them back, he took a quick look at the first song that Xia Ling had written down, “That Summer When the Flowers Were in Full Bloom,” and gave a start.

The next 19 songs had no relation to Xia Ling.

Was this just a coincidence?

Feng Kun quietly kept that paper and continued with the discussion on the game plan with the team.

After the meeting had ended.

Feng Kun brought the stack of papers back home and extracted Xia Ling’s piece.

The resemblance was uncanny… her handwriting looked so similar…

Feng Kun started to rummage through one of the cupboards in his house, where he found one of Xia Ling’s old manuscripts before she passed away, and started to match the Chinese characters word for word: That, Summer, Flowers, Full, Bloom…

Every word was almost identical!

His hands started to tremble slightly as he opened a little box on his table. In the little box was a picture that he had taken of a signature on the signature wall at the Nebula Music Festival red carpet. The signature “Ye Xingling” was cut into three strips of paper, and three other papers had the words “Ye,” “Xing,” and “Ling” extracted from Xia Ling’s manuscripts before she passed away.

A while back, he had sent these three words, both the signature and the extractions from the manuscripts, to three different handwriting identification specialists to analyze.

The results from the three specialists were that they were the handwriting of the same person.

Feng Kun’s hand started to tremble even more, and he took a copy of the 20 songs that were written on the paper, looked for the corresponding words in Xia Ling’s old manuscript, separated it into several different batches, and then sent it off to the different specialists to analyze.

The papers were mailed out.

It took Feng Kun a long time to regain his composure. If the specialists came back saying that the handwriting was from the same person again, what would that mean?

Was it possible for there to be two persons in this world that were so similar, regardless of speech, action, and handwriting? Or… were they the same person? Was it… reincarnation?

However, Xia Ling had passed away just slightly over a year ago, and Ye Xingling was already eighteen or nineteen this year.

Feng Kun sat in front of his work desk staring at the papers with the handwriting, trying to piece it all together. Suddenly, he stood up and dialed a number, “Is that Old Chen? I have something that I need you to do. Help me investigate a singer named Ye Xingling. I need a manuscript of her handwriting from a year ago… no, no, two years ago… just whatever you can find, her school homework, song lyrics, signatures, whatever. Send them all to me! The more, the better!”

Old Chen was a friend of his that ran a private investigation outfit. He would be more suitable to look into this matter.

Feng Kun’s felt expectation rising within him, while also feeling some trepidation. What should he do if it really was Xia Ling? And if it wasn’t Xia Ling, what would he do then?

Xia Ling was blissfully unaware of all this. While she was writing the song titles, her focus had been entirely on the songs, trying to make sure that Feng Kun would not be able to find any similarities with Xia Ling in her past life. However, she had neglected to think about her handwriting.

In her past life, she had been pampered by Pei Ziheng and never had to come up with any scheme. Now, she was being spoiled by Li Lei and seemed to be turning out like what Li Lei had teased her to be at the amusement park — a little dumb.

How would she be able to see past the ploy that Feng Kun had so carefully laid out?

The dumb little Xia Ling went about the team meetings, as usual, setting down the team strategy. She did not know that Mr. Feng Kun was giving her increasingly queer looks throughout this time.

This day, the Nebula Music Festival teams were discussing the “You Choose, I Sing” segment of the competition.

As the name suggested, the song choice for the segment would be chosen by their competitors.

It was Xia Ling’s turn to sing.

“It’s Ye Xingling’s turn.” Her opposing team discussed in low voices. “What song should we pick for her to sing?”

“We should pick that song, of course!” Someone said in a hushed tone. “Didn’t I tell you that I overhead Feng Kun on the phone saying that Ye Xingling has been practicing all the songs on the song list? She is pretty confident with most of them, but there is just that one song that she can’t sing well!”

“What song is that?”

“Idiot, it’s ‘The Caged Butterfly’!”