All-rounder Artist

That very night.

Gu Qiangyun suddenly called for an all-staff meeting, and in it, he expressed an intention: “The company needs restructuring.”

Whoosh!

With Gu Qiangyun declaring the company’s restructuring, everyone felt their position was under threat. It wasn’t hard to guess that Gu Qiangyun was planning to make layoffs.

It takes a longer time for everything to add up.

The flaws of Starlight Music were quite evident.

Gu Qiangyun had wanted to restructure the company for a long time, but the company was already on the verge of collapse. It couldn’t withstand any major upheavals, so as the general manager, he dared not be reckless, and could only suffer a death of a thousand cuts.

But things are different now.

With the arrival of Mr. Lin, the company’s situation has vastly improved, even making it to the top hundred in the B-list!

Thus, Gu Qiangyun felt that this was a good opportunity to restructure the company!

Now, the company had Mr. Lin to hold the fort. If he postponed it any further, he might not have another chance to restructure the company once Mr. Lin returned to Qin Continent.

So, after the all-staff meeting, Gu Qiangyun took decisive action the next day!

He called people in for discussions relentlessly.

Almost every day, people left.

The wind of massive layoffs made everyone in the company feel threatened, especially the composition department. Seeing more and more of their colleagues being laid off, they couldn’t help but panic—

The manager is really doing it!

A few laid-off employees tried to speak to Gu Dong in order to salvage the situation.

Faced with pleading from some old employees, Gu Dong felt reluctant, so he sought Gu Qiangyun’s opinion.

Gu Qiangyun said impatiently, “Do you think I don’t have feelings for the old employees? But in order to sustain the development of a company, we must be ruthless. For instance, 01′ Zhang who came to you for help is not that bad, but he lacks self-awareness, arrogantly claiming that he only takes orders over half a million, not even bothering to look at orders of two or three hundred thousand…”

Gu Dong was silent.

What Gu Qiangyun said was the truth.

Many employees in the company have this problem.

If they can’t handle big orders, they aren’t willing to put down their pride to do small ones.

But if no one does the small orders, who would take responsibility for the company’s performance?

Gu Qiangyun sighed, “You’ve heard what people are saying in the industry, right? Although our company has made it to the list, many people in the industry say that we’re dragging Mr. Lin down. Even though this is true, we can’t be shameless, right?”

“I understand.”

Gu Dong nodded, no longer objecting.

Gu Qiangyun’s restructuring continued in full swing.

It was not until half a month later that Gu Qiangyun’s restructuring finally came to a halt.

At this point.

The composition department of the company had been reduced from the original total of one hundred and twenty-six people to a mere seventy.

Hence.

When Lin Yuan returned to the company, he could clearly feel that the company was a lot emptier.

He didn’t say much. As usual, he continued to give music composition lessons to Xue Liang.

Xue Liang had not been affected by the layoff wave.

Mainly not because of his teacher-student relationship with Lin Yuan.

Even without this relationship, Xue Liang would not have been let go by the company, because his performance had always been quite good—

He never overreached and accepted all incoming small orders.

After the lessons.

Lin Yuan checked Xue Liang’s ability level.

Xue Liang’s composition ability score has astonishingly reached 514.

It was evident that Xue Liang had not been undergoing Lin Yuan’s training in vain.

However, worth mentioning was…

When Xue Liang’s ability score exceeded five hundred, Lin Yuan could clearly feel that Xue Liang’s growth was slowing down.

After a bit of thinking.

Lin Yuan understood why.

The reason why Xue Liang improved rapidly was because his foundation was weak.

But as Xue Liang’s ability strengthened, further improvement was not so easy. This rule applied in any field.

Lin Yuan didn’t seem too anxious.

He just asked Xue Liang to complete his current order first.

It was a seven hundred thousand order. Lin Yuan thought that if this order was completed, it would be a great help to Xue Liang’s ability improvement and might even become the opportunity for Xue Liang to officially graduate!

After Gu Qiangyun completed the company’s restructuring, he didn’t continue recruiting. Seventy staff members in the composition department were enough for now.

Indeed, it was true.

Whether it was the successful effect of the restructuring, making the remaining staff feel survival pressure, or that the seventy composers retained by the company were genuinely capable – when it came to late November, Starlight Music had indeed completed three orders.

Gu Qiangyun was over the moon!

Ever since Mr. Lin came to the branch, these were the first new orders completed not by Mr. Lin, but by the branch’s composers—

And there were three orders in a row!

Though these three orders were worth only one million five hundred thousand combined, they were nothing compared to the quantity of Mr. Lin’s previous orders. However, as the general manager, Gu Qiangyun could finally breathe a sigh of relief. After all, having laid off more than a third of the staff all at once, he was under a lot of work pressure. If anything were to go wrong, he would be held accountable by the head office.

Now, the situation had improved significantly.

At least on the B-list, Mr. Lin was no longer fighting alone. Other composers had also contributed their power. At least they were no longer plainly dragging him down!

Get Mr. Lin to have a chat!

Gu Qiangyun had always felt guilty about dragging Mr. Lin down, hence he had not spoken to Mr. Lin for a long time.

“Manager.”

Seeing Gu Qiangyun coming to his office, Lin Yuan lifted his head and looked at him, “How are things going with the Seven Star competitive order?”

“Seven Star?”

Gu Qiangyun was taken aback for a moment before laughing, “I almost forgot about that. Has Mr. Lin completed the Seven Star competitive order?”

“Yes.”

Lin Yuan nodded.

At this point, almost two months had passed since Seven Star released its competitive order. Lin Yuan felt that it wouldn’t seem too abrupt to hand it over now.

“I’ll give you my email address.”

Gu Qiangyun took out his phone to sort it out promptly.

He was just assuming that Lin Yuan wanted to earn a service fee, which is there for the taking. Just like a test paper issued by Seven Star, regardless of whether he knew how to answer the questions or not, he couldn’t just hand in a blank sheet: “Mr. Lin can directly send the work to this email.”

This was also where Gu Qiangyun was smart.

He felt that since Mr. Lin had implied that he had given up on the Seven Star order, he must have written a rather random and perfunctory song. As a manager, it’s better not to listen to it, also to save some face for Mr. Lin.

“Okay.”

Lin Yuan nodded.

He was not aware of Gu Qiangyun’s current thoughts, and even if he did, he wouldn’t explain much. After all, he wasn’t sure if his order met the client’s requirements. He simply sent the already prepared “Everywhere Kiss” to the email address Gu Qiangyun gave him.