"Impromptu Performance"

Fan Ning stood up, sidled out of his seat, and brushed past Murich, who had just come off the stage.

As he bowed and walked toward the piano, he felt the gazes from all around him cling to his body like viscous syrup, dragging along with every step he took.

Puzzled, curious, scrutinizing, waiting to see him make a fool of himself, or convinced that he was "one tough guy"...

He opened the envelope and looked at the musical notation on the note: standard 4/4 time, six scattered notes.

He immediately struck them on the piano to demonstrate.

A low C-sharp, then G-sharp, followed by a C-sharp and E an octave higher, then G-sharp and A another octave above that.

(Note: In solfège notation, 1-do, 2-re, 3-mi, 4-fa, 5-sol, 6-la, and 7-ti correspond to C, D, E, F, G, A, and B.)

"It spans a very wide range. It's basically certain to be in C-sharp minor, but it has an added sixth, A," Murich mused.

"There's plenty of freedom in deciding what style the improvisation will take, but it'll be hard to make it stand out," someone else commented.

Fan Ning looked at the piano's black and white keys before him. They radiated warm, delicate colors. Above the middle C key, the "Boethius" brand, engraved in Old Hoffmann, was full of lively beauty. Under the concentrated light of the crystal chandelier overhead, the audience in his peripheral vision was packed together in a dark mass. The view before him was excessively bright, making him almost dizzy, while the murmurs by his ears seemed to reappear faintly.

"Why hasn't he started playing yet?" Cecil's female companion asked.

"He only realized what it felt like to be scared senseless after stepping onto the stage," Cecil said with a laugh, shaking his head repeatedly. "He's a musicology major. Why did he come here to join the fun? Wouldn't it be better to honestly write a few research papers?"

"If I were him, I'd definitely regret it. This is terrifying."

"Improvisation is supposed to feel this insecure." Cecil's tone was tinged with superiority. "For performance majors, it's like being suddenly dragged up to perform a piece you've never practiced. Only those of us in composition can keep control of the situation."

Several music professors, including Dean Gould, sat with pens in hand and stared at Fan Ning before the piano.

No musical detail could escape their keen ears.

Fan Ning took a deep breath and finally raised his left hand. In the piano's lower register, he struck an octave dyad of G-sharp, and the deep, metallic sound immediately rang out through the auditorium:

"Bang—!!!"

"As expected of the largest auditorium in our conservatory. The sound absorption and reverberation are excellent. So what now?..." Murich, who had already earned a high score, rested his hands behind his neck and leisurely looked at the pitted walls around him.

"That's it...?"

"This is the improvisational inspiration he was talking about?" Cecil and several composition students all raised their hands to scratch their heads. "You've let that octave ring for at least four or five seconds, haven't you?"

After holding the octave dyad for a full two measures, Fan Ning raised his left hand again and launched into rapid broken C-sharp minor chords in the lower register, forming wave after wave of sextuplets.

Dean Gould narrowed his eyes and stared fixedly at Fan Ning.

Starting from the fifth measure, his right hand joined in, playing a rapidly racing melody. The granular notes burst into sparks, scattering in every direction.

It was the immortal work of the great Polish Romantic composer Frédéric Chopin from his previous life:

"C-Sharp Minor Fantasy Impromptu"!

Chopin composed four Fantasy Impromptus in his lifetime. This one was written in 1834, when Chopin was twenty-four. He himself believed that its main melody bore some resemblance to the theme of another work by the French composer Moscheles. To avoid criticism, it became the only one that was never published, and it was not discovered until after his death.

In fact, it had richer content and a more carefully crafted structure than Moscheles's piece. In Fan Ning's previous life,

it had been one of Chopin's most widely circulated and beloved works. It was both poetically fanciful and infused with rigorous logic, enough to stir a powerful emotional resonance in listeners. Onstage, before the piano, the boy in the black tailcoat kept his right hand racing at high speed. Together with the shifting sextuplets in his left hand, it formed a complex interlocking rhythm—at once a blazing, unstoppable waterfall of passion and an illusionary world overflowing with countless dazzling colors and patches of light!

Fan Ning's expression was actually somewhat tense as he stared unblinkingly at his hands racing over the piano keys.

He had not received formal training in his previous life, while the original Caloin had only majored in musicology and was often mocked by Teacher Anton for his fundamentals. Even after their memories had merged, he still could not match those piano performance majors.

But he knew all too well how to use fifty percent finger technique to produce ninety percent of the effect.

This piece had been an amateur Grade Ten examination piece that Fan Ning had played as a child in his previous life. In terms of the technical difficulty of simply "playing it through," it was not difficult for professionals.

But with Fan Ning's exacting ears, honed through studying countless recordings and live performances, few of the professionals around him could play it with real distinction. Their fingerwork was good, and they played through the piece in one breath with few wrong notes, but they overlooked far too many details in the score.

The right hand's upbeat at the beginning, the trembling pedal technique, the breathing between phrases, the accent lines that needed emphasis, the dynamic contrast beginning in measure thirteen, and the first notes of the three chromatic scales growing continuously stronger to create tension... Fan Ning felt that this was his best performance yet.

"Th-this..." The professors, all men of refined gentlemanly manners, could not help voicing their astonishment.

Even more exaggeratedly, three judges, including the dean, braced themselves against the table and rose from their seats, trembling slightly. Their excitement was plain for all to see.

"This is impossible. Music this romantic and enchanting, this rich in poetic beauty and mysterious inspiration—he improvised it? Impossible. I couldn't even write something like this, not in a month, no, not in a year!" Murich, from the piano department, sat in the front row of the side audience section, both hands braced on his knees as he leaned far forward.

"Profound and fantastical musical ideas are one thing, but there's also... the speed!" Vice Dean Hutz, seated to Gould's right, thought to himself. "An improviser has to compose and express the music at the same time, constantly leaving room in his mind. Even if it's only a fraction of a second, that means the chosen tempo is usually not fast."

"But now he's created such a dazzling torrent of rapid notes, with extensive use of secondary dominants, stacked secondary dominant chords, and masterful modulations... It proves that Caloin Van Ning's musical techniques are thoroughly internalized, almost instinctive. His inspiration has reached its peak!" He stared at the tip of the pen in his hand for a long time...

"This is a master-level improvisation! I have no reason to deduct points. No, even if this were a written composition, I couldn't find a reason to deduct points. I have to give him twenty." One associate professor had heard only about forty seconds before decisively marking down his score.

"There are some immature pedal techniques and a few dirty notes from striking the wrong keys, showing that his fundamentals are unstable. But he grasped the crucial emotional points with perfect precision. That's pure talent." Dean Gould's eyes flickered. "No, wait! This isn't the judging standard for a performance exam. This is his own inspiration."

"Why did I subconsciously treat this like a piano performance exam for a masterwork..." The dean shook his head and wrote down the score he felt ought to be awarded.

From the hands of the boy in the black tailcoat onstage, a crystalline stream of brilliant notes raced down from the upper register, sweeping across nearly the entire keyboard before transforming into several heavy strikes in the lower register. The rapid passage stopped. Fan Ning's left hand gently caressed the keys, bringing out a string of soothing D-flat major arpeggios. Then his right hand played a beautiful, songlike new melody.

Beneath the three-against-two rhythm, the left hand's harmony rippled with shimmering waves of light, while the bright, warm major-key melody in the right hand danced through with elegant ornamentation, like butterflies playing among flowers.

"He's modulated to the parallel major? There's even a contrasting section!" The audience was stunned.

Several professors who had already given their scores froze again and crossed out the scores they had written earlier.

Cecil, who had just been commenting leisurely, now stared fixedly at Fan Ning, his expression so dark it seemed ready to drip with venom.

He was the leader of Group Three and one of the composition department's outstanding students. He had been certain that the chance to premiere a major work at the graduation concert would be his. Then Murich from the piano department had appeared, whom he regarded as a powerful competitor.

As for Fan Ning? He had never taken him seriously at all!

Who could have known...

Cecil's number was several places after Fan Ning's. The longer he waited, the more his heart filled with a jumble of frustration, anxiety, and disbelief. The fist supporting his chin clenched tighter and tighter.

"Caloin Van Ning has brought us far too many surprises today!" Dean Gould kept his voice very low, but he was visibly excited. He turned to ask the person on his left, "Professor Brownie, do you know who Fan Ning's piano teacher is? What about his major instructor?"

The person being asked was Professor Lorin Brownie, first vice dean of Saint Leniya Conservatory and Cecil's composition teacher. His expression shifted unpredictably. He did not answer the dean right away, nor did he pick up the pen in his hand.

"He probably doesn't have a dedicated piano teacher." Vice Dean Hutz, seated to Gould's right, gave the answer. "I've only seen him in the piano classes required by the conservatory. He's quite close to Professor Anton Conall, his major instructor."

"Professor Conall, who died by suicide yesterday...?" The dean furrowed his brows.

The soothing andante of the middle section came to an end, and the music beneath Fan Ning's fingertips returned to the bizarre, unstoppable fantasy world of the opening section.

"It's basically a restatement of the opening, but it doesn't sound tiresome at all. I even want to hear it a few more times. This allegro is marvelous."

"That means he had already carefully laid out the structure while improvising the first section!"

This was essentially the reaction of most listeners. By this point, the quiet discussions from the stage had disappeared. Everyone had been firmly captivated by the magic of the music and listened in silence, as if savoring a delicious but undersized delicacy.

In the coda, a cool, clear ostinato appeared in Fan Ning's right hand, and the colors changed rapidly.

On that foundation, a lyrical slow melody sounded in the left-hand part. Listening closely, the audience discovered that it actually came from the singing theme of the middle section.

"Brilliant! The middle-section material returns, transferred to the left hand, while the tempo has been halved. Not only does it display the lyricism and songfulness to the audience once more, it also unifies the material of the entire piece. The logical structure is even more condensed, leaving one with endless afterthoughts!"

"Transcendence. That's the only word I can think of—transcendence. This is absolutely the finishing touch!"

Ending with two groups of quiet arpeggios, the auditorium filled with sunlight-warm sound, as though a dream had ended and reality had returned.

Once again, he felt the strange connection he had established with the audience. This time, there were several hundred strands of it! And the sensation of "resonance" was even stronger!

+1, +1, +0.5, +0.5, +0.3, +0.3...

Large numbers flowed in from all directions into the pale golden subtitles, like raindrops merging into a stream.

The [3/100] subtitle rose at incredible speed, reaching [100/100] in an instant. A small key-shaped symbol appeared on the right, flickering.

The number continued to rise, though more and more slowly, finally stopping at [135/100].

Fan Ning felt that something had risen, while something else had sunk.

He did not know whether it was "spirit," "inspiration," or "soul," but whatever it was, its intensity had shot straight to the bottleneck. It might even have overflowed after breaking through.

It was merely missing some suitable means of activation to bring about this essential change.

"So what is the means of activation? A key... a key?"

Fan Ning was puzzled for a moment, but soon his entire mind and body sank into an unprecedented sense of comfort and relaxation. The key against his chest grew hot again, and all kinds of negative feelings he had experienced since crossing over vanished at that moment.

Then he slowly lifted both hands from the keyboard and released the pedal, bringing the piano's echoes in the auditorium to an end.

Silence... deathly silence...

The auditorium remained utterly quiet for more than half a minute.

"Clap... clap... clap..." Dean Gould and Vice Dean Hutz rose directly from their seats. Their slow but powerful applause finally broke the silence of the auditorium.