Chapter 20

a dark chapter in their history.

But they had no choice.

They had waited far too long for a stage, even knowing there would be risks, abuse, and doubts.

They still had to press forward and give it a try.

The crowd fell silent for a moment. Then the lights and the musical intro burst to life at once.

All four members of Color4 lifted their eyes at once. As if no sound had disturbed them, they launched into the dance with bold, high-spirited confidence.

That was part of being a professional idol.

No matter what people in the audience said, they still had to wear professional smiles and give their best performance.

Considering the music festival's energetic atmosphere, they performed the same song they had done on the music show last time.

But promotional performances placed greater emphasis on combining camera work, stage design, and expressive singing and dancing.

A live performance, on the other hand, tested pure stage ability.

So during rehearsal, they made several changes to the details to suit the venue. After going through it a few times and making sure there were no problems, they decided to present the music festival with a brand-new version.

For the opening, a section originally performed solo by Sheng Chi had been changed to a sharply synchronized group dance by all four.

This dance was the same as the chorus, which the four of them had already drilled thousands of times in the practice room.

The rapid-fire beats came crashing down, leaving the people who had been waiting to laugh at them utterly speechless.

After countless days and nights of training in the practice room, their bodies had long since developed muscle memory.

They had only been waiting for this moment to unleash it completely.

The sound pickup at the venue wasn't the best.

Yet the moment Sheng Chi sang his first line, his voice was as steady as if he were recording in a studio, giving a whole group of people goosebumps.

A rustle of discussion rose from the audience.

"No way?! That vocal quality is insane. Did he pay extra for it?"

"Actually, he really is pretty impressive."

"Let's keep watching. Maybe that's the only thing he can do."

Unfortunately, Color4 had hardly any weak links.

Jiang Yu was excellent at both singing and dancing, while Xu Linyuan had made up for his dancing through sheer hard work, forcing his skills up to par.

Even Gu Zhijing, whose skills were a little lacking, didn't miss a beat this time with his teammates beside him providing backing vocals.

After the chorus, it was Gu Zhijing's rap section again.

He instinctively tightened his grip on his handheld mic, his palm damp with sweat.

When it came to singing and dancing, there were no other idol groups to compare them with, after all, so their advantage was clear.

But the festival had invited quite a few senior rappers from the industry, some of whom had performed just before them.

And with his level of skill, he really was showing off in front of the experts here.

He had always relied on the special appeal he had onstage, enhanced by the camera, to attract fans.

When it came to live performances, he was at something of a disadvantage.

They had finally managed to get the crowd fired up.

He absolutely couldn't let it fall apart on his watch.

Gu Zhijing tightened his fingers around the mic, took a deep breath, then turned and walked toward the center of the stage.

At the same time, Sheng Chi pressed a hand to his own mic and also walked toward center stage.

The rap section began.

Gu Zhijing lifted his eyes and met Sheng Chi's gaze at the same instant. Each saw his own reflection in the other's dark pupils.

Are you ready?

Let's do this together.

It was a bold change.

The rap section was originally supposed to be Gu Zhijing's solo, but Sheng Chi had been afraid he wouldn't be steady enough and had decided to turn it into a back-and-forth duet with more live impact.

And from Gu Zhijing's very first line,

Sheng Chi knew he had made the right decision.

The clash and impact of a rap duet in a live performance far surpassed a solo.

The two traded lines without holding back, face-to-face, as if they were battling and collaborating at the same time. Nearly everyone could see the wildly burning, utterly different stage presences they possessed.

One was steady with a streak of madness.

The other was unpolished but tenacious.

Their presences collided fiercely and invisibly in the air, only to blend together with exquisite skill the next second thanks to their perfect rapport, shaking everyone at the venue to the core.

That remarkable clash began with the first line they traded and lasted until the very end of the rap.

They high-fived, walked to opposite sides of the stage, and, right on the drumbeat, simultaneously made a sniper's firing gesture.

Together with the golden fireworks that flared to life at the edge of the stage, it sent the atmosphere to a new height.

Screams rose one after another from the audience.

At a venue where nobody knew them, with a purely live performance without backing vocals,

under immense pressure, they had delivered a performance better than expected.

The music finally ended.

Below the stage, the people who had mocked them earlier had fallen silent.

Even if they still weren't convinced and desperately wanted to nitpick and throw out a few more insults, the overwhelming power of the performance had temporarily shut them up.

Only now did they belatedly realize something.

They had never watched a proper idol group performance before. They had simply assumed that idols were a group of talentless people who could only sing and dance to please their fans.

So,

idols could be like this too.

The girl who had been the first to cheer Color4 on earlier was flushed with excitement. After jumping up and down several times, she let out a loud whistle, then started applauding.

Gradually, other applause joined hers,

followed by an unending chorus of cheers, screams, and shouts of approval.

The young men onstage were panting.

They looked out at the dark mass of spectators and listened to the applause and praise washing over them like a tide, and it all seemed almost too unreal.

They gripped one another's hands, bowed together, then straightened and lifted their eyes in unison. "Hello, everyone, we're Color4!"

Sweat glistened on the young men's foreheads, and they shone beneath the music festival's tangle of colorful lights.

The dreams that had once been trampled and scorned had finally been picked up by them, and they had proven to the world-

We did it.

The effort they had once put in within dark corners

had finally been brought into the spotlight for people to see.

The young men were immersed in their own world.

They didn't notice that a girl in the audience had recorded their entire performance.

And five minutes later,

the video set off an unprecedented wave of reposts on Weibo.

Chapter 24

[@Long Galactic Years: #Autumn Music Festival# Got a ticket from a friend and came with her to see the band she likes, but unexpectedly found some super handsome guys aaaaaah I really! Am! So! Into them! [Weibo video]]

The autumn music festival had just purchased real-time trending search promotion and was sitting at number ten on the trending list.

The blogger's account had a high ranking and plenty of followers, so the post immediately made it onto the popular page. Reposts and comments then shot up exponentially.

The video wasn't very clear, and it was a little shaky.

But the dazzling lights, the energetic atmosphere, and the young men onstage, with their presence in full force and their solid skills, looking as though they could conquer the whole crowd, instantly caught the attention of many people.

Many left comments expressing their amazement.

[D City's autumn music festival has a boy group this year?! Which idols were bold enough to do that?! That's a live performance!]

[I've watched the video. Don't be bitter, they really have the skills. Unedited vocals, completely live, and still that steady-they killed me.]

[Damn, I regret selling my festival ticket now aaaaaah!]

[Did anyone notice the rap duet in the middle?! I ascended on the spot!! Who are those two!! The sexual tension was incredible! How was that any different from them doing it onstage!]

[Three minutes. I need the name of this CP right now.]

[Just asking as a casual passerby, which boy group is this? They're so talented! I'm seriously tempted to fall into the fandom!]

[It's been thirty minutes and no fans have come to claim them yet? You can tell they're really nugu.]

[Even I, a veteran survival-show fan, haven't figured it out. By process of elimination, they definitely didn't come from this year's shows.]

[The one in the middle looks a little familiar. I think I've seen him somewhere.]

After countless guesses and rejections, someone finally pointed them in the right direction.

[Wait, isn't this four-member group Color4, the new group that just debuted on tonight's music show?!]

At the music festival.

Completely unaware that they had already caused an uproar on Weibo, the four focused on taking their bows and leaving the stage. As soon as they got off, exhaustion hit them. They didn't have the energy to watch the remaining performances and just wanted to head straight back.

Gu Zhijing looked around the backstage lounge and asked in confusion, "Where's Brother Fei?"

Sheng Chi glanced at the group chat and said, "He said something urgent came up, so he took a cab back to the hotel first."

He asked his teammates, "Should we head back too?"

Gu Zhijing was about to nod when he caught sight of Jiang Yu out of the corner of his eye and noticed that Jiang Yu couldn't tear himself away.

"Look at that band over there! Isn't that High Town?!"

Jiang Yu's eyes lit up with barely contained excitement. "I want to go say hello."

Gu Zhijing himself knew next to nothing about bands and had never heard of Hightown.

But he knew that Jiang Yu had studied guitar for a while before becoming an idol and had once dreamed of being in an underground band.

Judging by the look of things,

Jiang Yu had probably run into his former white-moonlight idol.

Gu Zhijing looked in the direction Jiang Yu had indicated.

At that moment, the band's guitarist had a cigarette between his lips and was talking to a young girl backstage.

The girl seemed to be his fan, and her eyes shone as she looked at him. Judging by the ambiguity between them as they talked, it had something of the air of the musicians and groupies popular in the last century.

Gu Zhijing narrowed his eyes slightly, feeling that something was a little off.

But after thinking it over, he ultimately said nothing about it. "Go ahead. We'll wait here for you."

While Jiang Yu went over to greet his white moonlight, Xu Linyuan took the opportunity to go outside and buy a few bottles of water.

Sheng Chi and Gu Zhijing found a corner and sat down to rest. They were about to wait for Jiang Yu to finish talking to his white moonlight and return before heading back to the hotel, when they faintly heard voices from over there.

"Which one? From a boy group?"

"No need, and I'm not interested. We don't even do the same kind of thing."

"No time. I've got things to do. I'm leaving."

Gu Zhijing's heart sank.

The other person's words weren't harsh, but his tone was impatient, carrying a natural, matter-of-fact contempt.

He seemed to think it was all perfectly natural.

Because that was how the industry's hierarchy of disdain had always worked.

Band musicians looked down on idols, rappers looked down on idols, proper singers looked down on idols, and actors looked down on idols too.

Idol groups seemed destined to live at the very bottom of the entertainment industry.

Even if you climbed to the ranks of the top stars and people in the industry offered you a few compliments out of respect, they would still inevitably consider you talentless.

All the more so for unknown idols like them.

Sheng Chi heard the commotion too and glanced over.

Jiang Yu usually had a fiery temper.

But being rejected like that by a musician he had once liked was like having a bucket of cold water dumped over his head. He froze on the spot, too embarrassed to know what to say.

Sheng Chi thought for a moment and was about to go over when the person beside him had already stood up quickly.

In the blink of an eye, Gu Zhijing was standing in front of the guitarist.

He spoke courteously. "Hello, senior. Sorry for disturbing you."

"I know we're still a long way behind you, senior, which is why my friend came especially to ask for your advice. I didn't expect it to upset you instead. I'm truly sorry."

"We'll keep learning."

"Anyway, this industry is only so big. I hope we'll have another chance to meet in the future."

His peach-blossom eyes curved. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Gu Zhijing's tone was neither servile nor overbearing, mild and polite, but anyone could hear the barbs in his words.

Yet his peach-blossom eyes held a natural warmth, and the way he looked at people seemed utterly innocent. In the end, the guitarist was left speechless and could only snort coldly and leave with the young fan beside him.

A short distance away, Sheng Chi, who had been about to come over, stopped and looked at Gu Zhijing.

His back was ramrod straight, and a gentle smile still rested on his face.