A guqin could be played like this? He'd fucking brought the immortal realm onto the stage!

The boos and jeers in the auditorium kept swelling.

Just then, someone slowly walked out of the shadows beside the stage.

The heckling from the audience paused strangely for a moment.

"Who's this guy? Here to fix the sound system?"

"He came up in camouflage? Did he wander onto the wrong set?"

Lin Bei paid no attention whatsoever to the startled looks from the audience.

He walked straight to a corner at the back of the stage.

A pile of props left over from plays performed by the sophomores lay there.

Lin Bei bent down and picked a dust-covered prop guqin out of a pile of foam boards and artificial flowers.

The guqin's craftsmanship was outrageously crude. Even its strings were cheap nylon cord stretched taut across it; one glance told anyone it was defective junk wholesaled at a street stall for a few dozen yuan.

Carrying that battered instrument, he walked to center stage.

Lin Bei stopped less than two meters from Ruan Qingwu.

He casually brushed the dust off the marble floor, sat straight down cross-legged, and laid the prop guqin across his knees.

Ruan Qingwu's eyes had already gone completely red.

But when she saw Lin Bei carrying the guqin, sauntering over to sit beside her-

All her hurt and panic suddenly vanished like smoke and clouds.

It had been like this ever since they were children. As long as Lin Bei was there, even if the sky fell, he could hold it up with his hands.

"Keep dancing."

Lin Bei lifted his eyelids and glanced at her. "Follow my music."

There were no extra words of comfort, no wasted breath.

Yet that simple sentence put Ruan Qingwu completely at ease.

She nodded gently, drew a deep breath, and resumed the opening pose of her classical dance.

The audience fell silent for two seconds, then erupted into even louder mockery.

"Holy shit! You're accompanying her with a busted plank? Who the fuck do you think you are, Zhuge Liang playing the zither to drive off Sima Yi?"

"Get the hell off the stage! Stop making a spectacle of yourself!"

Faced with the wild dance of demons in the audience, Lin Bei did not so much as twitch an eyebrow.

He slowly raised both hands, his ten fingers hovering above those cheap nylon strings.

With a slight stirring of his will-

The pure azure Spiritual Power in his dantian instantly boiled.

Spiritual energy raced through his extraordinary meridians, pouring without reserve into his ten fingers.

[Heavenly Sound Zither Heart], activated.

Lin Bei's right index finger plucked sharply downward.

Twang-

An intensely penetrating note exploded through the auditorium without warning!

There was no amplification from any sound equipment, nor any microphone picking it up.

Yet that single note bored straight into the ears of everyone present.

No, not into their ears.

It slammed straight into their souls!

Fatty Wang shuddered violently in the front row.

He felt as though the sound had not traveled through the air at all, but had shot up from the marble beneath his feet, all the way to the crown of his head.

The entire auditorium instantly went deathly silent.

Every sound of mockery, heckling, and whispered conversation was cut off at once.

Thousands of people stared wide-eyed, their gazes fixed on the boy in camouflage onstage.

Lin Bei's fingers flew.

Under the furious influx of Spiritual Power, the cheap prop guqin seemed to come alive.

Its music poured forth like water.

At first, the notes were low and slow.

Like a clear spring flowing over bluestone slabs after fresh rain in empty mountains in late autumn. Cool and lonely, yet carrying a magic that cleansed the heart.

Soothed by the music, even the restless freshmen in the audience unconsciously slowed their breathing.

Ruan Qingwu moved.

She had no need to recall the rhythm of the original backing track.

Lin Bei's music was like an invisible thread guiding her every movement.

Her flowing sleeves swept outward, her waist arching back.

Her dancing had already been exquisite. Now, paired with this music that struck straight at the soul, she seemed to shed the smoke and fire of the mortal world, truly becoming an immortal maiden who might ride the wind away at any moment.

The unspoken understanding they had built growing up together was displayed to its fullest at that moment.

Lin Bei abruptly hooked a finger, tracing an afterimage across the strings.

The music suddenly soared!

The gently babbling stream instantly became the cry of a phoenix above the nine heavens!

Stirring and piercingly high, it penetrated everything!

Goosebumps rose over all several thousand people in the auditorium at once.

Their scalps tingled, their hearts pounding wildly to the rhythm of the music.

This was a fucking guqin?!

Whose guqin could produce the might of a thousand troops and ten thousand horses, of a phoenix crying through the nine heavens?!

As [Heavenly Sound Zither Heart] operated at full strength, the Spiritual Power within Lin Bei inevitably spilled into the air along with the music.

A cultivator's spiritual energy held a fatal attraction for every living creature in nature.

All the more so for an ancient inheritance like [Heavenly Sound Zither Heart], which could call forth all things.

Several high ventilation windows along the side of the auditorium had been open all along.

Outside lay the shore of Weiming Lake in early autumn. The flying insects and butterflies in the flower beds, which had been preparing to lie dormant through winter, suddenly went berserk.

"Look... what's that!"

Someone in the audience cried out, their voice trembling.

Everyone instinctively followed the direction of that person's finger toward the vent above the stage.

A mass of brilliant colors was pouring wildly through the vent.

Butterflies.

Hundreds of butterflies of every color swarmed into the auditorium like moths to a flame!

They did not flit aimlessly above the audience, but spiraled straight toward center stage.

Around Ruan Qingwu as she danced, around Lin Bei as he sat cross-legged playing the guqin.

They danced gracefully.

Ruan Qingwu tossed her flowing sleeves upward, and several blue swallowtails alighted on her cuffs, fluttering up and down with her movements.

As Lin Bei's fingertips plucked the strings, a few bold white butterflies even landed directly on the head of the prop guqin, drawing their wings slightly inward with the strings' vibrations.

The cool white spotlight shone down.

A boy in loose camouflage, seated cross-legged and playing the guqin.

A girl dancing gracefully amid swirling, colorful butterflies.

The scene was so beautiful that even breathing felt like a crime.

The audience was utterly dumbstruck.

Sitting in the front row, Fatty Wang's mouth hung open wide enough to fit an ostrich egg.

He stiffly turned his head toward Liu Chen beside him, his voice wavering. "Chen... am I fucking hallucinating from heatstroke? Is Bei playing music or casting spells?"

Liu Chen's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty. He could not even squeeze out a fart.

In the middle seating block, Zhao Mengyao rubbed her eyes hard.

"Is... is he even human?" Zhao Mengyao muttered. "Even the Fragrant Consort reincarnated wouldn't be this outrageous! He's fucking brought the immortal realm onto the stage!"

Meanwhile.

Behind the curtain beside the stage.

Zhou Zihao had just come out after having his wound treated.

When the music outside began, he had initially thought nothing of it.

But when those notes pierced his eardrums, he could not help lifting a corner of the curtain to look outside.

That single glance-

Pinned Zhou Zihao to the spot.

He saw Ruan Qingwu onstage, graceful as a startled swan; he saw butterflies filling the air, and above all, he saw Lin Bei playing the guqin.

The Grade 10 piano qualification he took such pride in, the outfit he had spent over a hundred thousand yuan on-before Lin Bei's music, they were nothing but a buffoon rolling around in a mud pit.

Zhou Zihao felt as though Lin Bei had ripped off his pride, thrown it to the ground, and trampled it to pulp, leaving not even a scrap.

Overwhelming shock and humiliation tangled together. Zhou Zihao's legs gave way, and he collapsed onto the cold backstage floor.

"Young Master Zhou, are you all right?" Zhang Liang jumped in fright and hurried to pull him up.

Zhou Zihao flung Zhang Liang's hand away, mumbling indistinctly.

"Impossible..."

"This is impossible... he's using a prop guqin... how could he possibly play better than me..."