The whole audience rose in applause! Wasn't this Qi Refining Second Layer Spiritual Power way too wild?!

Meanwhile, onstage, Lin Bei's music was also reaching its end.

Lin Bei pressed both hands down, his ten fingers firmly holding the trembling, cheap nylon strings.

The humming stopped abruptly.

The instant the music ended, the colorful butterflies lingering at center stage seemed to awaken from a dream.

They circled Lin Bei and Ruan Qingwu three times, as though bidding a final farewell, then fluttered their wings and flew out through the ventilation windows high above, disappearing into the early autumn night.

Onstage, Ruan Qingwu held her final pose.

Her aqua-blue skirt hung still around her ankles.

Her chest rose and fell slightly, and a fine layer of sweat beaded on her fair forehead.

Those eyes, usually cool and distant toward everyone, were now fixed unblinkingly on Lin Bei, who sat cross-legged on the floor.

They sparkled with admiration she could not hide.

Lin Bei dusted off his hands and stood up.

Below the stage, there was a deathly silence.

Among the more than three thousand people in the auditorium, not even a cough could be heard.

Everyone was still immersed in that soul-piercing music, unable to pull themselves out.

Not until the eleventh second.

Fatty Wang, sitting in the front row, suddenly snapped out of it and let out a howl in his cracked-gong voice.

"Holy shit! That was fucking awesome! Brother Bei, you're my actual fucking brother!"

That shout called everyone's souls straight back.

The auditorium instantly erupted!

Thousands of students and teachers sprang to their feet in one sweeping rush.

Applause mingled with screams, nearly lifting the auditorium's roof off.

"That was a fucking guqin?! I thought I'd transmigrated into a xianxia drama!"

"What was with those butterflies just now? Magic? Special effects?!"

"That was godlike! Who the hell is this guy?! Why's someone this good going to university? Go hold a solo concert at the National Centre for the Performing Arts already!"

The boys shouted until their voices cracked, while the girls flushed scarlet with excitement, waving their glow sticks frantically.

Compared with Zhou Zihao's deliberately showy piano solo earlier, the piece Lin Bei had played after casually picking up a battered prop guqin was nothing short of a dimensional strike.

In the VIP seats at the front.

The elderly professor from Jinghai University's music department, an old man who was normally unbearably stuffy, was trembling all over with excitement.

"Ancient fingering... that's the lost fingering of antiquity!"

"There's no mistaking the frequency and resonance of those rolling strokes! A genius! This boy is a national-treasure-level genius!"

Beside him, the official visiting from the municipal cultural bureau also stood, clapping hard while turning to confer quietly with the university president.

"President, your university has recruited an extraordinary talent this year. That technique, that artistic atmosphere-absolutely superb."

Before the frenzy in the audience had subsided, deep in Lin Bei's mind, that long-absent mechanical voice finally rang out.

"Ding!"

"Congratulations to the host for completing the sudden mission: [Heavenly Music]!"

"Mission rating: Perfect. Standing ovation achievement unlocked."

"Distributing rewards..."

"Cultivation has advanced to Qi Refining Second Layer!"

"Miniature Spirit Gathering Array Disk ×1 has been deposited in the system space!"

The corners of Lin Bei's mouth curved in satisfaction.

This shitty system had finally done something decent for once.

The notification had barely ended when Lin Bei felt a scorching flame suddenly flare up in his dantian.

A startlingly vast surge of pure spiritual energy appeared out of nowhere in his sea of qi and began rampaging through his extraordinary meridians.

Holy shit.

Lin Bei cursed inwardly.

This breakthrough had come too fiercely. He was still standing onstage; if he failed to contain the spiritual energy and it leaked out, it would blast every piece of audio equipment around him to bits.

He hurriedly gathered his focus and secretly circulated his cultivation technique, forcibly guiding the raging spiritual energy through a full circuit.

The instant he activated his cultivation technique.

With Jinghai University's auditorium at the center, the spiritual energy drifting through the air across several surrounding city districts seemed to be drawn by some mysterious force.

Like a hundred rivers returning to the sea, it silently poured toward Lin Bei in a wild torrent.

Ordinary people could not sense the flow of spiritual energy. They only felt that the auditorium's air had suddenly become especially fresh, and even the sour smell of sweat from the packed crowd had vanished.

The cool air brushing against them felt indescribably refreshing and comfortable.

Inside Lin Bei's body, however, earth-shaking changes were taking place.

Crackle-

A series of faint popping sounds that only he could hear came from deep within his bones.

His body, which had already undergone tendon cleansing and marrow washing, experienced another qualitative leap.

His muscle fibers grew denser, brimming with explosive strength.

His meridians were forcibly widened to more than twice their former size, and Spiritual Power surged through them without obstruction.

His five senses became extraordinarily sharp.

He could even hear Ruan Qingwu's heartbeat quickening with excitement beside him and make out a speck of dust caught on a spiderweb in a corner dozens of meters away.

Qi Refining Second Layer, achieved!

Lin Bei let out a long breath, forcibly suppressing the faint azure spiritual glow emerging over his skin.

This felt incredible.

If Qi Refining First Layer had only made him somewhat stronger than an ordinary person and allowed him to use a few minor spells.

Then at Qi Refining Second Layer, he reckoned a single punch could now hammer a full-grown water buffalo to death.

After taking in the changes to his body, Lin Bei split off a wisp of his attention and reached into the system space.

In a corner lay a palm-sized, bluish-gray array disk.

Its material was neither metal nor wood, and its surface was covered in intricate, profound array patterns.

A single glance was enough to sense the ancient aura flowing over it.

The Miniature Spirit Gathering Array Disk.

Joy blossomed in Lin Bei's heart.

With this thing, cultivating somewhere as spiritually depleted as Earth would be like carrying a spiritual energy pump around with him.

He would no longer have to scrounge everywhere for those pitiful scraps of spiritual energy like a beggar.

This was a massive win.

The spotlight onstage still shone on the two of them.

Seeing Lin Bei standing there in a daze, Ruan Qingwu thought playing had tired him out and hurried over.

Ignoring the thousands of eyes watching from below, she naturally reached out and tugged the cuff of Lin Bei's camouflage uniform.

"What are you spacing out for?" Ruan Qingwu lowered her voice. "Aren't you leaving? Waiting to be gawked at like a monkey?"

Lin Bei came back to his senses.

Looking at his childhood sweetheart's little face so close to his own, he turned his hand and caught Ruan Qingwu by the wrist.

The girl's wrist was slender, her skin silky smooth.

Ruan Qingwu flushed red all the way to the base of her neck.

She instinctively tried to pull free, but with thousands of people watching, she did not dare make too much of a movement and could only let Lin Bei lead her.

"Come on. I'll take you out for a late-night snack."

Lin Bei gave a lazy smile.

Holding Ruan Qingwu, he gave the already frenzied audience a perfunctory little bow.

Then, beneath the envious, jealous, and resentful gazes of more than three thousand people, he held the campus belle's hand and swaggered into the shadows at the side of the stage.

The auditorium fell silent for an instant.

Immediately afterward, a roar ten times fiercer than before erupted.

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit! He held the campus belle's hand!"

"Who the hell is this guy?! I want all his information within one minute!"

"Guqin god! Mom, I'm in love! He looks insanely handsome in camouflage!"

"Don't stop me! I'm going to find out which college he's in and deliver a love letter tomorrow!"

The elderly music professor stamped his feet in agitation, pushed aside the chair in front of him, and rushed backstage.

"Don't go! Young man, don't go! Who taught you that fingering?! Leave me your number!"

Fatty Wang stood on a chair, watching Lin Bei's departing figure, so effortlessly cool that tears nearly spilled from his eyes.

"Brother Bei... you fucking call this not being interested in signing up?"

"You've hogged every last bit of the limelight! How's your Lord Fatty supposed to find a girlfriend in these four years of university?!"

Beside him, Liu Chen patted Fatty's shoulder and quietly twisted the knife.

"Accept your fate. Someone on Brother Bei's level-we're not even worthy of carrying his shoes."

The entire Jinghai University welcome gala descended into an unprecedented frenzy, all because of this guqin god who had not even left his name.