10:00 AM the next morning.

Lu Zhixian sat at the dining table, holding a cup of hot milk in his left hand and flipping through TV channels with the remote in his right.

"Bang!"

The door was pushed open from the outside.

Old Zhao rushed into the living room with two dark circles under his eyes, his hair as messy as a bird's nest, holding a tablet and thrusting it directly in front of Lu Zhixian.

"Old Lu! Look! Look at this!"

Half of Lu Zhixian's face was blocked by the tablet, and he leaned back slightly.

On the screen was the trending list of Yitian short videos.

Eight of the top ten items contained the name "Lu Zhixian."

Ranked first was: #One-Handed Blues Challenge#.

It was followed by a red "Hot" tag.

"From last night until now, the whole internet has gone crazy!" Old Zhao slammed the tablet onto the table, his fingers scrolling down frantically. "Look, all the bloggers in the music section are analyzing your one-handed performance from last night frame by frame, taking screenshots and studying your fingering!"

Lu Zhixian took a sip of milk.

"And then?"

"And then, after they finished studying, they started trying to play it themselves!" Old Zhao's voice rose an octave. "Every single one of them says they're going to replicate your fingering. They started this 'One-Handed Blues Challenge' topic, and the total participation across the internet has already surpassed two hundred thousand posts!"

Lu Zhixian wiped the milk stains from the corner of his mouth.

"How's their playing?"

Old Zhao froze for a moment.

Then his mouth began to curl into an uncontrollable grin.

"They failed."

"Every single one of them."

—

The first to fail was a blogger with a million followers named "Guitar Old Wang."

This guy was famous in the circle for his instructional videos. His fans called him "Teacher Wang," and every video started with that classic line: "Brothers, this fingering actually isn't hard."

After Lu Zhixian's video went viral last night, Guitar Old Wang posted an update overnight: "Left-hand hammer-ons plus slides, difficulty is medium-high, but not worth blowing out of proportion. I'll break it down for everyone in tomorrow's livestream."

At 9:00 AM this morning, the livestream began on time.

The number of online viewers instantly broke one hundred thousand.

Guitar Old Wang sat in front of the camera, holding his custom folk guitar worth sixty thousand yuan, a confident expression on his face.

"Brothers, watch closely."

He placed his right hand on his leg and his left hand on the fretboard.

His index finger dropped, hammering the string.

"Zheng."

The sound came out.

The bullet chat was instantly flooded with "Here it comes, here it comes."

Then his middle finger followed, trying to do the rapid combo of hammer-ons and slides from Lu Zhixian's video.

The first beat was barely passable.

On the second beat, the intonation started to go off.

The third beat—

His ring finger didn't reach the intended fret, and the pad of his finger pressed directly between two strings.

"Puff."

A dull thud.

Guitar Old Wang's expression froze.

He adjusted his hand position, took a deep breath, and tried again.

This time, he sped up, trying to keep up with the rhythm of Lu Zhixian's original version.

Index finger hammer-on, middle finger slide, ring finger pull-off—

"Snap!"

The first string broke.

The snapped string whipped up, the steel tip flying past his chin.

Guitar Old Wang leaned back in shock.

The livestream room went silent for half a second.

Then the bullet chat completely exploded.

"Hahahahahahahahaha!"

"'This fingering actually isn't hard,' you said."

"Teacher Wang, do you need me to call an ambulance for you?"

"I suggest renaming to Guitar Old Gone."

Guitar Old Wang gave an awkward smile to the camera for two seconds and silently reached out to turn off the livestream.

This screen recording was clipped within ten minutes and made into a parody video, with views directly surpassing three million.

—

But Guitar Old Wang wasn't the most tragic one.

The most tragic was Old Cannon.

He was the sharp-tongued music uploader who was the first to recommend "dispelling sorrow" in his livestream room.

Old Cannon's usual job was reviewing songs, not playing the guitar. However, he had seriously studied guitar for a few years in his youth, so his foundation wasn't bad.

At 2:00 PM this afternoon, he started a livestream titled: "Let's see just how hard that one-handed blues is. If I can play it, it proves the whole internet is overhyping it."

Number of online viewers: two hundred thousand.

Old Cannon held the guitar and slapped the body twice.

"Let me say this first, I'm not a monster-tier player like God Lu."

"But I listened to this melody about fifty times last night. There aren't many notes, and the tempo isn't fast. The core is that it relies entirely on the strength of the left hand."

"In theory, as long as your finger strength is enough, it shouldn't be a big problem."

He placed his left hand on the fretboard.

Deep breath.

His index finger dropped.

"Zheng"

The first note was crisp and bright.

Bullet chat: "Not bad."

His middle finger followed, sliding toward the high frets.

"Mmm—"

The slide came out. Although it didn't have that lazy flavor of Lu Zhixian's, it was at least passable.

Old Cannon's eyes lit up.

"Hey, it actually works!"

His confidence soared, and he began to try and speed up.

Index finger, middle finger, ring finger, continuous hammer-ons.

At about the sixth second.

His left pinky suddenly curled up uncontrollably.

"Hiss—"

Old Cannon's face instantly twisted in pain.

He pulled his hand back from the fretboard and vigorously rubbed his left pinky with his right hand.

"Cramp! Cramp! My finger's cramping!"

The bullet chat in the livestream room wasn't laughing anymore; they were howling.

"Six seconds, just six seconds!"

"Brother Lu played for fifteen seconds, and you didn't even last half that long!"

"The gap between you and the Godfather is the distance between you breaking a string and him not breaking one."

"Old Cannon, you were so cool when you recommended 'dispelling sorrow' last time. How did you become a comedy uploader today?"

Old Cannon shook his hand while forcing a bitter smile.

He picked up his phone and faced the camera.

"Alright, I give up. I can now responsibly tell everyone that the internet isn't overhyping it; it's underhyping it."

"This piece isn't something that can be handled by finger strength alone. The coordination between fingers, the angle of force, and that sense of relaxation... it's not something a human can practice."

He paused.

"This simply isn't something a normal person can play."

Clips of this livestream spread across the internet within an hour.

Under the #One-Handed Blues Challenge# topic, the vibe gradually shifted from 'challenge replication' to 'epic fail compilation'.

Meanwhile, a top comment was pushed to the very top of the topic.

"I finally understand. Lu Zhixian's one-handed performance last night wasn't about showing off technique at all. He was telling the world: this thing is as simple as sprinkling salt to me. So the reason you can't learn it isn't because you aren't working hard enough, but because you aren't him."

The likes on this comment surpassed four million within three hours.

Old Zhao showed these videos to Lu Zhixian one by one.

When he saw Guitar Old Wang breaking a string, Lu Zhixian laughed out loud.

When he saw Old Cannon's finger cramp, he almost spat out his milk.

"Alright, alright." Lu Zhixian pushed the tablet back. "Stop watching."

Old Zhao immediately leaned in.

"Old Lu! While the hype is at its peak, hurry up and start a livestream! You don't have to do anything else, just sit there and play a few notes casually. Gaining a few million more followers would be child's play!"

Lu Zhixian stood up.

"Not doing it."

"Why not!"

"Sleepy."

Old Zhao: "..."

Lu Zhixian yawned and turned to walk toward the bedroom.

"You! Can't you have a bit of ambition! Tens of millions of people outside are waiting to see you!"

"Let them wait."

Lu Zhixian didn't look back.

"We'll talk after I wake up."

The bedroom door closed.

Old Zhao stood in the middle of the living room.

He looked down at the data still skyrocketing on the tablet.

Then he looked at the closed bedroom door.

He gave a long sigh and sat on the sofa resignedly, starting to reply one by one to the various business cooperation messages that had come in.

Late at night, 11:40 PM.

The bedroom was in total darkness.

Lu Zhixian leaned against the headboard, his right index finger lightly tapping the nightstand twice.

"Open system panel."

A translucent light screen materialized out of thin air in front of him.

At the top of the screen, the popularity points numbers were slowly but steadily ticking upward.

34,782,160.

Lu Zhixian took a few more looks.

Over thirty-four million.

He actually didn't have much interest in things like lucky draws.

But.

Thirty-four million popularity points were right here.

He had glanced at the system mall; there were indeed many things to exchange for, but the cost-effectiveness of direct exchange was nowhere near as high as the lucky draw.

The corner of Lu Zhixian's mouth curled up slightly.

"Since I'm already here."

He reached out his finger and tapped that icon.

"Might as well try a couple of draws to test the waters."

The panel instantly expanded.

Lu Zhixian's pupils constricted slightly.

The pointer stopped steadily on the only dark-gold slot.

That slot had no name, only a question mark.

The entire room went silent for about two seconds.

A crisp mechanical prompt sounded in Lu Zhixian's mind.

“Ding! Congratulations to the host for drawing an S-grade reward—”