That tall, thin boy sat at the very edge of the first row, wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses. He held his hand up low, as if he had hesitated for a long time before raising it.

Lu Zhixian looked at him.

"What is your name?"

"Zhou Tong. Piano Department, junior year."

His voice wasn't loud, but the lecture hall was so quiet that everyone heard him.

Lu Zhixian didn't say "it's okay," nor did he say "actually, everyone is the same."

He asked a question.

"When you play, what is going through your mind?"

Zhou Tong was stunned for a moment.

He lowered his head and thought for a few seconds.

"Thinking about not playing the wrong notes."

He paused, then added a few more things.

"Thinking that my hand shape shouldn't collapse... thinking about the requirements the teacher mentioned... and whether I can pass the next exam."

His voice grew lower and lower.

By the time he reached the last word, his shoulders had slumped.

No one in the audience laughed.

Because too many people heard themselves in those words.

Lu Zhixian didn't respond.

He turned around, faced the piano, and placed his hands on the keys.

He played a scale.

C Major.

The simplest kind, something a beginner would learn in their first month.

But he played it exceptionally slowly.

He pressed down on every single note; it was heavy, weighted, and dragging.

It was like a person carrying too much weight walking down a road, every step struggling against the ground.

After finishing, he didn't look back.

He lifted his fingers and let them fall again.

The same scale. The same notes.

But this time, it was completely different.

Light and fast, his fingers seemed to skim over the keys.

He finished playing.

Lu Zhixian turned his head and looked at Zhou Tong.

"Can you hear the difference?"

Zhou Tong nodded.

"The first time represents your current state of playing. Your mind is full of not making mistakes, meeting standards, and not letting your teacher down."

"The second time is how a piano is meant to sound."

He paused.

"You've treated the piano as an enemy. It isn't."

The lecture hall was silent for a full five seconds.

A girl in the front row gripped her pen tightly, but didn't make a sound.

He Zhiyuan was sitting in the front row on the side.

He held his thermos in mid-air, neither setting it down nor taking a drink.

In thirty years of teaching, he had never asked a student this question in class.

It wasn't that he didn't know about it; he just didn't think it was necessary to ask.

He had believed his whole life that once the technique was in place, the feeling would come naturally.

But now, looking at the young man on stage, he was suddenly unsure.

Lu Zhixian withdrew his hands and leaned back slightly.

"Alright, now that we've talked about mindset, let's talk about something practical."

He pointed a finger at the piano.

"Of those here studying piano, is there anyone who is particularly afraid of harmony class?"

At least a hundred hands went up in the audience.

A few raised their hands especially quickly; it was clear they had been tormented quite badly.

Lu Zhixian smiled.

"Harmony—those Roman numerals in your textbooks like I, IV, and V—they look like math formulas, don't they? During exams, you just cram a bunch of markings onto the paper, and you can't even memorize them all."

Bitter laughter and nodding broke out across the room.

"We won't talk about those today."

"Have any of you ever cooked a meal?"

The audience looked blank.

Talking about cooking in a piano class?

Lu Zhixian rested his hands on the keys and pressed a C Major tonic chord.

A full, stable, and solid sound filled the entire lecture hall.

"This is salt."

He lifted his hands and changed to another chord. A dominant seventh chord, carrying a forward-pushing tension.

"This is chili pepper."

Then came the subdominant chord. Soft and transitional, like giving you a sweet breath of air after tension.

"This is sugar."

Someone in the audience let out a snort of laughter.

Lu Zhixian continued to play, linking the three chords in sequence. After one round, it was like completing a full journey of taste.

"When you're cooking, if you only use salt, the dish is edible but bland."

"If you only use chili, it's so spicy you'll want to flip the table. Sweet first, then spicy, then finishing with salt—that is a dish with layers."

"The logic of harmonic progression is roughly the same thing. Which notes go with which notes is essentially the same as the order in which you put seasonings into a pot."

He played two different sets of harmonic progressions.

The first was straightforward and flat; the second had ups and downs, tension, and resolution.

"You can hear it, right? The first set is just salt on rice. It's edible, there's nothing wrong with it, but it has no flavor. The second set is the Braised Pork."

A girl from the Vocal Department in the back row turned to say something to the person next to her. Her voice wasn't loud, but it was enough for those around her to hear.

"So that's what harmony means? Something I couldn't figure out for two years, and he explained it clearly to me in one minute?"

She was stunned by her own words, because everyone around her was nodding in agreement.

Zhou Tong sat in his seat with his mouth slightly open, the light in his eyes completely changed.

He Zhiyuan took a pen from his pocket, flipped open the notebook he always carried, and began to write.

Lu Zhixian's pace didn't slow down.

"Let's talk about another one: rhythm."

"Have you guys ever played video games?"

The laughter from the audience grew louder.

This was a university; how could there be any shortage of gamers?

"When playing an action game, what's the difference between sixty FPS and thirty FPS? Sixty is smooth and fluid, while thirty is as laggy as a PowerPoint presentation."

"Playing the piano is the same."

He played a melody on the piano.

The first time, he stuck rigidly to the beat. Every note's duration was perfect, precise as if framed by a grid.

The second time, with the same melody, certain parts were slightly faster, while others were subtly elongated. The whole piece began to flow and became elastic.

"The first one was played by a machine. The second one was played by a human."

"Your exams want you to play like the first one. But true music is found in the second."

Applause rang out from the audience.

A boy sitting on the steps in the aisle pulled out his phone and quickly posted to his Moments.

The caption was just four words: God Lu is divine.

After the applause died down, Lu Zhixian stood up.

He walked to the front side of the piano and scanned the audience.

"All talk and no practice is just hooliganism. Does anyone want to come up and try?"

Hundreds of hands shot up simultaneously.

There were three times more hands than when he had asked who was afraid of playing.

Lu Zhixian looked around.

His gaze fell back on the first row.

"Zhou Tong. You come up."

Zhou Tong's hands clenched on his knees for a moment before he stood up and walked onto the stage.

His footsteps were a bit stiff.

As he sat down on the piano bench and placed his fingers on the keys, his fingertips were trembling.

"What have you been practicing lately?"

"The third movement of the 'Twilight Sonata'. The left-hand arpeggios in the middle section have too large a span; I've been practicing for two months and still can't get through it."

"Play it."