In the audience, someone slightly adjusted their posture, as if waiting for a destined-to-be-dull ending to finish its course.

The side curtain was pushed open.

Lu Zhixian walked out.

His pace was neither fast nor slow.

He walked to the piano and faced the audience.

He did not bow.

He merely gave a slight nod.

Then he sat down.

He had already adjusted the height of the piano stool during yesterday's practice session, so he didn't touch it today.

He raised both hands, hovering them above the keys.

In the domestic livestream room.

Forty million people were watching.

For a moment, the bullet chat was so dense it nearly exploded the screen, but then it suddenly thinned out as if someone had cut it off.

Everyone was holding their breath, waiting.

---

The first note fell.

Very light.

It wasn't a violent opening meant to show off technique, nor was it a grand arrangement of chords.

It was just a single note, like a pebble falling into a lake in the middle of the night.

Then came the second. And the third.

The narrative theme began to emerge.

Like a person sitting in an empty room very late at night, starting to tell a story from a long, long time ago.

Not rushed. Not slow. The volume wasn't loud, but every word was crystal clear.

The low whispers in the hall stopped.

The audience member who had been adjusting their posture slowly straightened their back.

The melody line in the right hand began to unfold.

It was still light. But there was something within this "lightness."

It was hard to describe.

Like someone had spent a very, very long time digging a memory out from deep within, carefully cradling it in their hands to show you.

In the second row of the judges' panel, an old man wearing gold-rimmed glasses put down his pen.

He had been writing on the scoring sheet. He stopped halfway through.

With the pen resting on the paper, he looked up, his gaze passing over the shoulders of the front-row judges to look at the stage.

The piece moved into its second section.

The mood began to change.

The tempo didn't noticeably speed up, but the background of the harmony darkened. The bass range in the left hand was like thunder coming from afar—faint, yet pressing closer.

The melody in the right hand continued, but it was no longer composed.

Like a person who, in the middle of telling a story, touches upon something they are unwilling to face; their voice begins to tremble, yet they do not stop.

In the audience, someone—it was unclear who—leaned forward first.

Then more people followed suit.

The development section arrived.

The tempo picked up.

Lu Zhixian's left hand laid out dense arpeggios in the bass range, the deep resonance surging under the dome of the Golden Hall. The right-hand melody began to struggle—climbing upward, being dragged back, climbing again, and being dragged back once more.

Once, twice, three times.

Each time was more forceful than the last; each time it was dragged back, the pain was sharper.

Backstage.

Andre Koval sat in a chair.

His hands were resting on his knees with fingers interlaced.

The monitor screen showed only Lu Zhixian's back and the movement of his fingers.

Andre did not speak.

Beside him, his coach Mikhail stood motionless.

The climax.

Lu Zhixian's fingers erupted on the keys.

Octave strikes in the left hand surged all the way up from the bass range. The theme in the right hand turned into a scream—no longer a soft narration, no longer a careful memory, but a tearing, shredding, and flinging away of everything that had been suppressed for too long.

Of the two thousand people in the Golden Hall, not one moved.

No one breathed.

On the judges' panel, the old man with gold-rimmed glasses—Klaus Reinhardt, seventy-one years old, a judge for thirty years—slowly took off his glasses.

His hands were trembling slightly.

He pressed the corners of his eyes with his fingers and then put his glasses back on.

The piece entered its finale.

Like the world suddenly falling silent after a massive storm has passed.

The melody returned to the initial narrative theme.

It was still that same person. Still that same story.

But this time, he had finished telling it.

The final three notes. Each lighter than the last. Each more distant than the last.

As the last note dissipated, Lu Zhixian's fingers left the keys and rested gently on his knees.

The Golden Hall.

More than two thousand people.

Applause.

It didn't start from a single corner.

It exploded from all directions simultaneously.

Someone in the first row stood up, followed immediately by people in the third row, then the tenth row, the twentieth row, the second floor, and the third-floor boxes.

Within ten seconds, the entire hall was standing.

The applause merged into a single roar, washing over like a tidal wave.

On the judges' panel, Klaus took off his glasses and put them back on again.

Beside him, the French female judge was clapping her hands with more force than ever before.

Backstage.

Andre Koval's fingers slowly unclasped.

He stared at Lu Zhixian on the monitor screen and remained silent for a long time.

A word surfaced in his mind.

He wanted to chase the word away.

He couldn't.

Mikhail stood beside him, watching him without speaking.

He didn't need to speak. His expression already said everything.

Lu Zhixian stood up.

Facing the audience, he bent at the waist and gave a standard bow.

The applause grew even more intense.

He straightened up, turned, and walked back to the side curtain.

His pace was the same as when he had walked onto the stage: neither fast nor slow.

Behind the curtain, Old Zhao was standing there.

His lips moved a few times, but he couldn't say anything.

Finally, he reached out and patted Lu Zhixian's shoulder hard.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Lu Zhixian gave a small smile.

"Let's go, I'm hungry."

---

In the domestic livestream room.

The number of viewers peaked the moment the last note fell.

Forty-seven million.

The bullet chat stopped for about twenty seconds.

No one knew what to type.

Then, a single comment appeared.

"He won."

Then a second one.

"He won."

A third one.

"He won."

The entire screen was flooded with the same sentence.

From top to bottom, from left to right, it was nothing but those two words.

At 11:00 PM that night.

The competition organizing committee announced the results of the first round on their official website.

The page wouldn't open.

The server had crashed.

Old Zhao refreshed for ten minutes, but it was just a white screen.

Lu Zhixian sat on the hotel bed eating a sandwich.

"Stop refreshing, it'll be fine in a bit."

"Aren't you anxious?"

"No."

Another ten minutes passed.

The page was restored.

Old Zhao clicked in and found the results list.

His finger slid to the very top.

Then his movement froze.

"What is it?" Lu Zhixian took a bite of his sandwich and tilted his head to look at him.

Old Zhao handed the phone over.

On the screen was a table.

Technical Score: 49.2.

Artistic Expression Score: 50.

Total Score: 99.2.

In the remarks column, a line of text was highlighted in red.

"Highest score of this round. Breaks the thirty-eight-year record for the highest single-round score in the Xiaohua International Piano Competition."

Lu Zhixian looked at it for two seconds, put his sandwich on the plate, took the phone, and read it again.

There was another line below.

List of contestants directly advancing to the finals:

1. Andre Koval.

2. Lu Zhixian.

There were only two names.

Lu Zhixian handed the phone back to Old Zhao.

He picked up his sandwich and continued eating.

"When are the finals?"

Old Zhao stared at the number 99.2 on the screen, his voice sounding a bit airy:

"The day after tomorrow."

Lu Zhixian swallowed his food and nodded.

"Alright."

He glanced at the night view of Vienna outside the window, his tone flat.

"That's perfect. I'll have all day tomorrow to walk around."

The phone in Old Zhao's hand vibrated; it was a message from He Zhiyuan back home.

Only two words:

"Excellent."

Immediately after, a second message came in.

It wasn't from He Zhiyuan.

It was an official email from the competition organizing committee, with a line of English in the subject bar.

Old Zhao's expression changed.

"Old Lu."

"Hmm?"

"On Andre's side... he's changed his piece for the finals."

Lu Zhixian's hand holding the sandwich paused for a moment.

Then he smiled.

"Interesting."