The second day after "nocturne" was released.

Lu Zhixian slept until he woke up naturally.

There were over a hundred unread messages on WeChat. He didn't dare open his Weibo DMs.

Old Zhao's group chat had scrolled by another twenty-something messages, with the last one sent at 8:15 AM.

[Old Zhao: As of 8:00 AM this morning, cumulative sales across the three platforms: 1.12 million copies.]

A sentence followed below.

[Old Zhao: I don't even know what punctuation marks to use anymore.]

Lu Zhixian scrolled through them, didn't reply, and got up to wash up.

He took a rough glance at the Weibo trending searches.

"nocturne sales break one million."

"Looping nocturne one hundred times."

"Lu Zhixian dominates the charts."

He clicked into the third one to take a look.

Three platforms, nine number-one spots.

The comments section was already acting abnormal.

"One song taking nine top spots, may I ask if this is reasonable?"

"Reasonable. Because it's Lu Zhixian."

"I suggest the music platforms open a dedicated section just for him, otherwise others can't survive."

"LMAO, other singers must have complicated feelings looking at the charts today."

Lu Zhixian backed out and fried two eggs.

Halfway through eating, he scrolled across a set of data.

Someone had compiled the changes in play counts for other songs on various platforms after "nocturne" went live.

The conclusion was: the combined play counts of seven new songs released on the same day didn't even amount to a fraction of "nocturne".

Someone in the comments section summarized it with one sentence: "One person completely crushed the entire track."

This post was reposted over twenty thousand times.

Lu Zhixian thought this was a bit of an exaggeration.

But the data was right there, and he couldn't refute it.

Around 11:00 AM, cover videos started to explode.

On short-video platforms, there were already thousands of pieces of content under the tag "nocturne Cover".

Some played guitar and sang, some played the intro on piano, and some sang the chorus a cappella.

The quality was uneven, but the play counts were generally not low.

What was interesting was that almost every cover video's comments section had the same type of remark.

"It's sung well, but it's too far off from the original version."

"It's not that you aren't singing well, it's that the original version is too monstrous."

"Finished listening to the cover → Went back to listen to the original → Got critically hit again."

A music blogger with over three million followers posted a cover video; the singing and playing level were solid, and the comments section was full of praise.

At noon, a livestream recording spread across Weibo.

The sharp-tongued content creator "Old Cannon".

This person was an outlier in the music criticism scene, with over four million followers, and was famous for berating others.

After "nocturne" went live last night, many people rushed to his livestream demanding he review it.

He opened it.

The livestream recording wasn't long; the full version was about seven minutes.

When the piano intro came in, he held his thermos cup and took a sip of water.

When the verse started, he put the thermos down.

When the chorus came in, he leaned back.

"This person isn't human; it's someone God is hand-feeding."

After saying that, he ended the livestream.

After this clip was extracted, it was reposted over one hundred thousand times on Weibo.

The comments section was full of people gloating.

"Old Cannon was silenced; I can brag about this for a lifetime."

"How many points does the 'Seven-Point Warrior' give this time? Too afraid to rate it, right?"

"The point isn't that sentence, the point is he didn't interrupt a single word while listening to the whole song. Have you ever seen Old Cannon listen to a song without saying anything?"

"Never seen it. First time since he debuted."

After 2:00 PM, Lu Zhixian's phone rang.

He answered it.

"Big Brother!" The voice on the other end, Jiang Cheng, was even more excited than Old Zhao. "You're too awesome!"

"Alright, don't shout so loudly."

"No, I have to shout. Do you know how many people asked me at the company today? Asking if I really know you. I said, 'More than just know him, we even made a bet!'"

Lu Zhixian chuckled. "You still remember that one yuan?"

"I remember! That was the most correct one yuan of my life!"

Jiang Cheng laughed out loud on the phone.

"Let me tell you, I told the story of that one yuan three times in the office today, and every time I told it, my colleagues' eyes grew a bit more admiring."

"Admiring you for what? Admiring you for spending one yuan?"

"Admiring my good judgment! When you were still nothing, I already determined that you would make it."

"You bet that I would lose back then."

The other end of the line went silent for a second.

"...That's not important. What's important is the result."

Lu Zhixian couldn't be bothered to expose him.

The two chatted for a few more minutes, and Jiang Cheng said that next time he comes to the Magic City, he must treat him to a meal, and it had to be the most expensive one.

Lu Zhixian said alright and hung up.

At 4:00 PM, Lin Shiya reposted the link to "nocturne" on Weibo.

The caption had no words, only one emoji.

A crown.

The repost count broke fifty thousand within ten minutes.

The comments section directly turned into a massive scene of people shipping them.

"What does it mean that Sister posted a crown???"

"Shi-Xian shippers are dying on the spot!!! What kind of divine interaction is this!!!"

"Calm down, they are just friends."

"Would a friend just post a crown? Would a friend???"

"The person above is right, a friend wouldn't. So I choose to believe in love."

"Ship them if you want, but don't take it up with the real people."

The related topic hit the trending searches within half an hour.

"Lin Shiya crown emoji".

It was ranked seventeenth and was still climbing.

Lu Zhixian was lying on the sofa when he saw this trending search.

He clicked into Lin Shiya's Weibo post to take a look, then opened WeChat.

He sent a message to Lin Shiya.

"What does the crown mean?"

Lin Shiya replied in seconds.

"Literal meaning."

Lu Zhixian typed a question mark.

"It's exactly the meaning you understand."

"Which meaning that I understand?"

"Figure it out yourself."

"This is the same as not saying anything."

"Then just pretend I didn't say anything."

Lu Zhixian stared at the screen for two seconds and didn't press further.

After a while, Lin Shiya sent another one.

"The comments section is shipping us."

"I saw."

"Don't you plan to clarify?"

"Clarify what? You post your Weibo, I can't control that."

"That's true."

The conversation ended there.

Lu Zhixian tossed his phone aside and continued watching his documentary.

In the evening, in-depth articles from various media outlets started coming out one after another.

A music critic wrote a long article of nearly three thousand words with a very straightforward title: "No Ceiling".

The article combed through Lu Zhixian's first song, cited a large amount of data and evaluations from peers in the middle, and finally reached a conclusion.

"It is difficult for us to define this person using traditional methods. He does not belong to any single track, or rather, he belongs to all tracks. Every time you think he has reached the top, he switches to another path and continues to climb."

"'nocturne' proves one thing: Lu Zhixian's musical talent is not overrated; on the contrary, all previous evaluations may have underestimated him."

The last paragraph of the article was written very restrainedly.

"In today's Chinese music scene, which is increasingly dependent on traffic and marketing, the appearance of this song is like a reminder. It tells everyone that the power of the work itself has never gone out of style."

This article was reposted tens of thousands of times.

At night.

The house quieted down.

The system panel icon hung in the bottom right corner of his field of vision; he glanced at it.

The popularity points were still jumping.

They weren't jumping as fiercely as last night, but they hadn't stopped.

It refreshed every dozen seconds or so, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand each time.

He watched that string of numbers for a while.