12:17 AM.

Weibo user @PasserbyAWhoDoesntKnowWhatNameToCall, with a hand visibly trembling, pointed their phone at the big screen in front of them and snapped a photo.

The exposure was blown out, and the angle was off by eight degrees, but the words on it were crystal clear.

They didn't add any descriptive text, only writing one sentence before posting it.

“Brothers, I might be going crazy. See for yourselves.”

It took four minutes for the photo to spread.

—

Those with fast internet saw it first.

Then came the netizens who had never seen the same name appear so densely in their lives.

Then came the passersby who had just come out of other screening rooms and hadn't even entered this theater yet.

Finally, it reached the entire internet—everyone who wasn't asleep in the early hours of the morning and was lying in bed scrolling through their phones.

In the photo, under the music section of the credits, the three characters for [Lu Zhixian] were packed tightly together, overwhelming the entire screen and covering it completely.

The first wave of comments was surprisingly uniform.

“Photoshopped.”

“Obviously Photoshopped. Are the PS skills getting this lazy?”

“Printing error? Is this the biggest blunder in film history?”

“One person doing the workload of a full symphony orchestra? Does he have three heads and six arms? Is this some kind of a fucking international joke?”

Reasonable. This should be the first reaction of any normal person seeing this screenshot.

The problem was, before long, another group of people began replying to the thread.

“I just came out of the theater. It's not Photoshopped.”

“+1 to the person above. I saw it with my own eyes. The credits rolled very slowly, and I stared at the entire music department list until it finished.”

“It's not just Lu Zhixian; even the mixing, mastering, and vocal chanting were all him.”

“There's also the piano, violin, and cello solos, synthesizer programming... I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me at the time and rubbed them several times.”

The internet fell silent for about three minutes.

That three-minute silence was the overheat protection mechanism of carbon-based brains operating under high load.

Then, the comment section exploded.

—

At 1:00 AM, the “Music Judge” used his account—which was always known for being professional, objective, and having a verifiable basis for its sharp wit and criticism—to post an extremely strongly-worded long Weibo.

“Regarding the screenshot of the end credits of ‘under the starry sky’ currently circulating online, I have only one thing to say: Absolutely impossible.”

“The music for a theatrical-level sci-fi blockbuster covers more than a dozen highly professional sub-fields such as orchestral composition, string arrangement, electronic synthesis, recording engineering, mixing, and mastering. Each one of these is a direction that a person might not be able to master even after spending ten years on it.”

“Xian Dong Wo Xin Studio has absolutely no bottom line when it comes to hype.”

“This is just a name placement; there is bound to be a production team of considerable scale behind it.”

This Weibo post surpassed twenty thousand likes.

The comments below were all neatly lined up, nodding in agreement.

“Judge Teacher is right; this is just a marketing stunt.”

“To put it bluntly, it's just for traffic. They're riding on Director Zhang's coattails, maliciously hyping it up, and stepping on legitimate soundtrack masters.”

“I've disliked this studio, Xian Dong Wo Xin, for a long time. They've been coasting on those few catchy pop songs from their debut. This time they're directly clout-chasing a film giant; they really have no shame.”

—

But on the other side, Lu Zhixian's old fans, as well as that group of 'Hardman Ranking Squad' who had been tempered with iron will during the chart battles, began to take up the challenge.

Their way of responding was very 'hardman'.

“What do you mean impossible? My Teacher Lu is a hexagon warrior. What do you mortals know?”

“Last time with ‘love you,’ you all said it was a joke. What happened? Does your face hurt?”

“Don't use what you've seen to frame what you haven't; it makes you look pathetic.”

Then came another even more extreme wave:

“Guys, stop arguing. Let me ask a question. Is it possible that Lu Zhixian is actually an octopus? One main body and seven clones, each responsible for one part, with the main body coordinating everything. In that case, does the workload count as one person or eight?”

This comment surpassed thirty thousand likes.

“The person above is thinking too small. What's an octopus? He might be a squid; they have more tentacles.”

“Both of you above are thinking too small. He might be a consciousness entity. He doesn't need hands; he controls the synthesizers directly with neurons.”

“...I just want to ask you guys one thing. That pipe organ section really isn't something a human can do. The emotional handling of the pipe organ at that time—”

“Shut up, stop analyzing. Just believe it or get lost.”

The Hardman Ranking Squad had always been known for this concise and straightforward style of debate.

—

Professionals also entered the fray at this time.

An account claiming to be the assistant to the dean of a certain music conservatory listed twelve full points to demonstrate the impossibility of 'one person independently completing a full set of soundtracks for a theatrical film'.

Calculating from working hours, producing an orchestral soundtrack of this magnitude would take a professional team at least six to eight months.

Mixing and mastering are independent acoustic engineering disciplines that require professional sound engineers and dedicated monitoring environments.

The writing of string arrangements alone requires an almost perverse control over the parts of the entire orchestra...

He wrote two thousand words in a grand, sweeping style.

The conclusion was:

“In summary, completion by one person is a physical impossibility.”

“If Director Zhang Ji continues to insist on this claim, I will raise a formal challenge and issue a statement together with my industry colleagues.”

This Weibo post was reposted nearly fifty thousand times.

The scolding and the praising were split fifty-fifty.

The scolding went like this:

“Threats? Who do you think you are? A joint statement? I declare that I co-signed a statement before I left the house this morning, declaring you a piece of trash.”

The praising went like this:

“Well said! With these reasons, any single one taken out on its own can turn that screenshot into a joke!”

The two sides threw insults at each other, arguing until the world turned dark.

By that afternoon, the topic #Lu Zhixian One Man Army# shot to the number one spot on Weibo's trending searches, followed by a large character for “Explosive”.

This was already the third time Lu Zhixian had topped the trending searches in these two months.

—

In Xian Dong Wo Xin Studio, no one knew what Lu Zhixian was doing at this moment.

His sleep schedule had been irregular these past few days. No matter who knocked on the door, they didn't know if the person inside was asleep or awake, or if a pair of dark circles or a high-spirited face would open the door.

But in fact, Lu Zhixian was currently sitting in the studio, eating takeout and scrolling through the trending searches.

That takeout was still the Grandmaster Spicy Chicken Leg Rice.

He had been following this matter intermittently since noon, watching “One Man Army” grow from nothing, from a small skirmish to a trending search. He hadn't said a single word throughout the entire process, not even updating his Weibo.

People were tagging him in the comment section.

“@Lu Zhixian Hubby, say something, hubby!”

There were also old fans:

“@Lu Zhixian Get out here. My legs are broken from kneeling. Just tell the truth, is that list real?”

—

At exactly 8:00 PM that night.

Zhang Ji updated his personal Weibo.

The last time this account was updated was the news of the start of filming for ‘under the starry sky’.

During the entire filming period, he hadn't posted a single thing. Even during the film's promotion period, he was basically in a state of vanishing from the face of the earth, leaving all promotion to the team.

This Weibo post was the first one of the year.

The number of reposts surpassed twenty thousand within the first minute of it being posted.

The Weibo text read:

“There are always people who question miracles they haven't seen. Words are useless; I'll show you some behind-the-scenes footage.”

Below was a video link.

The video cover was a recording studio with dim, yellow lighting.

—

The comment section below this Weibo post was blown into scorched earth.

“Director Zhang is out!!!”

“Click it! Click it! Click it quickly!”

“My hands are shaking, my hands are really shaking. I swear I'm not faking it; my fingers are trembling.”

“What does behind-the-scenes mean? There's a recording? There's really a recording?”

The video's view count surpassed one million within three minutes of the link being posted.

Five minutes, three million.

At this moment, scattered, giggling netizens who already sensed something before even watching the video began to appear in the “Music Judge's” comment section.

“Judge Teacher, is this long post of yours below... still there?”

“Judge Teacher, I suggest you log off Weibo first, calm down, and watch it in a bit.”

“Judge Teacher... the footage is out. You might want to prepare yourself mentally.”

The behind-the-scenes video had a total duration of thirty-seven minutes and twenty-two seconds.

In those thirty-seven minutes and twenty-two seconds, the lighting in the recording studio remained dim and yellow, and the camera remained fixed at the same angle.

Lu Zhixian alone, piece of equipment after piece of equipment, track after track of audio.

The video ended with the second he smiled at the camera.

His eyes were bleary with sleep, his hair was a mess, and his T-shirt was so wrinkled its original shape couldn't be discerned.

“Finished. Going to sleep.”

The video ended.

The comment section went completely silent.

That kind of silence was even more absolute than the silence in a theater—because at least three hundred people in a theater can hear each other's breathing, but the silence in an internet comment section is silence in the truest sense.

After about two minutes, the first comment appeared.

“...Fuck.”

“I said it was Photoshopped before. I apologize.”

“Where's the Music Judge? Where's Judge Teacher? Where's the joint statement?”

“Wait, am I the only one who noticed he's a bit handsome when he's working seriously?”

“What the hell are you talking about above—actually, wait, you're not wrong.”

Then, the “Music Judge's” Weibo homepage welcomed the highest peak of visitor traffic since the account's creation.

His two-thousand-word long post was still hanging there, without a single word changed.

The comment section had been completely overrun.

Netizens flooded into the “Music Judge's” Weibo comments, but this time they didn't scold him.

Instead, they posted in a neat formation.

“Lord Judge, stop analyzing. Come out and see your God Lu!”

“@Music Judge Wake up! Get up to see the joke, Version 2.0!”