The chorus ended, and Su Ran made no extra movements.

He just stood there under that beam of white light, holding the microphone with both hands.

"Paint a girl to stay by my side."

"And paint a quilt with embroidered edges."

When these lyrics came out, they were telling a story.

In the second row of the judges' bench, an independent musician wearing a hat leaned forward.

He had been looking down at his phone, but this line of lyrics dragged him back.

There was movement starting in the audience.

It wasn't screaming; it was the sound of sniffing emerging from the silence.

Scattered, it drifted in from different corners.

The bridge.

The arrangement here did something that defied common sense.

All instruments were stripped away, leaving only a track of extremely low-frequency synthesizer as a base, so low it was almost inaudible. The vocals were completely suspended in a vacuum.

Su Ran sang the final line.

"Paint a moon for the lonely night sky."

The volume dropped to the bottom. Airy vocals. The tail of each word dragged a thin layer of raspiness.

Among the over six hundred people in the studio, not one moved.

Even the cameraman slowed down the movement of the lens.

The music stopped.

Four seconds of dead silence.

Then the applause crashed down.

The back rows of the audience exploded first; someone stood up, prompting the people next to them to stand as well.

Two, five, an entire row.

The VIP seats in the front row couldn't stay seated either, rising with a rustle.

Su Ran stood on the stage, a bit dazed by the sheer force of the noise.

He gripped the microphone, his Adam's apple bobbing once, but he didn't speak.

Backstage, Zhou Qiming held his thermos to his lips but didn't drink.

He stared at the monitor for a few seconds before putting the cup down.

"A bit interesting."

Just those three words, with no further evaluation.

But the assistant nearby noticed that when Zhou Qiming put the cup down, his fingers tapped twice on the side of the thermos.

This was a habit of his; he only did this when he encountered an opponent who forced him to re-evaluate.

...

The judges' commentary segment.

The first to get the microphone was He Wanqing on the far left of the judges' bench, a veteran female singer in the Chinese music scene who had been retired for ten years and was invited back by the production team after three persistent requests.

Her voice was a bit shaky when she spoke.

"Su Ran, I owe you an apology."

The whole place went silent again.

"I looked at your profile before I came and put your name in the 'just passing through' column." She took off her glasses and wiped them.

"But this song—no, this voice—makes me feel that I was very arrogant. You are a singer, not an idol. Those two words are not the same."

Another round of applause rose from the audience.

The second to speak was a bald producer, a technician in the industry who never spoke pretty words.

"Let's talk about the arrangement."

"The arrangement of this song did a very risky thing, stripping away everything that could bolster the performance, leaving only the vocals. This approach isn't new in a recording studio, but in a variety show setting, it's equivalent to going onto the battlefield without armor."

He paused.

"The point is, he bet right. Su Ran's timbre was completely released under this minimalist arrangement. Frankly, I've been making music for twenty years, and this kind of natural vocal quality is rare. Lu Zhixian's approach to this arrangement is at a very high level."

The microphone was passed to the third person.

A middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses. Judge number #12.

He cleared his throat, his face wearing a professional expression that said 'I understand, but...'

"Su Ran's progress is obvious; there's no doubt about that."

Having finished the preamble, his tone shifted.

"But I want to say from another perspective that a competitive stage is about comprehensive presentation. This song did well in emotional expression,"

"But the stage impact was indeed a bit weak. Putting a quiet folk song in this kind of competition format, in terms of song selection strategy, I personally think it wasn't smart enough."

The audience hummed with noise.

Someone shouted something but was stopped by the staff.

The next two judges also spoke, and their evaluations were mostly positive.

But that phrase "song selection wasn't smart enough" had already been thrown out, like a nail driven into the stage.

...

Voting.

The twenty judges each scored on their tablets, and the large screen summarized them in real-time.

In the backstage monitoring room, Lu Zhixian stood in the corner, hands in his pockets, eyes fixed on that data screen.

The scores jumped out one by one.

8.5, 9.0, 8.0, 9.5, 8.5, 9.0.

The score range of the normal judges was very concentrated, from 8 to 9.5, which was the highest tier among all the contestants that night.

Then three numbers jumped out.

6.0. 5.5. 6.5.

Lu Zhixian's gaze lingered on these three numbers for two seconds.

These people weren't even pretending anymore.

His expression didn't change at all.

He just pulled his hand out of his pocket, took out his phone, and typed three numbers into a memo.

7. 12. 18.

The numbers of the three judges.

Lu Zhixian locked his phone and tapped the edge of the screen twice with his finger.

The overall rankings came out. Adding the online audience votes, Su Ran ranked fifth overall.

Out of eight groups of contestants, the bottom two would be eliminated. Fifth place was one step above the safety line.

Surviving, but surviving poorly.

...

Lin Feng was the seventh to perform.

The song Zhou Qiming had arranged for him was in a dominant posture from the very first note.

It was incredibly explosive.

Lin Feng's vocal condition was indeed solid. Stable high notes, bright mid-range; technically, no faults could be found.

The judges' bench applauded collectively.

Those three—7, 12, and 18—gave scores of 9.5, 9.5, and 10.0.

Overall ranking: First.

Lin Feng stepped off the stage and brushed past Su Ran in the corridor.

He gave a slight nod, said nothing, and left.

...

The recording of the first round ended.

The bottom two groups were eliminated, and Su Ran survived, stuck in fifth place.

In the dressing room, Su Ran sat in front of the mirror, his phone screen lit up.

His manager had called twice, and he hadn't answered. When the third call came in, he picked up.

"Su Ran, are you crazy? Singing folk? Do you have any idea—"

Beep.

He hung up.

He placed the phone face down on the counter and looked at the person in the white shirt in the mirror for a while.

Ten minutes later, he stood at the door of Lu Zhixian's room, clutching a score sheet printed by the production team.

The door wasn't closed.

"Come in."

Su Ran walked in, spread the score sheet on the table, and pointed to those three numbers.

He didn't speak.

Lu Zhixian glanced at it.

"I know. The scores from those three people are abnormal."

Su Ran was stunned for a moment.

Lu Zhixian didn't explain how he knew, nor did he launch into an analysis; he just asked a question in return.

"Do you think you sang well today?"

Su Ran thought for a few seconds and nodded.

"The best since my debut three years ago."

"Then that's enough."

Lu Zhixian stood up, walked to the window, and with his back to Su Ran, pulled the curtain open a crack.

"They want to use scores to suppress us, so for the second round, I'll make a song that will make those three people pull their hands back even if they want to give a low score. Because they won't be able to afford the embarrassment."

Su Ran clenched his fist.

"I'll listen to you."

...

On the night the first episode of the program aired, #Su Ran Driftwood# rushed to the third spot on the trending searches.

"Is this really Su Ran singing? Are my ears broken?"

"Damn, I'm a six-foot-tall guy, and I'm crying like a dog."

"What level is Lu Zhixian's arrangement? Creating the greatest impact in the quietest way—how is this guy's brain wired?"

"Wait, I have a question. Judge No. 7 gave a 5.5? No. 18 gave a 6.0? Are your ears on your asses? Other judges gave the same song a 9.5, and you give a 5.5? Is this score gap normal?"

Scattered voices of doubt emerged. They hadn't gained much momentum yet, but the sparks had landed.

...

1:00 AM, hotel room.

Lu Zhixian hadn't turned on the lights; only his laptop screen was glowing.

He still hadn't opened the program's song library.

For the second round's song, he was going to choose an explosive one from the system.

"Painting" used restraint; he couldn't take the same path for the second round. This time, he had to fight head-on.

It wasn't about who was quieter, but whose fist was harder.

3:47 AM.

He had hesitated for a long time about whether to buy this song because its popularity value was too high.

If he bought it all at once, his heart wouldn't be able to take it.

"Screw it, let's do it!"

[Congratulations to the host for obtaining 'living viva']

Lu Zhixian felt as if his body had been hollowed out; more than half of his accumulated popularity points were gone, but he didn't regret it.

He immediately put on his headphones and played it from the beginning. Three minutes and thirty-two seconds.

It was still that familiar feeling.

After it finished, he took off his headphones.

He picked up his phone and sent a message to Su Ran.

Four words.

"Come hear the song tomorrow."

...

At the same time.

In a suite at a hotel in Jingzhou, Qin Haoran finished his third phone call and tossed his phone onto the nightstand.

"The first round is fine; Su Ran's score was suppressed."

He unscrewed a bottle of mineral water, took a sip, and muttered to himself while looking at the night view outside the window.

"In the second round, crush him completely. No matter how famous Lu Zhixian is, he's just a songwriter. Whoever holds the rules of the competition gets the final say."

He turned off the lights.

What he didn't know was that the 'just a songwriter' hadn't slept yet at 4:00 AM.