Just past midnight, the New Year's fireworks hadn't yet faded.

Lu Zhixian hadn't even stepped off the stage yet, but his phone had already been bombarded with hundreds of messages from Jiang Cheng and Su Qing.

He didn't rush to look.

He returned to the backstage, removed his makeup, changed back into his own clothes, and only then took out his phone to take a look.

Jiang Cheng had sent a voice message, his voice hoarse from shouting: "Brother Lu!!! The song is live!! Both versions dropped at the same time!! The comment section has gone crazy!!!"

Su Qing was even more dramatic, sending a screenshot directly.

In the screenshot, both the Live version and the studio version of "airport 10:30" were hanging on the new song homepage of all major music platforms.

The numbers in the comment section were still skyrocketing.

It had just broken twenty thousand ten minutes ago, and now it was heading towards fifty thousand.

Lu Zhixian shoved his phone into his pocket and waved at Old Li and Da Fei.

"Thanks for your hard work, everyone. I'll treat you all to a meal later."

Old Li threw an arm around his shoulder.

"What kind of meal! Teacher Lu, tonight's performance is enough for me to brag about for a lifetime!"

Da Fei nodded repeatedly from the side, unable to keep his mouth shut from excitement.

Lu Zhixian said goodbye to the band members and got into the minivan arranged by the organizers.

As the car drove out of the venue, he looked through the window and saw that a large crowd of audience members hadn't dispersed outside the stadium.

Several people were holding up their phones to record videos, all shouting his name.

He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes.

Before drowsiness washed over him, one last thought flashed through his mind.

Tomorrow when I wake up, the world should be a little different.

...

At one o'clock in the morning, the comment count for "airport 10:30" surpassed one hundred thousand.

The combined play count of the two versions directly claimed the top two spots on the platform's real-time hit song chart.

On the Weibo trending list, entries related to him were popping up like dumplings.

#Lu Zhixian God-tier vocal runs#

#This is what a real singer is#

#airport 10:30 legendary performance#

#Biggest winner of Star River Music Festival#

The first two entries were hanging directly in the top three of the trending list, marked in red with the word "Explosive".

The comment and repost counts all exceeded one hundred thousand.

Music bloggers, entertainment influencers, and random passersby were all discussing the same thing.

"Is there anyone like me, who went to see Cai Yu, but ended up being glued to my seat by Lu Zhixian and couldn't leave?"

"Let me tell you who were there, the video can't even capture one-tenth of that shock. That voice was drilling directly into your bones."

"I used to think he was just a capable producer, but today I discovered that this guy sings even more fiercely than he writes songs."

What was even more interesting was the music review circle.

Those marketing accounts and amateur music critics who had previously taken money to stir up trouble were now quieter than ever.

Sharp-eyed netizens dug up screenshots—several IDs had quietly deleted their previous posts about "not being optimistic about Lu Zhixian's transition" at two in the morning.

Deleted cleanly, not a single one left.

But the internet has a memory.

After the screenshots were posted, the comment section burst into laughter.

"Running away so fast, even deleted the posts. What about your face? Did you delete that too?"

"You were so majestic when taking the money, now you're cowardly?"

Meanwhile, truly authoritative professional music critics began to speak out.

A well-known music critic in the industry, "Ear Harvester," wrote a thousand-word long article overnight, with a simple and brutal title: "Chinese R&B has waited for ten years, finally waiting for this voice."

The article analyzed Lu Zhixian's live vocal run techniques, breath control, and stage presence frame by frame, and the final sentence was reposted by countless people.

"Don't call him a producer anymore. From tonight on, he is the singer Lu Zhixian."

...

Three o'clock in the morning.

In a high-end apartment building in Jingzhou, Zhao Peng, the head of the PR department at Xingmang Entertainment, was blasted out of bed by a phone call.

On the other end of the phone was Wang Haibin.

"Zhao Peng, did you see the trending list?"

"President Wang, I am processing it."

"Processing my ass!" Wang Haibin cursed, suppressing his voice, "Cai Yu's topics have all been suppressed, the homepage is all Lu Zhixian! Is your PR department useless?"

Zhao Peng gritted his teeth, opened his computer, and quickly issued instructions.

Twenty minutes later, a massive team of internet trolls started operating.

Professional fan accounts, machine-generated play counts, bulk purchases... all possible methods were used.

There was only one goal: to get the data for Cai Yu's latest single up and firmly suppress the chart ranking of "airport 10:30".

By 4:30 in the morning, the play count for Cai Yu's song showed an extremely strange surge.

The increase showed a perfect linear rise, completely different from a normal listening curve.

On the music platform's real-time chart, Cai Yu's new song was forcibly pushed to the first place.

"airport 10:30" was suppressed to second place.

...

After daybreak, the battle became completely white-hot.

Lu Zhixian's fan group was already in an uproar.

The composition of this group was very mixed; there were career fans who had followed him since his talent show days, new fans who were hooked by his New Year's Eve performance, and a batch of fans who had been there since his behind-the-scenes days.

The number of people wasn't particularly large, but their fighting spirit was extremely strong.

"The data is wrong! Cai Yu's song suddenly surged by two million plays at 4 AM. Who listens to music at 4 AM?"

"Look at the growth curve, it's purely machine-generated, it's too obvious."

"Everyone stop talking, go buy it, listen to it, and boost the charts! We can't let capital suppress our brother!"

The fans quickly organized a counterattack.

But the power of capital was there; the money Xingmang Entertainment threw down wasn't something a few hundred scattered fans could withstand.

The numbers on the chart seesawed for two hours, and "airport 10:30" was always stuck in second place, with the gap slowly widening.

The atmosphere in the fan group became increasingly anxious.

"We can't beat them, their trolls are too fierce."

"Relying on just us isn't enough, what should we do?"

However.

Around seven in the morning, something no one expected happened.

A force from the "general public" silently joined the battlefield.

No organization, no slogans, no unified command in the fan group.

It was just one ordinary user after another, clicking into the page for "airport 10:30", listening to it once, then buying it, sharing it, and looping it.

The comment section had many new faces.

"I don't follow celebrities, but this song is really good, I've had it on repeat all morning."

"Finally someone is singing real R&B! I've been brainwashed by electronic dance music hits for the past two years and my head hurts, thanks to Lu Zhixian for saving my ears."

"A 35-year-old uncle passing by. I didn't pay attention to any idol singers before, but I stumbled upon his live performance clip during the New Year's countdown last night, and this voice made me cry. Without saying a word, I topped up my membership and downloaded it."

"My mom watched the New Year's gala last night, and this morning she asked me what the name of that young man in black was, and asked me to help her download the song. My mom. She's fifty-six."

Under these comments, the like counts soared.

The explosion of the general public had no warning, but it came surging and lasting.

Because it didn't need anyone to incite it.

Good music is good music; this truth never needs internet trolls to prove it.

At 7:30 in the morning, the growth rate of "airport 10:30" began to overtake.

At 7:45, the gap between the two songs was wiped out.

Eight o'clock sharp.

On the real-time hit song charts of all music platforms, "airport 10:30" simultaneously topped the list at number one.

Play count, download count, collection count—all three data points were leading by a wide margin.

The second place was left behind by an uncatchable distance.

The troll data that Xingmang Entertainment had poured money into didn't even cause a ripple in the face of this real flood of traffic.

What was even more fatal was that the backends of several mainstream music platforms simultaneously detected abnormal data fluctuations in Cai Yu's song.

At nine in the morning, two platforms successively issued announcements, auditing the data for Cai Yu's song and issuing yellow card warnings to the relevant accounts.

Once the announcement was made, Cai Yu's fan circle exploded.

Cursing the platform, cursing the company, cursing Lu Zhixian—there were all kinds of voices.

But no matter how loud the cursing was, it couldn't change one fact.

They lost.

Lost cleanly.

...

Lu Zhixian was completely unaware of all this.

He had returned to the hotel last night and fallen asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, not even charging his phone.

When he woke up, it was already ten in the morning.

The sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains made him squint; he turned over and fished his phone out from under his pillow.

The moment the screen lit up, the message notifications were so numerous they almost burst the notification bar.

The WeChat group had 999+ messages.

Jiang Cheng had sent dozens of voice messages separately, and the content of the last one was: "Brother Lu, are you dead??? Damn it, reply to a message!!!"

Su Qing had also sent several, her tone changing from excitement to worry to excitement: "Teacher Lu, you must still be sleeping... Forget it, sleep slowly, anyway, we've already reached number one!"

Lu Zhixian rubbed his eyes and clicked into the music platform to take a look.

Number one on all platforms.

Leading by a wide margin.

He stared at the screen for two seconds, then threw his phone onto the quilt, lay flat on his back, and stretched comfortably.

Lu Zhixian whistled, feeling great, and got out of bed to boil a pot of hot water.

When he came back with the cup, he started replying to the messages one by one.

He replied to Jiang Cheng first: "I'm alive, don't get excited, watch your heart."

Then he replied to Su Qing: "Thanks, Xiao Su, I'll treat you to hot pot another day."

Then he saw an unread message.

Sent at 9:12 this morning.

From Lin Shiya.

He opened it.

"Congratulations on number one."

Simple two words, followed by a period.

Very Lin Shiya.

But there was another paragraph below.

"The day after tomorrow at three in the afternoon, I'm going to Jingzhou, Left Bank Cafe, let's talk about our cooperation."

Lu Zhixian was just about to reply when he realized the message wasn't finished, and swiped down.

"Also, someone wants to blacklist you. We'll talk about it in detail when we meet."

The hand holding the cup paused.

He stared at that last sentence for three seconds, then put down the cup.