The first chord of the guitar rang out, without any drum beats or special effects building up.

It fell cleanly into the entire venue.

Someone in the audience subconsciously stopped talking. In the fan zone, where people had been shouting for Shen Yihang's group for nearly ten minutes, the light boards remained raised but the hands holding them went still.

Lin Shiya stood in that beam of light, her head lowered, motionless.

Then, she opened her mouth.

"the brightest star in the night sky, can you hear clearly..."

Lu Zhixian sat on the side stage, his hand steady on the strings, keeping the volume controlled at a level that didn't overpower.

His mission wasn't to make himself heard, but to provide a place for Lin Shiya's voice to land.

The first verse concluded.

The entire venue was so quiet that the faint hum of the overhead light racks could be heard.

Shen Yihang stood at the entrance of the waiting tunnel opposite the side stage, clutching a towel given to him by a staff member during the earlier celebration, not yet having left the area.

He glanced at the stage, tightened his grip on the towel, and remained still.

Entering the chorus.

Lin Shiya's voice ascended on the word "pray," opening up directly without any transition.

"I pray for a transparent soul, and eyes that can shed tears—"

The night sky on the big screen filled up at this line, starlight surging from the edges toward the center, reaching its highest density during the chorus.

Lu Zhixian switched to the electric guitar, putting power into his wrist.

In the first row of the public judging area, a girl slowly lowered her light board onto her lap, covered her mouth with both hands, and her eyes turned red.

The person next to her didn't look back at her, because that person's eyes were also red.

At the judges' table, Zhou Qiming set his pen down and didn't touch it again.

"Give me the courage to believe again..."

"To cross the lies and embrace you..."

During the final chorus, Lu Zhixian's harmonies climbed several scales from a low register. It was only a few short lines, but the emotions were directly lifted by those lines, pushed up another level.

Then, he pulled his voice back.

Actively and completely, he left the final long note to Lin Shiya.

Her voice lingered on that note for two seconds before slowly fading out.

Silence filled the venue.

It wasn't just quiet; it was the kind of silence where no one dared to be the first to make a sound.

Three seconds.

Then it exploded.

Applause and screams erupted simultaneously, the two sounds merging to drown out the wave of noise from the end of Shen Yihang's performance.

At the judges' table, Zhou Qiming stood up.

Two judges beside him followed suit, and the third was half a beat slow but also stood up.

The cameras captured this scene and cut to the live broadcast screen.

In that second, the bullet chat was washed white.

It was all the same sentence.

"I didn't expect I would cry."

The camera turned to the side stage.

Shen Yihang was still standing in the same spot with a smile on his face, but the edges of that smile were already failing to hold up.

It wasn't that he was bitter.

He just knew very clearly that this wasn't a gap that stage production could fill.

Lasers could be brighter, smoke machines could be more numerous, but tonight's stage was something else entirely.

He draped the towel over his shoulder, turned, and left without looking back.

The judges' commentary segment began.

Zhou Qiming held the microphone and sat in his chair for a moment before speaking.

"I want to talk about Lu Zhixian first."

There were a few jeers from the audience, but he waved them off. "I'm serious."

"Many people understand the role of a guest singer as the 'icing on the cake.' The guest comes in, puts in their own highlight segment, the popularity of the two stacks up, and everyone looks good."

"But on this stage tonight, that's not what he did."

Zhou Qiming paused.

"He was in the back the whole time. His voice was in the back, his positioning was in the back, even that final harmony—when the emotion was pushed to the peak, he was the first to step back."

"This is the hardest kind of guest performance," he said directly.

"Because you have to first know that you could win against everyone, and then actively choose not to win."

"This isn't guest singing; it's a fulfillment."

The camera next to the judges' table recorded these words. Later, when the show aired, this segment was edited out separately and posted on the official account along with footage of that night's performance.

That same night, the topic trended on the hot search list.

The voting results were announced at the very end.

The host held the results card and paused on stage.

"The combined results of the Public Jury and professional scores for this round's Top 4 Race."

"First place, Lin Shiya's group."

"Leading second place by one hundred and thirty-seven votes."

The audience exploded for the second time.

Standing on stage, Lin Shiya's expression didn't change much upon hearing that number, but something flickered in her eyes before being quickly suppressed.

Lu Zhixian stood beside her, shoved his hands into his pockets, and looked around at the audience.

He was calculating a different set of accounts in his head.

[Current popularity points: ...]

He glanced at the number and closed his eyes inwardly.

Tragic. Truly tragic.

He knew better than anyone how hard it was to accumulate those popularity points. Now, looking at the balance, it was like a damn bank card with insufficient funds.

But whatever.

At least they won.

The show aired three days later.

Before that, Shen Yihang's team tried to start a trend with the keyword direction 'Lu Zhixian steals Lin Shiya's spotlight.'

Forty minutes after it was posted, it was drowned out by passersby giving reverse 'science lessons.'

"I suggest re-watching the performance; he was acting as a Human Foundation in the back the whole time."

This comment was pushed to the top of the hot search discussion, gaining over three hundred thousand likes within two days.

The replies below were perfectly uniform.

"The Human Foundation himself."

"The foundation is fucking better-looking than the building; this is unfair."

"To those saying he stole the spotlight, are we watching the same stage? He never even stood in the front from beginning to end."

"To Shen Yihang's team for this move: I suggest visiting the ENT department."

"LMAO, what the hell is a Human Foundation?"

That last sentence felt somewhat familiar, but netizens felt it was exceptionally appropriate here.

The official hot search eventually settled on three keywords.

**#the brightest star in the night sky**

**#LuZhixianFulfillmentGuestSinging**

**#LinShiyaFirstByALandslide**

The three keywords stayed up for nearly eighteen hours without dropping.

Discussions related to the 'CP' (couple) were actually suppressed during this period. It wasn't that they didn't exist, but everyone was too busy with other things.

"Stop shipping for a second, let me finish crying."

"Seriously, I haven't heard enough of the song yet, why are you talking about relationships?"

"I went back and watched the full stage three more times, not to ship them, but to confirm that what I saw last time wasn't a hallucination."

---

Backstage at the celebration, several crates of drinks were placed in the hallway. Staff members were chatting, and the atmosphere was much more relaxed than during the recording.

Sister Chen leaned against the wall.

She was scrolling through data on her phone. After flipping a page, she couldn't help but put the phone away and smile.

Lin Shiya came out from the inner room, having changed back into her own hoodie. Her hair was tied back up, and she held two bottles of water.

She walked to the other end of the hallway and found Lu Zhixian, who was dazing out while leaning against a storage rack.

He wasn't looking at his phone; he just stood there, staring ahead, thinking about who-knows-what.

Lin Shiya walked over and handed him one of the bottles.

He took it, glanced down at the bottle, and didn't move.

Lin Shiya stood beside him for two seconds in silence.

"Thank you."

Her voice wasn't loud, but the hallway was quiet, and she spoke very clearly.

Lu Zhixian didn't reply immediately.

He stared at the bottle of water in his hand, his mind drifting to the string of numbers on the system interface.

Those popularity points, accumulated bit by bit, traded for hot searches, built up by traffic...

Just like that, they were gone.

He was silent for a full two seconds, then looked up and smiled.

"It's nothing."

He unscrewed the water bottle and took a sip, his tone casual. "Next time, remember to reimburse my flight ticket."

Lin Shiya was stunned for a moment.

Then she laughed out loud.

It wasn't a polite curve of the lips; she truly laughed. The sound was suppressed, but her shoulders shook.

At the other end of the hallway, Sister Chen glanced over from the corner of her eye, took out her phone again, and pretended to look at data.

She thought to herself: If these two officially collaborated on an album, how many hairs would she have left as their manager?

She didn't know. But the data would definitely look good.