111: Chapter 111 I'm warning you, if you want to take on disciples, take me first. I'm number one in line.

Zhou Tong took a deep breath and began to play.

The opening section was fine, smooth and clean.

Then came the middle section.

His left hand had to span more than half the keyboard to reach that set of broken chords.

His arm tensed, his wrist twisted, and his fingers barely managed to press down.

The sound was muffled.

His hand had also lost its proper form.

He stopped, his face showing the kind of frustration that had been seen all too many times.

Four hundred people watched the stage; no one made a sound.

Lu Zhixian didn't say anything.

He walked to Zhou Tong's side and crouched down.

He reached out his left hand and grasped Zhou Tong's wrist.

His five fingers loosely held both sides of the wrist.

“Don't be too nervous.”

Zhou Tong looked at him.

“Your current movement is like reaching out to grab something on the opposite table; your entire arm is stiff. Change your mindset.”

“Your house has doors, right? When you turn a doorknob, doesn't your wrist rotate naturally? You don't even have to think about it, right?”

Zhou Tong nodded.

Lu Zhixian guided his wrist through a rotating motion.

His hand led Zhou Tong's fingers from one end to the other, the wrist naturally turning in an arc, each finger landing in sequence on the keys they were meant to hit.

“Try it once.”

Zhou Tong closed his eyes and tried once.

The sound came out, but it was a bit rough.

“Again.”

The second time.

It was smoother. The rotation of the wrist began to have its own rhythm.

“Again.”

The third time.

His left hand swept across the keyboard, and every note of the broken chord fell exactly where it was supposed to.

Mellow. Clear. Coherent.

Not a single muffled note.

The lecture hall was silent for two seconds.

Zhou Tong looked down at his left hand.

His fingers remained on the keys without moving, as if he couldn't believe the sound he had just produced was his own.

He suddenly looked up at Lu Zhixian, who was crouching beside him.

His eyes were red.

His lips moved twice, but no words came out.

Two months.

He had spent two months in the practice room.

Practicing until his fingers went numb, practicing until his vision went dark when he stood up from the piano stool at midnight.

Three minutes.

It only took three minutes to get it.

Applause started from the back row and exploded row by row.

He Zhiyuan took off his glasses, lowered his head, and wiped the corner of his eye with the back of his hand.

The old professor sitting next to him glanced at him but didn't speak.

Because that old professor's own eyes were also a bit stinging.

Before the applause had fully died down, Lu Zhixian had already stood up straight.

“Who else? While it's still hot.”

Three more came up.

The first was a girl; her right-hand legato wasn't smooth enough, with gaps always appearing between notes.

Lu Zhixian had her raise her right hand and suspend it above the tabletop.

“When you walk, your heel leaves the ground before the ball of your foot lands, right? It's the same for your fingers on the keys. Walk, don't jump.”

The girl tried twice.

The legato connected. It was so clean that even she was stunned.

Two minutes.

The second was a boy; he pressed the pedal too heavily, turning the harmony into a muddled mess.

Lu Zhixian made a twisting gesture beside him.

“You've used a kitchen faucet at home, right? To adjust the water flow, you turn it gently; you don't kick the pipe. The pedal is a switch to control the sound, not an accelerator.”

A burst of muffled laughter came from the audience.

When the boy stepped on it again, the pressure from his foot was noticeably more delicate. The harmony became clearly layered.

One and a half minutes.

The third was a girl; her touch was inconsistent, sometimes heavy and sometimes light, which was particularly obvious in the high-register.

Lu Zhixian directly pressed down on her fingertips and slowly pushed them onto the keys.

“You're using your fingertips right now. It's too hard. Move back a bit from the tip to the pad of the finger, and let the center of gravity fall naturally with the weight of the finger. Don't smash it; place it.”

Under his guidance, the girl's fingers shifted by an extremely tiny angle.

She played again.

The sound was completely different.

The granularity of the high-register came out, no longer flickering in clarity.

Three minutes.

Every time a problem was solved, a round of applause exploded from the audience.

When the last girl finished playing and stood up, tears fell directly; she kept saying “Thank you” while wiping them away, bowing three times before leaving the stage.

Among the students below who hadn't been called, several had held their hands up for the entire class, refusing to lower them even when their arms grew sore, their faces filled with the urgency of not being chosen.

A boy sitting on the aisle steps muttered softly, “I've raised my hand for six rounds already...”

The person next to him patted his shoulder. “Accept your fate; look, the whole room has their hands up.”

The class, originally scheduled for an hour and a half, went forty minutes overtime.

Not a single person left.

Even the three layers of people crowding the doorway hadn't budged.

Lu Zhixian walked back to the piano and sat down.

His hands fell onto the keys, and he began to play.

A melody without a name.

It wasn't classical, it wasn't pop; it was like everything was kneaded together, yet it was nothing at all.

The rhythm was loose and casual, with a hint of jazz flavor.

Thirty seconds.

He finished playing.

The final note slowly dissipated in the lecture hall.

Lu Zhixian looked up at the four hundred faces in the audience.

“Don't fight with it.”

“Play with it.”

“Class dismissed.”

Silence for a second.

Then the applause of the entire lecture hall exploded simultaneously; everyone stood up—four hundred people, not one remained seated.

The applause lasted for a long time.

So long that even after Lu Zhixian shouldered his canvas bag and walked off the stage, the clapping continued behind him.

In the corridor.

Twenty minutes after the class ended, no one had dispersed.

Students gathered in groups of three or five; some crouched in corners replaying secretly recorded videos on their phones, watching the “turning the doorknob” segment repeatedly; some leaned on windowsills flipping through notebooks, muttering, “The tonic chord is salt, the dominant chord is chili”; some stared blankly at the end of the corridor, not moving for a long time.

A girl sat on the steps of the stairwell corner, hugging her knees.

Her roommate next to her leaned in to ask what was wrong.

She shook her head.

“I've studied piano for ten years, and only today do I feel like someone has told me that you don't have to be so exhausted.”

At the end of the third-floor corridor.

He Zhiyuan stood by the window, still clutching that pen.

His notebook was spread open, filled with two whole pages of writing.

The handwriting was far less neat than usual.

The oldest white-haired professor nearby walked over and stood behind him for a while.

“Old He.”

He Zhiyuan didn't turn around.

The white-haired professor's voice was very soft.

“I just sat down there for two hours.”

“For a moment, I suddenly thought: if someone had taught me like this thirty years ago, would I have been a bit happier playing the piano?”

He Zhiyuan's pen paused.

He closed the notebook and remained silent for a few seconds.

“Things I've taught for thirty years...”

“...were explained clearly by a young man in a hoodie using analogies of cooking and playing video games.”

The white-haired professor didn't respond.

It wasn't that he didn't know what to say.

It was that he didn't know where to begin.

A commotion came from the other end of the corridor; some students had recognized He Zhiyuan and were hesitantly running over to ask questions.

He Zhiyuan stuffed the notebook into his pocket and turned to walk toward his office.

After taking two steps, he suddenly stopped and said without turning his head,

“Help me check if Lu Zhixian has any more public arrangements.”

The white-haired professor was stunned.

“You're going to listen again?”

He Zhiyuan pushed open the office door.

“I've taught classes for thirty years.”

“Today, he gave me a lesson.”

The door closed.

Meanwhile, Lu Zhixian was sitting in the back seat of Old Zhao's car, scrolling through his phone.

On the system panel, his popularity points were jumping up at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Old Zhao glanced at him through the rearview mirror.

“Do you know what a student said to me when they chased me to the school gate just now?”

“What did they say?”

“He said, 'Brother Zhao, is Teacher Lu coming back next time? I can help him wipe the piano.'”

Lu Zhixian chuckled but didn't respond.

A news notification popped up on his phone screen.

He glanced at the headline, and his finger stopped.

The content of the push notification was only one line—

“Official Statement from the International Piano Competition Organizing Committee: We sincerely invite Chinese contestant Lu Zhixian to participate in the 38th Xiaohua International Piano Competition.”

Lu Zhixian stared at the screen for three seconds.

“Interesting.”