40: Chapter 40 Lu Jin's Trump Card

Then everyone laughed even harder.

For a moment, Lu Qingyu's popularity climbed steadily.

Lu Jin was furious; he had originally wanted to set a trap for Lu Qingyu, but it ended up making Lu Qingyu the center of attention for the two girls. He wanted to dig deeper, but a Staff Member came in to tell them the show was about to start, so Lu Jin had to give up.

Chen Ting and the others also came out of their lounges, and all eight guests took their seats at the front of the stage.

The stage and equipment for "Music Partner" had been significantly upgraded from the previous season, featuring a grand and magnificent style. Facing the stage were four sets of sofas arranged in a semi-circle, with one set for each pair of contestants.

The Host was already in position, introducing the program and the rules for the first episode on stage.

In the first episode, the newcomers must sing original songs. The voting power lies in the hands of the live-streaming netizens. The person with the highest total score at the end will become the champion of the show and receive a prize of one million, in addition to their appearance fee.

All guests were in place. The performance order for the first round was based on the ranking of online votes.

Lou Qingran was the first to perform. She sang a theme song from a TV drama. Because the drama was a hit, the song was extremely popular online, used as background music for various videos across the internet.

Lu Jin and Zhang Xiaoxiao felt a sense of crisis. They had originally thought Lou Qingran would save this song as her trump card, but they didn't expect her to sing it right at the start.

After Lou Qingran finished singing, there was a one-minute voting period. Once the time was up, the voting channel closed.

“Qingran is so steady live; she truly is someone who has been following her master onto the stage since she was a child.”

“A future queen of the music scene. To be so outstanding at such a young age—Old Li, you have a good disciple.”

The four guest teachers chatted below the stage, unable to resist praising Lou Qingran to Li Qingming. Since she was his disciple, Li Qingming was naturally happy to hear her being praised.

“You flatter her. This disciple of mine does have a bit of talent.”

The final vote count came out: Lou Qingran had 1.23 million votes, immediately drawing cheers from the entire audience.

This was a very high number of votes. One must know that the champion of the previous season only had 1.12 million votes in the first round. Lou Qingran had surpassed the champion by so many votes.

This opening was hard to follow. The next one to perform was Zhang Xiaoxiao.

The song she chose was no surprise—it was the song that made her a hit on the internet, "Drunken Beauty".

After the music started, everyone sat below listening.

Although Lu Qingyu's eyes were on the stage, his mind had already wandered elsewhere.

He was thinking about what investment projects to pursue with his appearance fee and prize money after the show ended.

Wang Ning was executing projects according to Lu Qingyu's instructions, and "the temptation to go home" had already finished filming nearly half of its content.

Because the production crew wasn't top-tier—the director and actors were all students—the resulting footage was a bit amateurish. Wang Ning, being a man of aesthetic taste, had the post-production team edit ten episodes to send to Lu Qingyu for an initial review to see if they met the standard.

Otherwise, if everything was filmed at this quality and Lu Qingyu was dissatisfied and demanded a reshoot, the losses would be heavy.

Wang Ning nervously sent them to Lu Qingyu, finding the wait for a reply excruciating. What would the young boss say? Poor quality, bad acting, stiff dialogue?

Insufficient plot conflict, ugly filters?

Wang Ning thought of ten thousand flaws Lu Qingyu might pick out, but he didn't expect Lu Qingyu to only reply with two words: "Approved."

Lu Qingyu's goal was very clear. He only gave Wang Ning a budget of 200,000, and he was prepared for the short drama's quality to be poor. However, this short drama exceeded his expectations; it was actually quite well done.

Although the actors' skills were green, it was clear they were professionals. He didn't have high requirements for the editing—as long as it was logical and smooth—but the editing turned out to be quite good too.

The purpose of a short drama is to be satisfying. As long as the core of the drama is maintained—a climax in every episode, making it impossible for people to stop watching—other aspects can be relaxed.

However, what he didn't expect was that precisely because the director and actors were students, they not only took less money but also had a serious attitude. They would edit however you said and film all night if you asked.

This could be considered a pleasant surprise.

On this side, Zhang Xiaoxiao had already finished singing. Among internet celebrities, Zhang Xiaoxiao's singing was decent, though a bit inferior compared to Lou Qingran. Zhang Xiaoxiao got 1.02 million votes, with her top donor contributing quite a bit.

The next one was Lu Jin, who was already backstage at this moment.

Although Lou Qingran was excellent, he was confident that the person with the highest votes in the debut stage would be him, because he was about to reveal his most deeply hidden trump card.

When he was sixteen, he had once anonymously posted a song online. This song was written by one of his classmates; he thought it was good at the time, so he gave the classmate 3,000 yuan to buy the song.

Because he had long planned to enter the entertainment industry, he had his father spend a lot of money to find an arrangement teacher to produce the song. He released the first song of his life under the name "Nine Songs".

Unexpectedly, this song became a hit in the Gu-feng (ancient style) circle, even becoming a song that everyone in that circle must sing.

This stage required original songs. As long as he sang this song, his identity as "Nine Songs" would be known to everyone. By then, whether in terms of buzz or votes, he would definitely be the highest.

On stage, Lu Jin stood in the light holding a microphone. As the accompaniment began, everyone felt it sounded familiar. Sure enough, the moment Lu Jin opened his mouth, a flash of shock appeared in the eyes of Zhang Xiaoxiao and Lou Qingran.

The audience below was also stunned, shouting directly from their seats.

Among the live-stream viewers, especially those in the Gu-feng circle, many couldn't help but scream when they heard this song.

“Did I hear that right? He sang 'searching for you'.”

“Doesn't the show require original songs? How can he sing a song by Nine Songs?”

“Lu Jin is Nine Songs, didn't everyone know?”

This bullet comment was posted by someone Lu Jin had hired. He found internet water armies to drive the narrative; he was determined to get on the hot search topics today.

Sure enough, seeing this news, everyone was going crazy.

“Great Master Nine Songs is actually only 18 years old? Two years ago he was only 16!”

“So unexpected, ahhh, so handsome.”

“This song was the first one that got me into Gu-feng music. I didn't expect it to be Lu Jin.”

As Lu Jin sang on stage, the audience below remained very excited. Seeing the audience's reaction, Lu Jin knew he was set.

As Lu Jin's partner this time, Jiang Yu was also very happy to see Lu Jin's popularity so high. With Lu Jin's popularity, it seemed their group could work hard to fight for first place.

By the time Lu Jin finished singing and the music had ended, people were still shouting below. The Host went on stage to maintain order and then asked the question everyone was interested in.

Host: “I saw everyone's reaction was very intense from below. Why is that?”