96: The final episode

With Lou Qingran giving Lu Qingyu and the others a heads-up, everyone had an idea of what to expect.

Sure enough, when they arrived at the recording studio that evening, Lu Qingyu saw the director walking toward them with a smile so wide his face looked like a blooming chrysanthemum.

The director was planning to go big this time. He had spent a long time coming up with the theme for this episode: each singer would have three audience members randomly selected to specify their musical style, instrument, and theme keywords for the performance, and it had to be an original work.

When the director first proposed this idea, most of the planning team opposed it, believing there were too many uncertain factors involved.

Starting with musical style, this included rock, pop, traditional Chinese, folk, and various other genres; every singer had different strengths.

There was no telling what keywords would be chosen, and as for the instruments—it would be a massive headache if an audience member intentionally made things difficult by picking an obscure one.

In the meeting room, many felt that since this was the final episode of the program, playing it safe was the best approach. They advocated for the Program Production Team to select a single keyword and have all singers perform based on that theme.

However, the director believed that since their previous episodes had already broken numerous records, the show was just one 'crazy' step away from being legendary.

If everyone completed the challenge excellently, the show would be a resounding success.

Even if they didn't perform well, the show could still ride the wave of popularity generated by the controversy.

Everyone couldn't help but think the director had gone mad. The meeting regarding this issue lasted over three hours, but in the end, the director won the verbal battle against the crowd.

However, to give the guests some space and preparation time, the rules would be announced a day in advance, and the original two-hour preparation time for the singers was extended to three hours.

Today's program would be recorded an hour earlier, skipping the live pre-show warm-up segment.

The director's intention was to give the singers a heads-up so they could be mentally prepared; otherwise, the format was so outrageous that it would be disastrous if the singers got angry and refused to record. But he never expected that the ones most excited about this rule weren't the singers, but the fans.

After seeing the rules, fans went into a frenzy buying tickets from scalpers, all to support their favorite singers.

Fans knew their idols best. They thought if there were more of their own people in the audience, and they happened to be chosen, they could at least ensure the singer wasn't intentionally sabotaged.

Lou Qingran and Zhang Xiaoxiao felt a bit gloomy when they saw the rules; they didn't want to participate in this lousy variety show for another second.

Lu Qingyu's thoughts were different from the others; he was thinking that after finishing today's show, he would receive the final payment for the program.

Song Ke's heart tightened when he first saw the rules, but he instantly thought of a way to cheat.

This week had been very difficult for him. He had lost to Lu Qingyu twice, and with only one episode left, if he couldn't defeat Lu Qingyu before the show ended, he didn't know when the next opportunity would be.

He didn't want Lu Qingyu to become his psychological demon.

Song Ke repeatedly listened to Lu Qingyu's previous musical works. He had to admit that Lu Qingyu's lyrics were exceptionally well-written, but Lu Qingyu's musical style wasn't particularly consistent. Yet, every time Lu Qingyu performed, it was surprising; his age didn't seem to match the life experience reflected in his lyrics, which felt contradictory to Song Ke.

Song Ke, who wanted to summarize Lu Qingyu's musical style, reached no conclusion after repeatedly listening to his works. As the final show approached, Song Ke grew increasingly anxious.

Suddenly, a thought popped into his head: he suspected Lu Qingyu was cheating.

Otherwise, how could one person be so formidable? Especially since Lu Qingyu was only 18 years old.

With this bold hypothesis, Song Ke felt that everything that had happened before finally made sense.

While Song Ke was thinking about how to defeat Lu Qingyu, he saw the advance preview of the rules for the final episode. The moment he finished reading them, a series of maneuvers formed in his mind.

The show would randomly pick three audience members to choose the style, keywords, and theme for the singers. This 'random' process had a lot of room for manipulation.

According to the Program Production Team's method, they would have the lighting technician sweep the spotlight around, and whichever audience member the light landed on when the artist said 'stop' would set the challenge.

Song Ke remembered the lighting technician, Xiao Liu. As long as he gave Xiao Liu a little benefit, he could have him control the light to land on his own fans as much as possible during Lu Qingyu's turn.

His fans knew he had already lost two rounds, so if they were picked for Lu Qingyu, they certainly wouldn't give him an easy topic.

But his fans would give him easy topics.

His fans knew exactly what genre of music he liked best, which instruments he preferred, and what kind of songs he was best at. As long as the manipulation was in place, he would definitely take first place this episode.

Song Ke's mind filled with countless fantasies. Since Lu Qingyu was cheating, what was wrong with him using a little manipulation?

Finally, Song Ke made his decision. He immediately used his connections to find the lighting guy from the production team.

As long as he won the final round, he wouldn't need to care about his previous losses.

This time, he didn't believe Lu Qingyu could win again.

Saturday night, the fifteen-minute countdown to the final episode of Music Partner began.

This time, the director led the entire hall's Staff Members to carefully inspect the equipment, stage, and so on, first to ensure no accidents occurred during the program.

Secondly, they kept a close eye on the number of livestream reservations. Due to the high level of hype, the Program Production Team even trended on the hot search topics that day.

#Music Partner Hell Difficulty#

Producers of similar music variety shows couldn't help but give a thumbs up when they saw Music Partner's move. To dare to do this in a live show without a script—they were truly brave!

At the filming location, the eight guests were all in position. Lu Qingyu and Chen Ting were also prepared.

Although there were eight singers, only the four new singers would be performing this time. The four veteran singers would preside over the show, each holding ten thousand votes that they could cast for the three singers other than their own artist.

With five minutes left before the start, Lou Qingran caught an opportunity to speak with Lu Qingyu. Knowing he had just finished the National College Entrance Exam, she wanted to check in on him.

"Little brother, how was your National College Entrance Exam? Are you confident you passed 250 points?"