116: Chapter 116 Su Chen Starts to Sing

At the night market street, the sea breeze carried the cumin scent of teppanyaki squid and the oily smoke of the fried noodle stall.

The intersection was bustling with people, the honking of electric scooters blending with the noisy bargaining.

In this environment, let alone singing, even talking face-to-face required shouting.

On the metal shelf, the jukebox's cheap marquee lights flashed alternately in red and blue.

Su Chen bypassed Wang Mian and walked up to the metal shelf.

He reached out and grasped the greasy black microphone.

"Zhi la—"

A current of electricity surged up his fingertips along the metal mesh cover.

Su Chen's brows twitched slightly as he let go.

Electricity leakage.

He glanced at the jukebox again.

The screen was glitching, and half of the playlist couldn't load.

A muffled buzzing of current came from the accompaniment speaker.

Wang Zhengyu sat behind the monitor and picked up the walkie-talkie: "Tell Su Chen that the jukebox can make do. As long as he can finish singing a song in front of two hundred passersby and get two hundred bucks in tips, he passes."

Chen He was so anxious beside him that he was jumping up and down: "Old Wang! Is that making do? That's an industrial injury! Can't you see the microphone is leaking electricity? And on this big street, you're going to let Brother Chen shout at the top of his lungs to compete in volume with someone selling rat poison?"

Deng Chao stepped forward and pressed down on Su Chen's shoulder: "Brother Chen, forget it. Let's return the five hundred bucks we just earned. I won't eat tonight, I'll stay hungry."

Wang Mian also chimed in: "Right, right, right, I'll do the splits. I'll go do the splits for the boss at the food stall over there in exchange for two bowls of seafood noodles."

Su Chen patted the back of Deng Chao's hand.

"It's fine."

He reached out again. This time, instead of grasping the metal head of the microphone, he gripped the plastic handle.

"Click."

With a casual pull, he directly unplugged the microphone audio cable connected to the speaker.

The buzzing sound of the current vanished instantly.

The world seemed to fall silent for a second.

"This crappy speaker eats vocals."

Su Chen threw the disconnected microphone back onto the metal shelf, "I won't use this."

Wang Zhengyu was stunned, grabbing the megaphone: "No equipment? You plan to rely purely on your voice to carry through? Su Chen, the rules don't allow you to find helpers."

"No helpers."

Su Chen turned around, facing the bustling intersection with people coming and going.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his black sportswear, the brim of his baseball cap pressing down over his brows and eyes, revealing only his chisel-like jawline.

Dozens of cameras on-site aimed at him in unison.

In the livestream room with five million people, the bullet comments fell into a brief standstill because of this action of his, and then exploded.

[God Su pulled out the mic? Is he going to sing a capella?]

[Stop messing around, this is a seafood night market! The environmental noise is at least eighty decibels, what can you possibly hear from a capella?]

[Brother Chen is a god at Dancing, but singing... To be honest, for five years, even his die-hard fans haven't heard him sing a complete song.]

[Won't he crash and burn? Wang Zhengyu is damn evil, why force a dance lead to sing!]

[It's over, if he doesn't sing well tonight, tomorrow those anti-fans and marketing accounts will release articles to step on him again.]

Passersby at the night market stopped in their tracks one after another.

Several young people eating grilled skewers pointed and gossiped.

The female boss of the food stall carried a tray, looking over here with curiosity.

The crowd grew larger and larger.

Su Chen closed his eyes.

His lungs expanded, and the cold sea breeze poured into his chest cavity.

He didn't clear his throat, nor did he do any vocal warm-ups.

The next second, he opened his eyes and his lips parted slightly.

A clean, transparent voice without any impurities suddenly pierced through the hustle and bustle of the night market.

"The wind blows across the long street, blowing the past old..."

Just a single line.

No accompaniment, no harmony, no modification of cheap reverb.

Pure vocals, like a cold weapon drawn from its sheath, instantly cut off all the noise around.

That voice carried a natural penetrative power.

Not sharp, yet it could precisely crash into the eardrums of everyone present.

The intersection grew eerily quiet.

The honking of electric scooters stopped.

The tray in the food stall owner's hand froze in mid-air, a few drops of soup splashing onto the back of her shoes, but she was completely unaware of it.

The young people eating barbecue forgot to chew, their mouths slightly open, staring blankly at the man standing under the light.

Su Chen stood in place, his gaze looking straight ahead, as if piercing through the crowd in front of him, seeing the days and nights of the past five years.

Fingers worn raw from moving bricks.

Engine oil dripping from under the car chassis.

Nights spent hiding in the corner of a fly restaurant gobbling down a ten-yuan duck leg rice.

All that forbearance, unwillingness, struggle, and loneliness were mashed up by him, swallowed into his stomach, and finally completely melted into this a capella melody.

"Some wait in the rain, some walk into the dark night..."

His breath-taking was silent, and the transition between head and chest voice was so smooth that not a single gap could be found.

The mid-range was steady and heavy, and the high-range was ethereal and distant.

This was a song he wrote himself.

In the five years, in countless sleepless nights, in rental rooms without guitars or pianos, this was the melody he hummed repeatedly in his mind.

Deng Chao's mouth widened so much it could fit a duck egg.

He turned his head to look at Chen He.

Chen He swallowed a mouthful of saliva, his eyes staring straight ahead, unconsciously clenching his fists.

Wang Mian hugged his guitar, lowered his head to look at his strings, and suddenly felt that the wood in his hand was completely useless.

Fan Zhiyi took off his black-rimmed glasses, rubbed his eyes, put them back on, and cursed in a low voice: "This kid... is there a top-tier sound system installed in his throat?"

Standing on the periphery, Lu Han had an irrepressible smile curling up the corner of his mouth.

Looking at Wang Zhengyu who was dumbfounded behind the monitor, he muttered in a voice only he could hear: "Old Wang, back in the practice room, because he sang too well, that old fox Yoo Young-jin stubbornly refused to let him record. He was afraid that once he opened his voice, the lead singers wouldn't even have food to eat."

The song was very short, with only one verse and one chorus.

When the last trailing note dissipated in the sea breeze.

The night market street was dead silent.

It lasted for a full ten seconds.

Not a single person spoke.

Everyone even forgot to breathe, afraid of breaking this soul-stirring lingering charm.

Until a crisp "clang" sound rang out.

An old man forcefully threw two coins he had just received as change into the iron basin on the ground.

This crisp sound seemed to press a certain switch.

The crowd instantly exploded.

"Sounds great!!!"

"What song is this? It sounds so good!"

"Another one! Young man, another one!"

Banknotes fluttered into the iron basin like snowflakes.

Five yuan, ten yuan, fifty, one hundred.

The food stall owner directly tore off her apron, took out her phone, and scanned the payment QR code next to the iron basin.

"WeChat payment received, two hundred yuan."

Prompt tones sounded one after another.

"WeChat payment received, fifty yuan."

"Alipay account credited, one hundred yuan."

In the livestream room of five million people, after a minute of dead silence, the bullet comments ushered in today's most terrifying outbreak.

[This is called not knowing how to sing???]

[Good lord! I listened and cried in front of the screen just now, that voice is full of the suffering he endured these past five years!]

[Clean! Too clean! The current Chinese music scene relies entirely on tuning, this is the real god-tier live performance!]

[That music critic who called him the mute demon king, come out and get beaten! If this throat is called losing one's voice, those idols in the Chinese Entertainment Industry should all be called mutes!]

[Wang Zhengyu must be dumbfounded, right? You used crappy equipment to give him a hard time, and he directly ditched the equipment, a capella crushing the whole audience!]

[I captured Lu Han's smug smile, his face was plastered with 'My big brother is number one in the world'.]

[Too ruthless, what the heck kind of all-around monster is this?]

Wang Zhengyu slumped in the director's chair.

He looked at the monitor screen in front of him, and then looked at the iron basin in the distance that was packed tightly by the crowd.

The task of two hundred bucks?

It had only been half a minute, and the cash in the iron basin plus the scan-to-pay money had already broken the two-thousand mark!

Su Chen pulled down the brim of his cap.

He bent down, picked up the iron basin full of cash on the ground, and walked up to Wang Zhengyu.

"Bang."

The iron basin slammed onto the folding table next to the monitor.

Su Chen said in a calm tone: "Dinner funds, is this enough?"

Wang Zhengyu twitched the corners of his mouth and gave two dry laughs: "Enough... enough."

Deng Chao and Chen He cheered and pounced forward, hugging Su Chen on each side.

"Brother Chen! You kept this from us so bitterly! Why didn't you say so earlier if you had this voice!"

Deng Chao was so excited his face turned red.

Chen He grabbed the iron basin and laughed out loud: "Over two thousand! We can eat king crab today! Old Wang, thanks for your crappy speaker!"

Wang Zhengyu took a deep breath and gave a cold order into the walkie-talkie: "Second backup plan, go."

He would never admit that he was unilaterally crushed by the guests.

Just as the Wuha Group was about to take the money and go eat a seafood feast,

on the outer periphery of the crowd, a discordant clamor suddenly came.

"Make way, please make way."

Several young people wearing oversized printed T-shirts, big gold chains, and dreadlocks forcibly pushed aside the crowd and walked to the center of the venue.

Leading them was a dark-skinned fat man holding an expensive custom microphone, followed by a lackey carrying a portable mixing console.

The fat man chewed gum, looked Su Chen up and down, and let out a sneer.

"The melody is sung well, and the voice is transparent."

The fat man patted the microphone in his hand, his tone provocative, "But this is the street. Real street culture isn't just about standing there and howling a couple of sad love songs to make money."

Deng Chao immediately guarded in front of Su Chen: "Who are you guys? How are you still stealing the camera time?"

The fat man ignored Deng Chao, staring at Su Chen with unmasked hostility in his eyes: "I heard you are awesome at street Dancing at Workers Stadium? Dancing is Hip-Hop, and Rap is also Hip-Hop. Bro, do you dare to bring out the real deal at this intersection?"

The fat man snapped his fingers.

The lackey behind him immediately pressed the play button on the mixing console.

A highly aggressive hardcore Trap accompaniment with a BPM as high as 110 instantly bombarded the entire venue.

Holding the microphone, the fat man swayed his body along with the drumbeat, lifting his chin provocatively.

"Freestyle, do you dare to take it?"