124: Chapter 123 Su Chen's daily training routine is so strict it's almost obsessive.

Huang Zitao clicked send on Weibo.

A two-minute unedited fancam video went live.

In the video, with no makeup on and dark circles under his eyes, he delivered an aggressive fast-paced Rap into the microphone.

Without any melodic accompaniment, it relied purely on dry vocals and a metronome.

Every line hit the beat precisely, and his breath control was enduring.

The caption was blunt and straightforward: "Zhang Yixing and Lu Han only know how to call him brother. I'm different. Brother Chen, I've practiced this segment for three months, I didn't embarrass you, did I? @Su Chen"

As soon as the post was released, the Weibo hot search list refreshed once again.

#Huang Zitao Hardcore Rap Challenge#

#The Three Top Traffic Stars of the Chinese Entertainment Industry Gather Together#

#Su Chen's Top Traffic Shura Field#

Netizens had just finished watching Su Chen's trilingual Rap in Five Ha, and immediately turned around to see Huang Zitao handing in his homework.

[Taozi is really pushing the envelope this wave!]

[Good heavens, sharing a stage with Zhang Yixing, sharing a frame with Lu Han, and Huang Zitao directly handing in his final exam homework.]

[I finally see it clearly, the Chinese Entertainment Industry right now has these three brothers fighting like immortals, but there is only one referee, and that is Su Chen.]

[KING's aura! Without even stepping out himself, his junior brothers underneath can turn the Chinese Entertainment Industry upside down!]

[...]

Chengdu.

Morning Star Dance Studio.

Six in the morning, just as the sky was beginning to brighten.

Lin Hao, with bird's nest hair and yawning, pushed open the door of the second-floor lounge.

He had edited videos until 3 a.m. last night, and his brain was still a mess.

In the first-floor practice room, the heavy bass metronome was ticking away, "tick-tock, tick-tock".

Lin Hao walked down the stairs.

The central air conditioning was set to twenty degrees, but the air in the practice room was still heating up.

Su Chen was wearing a gray sleeveless sports tank top, supporting himself on the ground with both hands.

He was doing one-armed push-ups.

One, two.

The movements were standard to the point of being mechanical.

His back muscle groups contracted and expanded with the ups and downs.

Sweat dripped down his jawline onto the floor, gathering into a puddle of water.

The electronic clock on the wall showed the time: 6:15.

Lin Hao swallowed a mouthful of saliva and walked over to the whiteboard nearby.

A printed A4 paper was pasted on it.

Lin Hao took out his phone, turned on the camera function, and aimed the lens at that piece of paper.

"06:00-07:30: Physical training, core strength reinforcement."

"08:00-12:00: Dance basics. Popping fixed-point tremors, Classical Dance body rhyme fusion."

"13:00-17:00: Arrangement creation, chord progression deduction."

"18:00-22:00: Vocal expansion, multilingual Rap breathing point practice."

"22:30: Daily review."

There was also a line of small text at the bottom: No days off all year round, including holidays.

Lin Hao moved the camera away from the A4 paper and aimed it at Su Chen, who was getting up off the floor.

Su Chen picked up the towel hanging around his neck and wiped his face haphazardly.

He glanced at Lin Hao without speaking, turned around and walked over to the mirror, and pressed the sound system switch beside it.

A breakbeat music with a BPM as high as 120 rushed out of the speakers.

Su Chen directly cut into the fixed-point practice of Popping.

There was no flashy choreography, only boring muscle tremors.

Upper arms, chest, thighs.

Every heavy beat, his muscles produced a high-frequency vibration.

A full thirty minutes.

The exact same eight-count, he repeated no less than fifty times.

Lin Hao's hand holding the phone was sore.

He stopped recording, sat on the bench in the corner, looking at that tireless back, and a chill rose in his heart.

The entire internet was praising Su Chen as a talented freak blessed by the heavens, a great demon king of dimensional reduction strikes.

But Lin Hao only felt at this moment that this person was a machine.

A machine that forced itself into a dead end for some obsession.

Noon break time.

Su Chen was eating boiled chicken breast and brown rice on the folding table nearby.

Lin Hao opened his computer and imported the morning footage.

He didn't do any complicated editing, just paired it with a smooth background audio, directly splicing the close-up of the A4 paper and the footage of Su Chen sweating together.

Click send.

Caption: "Everyone says he is a monster, a genius. But watching him every day, I only feel scared. This person isn't training, he is burning himself."

Lin Hao's Douyin account "Morning Star Old Lin" had accumulated hundreds of thousands of followers.

As soon as this one-minute video was published, it was immediately pushed to the trending list by the algorithm.

Just as the after-heat of the variety show Five Ha had not faded, the entire internet's discussion volume about Su Chen was at its peak.

A large number of netizens poured into the comment section and bullet comments.

[Holy shit! Is this schedule something a human can stick to?]

[Six in the morning to ten at night, all-weather high-intensity training drill? Doesn't he need to sleep?]

[Look at the color of his tank top, it's completely soaked in sweat. That is real training, not a posed photoshoot.]

[I just tried doing three one-armed push-ups, and my wrists almost broke. He actually does fifty in a row!]

[Genius is not scary, what's scary is that a genius works even harder than you.]

[This explains why he can do everything in variety shows. Five years! In the span of five years, he spent every day like this!]

[I take back what I said before about him being blessed by the heavens. This is what he fought for with his life.]

[Watching him repeat that tremor movement fifty times, I suddenly felt a little like crying. How badly must he want to win to be so ruthless to himself.]

[Those idols in the Chinese Entertainment Industry who post on Weibo asking for comfort just from scraping a little skin, come see what a true idol is!]

As the video spread, the popularity continued to climb.

Some professional dance teachers and vocal coaches also began reposting.

The principal of a well-known Street Dance label in Shanghai left a message: "In my fifteen years in the industry, I have never seen this kind of training volume. His muscle memory has been carved into his bones. This is why his dance can establish a school of its own. There are no shortcuts, it's all piled up with sweat."

A vocal professor from the Beijing Conservatory of Music posted a review: "Did you see his breathing points when practicing multilingual Rap? That is day-after-day expansion of lung capacity. Last night, the reason he was able to sing a cappella in that kind of street environment was precisely because of this day-in-day-out foundation."

The emotion on the internet gradually changed from initial shock into a nearly fanatical admiration.

This was not a lofty, illusory deity.

This was a man bleeding and sweating, crawling up step by step from the mud at the bottom.

Hot-blooded.

Countless young people left messages under the video to check in.

[After watching the video, I threw away the lazy desk on my bed and am heading to the library now.]

[God Su is fighting with his life, what reason do I have to slack off!]

[This is the star we need to chase! Salute to KING!]

[This self-discipline ability is absolute perfection!]

[People more talented than you are working even harder than you!]

Nine in the evening.

Chengdu's sky had completely darkened.

A light rain began to fall outside the studio window.

In the soundproof booth on the second floor, Su Chen wore monitoring headphones and practiced the liaison of Korean Rap facing the microphone.

Lin Hao pushed the door open, holding a cup of warm water in his hand.

"Brother Su, take a break."

Lin Hao put the water cup on the desk, "The video online exploded, Taozi posted on Weibo, Lu Han and Yixing both reposted your training video too. Your popularity right now is even higher than top traffic."

Su Chen took off his headphones, picked up the water cup and took a sip.

His throat carried a trace of hoarseness due to long-term overuse.

"Popularity is illusory."

Su Chen put down the water cup, his gaze falling on the audio track of the computer screen, "Strength is the real deal."