At 3 a.m., the landmines in front of the station

……

There are still 3 hours until the show starts.

Tianlai Livehouse backstage preparation room

Two men are practicing their instruments to the extreme to warm up, not wasting a single second to improve themselves.

"Tianhuan, have you finished the music arrangement?"

"No problem, the program is all set up, and I just tested the effect, it's perfect."

"That's good. We have no room for error this time. If we're going to act, we have to do our best. Otherwise, we won't get the secret manual."

"I know. I want to see that too."

Jin Tianhuan turned his head and glanced towards the door, feeling quite uneasy.

"To be honest, I never used to be nervous before performances. After all, we've been on stage hundreds of times and performed in venues of all sizes, so we're used to it. But today..."

"Knowing that Commander Lu would be watching from below the stage today... it's hard not to be nervous."

Li Encheng empathized with this feeling, saying, "Even parts that I wouldn't normally make mistakes on became easy to miss."

"Yes."

The two stood up at the same time, stretching their wrists and ankles to relieve the pressure.

Everyone knows that compared to the boredom of playing the lute to a cow or the casualness of playing for someone with only a mediocre skill, the most terrifying thing is to try to teach a master a lesson.

In Lu Shi's ears, let alone a single wrong chord,

He can pick it up instantly, even if it's just a half-note off in a chord or a 0.1-second off in rhythm.

This invisible sense of oppression can envelop the entire venue.

They had to be extremely careful to deal with it.

"Oh, right."

Li Encheng put down his zither and suddenly asked, "Have you looked up any information on 'Seven Colors'?"

"I checked."

Jin Tianhuan's expression hardened, and he became even more distressed.

"Tell me more about it."

"Hmm. I don't think there's much to say about those female musicians."

He squinted and gave his conclusion first—

"I strongly suspect that one of the male musicians is Master Lu's son!"

"what?"

Encheng was stunned. After a long pause, he slowly raised his question:

"You mean, Master Lu, you want us to fight with all our might to instantly kill his own son?"

"...That's roughly the idea."

"Then I'd like to ask, what is the point of doing this?"

"significance……"

"I mean, wouldn't beating his son make him lose face? Is that reasonable?"

Li Encheng possessed the ability to think in reverse, and immediately proposed a conjecture—

"Is it possible that he wants to use this competition to test whether we have independent judgment?"

"!"

"What he really wanted might not have been for his son to be defeated, but rather to use us as a catalyst to push him forward, the key being to put pressure on him."

But the outcome must be that we lose and his son wins.

Otherwise, we would be offending him, and we would suffer a terrible fate!

And if we have to leave for any reason..."

At this point, Li Encheng paused, narrowed his small eyes, and said with certainty:

"So we've put pressure on them, and we've also saved face for them, without offending either side! Don't you think that makes sense?"

"Oh my!"

This was something Jin Tianhuan hadn't expected, and he was instantly enlightened, gaining a profound understanding.

"Hiss, Eun-sung, when it comes to interpersonal relationships, you're the one! How come I didn't think of that?"

"Right? If that guitarist is Lu Shi's son, then we absolutely, absolutely cannot win."

If you win, you're finished.

This is the end of our lives together.

Li Encheng got more and more excited as he spoke, and went straight to his conclusion:

"If we want to learn the zither from Master Lu, we need to think more and use our brains, instead of acting rashly."

Opportunity favors the prepared mind. We must understand the meaning behind Master Lu's words, comprehend the true instructions he intended to give us; only then can we be considered "spiritually gifted students"!

"Yes, your understanding is correct."

Jin Tianhuan wholeheartedly agreed.

The tone shifted abruptly, and the question was asked, "So how should we give Master Lu enough face? How should we make a clean break?"

"Okay. I have a plan. Listen to me carefully."

Li Encheng recalled the major event he witnessed from the audience when he participated in the Mosse Grand Prix –

"A few years ago, Higashise's speakers were tampered with by the official company. Tianhuan, do you remember that?"

"Of course I remember! I was looking at it too, and I thought there was something wrong with the high-frequency response of that box! I even mentioned it to you!"

"Right? Then I think we can use this inspiration to recreate the scene..."

"What? You mean..."

Kim Chun-hwan looked uncertainly at his partner.

Do you think this kind of operation is too costly...?

“That’s right. Let’s take advantage of Boss Zhang’s absence and dismantle his big Marshall. I just saw him go out to buy cigarettes.”

Li Encheng smiled mysteriously, "Inhumanity."

……

……

Chapter 171 The Goddess's Visor - Surrounded by Cats

The venue was packed with people today.

Because it was a band compilation, and also featured a live solo performance by an international guitarist, the word "challenge" became the hottest topic of the night.

The audience flocked to the scene, half of them wanting to see the excitement, and the other half just wanting to see the ending.

The full name of the "Buddha" team is "Buddha Cold". Their music style is avant-garde electronic, no vocals, and shoegaze rock. Their audience is basically stylish men with taste and artistic women who appreciate good looks.

Lee Eun-seung and Kim Chun-hwan are both quite good-looking, around 0.5 and 0.3 on the scale, respectively. So even before they went on stage, the audience was already swooning over them, gushing over the giant posters and banners displayed in the store.

Su Che considers himself to be of average appearance, so he has always kept a low profile, never interacts with the audience, and is even more aloof, never replying to comments or messages from strangers on social media.

Since Qicai has performed at Tianlai three times, even if they don't seriously manage their official account or cultivate their fan base on platforms like Xiaohongshu or others, they will still attract a new group of fans here, and their momentum is becoming increasingly strong.

The observant secretary secretly observed that the male-to-female ratio was not balanced, roughly 19:1.

Backstage, while everyone was preparing, I gave a brief update:

"According to the schedule, we, as the home band, were the first to take the stage. Many people in the audience came specifically to see us, so it seems we gained quite a few fans last time."

"Yes, gaining fans is a good thing, but our core goal is not to become famous all over the country. We are a 'big competition team', only to compete for reputation within the industry, not outside of it."

Su Che wiped the strings and said calmly.

"Oh dear, we're about to go on stage, why are you making the atmosphere so tense?"

Yuan Xiao came over and felt that A-Che seemed out of sorts today.

Compared to the past, he kept a serious face during rehearsals, as if he was afraid of making a mistake... This was completely different from his usual self.

On the other side, An Qing also noticed that his hands were trembling slightly.

"What's wrong? Cheche, are you scared?"

"Nonsense, what's there to be afraid of?"

"Really? But you...you look very uneasy."

The house cat came to his other side, squatted down, and took his hand.

A chill ran down his skin; clearly, he was more nervous than ever before.

"It'll be ready in a bit."

Su Che took a deep breath, unable to explain the source of this bad feeling.

Today's lineup is a double guitar duo; I looked up their information before coming.

There's not much information about them domestically, but they're incredibly popular in Korea. They've reportedly performed hundreds of shows, and each of them has over 50 fans on Bluebird Music.

In China, what can be found is that they participated in the Mosse Cup and achieved a very high ranking.

Li Encheng is 8th, and Jin Tianhuan is 20th.

It's important to understand that in this kind of solo ranked tournament, being selected by the production team based on your work, making it through the wildcard rounds to the qualifiers, and finally into the main tournament already makes you one of the top players in the country.

Above that, those who make it to the semi-finals, the top 16, and the top 8 are the elite among the elite.

Su Che had never played in the Mosse Cup, but he had an estimate of his own skill level.

He believes his level is around 0.4M.