“Hehe.”
Lin Jiaxin finished playing her song, then immediately grabbed her bag and ran off.
She didn’t give anyone a chance to ask questions.
If she stayed longer, she might have gained more Manifestation True Qi…
But! Lin Jiaxin was aiming for a bigger stage.
The performance at this week’s Freshman Welcoming Ceremony was the real key.
Leaving a little buzz with these classmates now would make them bring her up on the school forum later.
It was an unintentional bit of foreshadowing.
Of course, the real reason was…
Right now, Lin Jiaxin only remembered a handful of songs.
Any more than that, she couldn’t recall or play well.
After all, in her previous life, she’d only learned guitar to impress a crush.
She wasn’t a professional musician.
So… the trump-card songs for the performance absolutely could not be leaked here!
“Wait, isn’t she playing Xu Gao’s ‘Phantom Hearing’? Why does the lyrics sound completely different?”
“Xu Gao? Isn’t it Xu Song?”
“The mountain’s already been stripped bare by internet copycats, so all that’s left is ‘Gao,’ right?”
“Pfft—true… but with such weird lyrics, the original melody still sounds that good…”
“I know what you want to say… Bro Xu is awesome!”
……
Lin Jiaxin, who had hastily fled, had no idea.
Her impromptu adaptation of Phantom Hearing had exploded a bunch of hidden Squirrels.
So much so that she barely avoided ending up on the school’s ‘Blade Sister’ hit list.
Of course, even if she knew, she probably wouldn’t have cared.
Lin Jiaxin was dying to stir up some hype and gain popularity.
All to skyrocket at the upcoming joint performance!
……
Soon, a week passed.
On the day of the rehearsal, for the first time, Lin Jiaxin didn’t actively participate in training.
The other classmates, including Wu Jing and Fengchu, felt something was off.
No one was running ahead and turning back to taunt them.
No one was deliberately staying after training to show off.
Lin Jiaxin’s classmates had almost been conditioned by her!
A day without her torment felt weird!
……
Meanwhile.
Lin Jiaxin herself was lining up, waiting for her rehearsal slot.
She had checked the program list on her way.
It turned out that out of all these majors and classes, she was the only one performing an original guitar singing.
The other Technique Cultivation classes either performed martial arts.
Or recited ancient poetry in unison… very rigid and odd.
But the Alchemy major’s performance was quite fitting: using induction cookers to refine pills.
Over and over, it was really only the Physical Cultivation major’s program that caught Lin Jiaxin’s interest.
Two muscular men with pointy heads, bare-armed, performed male wrestling on stage.
Pure collision of muscle and chicken meat.
To be honest… if she didn’t have to perform herself,
Lin Jiaxin would have loved to sit in the audience and watch up close.
It was so awesome!
“Contestant number 9, please come on stage.”
“Contestant number 9, please come on stage.”
A broadcast rang out from the empty stage.
Hearing this, Lin Jiaxin slung her guitar bag over her shoulder and followed the voice’s instruction onto the stage.
“Contestant number 9, your program is ‘Original Guitar Singing,’ correct?”
The Student Council President sat in the front row, notebook in hand, confirming with Lin Jiaxin.
Lin Jiaxin took out her guitar and nodded.
“Yes, the song I’ll be singing is ‘Preface to the Orchid Pavilion.’”
“‘Preface to the Orchid Pavilion’? Okay, please begin your performance.”
“Phew…”
Lin Jiaxin nodded and took a deep breath.
“Orchid Pavilion tracing the calligraphy, the running script flows like clouds and water…”
She plucked a string, and the internal enhancement array in the guitar faintly lit up.
The sound of the guitar and her voice spread through the empty auditorium.
The Student Council President, who had been businesslike and somewhat indifferent, along with the staff nearby, all froze for a moment.
Wait—it wasn’t a cacophony of noise?
Both the playing and singing were this good?
But… why did the melody sound familiar?
Didn’t she say it was original?
“…”
“🎶I await the spring thunder, to remind you who you love…🎶”
As the last note faded, Lin Jiaxin slowly opened her eyes.
Perfect!
She gave a slight bow, gracefully curtsying.
The corner of her mouth tilted upward, her small chin raised proudly as she awaited the Student Council President’s critique.
Heh heh…
Your big sister Xin sings so well, you’re all definitely gonna be mesmerized, you little darlings.
“…”
But the audience was silent for only two seconds.
Then the Student Council President frowned and pushed up his glasses.
He stood up, looked down at the form in his hand, and asked in an uncertain tone:
“Classmate, this song… wasn’t its original name ‘Irrelevant to Wind and Moon’?”
Lin Jiaxin’s smile instantly froze on her face.
“…What?”
“I said, ‘Irrelevant to Wind and Moon.’”
The Student Council President repeated: “The original singer is Zhou Lun—a pretty old song… I last heard it in elementary school.”
“Haven’t you heard it?”
Lin Jiaxin opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but ultimately kept quiet.
No way—she’d definitely never heard any so-called Irrelevant to Wind and Moon!
When she had searched for songs earlier, that name never appeared.
She had searched for Preface to the Orchid Pavilion.
Since she couldn’t find it, she subconsciously assumed that song didn’t exist in this world.
And now you’re telling me it does exist.
And it has a different name—Irrelevant to Wind and Moon?
Damn it! Phantom Hearing and River South kept their original names.
Only Preface to the Orchid Pavilion got renamed?!
And also… wasn’t Irrelevant to Wind and Moon about that little cream match-fixing scandal?
How did it become the original song’s name?!
Lin Jiaxin clenched her fingers, feeling a strong wave of embarrassment surge from deep inside.
Her toes unconsciously scraped against the floor, as if trying to dig out a three-bedroom apartment to hide in.
No wonder the Manifestation True Qi had increased only by a tiny amount after singing just now…
So she had been found out…
But Lin Jiaxin also knew she absolutely could not let her face show any slip-up, absolutely not!
Otherwise, it would be one thing to expose her awkwardness…
The key was that it could damage her Dao Heart!
“…Oh, that song.”
So Lin Jiaxin took a deep breath and nodded.
Her tone suddenly became very casual, as if discussing what she’d eaten in the cafeteria:
“I know it—of course I’ve heard it—but my version is different.”
“Different?”
The President tilted his head in doubt: “But the melody sounds exactly the same to us.”
“…Ding🎶”
Lin Jiaxin’s fingers plucked a string unintentionally, producing a brief jumble.
‘Damn, he caught that!’ Lin Jiaxin’s internal alarm bells rang, but she couldn’t admit it!
“The melody… is probably about the same.”
Her mind raced as she shrugged.
But her gaze unconsciously drifted to the side curtain of the stage, avoiding eye contact:
“But I changed some of the chords… if you listen carefully to the barre in the chorus, the original used standard fingering, and I switched to a high-position capo on the second fret. The details… are quite different.”
The President paused. He really didn’t know much about music.
So he had no idea if Lin Jiaxin was telling the truth.
“…”
He was silent for a moment, wrote a few words on the form, then looked up with a slightly odd expression:
“So you’re saying this is an adaptation?”
“Yes, an adaptation.”
Lin Jiaxin answered decisively this time, very firmly.
She was so earnest that even she believed it herself.
“Oh, then why did you report it as original just now?”
With the Student Council President’s soul-searching question,
the air on stage froze for about an eternity.
Lin Jiaxin looked down at the President.
The President looked up at Lin Jiaxin.
They stared at each other—she with guilt, he with confused seriousness.
“Because…”
Lin Jiaxin took a deep breath, forcing her chin up slightly:
“The scale of the adaptation was so large that I felt it had become a new song.”
“So… in my heart, it’s an original.”
“I see.”
The President finally understood, nodding but then shaking his head:
“But according to the rules, this can’t count as an original.”
“If you insist on picking this song, I can only mark it as ‘adaptation’ on my end.”
“Then I… I’ll… think about it.”
Lin Jiaxin gritted her teeth and spoke quietly.
She was about to faint from anger.
Goddammit!
So every song she remembered from her previous life existed in this world!
But… thinking about Irrelevant to Wind and Moon,
a sudden realization struck her.
She quickly opened her phone and searched for ‘Wei Lan Bian Ji.’
Sure enough, there was no such person on the entire web.
Then she searched for Huan Ding.
Sure enough, it didn’t exist either!
That meant… those original singers existed.
Their songs existed too.
But because of the world crisis on the Outer Domain Battlefield,
many derivative creations from her previous life never existed in this world?!
Lin Jiaxin trembled at the thought.
That meant as long as she used an incredibly popular derivative creation from her past life…
At the very least, she could rival an original in shocking the audience!
Lin Jiaxin’s eyes darted around.
She suddenly thought of a very fiery cover that had been on the whole internet’s top charts in her previous life…
It’s decided then!
Shan Yichun’s Li Bai!