On the afternoon of February 1st, Xie Yunfan took a taxi to the hotel arranged by the organizers.

This time, the two teams from Rong City University coming to the Imperial Capital for the competition had 12 people in total, led by Professor Lin and Counselor Teacher Zou.

Seeing Xie Yunfan arrive, Teacher Zou immediately called out to him: “Yunfan, over here.”

As Xie Yunfan walked toward everyone, Teacher Zou smiled and said: “Alright, everyone is here. Let’s go report in first.”

The group followed the teacher to the sign-in area.

In the hotel’s first-floor lobby, a massive poster for the “National College Student Game Design Competition” was displayed. There were many staff members and volunteers at the sign-in area, and a team from another university was currently reporting in there.

Xie Yunfan and his classmates arrived at the sign-in area to line up, verify information, sign their names, and collect their participant badges. After busying themselves for over ten minutes, they finally finished the process.

A staff member instructed: “Tonight at 8 PM, all participating team members must go to the conference room on the 10th floor for a meeting. The organizing committee will explain the detailed competition rules to everyone. The hotel’s buffet restaurant is on the 4th floor; you can dine using your room card.”

The organizing committee arranged double-standard rooms for all the contestants. Xie Yunfan and Ji Yan stayed in one room. After the two rested in their room for a moment, they went to the cafeteria restaurant with everyone to eat dinner.

At 7:30 PM, the contestants arrived at the 10th-floor conference room one after another. Many acquaintances were greeting each other, and there were also some social butterflies walking around adding people on WeChat.

At 8 PM sharp, all contestants were present.

A staff member came in holding a stack of documents and said loudly: “Classmates, first of all, on behalf of the organizing committee of the National College Student Game Design Competition, I welcome everyone to the Imperial Capital. I also congratulate everyone for fighting your way out of the encirclement to enter the national grand finals!”

Enthusiastic applause erupted in the venue.

The staff member said: “Next, I will announce the competition rules. Each team will have 30 minutes. Among this, 25 minutes will be used to explain and demonstrate the game, and the remaining 5 minutes are for free Q&A.”

“The 15 teams will be divided into the first half and second half of the competition. 8 teams in the morning, 7 teams in the afternoon. The order of appearance for the competition will be determined by the team captains drawing lots.”

“The scoring for each work consists of two parts: the judges’ scores account for 50%, and the player jury’s votes account for 50%.”

“There are five judges, with a perfect score of 100 points. The highest and lowest scores are removed to calculate the average score. The player jury consists of 100 people using on-the-spot voting; the number of votes received equals the score. Finally, rankings will be based on the scores.”

“This competition has one First Prize, two Second Prizes, and three Third Prizes, with prize money of 1 million, 500,000, and 300,000 respectively. Teams that fail to win an award can also receive a 20,000 yuan finals participation award.”

“Next, please invite the captain of each participating team to come on stage to draw lots.”

The 15 captains went on stage in unison to line up and draw lots. On the stage sat a large box containing 15 envelopes. Employees from the notary office were also on-site recording in real-time.

Liao Meng drew an envelope, opened it, and turned the card toward the audience—it was actually No. 1, the first to appear.

The faces of the classmates on his team all looked terrible: “It’s over, it’s over, we’re the first to go on stage!” “The class monitor’s luck is so bad, isn’t this too unlucky?”

Xie Yunfan immediately followed and drew an envelope out—

No. 15, the last to appear in the afternoon.

His teammates instantly felt their vision go dark: “Yunfan’s luck is also so bad!” “The last one, the players will be dead tired after sitting for a whole day, who will still vote for us!”

The order of appearance in the competition was very important. For the first to go on stage, the judges and audience scored relatively conservatively, making it very difficult to get a high score. As for the last to appear, the audience would suffer from aesthetic fatigue, be tired from sitting, and unable to concentrate, equally making it hard to get a high score.

Professor Lin sighed helplessly in his heart. The luck of Rong City University’s two teams in this lot drawing was indeed extremely poor!

However, he still smiled and comforted the classmates: “It’s fine, everyone go back and prepare earnestly. The order of appearance doesn’t decide everything. Let’s go all out, as long as we leave no regrets.”

The professor’s words made everyone feel slightly better.

That night, the drawing order for this year’s National Design Competition was published on the official website, and Rong City University’s school forum instantly exploded in an uproar.

“Did Liao Meng and Xie Yunfan not wash their hands when they drew lots?”

“This is truly unbelievable. One is first, one is last!”

“No need to think too much, this year will definitely be accompanying running again.”

“Accompanying running doesn’t matter, at least there’s a 20,000 yuan psychological comfort prize.”

“Can you guys not rush to badmouth them? Haven’t the competition results not come out yet?”

“Camping the live broadcast, everyone remember to set an alarm for 8 AM tomorrow to watch Senior Brother Liao!”

---

That night, Xie Yunfan and his teammates verified the details once again.

Xie Yunfan encouraged everyone: “The order of appearance doesn’t matter. Being the last one, we’ll just treat it as the grand finale, relax your mindset.”

Zhang Zizheng was so nervous his face went pale: “I’m afraid, what if I make an operational mistake when I go on stage tomorrow?”

Xie Yunfan patted his shoulder and said: “Tomorrow, don’t look at the judge’s seats, and don’t look at me. Focus intently on the game interface. Even if you miss some notes, it doesn’t matter. We are only demonstrating the game; no one requires you to get a full combo.”

Zhang Zizheng took a deep breath to calm his mood: “Okay, I’ll play the few demonstration levels a few more times tonight.”

Ji Yan looked at Xie Yunfan and said: “By the way Yunfan, we are the last to appear tomorrow afternoon. Should we go over for the morning competition?”

Xie Yunfan said: “Everyone gather for breakfast at 7:30 AM, we’ll go watch the competition together to adapt to the on-site atmosphere in advance. Besides, the class monitor and his team are the first to appear; it wouldn’t be appropriate if we didn’t go.”

Everyone nodded in agreement: “Okay!”

At 8 AM the next morning, the Imperial Capital Game Center welcomed the contestants of the new National Game Design Competition.

The 100-person player jury was situated on the other side of the main stage, where they could clearly see the stage’s large screen. There were 100 seats, and the seats came with voting buttons.

In a corner of the jury area, a young man wearing glasses was lowering his head to scroll through Weibo. A curly-haired boy next to him suddenly said excitedly: “Hello, are you the legendary God Cai?!”

The young man lifted his head, narrowed his eyes to look at the other person: “You are?”

The boy smiled: “Hehe, I’m streamer Brother Liu. I received an invitation from the organizers this time to serve as a player juror. I didn’t expect to meet you.”

The young man wearing glasses was precisely the big-V (verified influential user) in the gaming circle, “Purple Cauliflower,” known to people as “God Cai,” who was very famous in the gaming industry.

Being a national competition after all, if they randomly grabbed some passerby players over, they would likely vote entirely based on preference, lacking objectivity.

Therefore, in every year’s game competition, these 100 “player jurors” were either gaming big-Vs, website journalists, forum moderators, gaming streamers, etc. They had rich gaming experience and could at least give relatively fair evaluations.

Brother Liu proactively took out his phone: “Can we add each other on WeChat? I see you frequently recommend Ghost Realm on Weibo, and your name is also on the achievement leaderboard!”

Purple Cauliflower said: “Mhm, I specifically grinded a wave of achievements some time ago, some are actually quite hard to do.”

Brother Liu said: “Too hard, I still have over a dozen achievements I haven’t completed… I wonder what Little Sailboat has been doing recently? He started playing the disappearing act again.”

Purple Cauliflower smiled: “Last time they disappeared for half a year and produced Ghost Realm. Disappearing again this time, maybe they are developing a new game.”

Brother Liu said: “Will they continue cooperating with Qihang to make a holographic game? I’m quite looking forward to it, the games this studio makes are very innovative.”

In a corner of the contestant seating area, Xie Yunfan kept sneezing wildly.

What’s going on, who is talking about him?

---

【Famous in One Battle (2)】

At 8 AM, the 100-person player jury was fully present, and the audience seating area also gradually filled up with many relatives, friends, and cheerleader squads of the participating teams.

The host came on stage, read out the competition rules, and grandly introduced the 5 judges. These 5 people included the president of the Hua Xia Game Association and four well-known professors.

Immediately following, the host said: “Next, please invite the well-known gaming blogger God Cai to swear an oath on behalf of the player jury.”

A young man wearing glasses and looking gentle and refined stood up, his voice clear and bright: “Respected professors, participating contestants, and respected organizing committee, it is an honor to swear an oath on behalf of the player jury.”

“I swear that we will, based on the principle of fairness and justice, earnestly and responsibly vote for every participating work, without playing favorites or committing fraud, ensuring the fairness of the National College Student Game Design Competition. Wishing all contestants good results, thank you.”

The man sat down, and enthusiastic applause rang out in the venue.

Ji Yan excitedly muttered in Xie Yunfan’s ear: “Damn, damn, God Cai came! He’s a big shot with millions of Weibo followers!”

Xie Yunfan: “…”

He hadn’t expected that the blogger who previously acted as unpaid “tap water” (organic) promotion for Ghost Realm on Weibo would, in reality, wear glasses and have a handsome, refined appearance that looked more like a scientific researcher.

At a glance, this person had a rigorous personality and wasn’t easily interfered with by the outside world. After all, back in the day, he had publicly scolded a certain game from Wings of Dream, scolding people all the way onto the trending search lists.

Zhang Zizheng whispered: “I even referenced many of his strategy guides when playing games. He actually came to be a judge for this competition. It’s over, I’m starting to get nervous again!”

Ji Yan said: “I saw the representative badges held by those jurors—there’s a Mobile Games Home forum moderator, a Hua Xia Games Net reporter, well-known streamers, and so on. This player jury is a bit formidable!”

Zhou Shiyue whispered: “Their eyes must be very critical. The requirements for the games will probably be very strict, right?”

Compared to the excitement and nervousness of his team members, Xie Yunfan actually felt completely relieved instead—if you casually pulled a bunch of players from the internet to vote, those who didn’t like rhythm games definitely wouldn’t vote for him.

The more professional the jury, the more they could see how high the quality of his game was.

The host said: “Thank you to all player jurors. This competition will be broadcast live the entire time on Blue Fish TV. Friends in the live broadcast room are also welcome to watch in real-time!”

At this time, in the most conspicuous position on Blue Fish TV’s homepage hung a live broadcast room recommendation for the [10th National College Student Game Design Competition].

The officially pushed live broadcast room had massive traffic. Today was also the weekend, and many early-rising viewers curiously clicked into the live broadcast room to watch the competition.

The bullet comment (danmu) area was densely packed.

[What kind of games can university students make?]
[Passing by, coming to see the maiden works of university noobs~]
[Rong City University Design Department checking in, go Senior Brother Liao!]
[Imperial Capital University sends congratulatory messages, optimistic about Zhou Jiajia’s team]
[I see Brother Liu, 666! Brother Liu is truly popular now, to actually be able to act as a player juror]
[Big shots gathered in the jury seats, the students better not be nervous]
[Looking forward to this year’s works!]

During this time slot in the morning, there weren’t many online viewers. However, university students from design departments would definitely pay attention to this competition, and there were many in the bullet comment area cheering for their alumni.

The host said: “Now the competition officially begins. Please welcome the first participating team, from Rong City University, Liao Meng’s team—God of Battle!”

Liao Meng walked onto the main stage together with his team members.

Appearing first, he seemed somewhat nervous. He took deep breaths several times before opening his speech manuscript and saying loudly: “Hello everyone, I am Liao Meng from Rong City University. Our participating work is God of Battle.”

The speech manuscript was very exquisitely crafted; one could see that effort had been put into it.

The game’s background music was quite hot-blooded. The work revealed the immaturity of a “university student’s maiden work,” but the overall design was acceptable.

This was a standalone mini-game where players leveled up and fought monsters all the way, transforming from a complete noob at the start into a “God of Battle” in the end. It was a bit like male-oriented power-fantasy progression web novels.

The special effects utilized rather gorgeous colors and looked very cool. But inherently, the combat mode was relatively monotonous, carrying a gorgeous web-game style of “one slash deals 999 damage,” where one could smoothly level up by slicing melons and chopping vegetables the whole way.

It was quite satisfying, but lacked playability.

Xie Yunfan rather liked his boss skill designs—things like “Moving Light Wave,” “Flipping Scales,” “Absolute Gravity,” “Infinite Black Hole”… These bizarre skills, combined with science and engineering knowledge, were designed very thoughtfully!

—This was the part that made people’s eyes light up the most.

As for the rest, in Xie Yunfan’s eyes, it was indeed too immature. Coupled with appearing first, the score probably wouldn’t be high.

Although Liao Meng tried his best to maintain calm, the veins popped out on the fingers gripping the microphone, showing just how nervous he was.

Looking down at the audience, he concluded: “We designed this game hoping that everyone with a dream can, through hard work, become the ‘God of Battle’ in their own field! Thank you everyone!”

The speech ended, and sparse applause rang out from the audience.

The host: “Next is the Q&A time. The on-site player jury and the few judges may ask questions freely.”

A long-haired girl in the player jury stood up and asked very sharply: “Slicing melons and chopping vegetables all the way to become the God of Battle—isn’t the content of your game somewhat monotonous? Speaking only for myself, I wouldn’t have much interest in playing it further.”

Liao Meng said: “This is a stress-relief mini-game. I hope players can relax themselves during the process of playing the game. Finally clearing the level and obtaining the title of God of Battle will also yield a great sense of achievement.”

A boy stood up and said: “Inherently, this is a fast-food game. After playing it, aside from stress relief, it won’t leave any deep impressions. Isn’t the core of the game too superficial?”

Liao Meng’s face turned slightly red, and he tried hard to explain: “The protagonist of our story is a child who was once suppressed. I feel that him being able to summon courage, regain confidence, and go defeat those monsters is not the superficial core you spoke of.”

The live broadcast room.
[Damn! Did this bunch of people in the jury seats eat dynamite?]
[These big shots have always had venomous tongues. Not directly cursing this game as being terrible is already giving enough face.]
[Be a little more polite to the university students, don’t scare the little cuties to death!]

Below the stage, Xie Yunfan frowned slightly. He hadn’t expected the questions from the jury seats to be so ruthless.

Actually, only people who knew Liao Meng’s experiences could fully understand this game.

He had once missed out on his dream university due to an accident. He had been a good student in the eyes of his parents and teachers since childhood. Underperforming in the college entrance exam must have struck him a heavy blow.

Later, he regained his confidence, proactively served as the class monitor, studied hard, and won scholarships every year. The protagonist of this game actually carried traces of his own shadow.

Unfortunately, his experience in making games was still insufficiently rich. The game’s gameplay was indeed designed very immaturely and was unable to resonate with players.

The host said: “The Q&A segment is over. Next, please ask the judges to give their scores.”

After a moment, the vote count was announced.

“Rong City University Liao Meng’s team God of Battle, Judges’ score 75 points, Jury’s vote 77 votes, Final score—76 points!”

Xie Yunfan thought to himself: It’s over, this result will probably be at the very bottom.

The classmates who got up early in the morning to watch the live broadcast frantically spammed the screen: “So low? It didn’t even pass 80 points!”
“Appearing first suffers too much of a disadvantage. I think this game is acceptable, the judges gave biased low scores, winning an award is definitely hopeless!”
“I also think it’s quite fun. Killing all the way to become the God of Battle—when I’m annoyed, I indeed want to download this kind of mini-game to relieve stress.”
“The national competition is just at this level? Withdrawing, withdrawing.”

There were all sorts of bullet comments in the live broadcast room.

When Liao Meng walked off the podium, his face looked somewhat terrible, and his ears were flushed completely red. He also knew that with this score, there was no hope of winning an award. It was just that being criticized by so many expert jurors just now had dealt him a massive blow.

Professor Lin gently patted his shoulder and whispered: “It’s fine, the important thing is participating. You performed very well just now.”

Liao Meng forced a smile.

Xie Yunfan leaned over and said: “Class Monitor, your game indeed has designs with remarkable merits.”

Liao Meng said with a bitter face: “You don’t need to comfort me. I know this work is not mature enough yet.”

Xie Yunfan said: “It’s not comfort, I’m speaking the truth. Your skill designs are very characteristic. It doesn’t show in a standalone level-clearing game, but if placed in a PVP fighting game, the combat process would be very interesting.”

Liao Meng paused, turned his head to look at him: “A fighting game? I’ve never thought about making PVP, numerical balancing is too hard to handle.”

Fighting games emphasized numerical balancing very much. It was only interesting when two people fought back and forth without a clear winner or loser. For the skill balancing of a combat PK game, let alone university students lacking experience, even many professional teams might not necessarily be able to control it.

So it was correct to make a standalone game for a graduation project; making a fighting game would crash more easily.

Xie Yunfan thought for a moment, took out his phone, and sent a message to Luo Hang: “How many characters have been made for Fighting Master right now, do you still need to add more?”

Luo Hang: “There are only about 30 mature ones. That’s far from enough, we need to continue designing them, otherwise we can’t do ranked matches in the later stages.”

Xie Yunfan: “I have a classmate here who has very good ideas regarding the design of fighting skills. How about I introduce him to you later?”

Luo Hang asked: “Liao Meng who just appeared?”

Xie Yunfan was very surprised: “You’re watching the competition?”

Luo Hang smiled slightly: “Mhm, paying attention to university student designs. I saw his work, the combat skill designs indeed have some ideas. You want him to design character skills to add to Fighting Master‘s character library?”

Xie Yunfan said: “Right. Our class monitor’s attitude toward doing things is very earnest, and he’s also very talented. Give him a chance, let him try.”

Luo Hang: “Okay, bring him over to chat after the competition ends.”

Xie Yunfan put away his phone and continued looking at the main stage.

With a face full of loss and dejection, Liao Meng tightly clenched his fists under his seat.

It seemed the game he had exhausted his heart’s blood to make could only serve as cannon fodder. A score of 76 meant there was zero hope of winning any awards.

Drawing the first lot to appear in this competition was already very unlucky. Being questioned continuously and doubted just now had hit him quite hard.

He had no idea that Xie Yunfan, sitting next to him, had already found a job for him.

---

Soon, the second team took the stage.

The team from Hua Yang Institute of Technology, game Three-Day Reincarnation.

This game was designed very innovatively. It was about a story where the player continuously reincarnated over three days to save their loved ones, somewhat like “infinite loop” gameplay.

The process of saving people had many sudden accidents that needed to be handled. If they couldn’t achieve a clearing ending, they had to constantly restart.

The creative idea was good, but Xie Yunfan felt that the entire game had too many repetitive events, and the operations were overly tedious. After playing it more than five times, players would feel annoyed.

Having to repeatedly do the same thing every time they restarted meant they clearly hadn’t adjusted the trigger probability of events well, and the unexpected events and random events weren’t rich and interesting enough.

However, for university students, this work was indeed acceptable.

The speaker was a girl with great stage presence and brimming with confidence. The final score she received was also good—88 points.

Being able to hit 85 points meant a very high probability of winning an award.

The girl was extremely happy when she stepped off the stage. However, Liao Meng’s face looked even worse. Appearing one after another, one 76, one 88… the contrast was tragic!

Ji Yan whispered: “This game actually got a score of 88? Why do I feel the quality isn’t even as high as ours? Those NPCs are all models that came with the asset library, the event dialogues are like reading a ledger, uh… it feels like it has no soul.”

Xie Yunfan said: “Your feeling is correct.”

Among the games present, very few could compare with Soul of Music in terms of degree of completion.

During this period, Classmate Ji Yan had been making games alongside a King-tier (top-tier) planner. His aesthetics and design concepts had improved quite a lot, allowing him to see the flaws in other games at a glance. It was just that he hadn’t yet realized his own changes.

One participating team after another took the stage.

The 4 hours of the morning passed quickly. Among the 8 participating teams, the highest score was the second to appear, Three-Day Reincarnation.

Ji Yan suddenly gained confidence: “I feel like we have a chance!”

Yan Ke whispered to Zhou Shiyue: “Their plots aren’t written as well as yours. It’s all just a messy jumble.”

Zhou Shiyue blushed: “What I write is also just average.”

Xie Yunfan: “…”

The big shot was truly modest. Having written so many novels, going to write game text would definitely be better than classmates with zero experience writing it.

Everyone ate lunch and went back to rest for over an hour.

At 2 PM, the competition started again.

The contestants all knew that the afternoon session was where the competition was the fiercest. The seeded champion teams of this competition were all in the afternoon.

As soon as the 2 PM competition started, Imperial Capital University’s Happy Child, which appeared first, detonated the entire venue!

This was an adventure story with a child as the protagonist. The art style was similar to Wings of Dream’s chibi fairy-tale style, featuring various cute small animals, making it exceptionally warm and healing.

Mixed inside were many mini-games played during childhood, such as playing rock-paper-scissors with NPCs, hopscotch, playing jacks, jump rope, and so on.

Captain Zhou Jiajia was a girl over 175cm tall. Her speech was natural and poised; truly worthy of being a top student from a key university, her aura was very strong.

“The essence of a game is entertainment. We hope that this game can let many people recall their own childhoods.”

“No matter how old you are now, no matter how many difficulties and twists and turns you have encountered in life, when playing this game, we hope you can completely lay down the troubles in your heart and become a Happy Child!”

She said this passage with a smile, and enthusiastic applause erupted throughout the venue.

This game very easily evoked players’ childhood memories. It was designed very cutely, and anyone who remained young at heart could download it to play a bit.

As a university student’s graduation project work, in Xie Yunfan’s eyes, it was also sufficiently excellent. The judges’ scores were very high, breaking through the 90-point barrier for the first time!

Many viewers in the live broadcast room flooded the screen with encouragement.
[I even want to play this game, it’s too cute!]
[The chibi protagonist is indeed adorable]
[There are many familiar mini-games, the overall art style is very healing]
[Optimistic about this game taking the championship~]

Many viewers thought this game was bound to win the championship.

However, appearing fourth in the afternoon, Zookeeper from South Yang Tech, made everyone’s eyes light up again!

In this game, players role-played as a zookeeper. They needed to feed various animals like tigers, lions, and giraffes, and there were various tasks every day.

After raising the animals well and opening the zoo, tourists’ spending in the park would convert into gold coins, used to purchase ingredients for the animals, repair various equipment, and maintain the zoo’s daily operations.

If the player couldn’t complete the tasks or allocated time incorrectly, the zoo might go bankrupt and close down.

Inherently, this was a management mobile game. Taking “protecting animals” as the theme, the animals would even speak and complain; it was designed quite innovatively.

Of course, their gold coin system was done very poorly. Xie Yunfan felt the numerical settings for the task rewards were extremely unreasonable, with almost no management difficulty.

The final score for this game—92 points!

[South Tech is awesome, surpassing Imperial Capital University’s 90 points]
[Looks like this year’s champion is Zookeeper, runner-up Happy Child, no suspense anymore!]
[There are three teams left, all from unknown schools, no need to watch anymore, right?]
[I’m withdrawing too, I’ll come back to look at the official website results later]

Past 4 PM, many people successively exited the live broadcast room.

The subsequent two games had no major highlights, with scores hovering around 80.

Because the previous teams went overtime, along with the time accumulated for voting, Q&A, etc., by the time it was Xie Yunfan’s turn to appear last, it was already 5:30 PM.

Being dinner time, everyone was somewhat hungry. Many people had run off from the live broadcast room, and the jury having sat here for a whole day were almost unable to sit still from backaches.

Impatient expressions appeared on some people’s faces.

Purple Cauliflower silently complained in his heart: Hold on, it’s the last one.

“Next, is the final group of contestants. From Rong City University, Xie Yunfan’s team’s game—Soul of Music!”

Xie Yunfan walked quickly onto the main stage, and Zhang Zizheng prepared himself in the demonstration area.

Hearing the game’s name, the jury wasn’t very interested—seemed like a rhythm game? Probably nothing innovative.

Xie Yunfan opened the speech manuscript file on his computer. At the same time, Zhang Zizheng launched the game.

On the large screen, the opening animation for Soul of Music appeared.

Only to see a glamorous woman holding a pipa sitting on a boat. The lake surface was hazy with mist. The pipa concealed half her face. She gently plucked the strings, and a crisp pipa melody rang in the ears.

“I have accompanied many masters, and witnessed many stories…”

Immediately following, on the other side of the lake appeared a small boat. A man in a green shirt stood at the bow, holding a dongxiao. The deep and melodious sound of the flute echoed throughout the entire venue.

A pleasant male voice said: “My previous master was a poet, who took me to travel across a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers.”

The camera cut along the lake water to the shore. A woman with waist-length hair sat under a tree, smiling as she played the guzheng: “My master was a princess of a fallen nation.”

The camera continued to move further away. A dashing and handsome young lad held a bamboo flute, sitting on a tree branch. The crisp sound of the flute startled a flock of birds on the tree into flight.

The young lad’s voice was sunny and bright: “My young master has a huge temper. I hope to quickly change to another master.”

A fierce wind rose, and bamboo leaves rustled.

In a distant pavilion, a cute young girl rapidly struck a yangqin with both hands. The pleasing notes sounded agile and lively.

The melody took a sharp turn downward, and the camera pushed forward rapidly. Deep within a palace, behind layers of curtains, the clear and ethereal sound of the konghou seemed to be narrating an ancient legend.

At the end of the vast desert, an old man bowed the strings of an erhu. The desolate music contrasted with the bright moon in the night sky, giving people an extremely bleak and solemn feeling.

…

The camera pushed continuously, rapidly flashing through ten small scenes: lakes, bamboo forests, pavilions, ancient paths, deep palaces, vast deserts…

Those instruments walked out of their own scenes, stood together, and formed a magnificent group portrait.

The instruments spoke in unison, and a soul-shaking mixed voice rang out in the venue: “If every instrument had a soul, would you be willing to listen to our stories?”

—Soul of Music.

Two highly stylized characters slowly emerged from the depths of the image, freezing in the middle of the screen. Below the characters appeared the registration and login boxes.

The audience in the venue fell completely silent.

Purple Cauliflower, Brother Liu, and the others in the jury seats all sat up straight one after another.

The netizens in the live broadcast room were also stunned.

Damn? The level of this opening animation… is a bit awesome?!