Hello Everyone, a new work has been started called "Surviving the Endless Sea" on my account. Please check it out.
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Zhang Cihai, a famous lecturer, spoke in a warm and slightly hoarse voice. His tone was filled with complicated emotions, as though even he was struggling to fully digest what he had just witnessed.
"This man created a shadow of arrogance in his young daughter, and that shadow became the foundation of her confidence. That is Yu Ye. The Yu Ye of his youth. Many people have never seen that side of him."
"So Shuying had a template, a melody, and even a clear direction for learning the piano implanted in her mind from the very beginning. This was only your first step, right? You didn't care about the tune at all. That melody belonged to you, yet you abruptly dismantled it and turned it into lyrics, simply so that she could understand the melody! You broke all the rules just to awaken your daughter's talent!"
Zhang Cihai's voice became increasingly complicated. Even he found it difficult to believe what kind of painstaking plan was hidden behind everything they had just seen. What kind of performance was this? It was simple, yet cruelly effective.
Yu Ye knew that he was going to die. He knew that death could come for him at any moment. He also knew that his daughter might grow up to be ordinary. But he was unwilling to accept that. He did not want his daughter to bear the weight of an ordinary life in the future, so he placed all of his hopes on this child.
He tore apart the so-called piano crash course books in advance. Those books might contain countless tricks for rapidly improving one's performance, but they were of little real help when it came to learning classical piano.
Yu Ye didn't want Shuying to become someone who merely knew how to play a few impressive pieces. He wanted her to understand the piano. He wanted her to believe that she could become extraordinary.
In order to convince her that she possessed genuine talent, Yu Ye even spent money to arrange for the friends around Shuying who were learning piano to become stronger than her.
That was the first step. He wanted her to feel inferior. He wanted her to realize that there were always people around her who seemed more talented, more skilled, and more gifted. Only by making her feel humble could he make her desperate to change.
The second step was to give her the mobile phone and allow her to see the image of a young man who seemed to be approaching the end of his life. That image made Shuying begin to wonder. Why did that man want her to learn piano? Why did he care so much about music? Why did someone who seemed to have nothing to do with the elegant world of piano insist that she continue?
Then came the third step. When Shuying became more and more inferior, when she felt that she was about to retreat, Yu Ye finally revealed the youthful voice he had deliberately hidden. He sang all of his grief. He sang all of his regrets. He sang all of his hopes for the future.
And at that moment, Shuying finally understood something. She could not retreat. She had to keep moving forward. Her belief became firm. Truly firm. So she would never back down again. That was when Shuying began to believe in herself. She began to believe that her talent for piano was extraordinary.
"A lie repeated a thousand times, ten thousand times, even a hundred thousand times, can eventually become the truth." Zhang Cihai's voice carried a strange weight. "It may seem ordinary at first, but with the blessing of a father's love, that ordinary talent can become extraordinary through hard work."
"Originally, Shuying's piano learning was very ordinary. Even her classmates thought so. But no one could have imagined that she would genuinely come to believe that she was talented. She had faith. She had melody in her heart. And because she believed, because she persisted, because she continued to work hard, a piano genius was eventually born."
"Right? Mr. Yu Ye?" Zhang Cihai looked toward the camera.
On the screen, Yu Ye's figure appeared again. He stared at that figure for a long time. He would really like to meet such a person. He had never encountered someone like this in his entire life.
In the broadcast, the hearts of countless viewers seemed to collapse inch by inch. The members of the program sitting backstage were equally silent.
On the stage, the contestants present looked at one another with bitter smiles. It seemed that ever since that man appeared, all of their carefully prepared family-education methods had been completely exhausted.
"There is no doubt that he understands songs, but can he actually play the piano? Those... rough fingers. Those hands that have worked on construction sites. Can they really play a piano?" Contestant Su Wen spoke with a complicated expression.
After all, Yu Ye had gotten up at four or five in the morning every day, left early, returned late, and spent years performing all kinds of physical labor. His fingers had long since become rough and deformed. They were covered with cracks left behind by countless jobs. Those were absolutely not the slender, elegant fingers of a pianist. It was difficult to believe that someone with such hands could possess such accomplishments in music.
What made it even more unbelievable was his background. He had grown up in an orphanage. At that time, he simply had no opportunity to learn piano.
"Yu Ye can only be considered unfortunate," Su Wen sighed. "But Shuying is the pride of her generation!"
There was a hint of resentment in his voice. As a teacher, he had always believed that the family education he provided should naturally be superior to that of someone from the lower social classes. At least, that was what he had believed before today.
But now, even though the man's circumstances were so poor and his appearance so ordinary, when it came to teaching and nurturing a child's ability, he was not inferior to any of the people present. That realization made some of the contestants uncomfortable. After all, they had been compared with someone like this.
Su Wen felt that if he were going to be compared, he should be compared with someone who had a wealthy father, or perhaps with Shuying's mother. He should not be losing to someone like Yu Ye.
Among the guests, Yuan Quan looked at the contestants and sneered. He was a doctor. He had witnessed enough of the warmth and darkness of human nature to understand exactly what these contestants were thinking.
He simply raised his microphone and spoke. "I don't know what kind of family backgrounds you guests have, nor do I know how capable you believe yourselves to be. But you need to understand one fact. If this man appears before you, he can tell you exactly what it means to be completely crushed."
Yuan Quan's words were blunt and merciless. The group of guests immediately looked ugly, but no one could refute them.
Meanwhile, the program's playback continued.
Yu Shuying had still not spoken. She was waiting. She remembered too much. At that time, after netizens sang the melody of The Flower of the South City, that melody had remained in her heart. From then on, she was no longer afraid of anything when she went to practice the piano. Afterward, she accidentally won the musical quota for the National Treasure Piano Artist.
She entered the piano musical scene. Then, almost by coincidence, she was selected to perform alongside a pianist. That was when she first understood what glory felt like. She swore that she would sit in that position again. And she would remain there forever.
After that, she defeated opponent after opponent in the piano room. She practiced scales. She searched for melodies. She composed piano music.
As the years passed, she gradually became involved in several circles within the sensational music world, including the piano circle, the classical music circle, and the pure music circle. That year, Shuying's brilliance shone brightly.
And behind that brilliance was a father who had spent years struggling merely to provide food and clothing while fighting against illness. But whenever the song sounded... She would suddenly feel an unbearable sadness.
"It's you... It's you!" Yu Shuying's voice was hoarse.
She could never forget that person. She truly couldn't. That netizen had sent her countless photographs in order to convince her that the story was real.
There were hospital beds.
Needles.
Chemotherapy equipment.
A pale complexion.
Pinholes covering the skin.
And there was also that person's news.
He had updated more than a dozen times. From the beginning of his illness... To the days after the illness worsened... And finally, there was no more news.
Yu Shuying remembered that when she was still a child, she had cried as she sent him a message. "Listen. The piano music I made for you is here. Please listen to it. Please wake up..."
At that time, the man in the living room had just returned from work. His entire body was covered in dust, and he looked exhausted. During the winter, when he had been selling vegetables, the cold had cracked his hands until they bled. Yet even then, he had remembered to buy hand ointment for himself.
He had proudly said that he had bought it with his own money. Then he had muttered to himself, looking almost miserly.
Nana looked at Yu Shuying and comforted her. "This man is doing well now, but Yu Shuying had no one to rely on at that time. He only gave her that faint humming melody..."
Nana's voice gradually became softer. No one would have believed it. From childhood until she was grown, almost no one believed that this man could play the piano. Unless Liu Shi had taught her. Only someone with Liu Shi's background would have had the qualifications to play the piano in that era.
And now, the playback continued, and two images appeared simultaneously.
One showed Yu Ye finishing his song alone. He climbed down from the rooftop and returned to the living room. The other showed a young Shuying sitting inside her bedroom with red eyes. Then came a sudden...
Bang! The sound of someone knocking on the bedroom door.
"Isn't your piano learning going very badly?" Those were the first sentences the man said when he came in.
"No!" Shuying was annoyed, but her eyes were firm. "I will defeat them!"
The man simply smiled. Then he walked away with a faint, disdainful smile. It was the same kind of smile countless ordinary parents had shown before. A smile that seemed to say that he completely doubted whether this child could truly become better.
But at that moment, Shuying felt as though she had been stabbed by that smile. She stared at the man's back, then she murmured to herself. "Just wait and see. I will defeat all of my opponents. Even you. I know how to compose piano music. I am different from those people who merely learn the piano!"
At that moment, Shuying wanted to tell all those wealthy families of the same age that learning piano was different for her.
"I have a story in my heart. I understand the meaning behind piano music. I want to play out a good story. I also want to let this man know that the things he doesn't like, the things he thinks someone from the bottom could never accomplish... I can do them."
At that moment, Shuying was stubborn to the extreme. Yet deep inside her heart, a light had been lit once again. No one could have imagined that from this very moment onward, her faith would become unshakable.
And now, on the stage of the show, several people wore complicated expressions. They did not know what to say, especially the hostess who had comforted Yu Shuying earlier. She felt as though something was stuck in her throat.
If Shuying knew that the reason her peers had appeared so strong was that her father had deliberately arranged everything... If she knew that he had done it only to make her feel inferior first... If she knew that the good friend who had supposedly suffered from bone cancer was actually part of her father's carefully constructed plan, created so that she would awaken and understand the true meaning of piano music... Then what would she think?
Her father had never initially wanted her to become famous. At the beginning, he simply wanted to create a story. A story that could become the beginning of every piano artist's dream. But at that time... Shuying knew nothing. She only knew that the man's hands were covered in ruthless cracks. The cracked skin must have hurt, yet he never complained.
As for imagining that the man could play the piano, she had never even considered it. Because Shuying had only ever seen those hands on construction sites. She had seen them delivering meals. She had seen them working in the wind and snow.
So when she was young, she subconsciously concluded that he had nothing to do with the piano. Nothing to do with romance. Nothing to do with excellence. He belonged to those ordinary people who woke up early and went to bed late, people who worked from morning until night just to make a living.
And now, on the stage of the program, it was finally time for the contestants to demonstrate their family education. "Contestant 04, Ma Ting, please stand up."
Ma Ting was the store manager of a chain of Music Stores. She came from an excellent family and possessed considerable resources.
This time, she had brought her son to participate in the show for one purpose: to promote her son's reputation as a pianist and let the audience see how she had educated a piano genius.
With heavy makeup and high-end clothing, Ma Ting nodded toward the program team with a smile. Then her family's footage began to play.
"Practice the piano properly. Then you will become a piano artist." Ma Ting frowned as she reprimanded her son.
At the time, Ma Xuewen was thirteen years old. He practiced with a dull and emotionless expression. He had started practicing at the age of four. After years of training, his technique had become extremely skilled. His fingers moved smoothly across the keys, producing notes that flowed like a stream.
At thirteen, he had already become highly proficient in the diatonic scale. Now, the sad sound of his piano playing echoed through the room. Every note was precise. Every movement was extremely skilled.
Seeing this scene, Ma Ting, as his mother, was filled with pride. After that, she continued telling her son the same thing every day. "Practice the piano properly. You want to become an artist, and our family will definitely produce an artist."
"What's wrong? Play it again! You have to make me angry before you are willing to practice, right?"
The footage of Ma Ting played rapidly. Every day, she reprimanded her son. Whenever she discovered that the child had not practiced or had become lazy, she would immediately scold him. Sometimes, she would even cry in disappointment.
Eventually, the child grew up. He became angry. He left home. He distanced himself from this stubborn mother. But in the end, he still returned. He opened a piano shop. He began playing again. Only... He never became a pianist.
The footage ended, and the screen went dark. Now, seated before the stage were the judges, Yu Shuying, the male and female presenters, and the seven current guests.
"I think something is wrong with your education." One of the guests finally spoke.
"Truly talented children can become geniuses with only a little guidance. Just look at Shuying." Chen Cheng said.
Even so, there was still admiration in his expression. From the first time he had seen that little girl, he had already known that this child possessed extraordinary potential. With only a little proper education, she could become a great talent.
"What do you mean?"
"Yu Ye gave Shuying a pedal, and then Shuying rose step by step and eventually became a piano artist." Chen Cheng nodded slowly.
The story was still continuing, and everyone in the studio could feel that the true climax had not yet arrived.