Monday.
For the vast majority of university students, Monday means the pain of the 8 AM class and the Sage Time after the weekend carnival. But for Lin Feng, this Monday was no different from rushing to the execution ground.
Dragging heavy steps, Lin Feng pushed open the door of the rehearsal room.
On that face, which was perennially evaluated by the system as facial paralysis and misread by outsiders as High Cold, one still could not see any emotional fluctuation, as if it were a piece of ice that had not melted for ten thousand years.
However, only Heaven knew that the inside of this ice was already covered in cracks, panicked to the point of wanting to dig a hole on the spot and burrow into it.
Lin Feng had passed the entire weekend in a state of heart-pounding fear. Because he was afraid that the terrifying flag of "if I don't let anyone know, it should be okay" would come true, he didn't even dare to fully complete those daily tasks that were originally unshakable, deeply afraid the system would create some demon moth for him again, or forcibly trigger some plot of interacting with Shen Linyin.
He was just like a thief who had done something with a guilty conscience, only wanting to hide himself in the shadows.
"Yo! Brother Feng, you came!"
Before Lin Feng could even smooth out his breathing, a voice full of vitality smashed head-on into him.
Ren Yichen carried that electric guitar covered in stickers on his back, wearing a handsome face sufficient to make the whole school's girls scream, smiling like a two-hundred-jin fool. Obviously, this dear brother was still immersed in the huge success of last week's Livehouse performance, completely unaware of his teammates' awkwardness, and even less aware that his own girlfriend had almost been "conquered" by his good brother.
"En."
Lin Feng tried his best to control his facial muscles, responding faintly, but his line of sight was like clearing mines in a minefield, carefully sweeping toward the corner of the room.
Shen Linyin was sitting there.
This school-beauty level drummer, who usually kept neat short hair, had a cold and dashing temperament, and played drums with quite a bit of the style of a Liangshan Hero, was behaving abnormally anomalously at this moment.
She did not twirl the drumsticks chicly as usual, nor did she raise her head to greet Lin Feng, but lowered her head, staring deadly at the snare drum skin in front of her.
That face full of focused expression, it was as if she were researching whether the molecular structure of this drum skin was about to undergo fission.
But Lin Feng clearly saw that the knuckles of her hands holding the drumsticks were slightly white, and the roots of her ears were even dyed with a layer of suspicious crimson.
Big Sister, don't be like this!
Lin Feng wailed in his heart.
Where is your usual ruthlessness of wanting to smash the drums to pieces? Where is your high and cold style of treating suitors like air? Who are you trying to scare to death with this appearance of a 'shy little wife'?!
This weird silence and contrast made Lin Feng, who was already guilty-hearted, even more anxious.
In comparison, the bassist Lu Mingxuan behaved very stably.
As long as he stepped into this rehearsal room which he determined to have "extremely poor Feng Shui," this dear brother automatically switched to the Obsidian Mentality mode. One could only see him paralyzed on that dilapidated folding chair, eyes godless, his soul appearing to have already floated to the Nine Heavens and Clouds, the whole person presenting a half-dead state of "although my person is here, my soul has already gotten off work."
In this suffocating atmosphere, Lin Feng actually found Lu Mingxuan's usual schtick to be a bit of a relief. He bit the bullet and walked to the position belonging to the lead guitar, silently putting the guitar on his back, trying to turn himself into a transparent background board.
"Cough cough, since everyone has arrived, I have a big matter to announce!"
Ren Yichen cleared his throat, and that inexplicable halo of confidence once again shrouded the whole venue.
"Although the effect of the last performance was explosive, and that Shamate was also very successful, after coming back I reflected a bit..." Ren Yichen said with a serious face, "In the end, being forced to sing 'Nothing to My Name' out of helplessness, although that was for art, it is after all someone else's song. As a band with a soul, we cannot always live by covering songs and 'paying tribute'!"
Hearing these words, except for Lu Mingxuan who was still spirit-wandering, both Lin Feng and Shen Linyin could not help but think in their hearts: Was that for art? That was because you had no songs to sing, okay!
"So!" Ren Yichen fiercely pulled out a piece of crumpled paper from behind his back, waving it like he was offering a treasure, "I utilized two days and two nights of inspiration explosion over the weekend and wrote a new song! This time it is absolutely original! Absolutely hardcore!"
Lin Feng's eyelid jumped.
Ren Yichen's creative ability... how to say it, although this fellow hovered at F-grade in singing, his passion for rock and roll was indeed S-grade. It's just that this so-called "creation" was often full of various inconceivable brain holes.
"Come come come, this is the first draft, I just transcribed the score, everyone give some opinions."
Ren Yichen handed that paper in front of Lin Feng.
Lin Feng looked down.
In that instant, he almost thought Ren Yichen had made a rubbing of a curse talisman from some ancient tomb and brought it back.
The paper was densely packed with drawings of various twisted lines, black dots that were suddenly big and suddenly small, and a few stains that looked like mosquito corpses. It neither had the staff format used commonly on this planet, nor did it conform to the logic of numbered musical notation; even the bar lines were drawn like he was playing Snake.
How was this a music score? This was clearly a failed exercise in Wild Cursive calligraphy!
"..."
Lin Feng was silent.
Fortunately, as early as the first day of him joining, when he was still a guitar novice being driven like a duck onto a perch, the system had endowed him with a passive god skill—[Absolute Score Eye]. Since Ren Yichen's handwriting skill hadn't improved one bit, it was time to make use of it again.
Under the blessing of this skill, the world in Lin Feng's eyes changed.
Those chaotic lines began to align automatically, the black dots that looked like tadpoles began to return to their positions, and the originally disorganized graffiti was rapidly translated into lines of standard, clear music scores in Lin Feng's brain.
This skill could even see through the phenomenon to the essence, directly parsing the true melody the creator wanted to express in their brain at that moment—even if the creator had a hand tremor and drew it wrong.
Let me see, what exactly did this 'genius' write...
Lin Feng took a deep breath and began to read this new work named "Broken XX" (the last two words were scrawled so illegibly they looked like drawing circles).
However, as his gaze moved down, the corner of the mouth on Lin Feng's originally expressionless face twitched extremely minutely.