Chapter 62 This will be a truly top-tier band!

"Stop talking and get off the stage."

Li Can's voice came through everyone's in-ear monitors.

With somewhat strained expressions, the four of them gathered around Winnie and Li Can, their minds overflowing with words they were just dying to let out.

They bowed to the audience and walked off the stage.

"Senior! Seniors! You guys were absolutely legendary!"

As soon as they stepped off the stage, the junior members of the student union swarmed them.

The juniors' faces were flushed with excitement.

"It was truly unbelievable, that was so insane..."

An electric guitar string had snapped right in the middle of the performance.

The discordant notes and electronic feedback had directly terrified the students backstage.

If such a flawless performance had ended in regret like that, it would have been devastatingly painful!

Yet the snapped string was genuinely not a matter of human error or quality issues.

That sort of thing was simply uncontrollable.

In almost any instrumental performance, a snapped string is one of the most severe stage accidents.

And yet, a stage accident of this magnitude had been resolved in such an extravagant fashion.

Li Can had made the first move, altering the heavy drumming pattern of the ending section and suddenly introducing a syncopated beat.

This left the audience without the slightest foreshadowing that the music was coming to an end.

And what about the rest of them?

Chen Gang's keyboard also halted its finale, returning to staccato notes to maintain an unfinished rhythm.

Han Jiayin's rhythm guitar and Zhao Ze's bass switched instantly, catching the "fully resolved" terminal chord that was on the verge of being played, and substituting it with an "uncompletely resolved, heavily foreshadowed" transitional chord.

In the flash of a spark, based on the noise produced when Winnie's string snapped, they listened and identified it instantly, using its root note as their baseline...

Both of them simultaneously chose the exact same diminished seventh chord!

Such a chord sounded equally discordant, but not only did it mask the noise of the broken string, it also fit the theme of the musical piece "Through the Flames" through its dissonant transformation, adding brilliance and depth.

It heightened the tension while facilitating modulation, making the musical structure even more solid and compact.

After Winnie recognized the intent of the chord, she swiftly seized the lower register, joined the chord, and delivered a massive slide.

She transitioned into a dominant seventh chord, perfectly recapturing the musical emotion and resolving the musical phrase.

It fell precisely into place with everyone's full cadence.

It seemed like something that happened in a split second.

In reality, everyone's reaction time had been pushed to the absolute limit, flashing through eight hundred different tactical maneuvers in an instant, every single detail packed to the brim.

With a divine ending like this, if even a single slacker had been present, the entire sequence would have collapsed!

"Too fierce! Oh my god!"

"That was terrifying as hell, holy crap! My scalp was tingling just watching from the sidelines."

"You can actually save a trainwreck like that, good grief..."

It wasn't just the students.

Down in the audience, the professors from the National Conservatory of Music had seen everything with absolute clarity.

Before they could even react, they had witnessed this transcendent rescue.

When they finally came to their senses, several professors had earthquake-like tremors in their pupils as they looked at each other.

Their faces were plastered with the word "absurd."

Rescuing a performance by oneself was one thing.

A blood-pumping combo move like that was something they had truly never witnessed before!

"Our school... no, Huaxia is probably about to produce a truly world-class band."

A professor in the audience couldn't help but praise softly.

Hearing this, another professor nodded repeatedly.

"Indeed, top-tier... At this level, if this wasn't a coincidence but pure skill... they might even leave the so-called top tier far behind..."

However, upon hearing these words, the expression of the professor who spoke first turned peculiar.

He turned his head and asked, "A coincidence? Professor Shen, do you believe that?"

"I don't... The pitch of the wrong note produced by Winnie's snapped string was uncontrollable. To instantly identify the root note while forming a diminished seventh chord, followed by rapid modulation and a sliding termination—this could by no means be a coincidence. It can only be the result of rock-solid music theory, fundamental skills, on-the-spot reactions, and tacit cooperation, where not a single element can be missing."

Professor Shen shook his head, his expression stiff, the corners of his mouth twitching.

"But this is just too absurd!"

"That kind of tacit understanding, I've only ever seen it performed by the world's top band, Dark Annihilation, at their 2009 London concert. But that was psychedelic rock, completely out of the same league of velocity as power rock."

"Their handling was equally breathtakingly delicate, but their reaction speed was worlds apart. Perhaps Dark Annihilation could have pulled it off, but they never encountered it, whereas Li Can and his crew... actually did it."

"..."

Dark Annihilation, hailing from Texas, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, possessed a diverse style and had continually explored forward with the progression of the times, serving as a benchmark for rock musicians worldwide.

The two professors felt their throats growing a bit dry.

Precisely because they understood the difficulty, they were even more shocked than ordinary people.

And this was merely a newly formed band!

The two professors glanced at several media personnel sitting in the front row, whose faces were all frozen in expressions of utter astonishment.

They exchanged a glance and revealed meaningful smiles.

...

After the group bid farewell to the excited junior students and returned to the lounge to unwind, the atmosphere among them instantly shifted.

The performance rescue.

It was indeed explosive. Under normal circumstances, they would surely be thrilled over such god-tier coordination.

But for the band members...

The sudden embrace and kiss between Li Can and Winnie was far more explosive.

"Li Can! What the hell! You kept this hidden from the brothers so well!"

Lin Feng jumped straight up in place, slinging an arm around Li Can's neck as he asked through gritted teeth.

"Who was it that said Sigma males never fall into women's traps?!"

"Hmph, Sigma males never care about the opinions of others."

Li Can sneered and straightened his posture.

Lin Feng had no choice but to release his arm.

If he didn't let go, he'd end up being hung up by his neck, which would be quite embarrassing.

Chen Gang and Zhao Ze exchanged a glance.

They suddenly realized something.

"Holy crap! Out of the six band members, two couples have formed, leaving just the two of us single?!"

As soon as those words were spoken, Li Can and Lin Feng both laughed out loud.

"Then you two should just get together."

"Go to hell, I can't stay in this band anymore..."

The bunch began playfully scuffling in the lounge.

Winnie smiled gently as she watched the guys horse around, gossiping a bit while chatting with Han Jiayin beside her.

After they had played around for quite a while, she finally spoke up.

"Alright, alright, stop messing around. The performance is over, we're having a celebration banquet later, are you guys coming along?"

"Did you hear that, Li Can? Still won't let us go? Time to go eat!"

"Oh oh oh, let's go, let's go eat."

With a chuckle, Li Can loosened his arm, releasing the three guys who had just been locked in headlocks.

Zhao Ze calmly wiped his glasses, and Chen Gang took a sip of water.

Meanwhile, Lin Feng rubbed his reddened neck and couldn't help but mutter under his breath.

"What an absolute beast, growing up so tall, he really didn't eat rice in vain..."

Muttering, Lin Feng packed up his instruments.

After the group walked out of the lounge, pulled out their keys to lock the security door, they hurried toward the school bus parking lot outside the theater.

Once the performance concluded, the students who had attended as audience members would take advantage of the lingering excitement to go out in groups of three or five to have fun.

As for the performers, they would carry out the deeply ritualistic tradition of going out for a meal together as a celebratory banquet marking the successful conclusion of the evening.

Right there on the bus, as the group was chatting away, a conservatory professor walked down from the front and came over to sit down beside Li Can and the others.

"Professor Shen."

Everyone greeted him politely.

Shen Hong smiled, nodded, and got straight to the point.

"Your band is really fantastic. What do you say, are you interested in participating in a music festival?"