Chapter Eighty-Eight: Splendor

A tall, thin young man in a suit and bow tie, Wu Di had a delicate, narrow face, elegant brows, and bright eyes. He had the kind of refined, almost feminine handsomeness that made him the sort of prince charming girls could not help but adore.

Wu Di had entered far too many competitions. In professional piano contests at home and abroad, a Chinese name was almost always among the top finishers—either his or Su Yuxi’s. Overall, he had won even more prizes than Su Yuxi, simply because she rarely entered competitions, choosing only the most prestigious ones.

Wu Di, by contrast, would enter any contest, large or small. His family could not afford to be selective, so any prize money would do. That was why he was known as a competition addict.

In truth, the piano department at the Central Conservatory of Music was slightly stronger than the one at the Academy of Drama, but Wu Di had not chosen the conservatory because Su Yuxi was at the Academy of Drama.

Her figure from behind was the goal he had chased all his life.

Wu Di strolled toward the piano with effortless grace, a smile at the corners of his lips. At once, he drew another wave of stifled squeals from the girls in the audience; if they had not still been trying to preserve a little college composure, some might well have rushed forward for his autograph.

Many of the judges knew this young prodigy as well. He had skipped the preliminary round and gone straight into the second round. In fact, he could have applied for admission without examination, but Wu Di had grown impatient with the dullness of high school life and wanted to come to the Academy of Drama sooner to take a look. So he rejected the offer of exemption and came to compete instead. For him, this exam was nothing more than a trip, a game.

Wu Di bowed and adjusted the piano bench, as though he had forgotten to announce the piece he was about to play.

Every eye in the hall was fixed on this young and proud genius. This year’s arts examination, they said, was truly full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers; among the twenty-odd candidates, not one could be dismissed as merely passing through. But the marvel was that there was always a higher peak beyond the last, and the farther the contest went, the greater the surprises became. By the end of the examination, even a nuclear weapon had appeared, making everyone feel that sitting here so long had been well worth it.

The instant Wu Di’s hands touched the keys, his entire bearing changed. He bent deeply at the waist, almost as though he meant to bury himself in the piano.

At first he had only intended to play casually, but the girl who had performed Schubert before him stirred his desire to outshine her.

The audience watched as both hands struck down together. The keys rang out with fierce resonance, the weight of palm and forearm evenly transferred into the instrument. A seemingly tiny movement of the wrists brought forth from the piano a subterranean chord, like a dark current surging beneath still water. From soft to loud, from nothing to something, there was no abruptness, no chaos; everything flowed with such natural ease.

The sound surged through the music hall of the Academy of Drama, and many people covered their mouths to stifle cries of surprise. Most of those who understood music and piano recognized it at once: Liszt’s Fourth Transcendental Étude, a dazzling showpiece ranked sixth among the ten most difficult piano works in the world.

Wu Di’s upper body remained low, his expression focused and solemn, his thin lips pressed tightly together as his hands flew over the keys.

His right hand, nimble and deft, swept rapidly from the lower register into the upper, lifting a string of minor notes colored by tragic grandeur. His left hand hammered the treble with heavy force, squeezing out a wail, making the piano cry out in a shower of strange, wondrous tones.

Then suddenly his right hand gathered force in the piano’s high register, and two crisp chords burst forth like spray crashing against rock in a furious tide—so sharp, so clear!

Even in such fierce playing, Wu Di maintained an impeccably standard hand shape, which surprised Li Yunling greatly. It showed how solid his fundamentals truly were. Now, seeing this passage of rapid right-hand arpeggios, so demanding of technique, performed with such perfection, all the judges were astounded. Clearly Wu Di’s excellence far exceeded their expectations.

This piece required an uncommonly strong sense of rhythm, yet not the slightest confusion; almost no wrong notes; the ability to bring out the layers of each voice and the extreme contrasts of each section; and, in the end, a complete and seamless performance. It was extraordinarily difficult.

For Wu Di to dare perform it in such a setting, he must have had tremendous confidence.

Even the judges below were watching with bright eyes and delighted expressions. For them, it was no longer an examination, but a magnificent feast of music.

Those three-staff scores with parallel lines, the accidentals crowding every measure, the profusion of ornaments—all of them, in Wu Di’s hands, seemed like obedient spirits. Following the rise and fall of his body and the sweep of his arms, they danced wildly through the hall, and everyone who heard and watched was utterly entranced.

Piano was not merely a pleasure of sound. In the hands of a master, every expression, every gesture, every lift and fall of the body became part of the music, part of the moving art before our eyes.

Watching this boy become one with the piano, it seemed as though every phrase and every note had been transformed into emotion that lingered in the air—ardent, furious, sorrowful, joyful—so that everyone felt it as though it were their own.

In the ending, the heavy, measured strikes unlocked the audience’s final shackles, and their emotions, carried by Wu Di’s slow movements, sank into a cold sea.

With his last sweep of the hands through the air, the performance came to an end, and only then did many in the audience truly understand what performance meant, what a piano meant, what music meant.

Covered in sweat, Wu Di let his hands fall at his waist and lifted his head slightly, closing his eyes to feel the intense beams of the spotlight on his face.

Silently, in his heart, he said: Su Yuxi, I am here. This Mateppa is my magnificent declaration of war.

The audience below had no choice but to stand and applaud. A performance this brilliant deserved nothing less.

The judges also revealed their scores. Kong Jianjun even gave a perfect hundred, and even the strictest of them, Li Yunling, awarded a high 95.

In the end, Wu Di received 98 points, the highest score ever recorded in the Academy of Drama piano department’s second-round examination. Many people believed the first place in this year’s piano arts examination had now been decided.

No one before him had dared to perform Mateppa in an exam, and not even one of the world’s ten most difficult piano pieces had ever appeared in such a setting. Of course, that was partly because many geniuses were admitted directly and never had to take the exam at all.

But there was no denying that Wu Di’s mastery of the piano had risen to a new, awe-inspiring height.

At his age, perhaps only Su Yuxi in China could compare. Given time, he would surely become a top-tier piano master, and perhaps even have a chance to contend for the Chopin International Piano Competition, Li Yunling thought as she applauded.

The unhappiness she had felt because of Cheng Xiaoyu had vanished without a trace, because this genius belonged to their department.

After Wu Di stepped down from the stage, the association president, Hu Bing, took the microphone and said, “Today’s exam has truly been dazzling! With our incoming junior, Duanmu Linsha, and a genius like Wu Di, I believe the future of the Academy of Drama will be immeasurably brilliant. Let us thank the school leadership for their wise decision in turning this public examination into a splendid concert.” He paused, waiting for the applause to rise and fade.

Then Hu Bing smiled and said, “Now there is still one final candidate today, the long-awaited Cheng Xiaoyu. Please welcome Cheng Xiaoyu to the stage.”

Cheng Xiaoyu’s name echoed through the hall, but no one answered. Hu Bing asked again, “Is Cheng Xiaoyu here?”

Someone below joked softly, “Not here!”

But in the hushed concert hall, that voice seemed to swell to enormous size. Laughter rippled through the hall at once and swelled into jeering.

Hu Bing then looked toward the judges below; no one knew who was to decide whether the exam had already ended.

Duanmu Linsha held her phone in her hand but did not press to call. After hearing Wu Di’s performance, her confidence had wavered as well, and she began to wonder whether Cheng Xiaoyu was too frightened to come on stage.

Pei Yanchen frowned, feeling somewhat regretful. She thought that if Cheng Xiaoyu did not dare to compete, she bore a great share of the blame.

He Mingzhe was also deeply pleased. If only Cheng Xiaoyu’s exam had come earlier, the humiliation would have been even more brutal. He had gone to considerable trouble to make Wu Di shine, and that made him somewhat displeased.

But compared with all that, what mattered far more was being able to prevent Cheng Xiaoyu from entering the Academy of Drama, to secretly manipulate a person’s fate. What a heady, exhilarating thing it was.

He Mingzhe felt delight rising in his heart, though his face remained expressionless as he searched the crowd for Duanmu Linsha, wanting to see whether she was disappointed to the extreme.

Watching the noise in the hall grow louder and louder, Li Yunling stood up, took the microphone from the podium, and said, “Since Cheng Xiaoyu has not come, let him be treated as having given up the exam!”

Before she had even finished, the hall erupted in a storm of boos, for this was hardly the perfect ending they had wanted.

When you have gone to the trouble of raising your fist to beat someone senseless, only for that person to run away and leave you with nowhere to vent your anger, it is an exceedingly irritating thing.

Everyone had now confirmed the cowardice and incompetence of that fat man, and some were already rising in disappointment, ready to leave. For most, all that was missing was a final beating of the fallen dog.

Just as everyone was growing disappointed, the central doors of the hall were pushed open, and Cheng Xiaoyu came in, drenched in sweat, a score rolled up like a baton in his hand.