Chapter 56: The Clock in the Opposite Direction

"Damn! If the Class Monitor hadn't brought it up, I would have almost forgotten. That's right, Old Xu, go up and perform a number for us! Everyone's waiting!" Cheng Huaiyu, also one to stir up trouble, urged him with a grin.

"Uh..." Xu Heng looked at the dark-faced Zhang Zikuan, feeling it wouldn't be great to strike him down again at this moment. Although the scumbag was quite annoying, Zhang Zikuan hadn't done anything too outrageous, like getting some young girl pregnant or the like.

Who knew that Zhang Zikuan would be so magnanimous at this moment, saying in a muffled voice, "If you want to perform, you can borrow my guitar."

Xu Heng glanced at him with some surprise, discovering that this scumbag was actually a sensible person. He knew that rather than letting everyone have nothing to do and digging up his scandal for gossip, it was better to let other things dilute the impact of his scandal of having one foot in two boats during his freshman year.

Thinking of this, Xu Heng smiled, walked to Zhang Zikuan's original spot, and took the guitar from his hands.

"Alright then, just as the Class Monitor said, it's rare for everyone to be out here, so I'll play a song to liven things up."

A burst of cheers erupted around them, and a few boys even let out a couple of whistles.

"But before I sing, I want to say a few words from the heart."

Xu Heng sat on a stone stool, holding the guitar, and looked around.

"University is the most beautiful time in one's life. At our age, there is no pressure from homework, and we are free from the nagging of parents and teachers, like free birds."

"But that doesn't mean we are already capable of living independently. Most of the students here are living on their parents' living expenses, eating in the school cafeteria, and the people we associate with are all our peers. Only after we leave university and step into society will it be called true independence. At that time, we will feel lonely because our parents are not by our side, we will be troubled by the pressures of life, and we will run back and forth at our jobs every day, complaining endlessly."

"But this is what true life is: ordinary, yet beautiful."

Xu Heng plucked the strings twice; the melody of *Ordinary Road* was already at his fingertips, but he pulled it back.

He thought for a moment and felt that if he let kids of this age listen to *Ordinary Road*, they wouldn't understand it, so he eventually gave up.

Besides, *Ordinary Road* is such a good song that it would be a waste to just sing it like that.

"Today, I'll play an old song by Zhou Dong. I believe everyone here should have heard it."

"Zhou Dong? Jielun's old song?"

"Zhou Dong has old songs?"

In many people's perception, Zhou Dong became popular in the 06-08 period. For people in '07, *Blue and White Porcelain* and *Rice Field* hadn't come out yet. In their eyes, Zhou Dong's representative works were still *Chrysanthemum Terrace*, *East Wind Breaks*, and *Qi Li Xiang*. If one had to talk about the oldest song, it would only be *Nunchucks*, but *Nunchucks* only became popular across the country after Zhou Dong exploded in popularity.

Actually, that's not the case. Zhou Dong had already become popular in Taiwan a few years prior. The later Chinese-style songs were specifically created by finding Fang Ge to break into the mainland market. Zhou Dong's explosion in the mainland had a certain inevitability.

But if one were to mention the song that made Zhou Dong popular the latest and most coincidentally, it would probably be this one, which was brought to fame by short-video platform short videos twenty years later... *Clock in the Opposite Direction*.

The guitar strings rang out, and the moment the intro came out, everyone was stunned for two seconds.

Many people subconsciously searched their mental music libraries, then asked themselves—is this a song by Zhou Dong?

Such an unfamiliar melody, they had never heard it at all.

Not everyone would listen to every single song by Zhou Dong from his debut to the present, especially since *Clock in the Opposite Direction* was in the most inconspicuous spot on Zhou Dong's first album.

So they raised doubts, questioning whether what Xu Heng was playing was actually a Zhou Dong song, or if it was a Zhou Dong song he had adapted himself.

But there were also a few die-hard Zhou Dong fans who, upon hearing this intro, immediately knew which "old song" Xu Heng was referring to.

"Holy crap! *Clock in the Opposite Direction*!" a girl exclaimed.

"Ah? What song is this? How come I've never heard it?"

"You don't know? This is an old song from Zhou Dong's debut album. I bought all of Zhou Dong's albums before, and I really like this song, but it just never got popular. I didn't expect Xu Heng to actually sing this song."

"I really haven't heard it, but the intro to this song is quite nice, it's just that the lyrics he's singing are a bit hard to hear clearly."

"The pronunciation of b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l in Pinyin."

After the explanation from someone in the know, the others suddenly realized.

After the intro, when the verse part came, they found that this obscure song was unexpectedly good.

Although the melody was a bit of a tongue-twister, fortunately, Xu Heng's recording was steady and his articulation was clear, making even the few die-hard Zhou Dong fans who had heard the original song subconsciously think, "So that's what the lyrics to this song are."

"Hate that my emotions are useless~ oh~ a heart that is still aching in love until now~ oh~ still moved by that apology before the breakup~ ohohohohoh~"

After finishing the verse, Xu Heng took a light breath, then continued to play and sing:

"The clock of the screen shuttling through time~"

"Starts moving in the opposite direction~"

"Returning to the time and space when I first loved you~"

"Freezing the unfaithful content~"

As soon as the chorus started, the expressions on the faces of the people around them couldn't hold up anymore. It wasn't that Xu Heng sang badly, but that he sang too well.

A clean voice with a touch of magnetism, added to the injection of that sorrowful and sentimental emotion, was a completely different style from Zhou Dong.

At this moment, Xu Heng in the center of the crowd was like a singer under a spotlight, his image suddenly becoming vivid.

The girls suddenly discovered that not only did Xu Heng sing well, but he was also exceptionally handsome.

After the buffs stacked, Xu Heng jumped directly to the level of a campus heartthrob in the girls' minds.

Cheng Huaiyu, as Xu Heng's roommate, was dumbfounded. Looking at Ji Meimei next to him, who was looking at Xu Heng with a face full of admiration, he thought to himself, "Don't tell me this junior sister of mine is going to be snatched away by Old Xu before I even get a chance to woo her..."

At this time, Zhao Gaoyang suddenly said, "Cheng Ge, you were right, heartbreak really can make people cool, I want to be heartbroken too."

"Save it, find someone first before you talk about heartbreak."

"Damn! Cheng Ge, you're so mean!"

Zhao Gaoyang grinned and secretly shifted his gaze to Fan Xi not far away.

Today, Fan Xi was wearing a yellow short-sleeved shirt with a Pikachu pattern. To go mountain climbing, she had coiled her long ponytail on the back of her head. With a bare face, she was very moving.

But her gaze did not, as in the TV dramas, look toward his side with a meeting of minds, but was staring blankly at Xu Heng in the crowd.

She didn't leave even a sliver of peripheral vision for him.

Zhao Gaoyang withdrew his gaze in disappointment.

At the same time, the song *Clock in the Opposite Direction* also reached its end. After Xu Heng sang "the face is surging out of control~~" with deep emotion, he put down the guitar.

The surroundings were silent.

"I haven't sung this song for a long time, so I'm a bit rusty. If there's anywhere I sang it wrong, Zhou Dong fans, please don't come up on stage and beat me."

Xu Heng finished this sentence in a joking tone, and everyone laughed, then gave him warm applause.

There were also a few observant students who saved the recorded video onto a memory card, deciding to post Xu Heng's cover of *Clock in the Opposite Direction* online. When they did, they would come up with a title: "If you listen to *Clock in the Opposite Direction* a thousand times, can you go back to the past?"