Chapter 353: Swing to Your Heart
Before this moment, Lu Yan He had thought he didn't love the stage.
That was why, when Chen Ziyan told him earlier to focus on acting and treat singing as a secondary pursuit, he hadn't felt troubled at all—he had even stopped treating singing as a secondary pursuit entirely.
But standing on stage, dancing wildly with Li Zhibai and Yan Liang, singing "la la la la" over and over again, while all the audience members below raised their arms to dance along with them—this scene, this moment, made Lu Yan He's emotions surge like a burst dam, washing away all his reserve, rationality, and contemplation.
He was purely immersed in this joyful moment of empathy with the entire venue.
——What's your name?!
——I love you!
——Don't you know?!
——I need you!
This was Lu Yan He's confession to his two teammates, and it was also his confession to all his fans.
He Lan was in tears at this moment.
Ma Zhiyuan did, after all, have a solid fan base, and his stage performance was indeed good.
"Who told you to call us suddenly? It's almost time to start," Li Zhibai immediately complained.
"What's wrong, Mom?"
His mother opened the door and walked in. "You're so dawdling just changing your clothes. I'm faster at putting on makeup than you are at changing clothes..."
His mother said, "Let me tell you, I've signed you up for something."
As the live broadcast ended, the audience voting for *Idol Era* began.
Ma Zhiyuan's heart was filled with bitterness.
The reason they were excited was that when they were performing the song *Green Apple Paradise*, they could feel for themselves how different their state was. For an artist, encountering such a performance state depends on the right time, the right place, and the right people; it is something to be sought but not found.
Why, why even after he had worked so hard, exhausted every effort, was he still not as good as them?
That night, the viewership ratings for *Idol Era* reached their peak during the *Green Apple Paradise* performance.
His mother stood at the doorway, looking at him with an expression of disbelief.
This song, this song written by Lu Yan He.
Lu Yan He nodded. "Indeed, but Brother Bai, we almost dropped the ball today because of you."
Li Xiaobin was stunned, at a loss for what to do, just holding his mother like that. Then, suddenly remembering something, he turned his head to look at himself in the mirror, and at his mother, who was leaning her head on his shoulder, crying until her face was red.
Lu Yan He: "That's how I feel. Don't you have that feeling?"
After the three of them finished their performance, they were still too excited to calm down even by the time they reached Huiziyuanqiao.
He had originally thought Chen Ziyan was a secret weapon, someone who could help him offset the influence Lu Yan He brought to Li Zhibai through their collaboration. He hadn't expected that this collaboration would not only fail to bring him help but would also bring him quite a bit of questioning.
Ma Zhiyuan was very young at the time, and hearing this, he was very unconvinced and immediately said, "As long as I work hard enough, I will definitely be more popular than him in the future!"
"Tonight, it's truly incredible. Before the performance, I guessed our performance would be good, but I didn't expect it to be this good."
"You say that every time—that you can't write, that you write slowly. Look, didn't you write this one immediately?!" Li Zhibai put his arm around Lu Yan He's shoulder. "You're just hiding your light. Look at everyone's reaction now; *Green Apple Paradise* completely blew up the venue. My social circle is full of people posting about our stage."
Yet the discussions were boiling over.
She had never seen this side of Lu Yan He, using the fullest, most abundant passion and emotion to sing a song on stage.
Fortunately, that spicy hot pot shop was still open.
The catchiness of this song was evident.
His father looked up at the camera, and thus, the camera captured the astonishment, distraction, and shock in his eyes the moment he looked up and saw his son.
"Mom!" he called out.
Whether there were regrets, only he himself knew.
How popular was *Green Apple Paradise*?
The next day, imitation shows of this stage appeared on several social media platforms.
Li Xiaobin: "... How many hours have I been back? I've already been scolded by you so many times."
Then, Lu Yan He saw the video posted by this boy named Li Xiaobin.
"This was a night that belonged to Lu Yan He. He brought out three songs with completely different styles in one go, proving his talent in music. I find it hard to believe that I am actually saying these words: Lu Yan He shouldn't be an actor; he should be a singer. His creative talent can completely cover up the shortcomings of his own vocal conditions. His creative talent is enough to make him a top-tier singer."
At that time, the seeds of resentment were planted in the bottom of his heart.
"Keep it. This is his only suit, of course we keep it," his mother said. "I've been keeping it well all these years."
"I was just curious, asking casually," he said. Then, the next second, he heard himself ask as if by divine intervention: "Mom, is my dad's suit still kept?"
"What a dirty heart," Li Zhibai clicked his tongue.
And Li Zhibai, he could always be so carefree. Moreover, he had friends like Lu Yan He and Yan Liang by his side.
The show's voting actually didn't have much reference value for the rankings on the Heavenly Star List.
His mother was stunned for a moment, her face blank for an instant, and then she reacted. "Sure."
Li Xiaobin looked at himself in the mirror. He had never worn a suit before, and he had even tied a tie inside with great seriousness. He used water to style his hair in a side part. Looking in the mirror, the person inside made him feel a bit like a stranger, yet inexplicably somewhat familiar.
It was mainly because after they finished their own performance, they attached a photo of themselves when they were young. They were college classmates, and they had remained close friends since graduation. Back then, they were each full of spirit, youthful and flying, so handsome that it felt as if the whole world was under their feet.
He took out his phone and turned on the recording mode, wanting to record a segment for himself to keep as a souvenir.
Li Xiaobin had been scrolling through his phone all day today, and he could see this content every now and then.
"Damn, my *Infatuated* is actually trailing behind Ma Zhiyuan's program?" Li Zhibai cursed in the car.
"You go try it," his mother said. "I remember you liked singing along with your dad when you were a kid. Maybe you inherited your dad's good voice."
Many netizens posted photos of their fathers when they were young. Many of their styles were just like Lu Yan He and the other two on the *Green Apple Paradise* stage—wearing suits, sporting side-parted hairstyles, their smiles somewhat reserved and shy.
Li Xiaobin looked at his mother in disbelief. "Mom, you're not joking, are you? I... I'm not going."
Even his father's memorial portrait was processed from this photo.
This made his heart feel sour and swollen, somewhat choked up.
And after a day of fermentation, a theme suddenly appeared: My parents were once this stylish too.
However, tonight, Ma Zhiyuan knew he had failed.
Lu Yan He also used his own account to like them.
She also believed that Lu Yan He's other fans must have understood.
In the backstage lounge of *Idol Era*, Ma Zhiyuan and Chen Ziyan watched the performance on the screen, their expressions stern, not saying a word.
And at this moment, Ma Zhiyuan suddenly realized one thing.
There must have been tears in his eyes too, right?
That night, someone suddenly posted a short video. In the video, he showed the camera a photo of his father when he was young and said he wanted to imitate his father's style from back then to see his father's reaction.
His mother held a plate of sliced apples and said, "I cut some apples for you. You're definitely going to stay up late tonight."
However, this also reflected the audience's preference for tonight's show.
Li Zhibai, reminded by them, suddenly remembered.
He watched his mother's eyes turn red in an instant, her emotions suddenly out of control.
The way those three people on stage performed as if they were burning themselves out was a state every performer understood.
Less than an hour after the performance ended, this song swept across all major social media.
Li Xiaobin smiled.
Fortunately, this spicy hot pot shop had its own storefront with a few tables inside.
A massive amount of imitation.
Someone wrote in the comments section under this video: "Crossing the corridor of time, they return still as youths."
The title read: When I put on my dad's suit and combed my dad's hairstyle, my mom cried.
"Being a tutor doesn't affect you going to participate in a competition. Maybe you'll just be eliminated in the first round," his mother said.
But she was not crying because of sadness or grief; it was a moving, stirred-up emotion.
Li Zhibai and Yan Liang were the same.
So, even though the car had already driven to the entrance of Huiziyuanqiao, they turned around.
"If I tell you to go, you go. Why all the nonsense?" his mother said in an unquestionable tone. "Anyway, you're on summer vacation and have nothing to do."
His team remained silent.
Lu Yan He: "How could I have so many songs like that?"
On one hand, this performance hit the curiosity of today's young people about the pop trends of the last century and their attention to the youth of their parents' generation; on the other hand, it also evoked memories of their own youth in many middle-aged people.
"It really is, I even forgot. Damn, he even spread rumors outside before, saying I was just a rich second-generation kid who relied on background and connections to make it in the entertainment industry," Li Zhibai muttered. "This dog thing even told others that I was arrogant and looked down on everyone, telling them to stay away from me, making everyone avoid me whenever I attended any event. Damn it!"
Li Xiaobin pursed his lips.
He rested his chin on one hand, and it seemed that the excitement had passed, his spirits somewhat scattered.
"This room is so stuffy and you don't even turn on the air conditioning." His mother walked over, picked up the remote, and turned on the air conditioning.
Ma Zhiyuan used to think they were a drag on Li Zhibai and even mocked them for being Li Zhibai's lackeys and followers. Now, Ma Zhiyuan could no longer say such things.
People in the company might have seen the envy in his eyes and teased him, saying, "Stop envying. You can't envy what he has."
More and more people began to dig into the stories of their parents' youth because of the *Green Apple Paradise* stage.
Since when did Chen Ziyan have such a bad reputation?
"With all these bags, I told you to wait for me at the station so I could help you carry them."
"When you were five years old, fifteen years ago, right?" His mother walked over, stood beside Li Xiaobin, and asked, "Why are you asking this suddenly?"
Yan Liang: "You two should thank me. If it weren't for my quick-witted rescue, heh heh."
"Do you think they were provoking us on purpose?"
He was anxious and uneasy every day about being overtaken by others, looking around every day to see if the mountain peak he stood on was the highest one.
This was also the only video under his account.
"He even restrained himself?"
"No," Li Zhibai immediately shook his head. "Not at all."
"Actually, I don't have much memory of my dad. My family only has one family photo taken when I was five. My memory of my dad comes almost entirely from the things my mom told me. I didn't expect that when I wanted to imitate my dad's style like everyone else, my mom suddenly cried the moment she saw me."
Especially Li Zhibai, who was the company's most popular artist.
Even if Li Zhibai's *Infatuated* ranking wasn't as good as his stage, it was still unknown who would be number one on the half-year list between him and Li Zhibai.
However, what many people didn't expect was that Ma Zhiyuan and Chen Ziyan's joint stage didn't even make it into the top five, currently ranking only eighth.
Just a few short frames made Lu Yan He strongly feel that the emotions his mother had been suppressing for many years were truly unable to be held back at this moment, bursting out like a flood.
But at this moment, he had a feeling that he had already failed.
His mother took a bag from his hand and complained to him.
"What a pity. Ma Zhiyuan's performance originally had top-tier choreography and expression, but it's a pity he ran into Lu Yan He and the others' performance that hit people's hearts. The most superb technique is not as good as the simplest empathy."
At that time, Ma Zhiyuan often saw Li Zhibai appearing in the company escorted by a group of people.
"A little bit."
Then the video poster, one of these five middle-aged men, replied: "Still youths? Crossing the corridor of time, we are all middle-aged now! But hearing this song really stirred our hearts. Back then, we were also youths dancing at the graduation ceremony!"
"I dug out photos of my parents when they were young. Damn, why did my genes mutate like this?"
And the scene of his mother hugging him and crying loudly.
The video showed a comparison picture.
He Lan believed she had understood.
Li Xiaobin was looking at how much of himself appeared on the phone screen when he suddenly didn't hear his mother's voice. He was a bit puzzled, so he turned around. "Mom?"
Li Zhibai said: "Tonight's performance was the most satisfying one I've had in a year. It was really great, so great it blew my mind. Old Lu, you have to write more songs in the future. Songs like *Green Apple Paradise*, give us more of them!"
"Let's go."
His mother hugged him and burst into tears with a "waa."
"This was Yan Liang's idea," Li Zhibai said. "He's better at this. He has a very complete idea for every stage. An expert."
Li Xiaobin: "..."
After dinner, Li Xiaobin was covered in sweat, so he went to take a shower first.
"I went to ask my mom who is more handsome, me or my dad when he was young, and my mom rolled her eyes at me."
The phone captured the change in his mother's eyes the moment she opened the door and saw Li Xiaobin—full of shock and bewilderment, her eye sockets quickly turning red.
"It was useful, wasn't it? Didn't it almost get you provoked? If you had been successfully provoked, how would you have performed on stage?"
"He wants to defeat you with all his heart and stand firmly in the first-place position, so it's not strange for him to do anything," Lu Yan He said. "When he was at MX before, he did quite a few disgusting things. It's not like you don't know. Now that you are both artists under Zhou Ping'an, he has restrained himself a little."
They said: "Who do you think you are? What do you count for? Even if you become popular in the future, what do you count for in front of him? He has a father who can talk directly to our boss. Do you?"
Ma Zhiyuan recalled when he was still a trainee in the company. At that time, Li Zhibai and the others had just debuted and were as popular as the midday sun.
As the three of them talked, they inexplicably wanted to go back to the Hongfu area to see if that spicy hot pot shop was still open.
Li Xiaobin: "Alright, alright."
The music of *Green Apple Paradise* started at this moment.
Was it because his mother saw him like this and thought of his father?
By the time Lu Yan He scrolled to this person named Li Xiaobin, it was already the third day after the *Green Apple Paradise* performance.
"Mainly because you guys created a very retro stage theme for this song, that's the key," Lu Yan He said. "When I wrote this song, I was worried if it was a bit outdated and didn't fit the style of the *Idol Era* program. As a result, you guys directly made a retro theme, from our styling to the arrangement and then to our dance moves, all unified in tone, which instead created a complete thematic expression."
Li Xiaobin was startled and hurriedly walked over to hug his mother. "What's wrong with you? Don't scare me. Why are you suddenly crying? What happened?"
"Are you done?" his mother asked.
"How about I put it on and try it?" Li Xiaobin said. "*Green Apple Paradise* was very popular yesterday, and everyone is imitating that style, so I want to try it too."
"Dad!" he called out. "Look at me."
"What are you doing?" his mother suddenly came out of the room and asked.
"I'm impressed," Lu Yan He laughed.
"How about we go get a late-night snack before going back?"
Many friends in the circle would send these popular imitation videos to them.
Dragging his suitcase off the bus, he walked home all the way, and from afar, he saw a familiar figure walking towards him.
"Then you're asking for a scolding yourself," his mother snorted and turned away.
Besides the three of them, there were also assistants and bodyguards from their respective teams, a group of people filling up three four-person tables.
"Like two big idiots, insisting on saying those bullshit things before we went on stage. What was the point?"
"This is a sincere performance dedicated by three young people who, after experiencing great fame, can still completely burn themselves out on stage."
"Who said I have nothing to do? I'm going to be a tutor."
There was a video of five middle-aged men in suits imitating this dance at a hot pot restaurant, which was also very popular online.
Why did Ma Zhiyuan always treat Li Zhibai as his biggest competitor?
In the past few days, this performance was simply too popular, sparking imitations from all walks of life. People from all industries were imitating this stage, spreading it across major media.
That was a state to be sought but not found.
The boss was all smiles, looking pleasantly surprised: "Big stars, it's been a long time since you've come!"
"You're in college, what are you tutoring for?" His mother rolled her eyes at him. "I signed you up for a singing competition program."
He said: "On the right is him twenty-three years ago, and on the left is me twenty-three years later. I didn't even expect that I look so much like my dad."
"This time, we'll show them," Li Zhibai suddenly chuckled, his shoulders shaking. "Let him be arrogant, arrogant to death. Now his program is ranked third, heh!"
The car taking Ma Zhiyuan back was very quiet.
This video inexplicably touched a public emotional point and received a large number of likes and forwards.
Almost all music bloggers inevitably talked about this song.
She covered her mouth, looking at him with eyes full of tears.
The few dozen seconds of video made Lu Yan He's eyes turn red.
He thought of his MX, the MX he could never return to.
Just the copyright revenue from these few days was not small.
His mother suddenly knocked on the door and came in.
Before sitting down to prepare his lessons, he scrolled through his phone for a while.
Ever since his father passed away, he could only see his father in this family photo.
"We don't live here anymore, but I really wanted to eat your food today, so we came back," Li Zhibai said. "Boss, give us ten chicken feet first, and you can help us pick the rest."
After post-processing, on the left was him now, and on the right was his father in an old photo from twenty or thirty years ago. The two appeared on the left and right in equal proportions, and they were surprisingly seven or eight parts similar.
His mother had said that because his father didn't like taking photos, and many photos were lost due to moving, in the end, only this photo was preserved.
He finished his last exam, packed his luggage, and went home.
At eleven o'clock at night, the data on all major platforms soared because of this show and these performances.
"Probably both, anyway, the intentions were impure," Lu Yan He said. "Usually when I run into Ma Zhiyuan, he rarely says harsh things to me. At most, he keeps a cold face and ignores everyone. Occasionally, when something happens, we stab each other a couple of times, but he wouldn't go to such lengths to mock us like today."
Ma Zhiyuan didn't know how to describe his mood, especially after he logged into his Weibo and found that many people in the comments section were asking:
——Why did you collaborate with Chen Ziyan? His reputation is already rotten in the streets.
These words were like arrows piercing into Ma Zhiyuan's heart.
"My dad passed away very early, and my mom raised me alone. That day, when I watched *Idol Era* with my mom and saw *Green Apple Paradise*, my mom even said that if my dad were still here, he would definitely have mastered this performance in one night."
Li Xiaobin walked to the living room as if by divine intervention, came to the cabinet next to the TV, and looked at the family photo that had been placed there for so many years.
A video blogger said: "I really always thought my dad was very old-fashioned. After watching the *Green Apple Paradise* stage, I suddenly realized that they were actually like me at that age before. My mom said my dad really wanted to be a dance king and went to the dance hall almost every day after work, but after I was born, he basically didn't go anymore."
"Don't look at my dad as just an old cadre now; he had a great voice when he was young. When the unit organized singing competitions, he always won prizes. Look at him now, sigh... his voice is only at a prize-winning level when he's scolding me."
"*Idol Era*'s live broadcast tonight will become a classic. Almost every stage level presented by every artist had a very high degree of completion and expression, and among them, without a doubt, the most shining and dazzling one was *Green Apple Paradise*. If *Young Battlefield* was Yan Liang's retrospective and self-singing of his past, then *Green Apple Paradise* was the three of them taking all the audience into their joyful world, singing out the youth's publicity and wantonness to this world. They all used their wholehearted devotion and empathy to infect every audience member with their performance."
Yan Liang: "Old Lu is right. After he went under Zhou Ping'an, he did restrain himself a little. Before, when he attended an event with you, didn't he specifically mock you in front of others, saying our Fengzhi was outdated, saying you only relied on your rich second-generation status to stay in the entertainment industry, and saying you bought hot searches to create fake popularity?"
When they lived in Hongfu before, their late-night snacks were either at the barbecue shop next door or at the spicy hot pot place.
After *Green Apple Paradise* took away some of Li Zhibai's votes, *Infatuated* was overtaken by Ma Zhiyuan's stage.
In the video, Li Xiaobin briefly explained his family situation.
"Turn on the air conditioning when you should. Don't save that little bit of money," his mother glared at him again. "You can do tutoring if you want, but don't count on earning much from it. I don't have big money, but I have saved enough for your schooling and daily expenses. You're a grown man, don't live so stingily and pettily. No girl will like you if you're like this!"
Everyone put on these somewhat loose suits, slicked their hair into a side part, and recorded their own *Green Apple Paradise* in dormitories, squares, and various environments.
"The only regret is not seeing Ma Zhiyuan and Chen Ziyan's faces after the performance."
It was already the end of June, and summer had arrived.
Under these circumstances, just thirty minutes later, *Green Apple Paradise* took 1.2 million votes, ranking first, followed by Yan Liang's *Young Battlefield*.
"Don't feel it's that hot, just turn on the fan."
Li Xiaobin didn't know what had happened yet and asked, "Mom, what's wrong?"
"Are you guys hungry?"
When he broke into the mountain peak alone, he thought he had reached the top, but there was no one by his side to enjoy the scenery with him.
Several of them greeted the boss.
"What?" Li Xiaobin looked at his mother in shock.
"Mainly because the audience was also very supportive, the whole venue was dancing with us, and the whole place was hot," Li Zhibai said.
So, he put on the suit his father wore when he was young in the photo, imitated the hairstyle and movements in the photo, and then, the scene changed, turning into him holding his phone and filming a middle-aged man wearing a polo shirt and sports pants.
"Ah?" Li Xiaobin was stunned. "Sign up for what? Mom, you didn't sign me up for some cram school, did you?"
"What expert, don't mock me," Yan Liang said.
Then, Li Xiaobin edited the video he captured on his phone to the end.
"It's not very heavy," he said.
Even after MX became an overnight success, even after he became a top idol artist, and even after the person who said this to him had left Star Entertainment, these words still stuck in his heart like a thorn, reminding him of the humiliation he suffered back then at every moment.
She didn't know why such a happy song would make her burst into tears.
Li Xiaobin came back to his senses, said "oh," and asked, "Mom, when was this family photo taken?"
"This is a retro stage of the 80s and 90s of the last century. They put on the clothes and hairstyles of that era, sang songs in the style of that era, but in such a retro expression, they sang their own joy and hope, and sang the love that would resonate in every era."
Li Zhibai also laughed. "The tacit understanding between the three of us is still enough."
*Idol Era* live broadcast ended.
Lu Yan He and Yan Liang looked at each other.
"How could they appear."
At this moment, even those watching their phones were silent, quietly looking out the car window.
Only netizens who watched the complete program and had real-name authentication in the background could vote; those who did not pass the qualification review did not have the right to vote.
On short video platforms, there were still a large number of bloggers sharing photos of their fathers in suits and side-parted hair, sharing their stories.
A look of mockery immediately appeared in the other person's eyes.
From beginning to end, his mother just hugged him tightly without saying a word.
Li Xiaobin set his phone to selfie mode, placed it on the desk, and stepped back, letting his whole body slowly appear in the frame.
The name of this video also made it onto the hot search list of this short video platform.
On the fourth day, this story was published by *People's Entertainment*, which published a front-page commentary article:
*From the Explosion of
End of Chapter
