Chapter 631: Young Man, Welcome Home

Wu Ziliang was full of regret now—deep, searing regret.

If he had known this situation would come up, he would have bought a diamond ring in advance and proposed on the spot, riding the mood.

He was a man who planned his life carefully, whether in study or in living.

His girlfriend was about to graduate, and so was he.

The two had met and gotten to know each other during military training at the start of freshman year, then fallen in love. All the way to now, with graduation in sight, he had more than once thought about when exactly to propose to his girlfriend; he had mapped out several proposal locations in his mind, but none of them had been settled on.

But now, he regretted it.

If only he had brought the ring he'd bought long ago on him this time, and dropped to one knee right there to propose to his girlfriend Xu Yue, who knew how moved she would have been, how unforgettable it would have been.

This was absolutely a moment that could have made his girlfriend feel happy and surprised—but he hadn't seized it.

It hurts…

Next time—next time he snagged tickets to Zhou Yi's concert, he'd propose to Yueyue right there at Zhou Yi's concert!

Feeling as though he'd found the perfect proposal spot, Wu Ziliang smiled in a way that looked a little dopey; even his girlfriend Xu Yue only figured he was a bit shy with so many people around.

After all, Wu Ziliang had always been on the introverted side.

"Wishing you both a long life together!"

As the song ended, Zhou Yi called out his blessing in a loud voice; the somewhat scattered yet powerful applause in the venue made Xu Yue, who was looping her arm through her boyfriend's, wear a sweetness between her brows that simply wouldn't fade.

The rest of the audience's applause grew even more fervent; many couples, while envious, also had a light bulb go on—

So Zhou Yi's concert could be played with like this.

If they got another chance in the future, couldn't they try their luck too?

What if?

This was a chance to be blessed by Zhou Yi!

Some men, hugging such hopes to their chests, had already begun planning to grab tickets to the next show—or the next few.

Unaware of the scheming going on in his fans' hearts, Zhou Yi after this rolled out a string of sweet-themed segments, stacking up sweet songs he hadn't sung before—"Little Dimples" and the like—without letup.

Only after that did the next segment arrive—

First a three-song run of "Sunzi Bingfa," "Ghost," and "A Snap of the Fingers," then a four-song run of "New Earth," "Qi Li Xiang," "Mo Qinghua," and "A Poem Written for You."

The seven-song combo arrangement left the well-versed Xu Yue thrilled.

The reason she had said that line wasn't just talk. She truly admired Zhou Yi's courage in standing up alone to give thanks and pay tribute to that man.

She studied media herself, so she knew all too well how many people in today's media world were slandering that man—even several of her own course instructors had openly shot down her rebuttals.

A concert usually runs between 120 and 150 minutes.

As a top-tier star, the bigger Zhou Yi's fame grew, the more his concert market was generally maxed out.

No way around it—he had too many hit songs.

To let the fans hear a little more, Zhou Yi had even started doing medleys—

Whether Chinese into English, or English into Chinese, the goal was to fit as many songs as possible into that limited time, so the fans would feel the ticket price had been worth it.

Among the fans who had screamed from start to finish, quite a few ended up hoarse along with the atmosphere.

Only near the end, when Zhou Yi—having changed into his final stage outfit—finished the second-to-last song "Can't Help Loving You," did this concert draw to its close.

As was customary, the final closing number of the concert was "Glory."

Zhou Yi also used the chance to keep chatting as he adjusted his condition, striving to end the concert in peak form.

"Now, as everyone knows, Shangrao is my hometown; I grew up in—"

Just as Zhou Yi began to speak, the venue's camera suddenly swung, then locked firmly onto one person's face and stopped moving.

The rest of the audience, seeing this, were baffled, unsure what was going on—but Zhou Yi on stage, catching sight of it, laughed out loud: "Ma Feng, you came too. Let me introduce everyone—this is my high-school desk mate, my best buddy: Xu Haofeng, nicknamed Ma Feng."

The staff who had been lying in ambush nearby darted up while Zhou Yi was still stunned, and handed the microphone to the grinning Xu Haofeng: "Hey hey hey, everyone, I'm Xu Haofeng—the man who won 8 yuan off Zhou Yi playing cards last year."

Won 8 yuan…

???

Plenty of audience members below still figured Zhou Yi was just doing a bit—after all, he was back in his hometown, so calling up an old childhood friend seemed normal enough. But only Zhou Yi, who knew full well he hadn't arranged an old-friend segment, felt something was off—

What's going on?

A surprise arranged by Qian Jiang?

His first thought was of his manager.

"Zhou Yi, as a member of your fan club, I feel obliged to remind you—we have a gift for you. We hope you won't be ungracious; take it."

Zhou Yi, catching the wording, raised an eyebrow slightly: "You all? A gift? For me?"

"Buzz buzz…"

Xu Yue was puzzling over it when a strange buzzing suddenly reached her ears—

Wu Ziliang turned his head toward the sound; the people who had brought their own packaging before the show had now opened it all up, releasing… remote-controlled airplanes????

To be precise, remote-controlled airplanes fitted with lights—

The plane lights were on.

A dense swarm of remote-controlled airplanes flew above the Shangrao Stadium, drawing thousands of gazes—including Zhou Yi's—upward.

Suddenly, the venue's speakers carried the lilting musical intro of "Swallow Returns to the Nest"—giving Zhou Yi a fright.

"After the rain, dawn breaks over the riverbank; how many new guests know the old boat?

"In the distant hills, bamboo groves and fragrant grass; the morning wind has greened the plantain leaves.

"Winter plum blossoms fall and winter ends; the swallow carrying spring longs for its nest.

"The scenery along the way, the one who's missed—two hearts, far apart~"

Xu Haofeng, who had raised the microphone, let his singing voice ring out; Zhou Yi on stage, after a brief moment of puzzlement, quickly caught on, smiled, shook his head, and said nothing—

He simply held the microphone in both hands, letting it hang naturally in front of him, his eyes full of smiles.

"Swallow Returns to the Nest," Swallow Returns to the Nest.

The wanderer longs for home, the wanderer returns home.

He is that wanderer.

He had sung the first part of this song himself before, in the Chinese-style chapter. But now, hearing his old high school best friend stand up to sing for him and stumble, he couldn't help but want to laugh.

Yet, after Xu Haofeng stumbled, on the three-sided stands, more and more people seemed to stand up as if trained—

This time, none of them had microphones.

The camera swept across one by one, showing children from Zhou Yi's old neighborhood, the homeroom teacher's children, other teachers' children, junior and senior high school classmates, and so on.

At this very moment, they were all singing the same song—

"In the mountains and waters, the song echoes, echoes the scalding longing

"Two lines of last year's family letter, reading them warms the eyes again

"By the clouds and water, bathed in warm sun, in the misty waves, the long-lost hometown

"Unharmed since we parted, you are in my heart~~~"

In the Shangrao Gymnasium with five thousand people, the fiery atmosphere had rarely vanished completely; all that remained was the hometown.

Zhou Yi, who hadn't expected this move, snapped out of his brief daze, pressed his lips together, and blinked with unusual rapidity.

On the large screen at the scene, no longer an MV or live footage, appeared the snippets of his childhood growing up in this city—

"The window of childhood, the aged wall, have they secretly changed direction~

"You and I before the hall, meeting in silence, or pouring out our hearts~~~"

"..."

Zhou Yi turned his head, swayed his body, looked at the past scenes of himself on the big screen, instinctively took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled.

Remote-controlled planes carrying lights slowly assembled in mid-air into six shining large characters—

Youth, welcome home.