Chapter 95: A Mouth Too Big to Swallow a Fist

When Zhang Qiyang returned to the singers' lounge, he saw that the seat beside Li Xuan was empty, so he sat down without hesitation.

Several singers applauded and praised his performance.

Li Xuan did not look at Zhang Qiyang, but covered her mouth and microphone with one slender hand and whispered, "You came prepared today, didn't you? You sang two songs, right?"

Zhang Qiyang also covered his mouth to hide the movement of his lips. "I only meant to sing one, but Teacher Hai and the others insisted it wasn't explosive enough. So I decided to make it a little explosive for them."

"Did you write both songs yourself?"

"Yes. This humble cobbler's shoes are not bad, are they?"

"Not just not bad. Brilliant."

As she spoke, Li Xuan's tone was unusually firm, and in her beautiful eyes there bloomed a faint light of admiration. It seemed she, too, was about to be blasted to smithereens by Zhang Qiyang.

After Zhang Qiyang's performance, it was the healing diva Yue Li's turn.

With a tender and lingering song, "Sea of People," Yue Li pulled the audience back from Zhang Qiyang's raging landslide and into the modern city.

In terms of live impact and aggression, Yue Li's "Sea of People" could not compare with Zhang Qiyang's earth-shaking performance, but many people simply loved this familiar sort of tune.

Like a bowl of soul-warming broth handed to someone who had just weathered a storm, "Sea of People" made many in the audience feel sunlight-warm inside, comforted and at ease.

Their passion had been ignited by a string of high-level performances, and when Yue Li finished, the audience rose as one to give her thunderous applause.

Though this was a challenge round with no eliminations at stake, the singers' performances in this episode were probably the strongest of the recent run.

By bringing the audience back with their best efforts, the show's ratings rose steadily.

By the time the performances were nearly over, the rating had climbed firmly to 3.5 percent, which greatly encouraged the production team.

Though this figure could not compare with the easy five-plus ratings of the previous two episodes, taking the Saturday variety show crown was certainly no problem.

All the regular singers had finished performing and gathered in the singers' lounge, waiting to see how today's challenger would fare.

They knew almost nothing about Zhao Ziqi, the singer who was about to challenge them.

But for Chu Entertainment to suddenly push her into such a popular program meant her strength was surely anything but ordinary; she was likely a promising newcomer with a hidden trump card.

On the main stage, Chen Zixuan introduced the challenger for the night, Zhao Ziqi, who would be singing "I Do Not Love You."

All the singers were slightly taken aback.

The live audience was surprised too.

Anyone with even a little musical knowledge knew that "I Do Not Love You" was one of the hardest songs in the Chinese music scene to perform live, and one of the most likely to end in disaster.

Even Li Xuan, the original singer, rarely performed this song in ordinary settings; only at concerts would she bring it out and give everything she had to thrill the audience.

Its range was far too wide, almost inhuman.

For an ordinary singer, challenging this song meant either the high notes could not be reached or the low notes could not be settled; in any case, it was extremely difficult to control.

Any singer bold enough to attempt it was either fearless through ignorance or possessed truly extraordinary ability.

Clearly, Zhao Ziqi of Chu Entertainment must belong to the latter.

The audience greeted the final challenger of the night with the warmest applause.

Every singer in the lounge stared at the screen, taking in this super rookie thrust forward by Chu Entertainment from head to toe.

Somewhat unlike what they had imagined, the newcomer was very small in stature.

Though she wore thick-soled white platform shoes, she still gave off an unmistakably petite impression.

Her hair was teased sky-high, but by estimate her actual height would not exceed five feet.

A clean white shirt paired with fashionable sky-blue hot pants revealed a pair of pale, slender little legs, and the moment she stepped onto the stage she brought with her a refreshing breath of summer coolness.

Her chest was as flat as an empty runway, but her ribcage looked very full, lending her an impression of abundant breath support.

To speak frankly, this twenty-two-year-old newcomer was rather ordinary-looking.

Her face was on the long side, and her mouth was very large, the sort that could open wide enough to swallow a fist.

With a face and mouth like that, if she had not possessed real ability, Chu Entertainment would never have invested so much in her.

If not for her especially bright eyes, her looks would have been a disservice to the audience watching from their television sets.

Judging by her eyes alone, Zhao Ziqi was beautiful, as though she held two stars within them, black and luminous.

Standing on such a huge stage and facing such a perilous situation, there was not the slightest trace of fear or nervousness in her eyes. Her gaze was steady and composed, bearing something of a general's bearing.

With that single appearance, the singers all secretly nodded to themselves, realizing that this girl had an unusually powerful aura.

The steady gaze held in Zhao Ziqi's eyes during the close-up shot felt inexplicably familiar to Li Xuan.

Instinct told her that this girl really was, just as Zhang Qiyang had guessed, a newcomer full of ambition.

The provocation stirred a faint fighting spirit in Li Xuan's heart.

The audience fell quiet, wanting to see what sort of challenge performance this unfamiliar newcomer would bring them.

Most viewers in front of their televisions were displeased to see an unknown newcomer come to challenge the show.

What right did this little girl have?

What qualified her to take the stage for such an important challenge?

Could it be some rumored hidden trade behind the scenes?

But looking at the girl's meager build and fist-swallowing face, what kind of high-ranking official would have such a taste?

That girl was probably like that trashy loudmouth Zhang, getting onto the show through a powerful backer!

She might be some relative of an entertainment bigwig or a powerful figure.

Before Zhao Ziqi even began singing, many threads had already been posted on the show's forum, all of them trying to dig into her background.

But once the music for "I Do Not Love You" began, and Zhao Ziqi opened her mouth with a startlingly beautiful first note, no one cared about her identity anymore. Instead, they were deeply drawn in by her voice, deep yet strangely penetrating.

The version of "I Do Not Love You" she sang was very different from Li Xuan's.

Li Xuan had a voice that could move freely through all three registers, with smooth and natural transitions in placement that made listening to her a pleasure from head to toe.

Zhao Ziqi was clearly not that kind of singer. Her voice placement sat farther back, her tone powerful and highly distinctive.

The moment she opened her mouth, her spellbinding singing could seize a person's ears.

No matter what stray thoughts or distractions might be on your mind, hearing such an irresistibly magnetic voice would draw away all your attention, then pierce through you with force and carry you into a state of pure musical enjoyment.

In sharp contrast to her petite frame, Zhao Ziqi's performance that night was as vast as the neon sky and grand beyond measure.

With that mouth that could swallow a fist, she made the entire orchestral arrangement soar.

Taking on "I Do Not Love You," one of the most notoriously difficult songs in Chinese pop, Zhao Ziqi sang with such ease that to say she stunned the room would be no exaggeration at all.

The impact of her performance on the live audience was in no way weaker than Zhang Qiyang's "Affected" from the previous week.

As for pure vocal extremity, Zhao Ziqi may have fallen a little short of Zhang Qiyang's god-defying "New Excrement" from the episode before that, but she still delivered an enormous shock to both the live audience and the other singers.

In the span of just one song, Zhao Ziqi etched her name into the memories of millions of viewers.

People in the industry remembered her name even more firmly.

If this had happened in the past, there would have been only one way to describe Zhao Ziqi's voice: Heaven had blessed her with a bowl of rice.

And now Li Xuan, likewise blessed by Heaven, had finally met her match.