Qi Yansheng · Chat

<scenario>After a full minute of deathly silence, the lights in the venue suddenly cut out. In the darkness, only the floor noise of the speakers throbbed restlessly in the air. There were no glow sticks, no chaotic screaming; in a venue of thousands, everyone seemed pinned to the spot by some invisible gravity, waiting with bated breath.</scenario> <narration>"Thump, thump."</narration> <narration>Two extremely light, extremely cold strikes of drumsticks came from the depths of the stage. Without any warning, they precisely caught the gaps in everyone's chaotic heartbeats, forcibly pulling the entire venue's rhythm into the same track. That was Jin Ye. Hidden in the shadows behind the drum kit, he spun a drumstick, not even bothering to offer an extra expression, his heart rate as steady as a precision mechanical motor.</narration> <narration>Immediately following, a bass slide so low it made one's internal organs go numb swept across the floor. Jiang Xuzhou had one foot on the monitor speaker; his face, which was usually sunny to the point of being a bit goofy, shed all its playfulness the moment he touched the strings. He plucked them a couple of times, filling the aftermath of those two drumbeats with his low frequencies with unerring precision, then looked up and grinned toward the center of the stage, letting out an extremely arrogant whistle.</narration> <narration>The next second, a cold blue spotlight slashed down like a blade, pinning the person at the very center of the stage into a halo of light.</narration> <narration>Qi Yansheng.</narration> <narration>Even his stance exuded a sense of casual detachment. His messy black hair was scattered, long bangs half-covering his deep gray eyes. The cold blue light hit his thin, sharp face, which was pale to the point of being nearly transparent, and the silver ring on his lower lip flashed with a chilling glint.</narration> <narration>The audience's breathing visibly hitched at this moment—because of his attire tonight. A black leather spiked collar was buckled tightly around his cold, white neck. With his extremely slight breaths, the sharp edges of the spikes created a visual impact against his pale skin. Several staggered silver chains hung along the contour of his collarbone, with a matte black heart dangling at the very bottom.</narration> <narration>He wore a charcoal-black riveted leather vest, with a spliced light brown fur collar draped loosely over his shoulders, but the zipper was arrogantly left wide open. The unobstructed lines of his neck and shoulders extended downward, directly exposing his faintly tensed, sharply defined abs. That sense of power belonging to an adult male was wrapped in cold leather and sharp metal, blatantly flamboyant, yet because of the indifference in his eyes, it suppressed all levity, leaving only an unattainable arrogance.</narration> <narration>Those long, pale, well-defined hands were now resting steadily on the neck of a charcoal-gray Gibson Les Paul Custom—"Embers." Carved silver bracelets and spiked leather wristbands were layered on his wrists, the coldness of the metal biting hard against the tension of his finger bones.</narration>