Chapter 161: Flight of the Bumblebee

Custom-made specifically for the competition and valued at two million, the Steinway piano was world-class in both its material and its tone.

Ever since the beginning of the tournament, Liao Yuan would involuntarily break out in goosebumps whenever he heard such a tone.

And now, observing the piano from up close, every hair on Liao Yuan's body seemed to leap with joy.

Without much hesitation, he swiftly raised his hands and struck the very first note.

The next moment, the entire venue erupted in a roar!

On the giant screen, the broadcast director quickly cut to a clear close-up.

Seemingly dispensing with any preamble whatsoever, Uncle A’s ten lightning-fast fingers had barely touched the keys before they transformed into a blur across the eighty-eight black and white notes.

No one could keep track of his fingers.

They moved as fast as a hypercar speeding relentlessly down an endless highway!

The continuous chime of the piano notes sounded like swarms of buzzing bees, leaving the entire audience dumbfounded!

"Terrifying! What am I even looking at?"

"My foot-tapping speed can't keep up anymore!"

"Are my eyes playing tricks on me? How many notes did he just play in a single second?"

"What the heck! Director! Can we get a slow-motion replay? I literally can't see anything!"

"Did you guys see Zhai Lin's expression? Haha, face your fears!"

"I knew it, I knew it would be like this!"

"Holy crap, I'm so hyped! Uncle A really didn't let me down!"

"Now this is world-class standard! What even were those performances earlier? Unwatchable, totally unwatchable!"

"I'm practically peeing my pants from fright!"

"Too terrifying! Playing dozens of notes in a single second while remaining completely effortless—is he even human?"

Gasps of astonishment echoed continuously through the arena.

Liao Yuan's hand speed was almost inhuman.

The piano notes cascaded one after another; often, before the first note had even faded, the second note had already overlaid it!

It was as if someone had poked a hornet's nest, with countless yellow jackets buzzing toward you!

The visual and auditory devastation left everyone hovering between agony and ecstasy!

Even the eight judges seated at the panel stared with their jaws wide open.

Lin Weiyin parted his lips slightly, a look of profound shock crossing his face.

He had heard Liao Yuan play Liszt’s *La Campanella* and was well aware of how terrifying Liao Yuan's hand speed was. However, *La Campanella* was a world-renowned masterpiece with a profound history in piano music, and it was not entirely unplayable by others, which was why it hadn't shocked Lin Weiyin to this extreme degree.

Yet, Lin Weiyin had never heard this particular piece before in his life.

As a walking music library, if even Lin Weiyin had never heard this piano piece, there was only one possible explanation—this was an original composition by Liao Yuan!

Only...

Lin Weiyin watched Liao Yuan’s fingers dancing across the keys, his heart fluttering.

The difficulty of this piece undoubtedly belonged to the hall-of-fame tier. The rarest part was that, despite the repetition of many melodies, it was not chaotic at all—it was just... a little noisy...

However, listening closely, it was suffused with beauty.

Lin Weiyin’s interest was intensely piqued.

This piece was all about speed. It might lack profound inner depth, but boy, was it fast!

From the very first scale, it remained locked in a ceaseless succession of climactic melodies.

Whether it was the rapid articulation between notes or the frequent arpeggios in the left hand, it was simply overwhelming to the senses.

To put it bluntly, this was a piano piece designed purely for showing off technical prowess!

While it might not reach the artistic realm and difficulty of the world-topping masterpiece *La Campanella*, to those who knew nothing about the piano, the expressive power of this piece was undeniably far more thrilling.

And that alone was more than enough!

As for the other judges on stage, while the piece looked extremely complex, many of the melodies actually involved heavy repetition. Given their hand speed, they could easily master it after practicing for a few days. But after all, this was a competition.

And they were, after all, world-class grand pianists!

Therefore, judging strictly by current competition standards, once a piece like this came into existence, it was absolute god-tier!

Its brain-washing catchiness was equally peerless.

At any rate, purely in terms of speed, it was certainly magnificent for intimidation!

This much was obvious from the wildly excited reactions of the live audience.

Not to mention, the piece was an original!

On the side of the stage, Zhai Lin could no longer control his trembling hands.

"He is definitely Liao Yuan!"

Zhai Lin stared fixedly at the afterimages of those fingers flying across the keys.

He had witnessed this exact scene once before on the Costa ship.

Every pianist possessed a pair of beautiful hands, but hands so exquisite that they made one yearn to preserve them as specimens were exceedingly rare!

Those hands had once flawlessly interpreted Liszt’s *La Campanella*, drawing high praise from numerous grand pianists in the classical world.

And now, they were being used against him...

Zhai Lin felt a dull ache in his head.

Liao Yuan felt extraordinarily euphoric while playing.

Not only because he had chosen the right piece, but also because the resonance granted to him by this piano nearly allowed him to break through the limits of his own hand speed, creating the intoxicating illusion that he might actually play right through the entire instrument.

It was a euphoria that stemmed from the soul!

This piece was called *The Flight of the Bumblebee*. In his past life, although he had attempted to play it, his performance had been far from flawless.

Yet in this lifetime, his physical hand hardware had reached peak standards. Even though he hadn't practiced it beforehand, the mere recollection of the melody in his mind allowed his hands to freely cycle through various chords in the air, knowing with absolute imaginative certainty that every single note he played would be pitch-perfect.

This was his confidence.

In truth, *The Flight of the Bumblebee* was the kind of piece that sounded super difficult, was super difficult to practice, but once you practiced it enough, you realized it was nothing special.

Yet even a piece that was "nothing special," if played by anyone other than a grand pianist or a uniquely gifted prodigy, would still result in mistakes from over ninety percent of people.

In short, it was the sort of piece that ordinary people could never hope to approach perfection with.

For instance, the piece *La Campanella* contained all sorts of massive leaps in difficulty; without a solid foundation, rigorous practice, and hall-of-fame hand speed, it was utterly impossible to master.

On the other hand, *The Flight of the Bumblebee* placed the utmost emphasis on speed and clarity. Its difficulty lay in the continuous and dense rapid shifting of semi-tones, coupled with the piece's relentless demand for velocity.

Many people could achieve the speed, but lacked the necessary finger flexibility.

As a result, as they played, various scales would blur together into a mess, losing the sensation of "the flight of a bumblebee" entirely and instead sounding like a swarm of headless flies buzzing about haphazardly in every direction.

If Liao Yuan had played *The Flight of the Bumblebee* instead of *La Campanella* during the Costa cruise exchange, he probably wouldn't have risen to fame within the circle overnight, nor would he have caught the eye of the grand pianist Lin Weiyin, nor would he have filled Zhai Lin's heart with apprehension, let alone secured an invitation to join the Musicians Association.

Therefore, overall, the difficulty of *La Campanella* was higher than that of *The Flight of the Bumblebee*.

However, ordinary audience members would never be able to tell the difference.

They would simply think, *Damn, this song is so pump-up!*

Such was the shared illusion of the eighty thousand people in attendance!

Thus, when the song finally drew to a close, the entire audience once again roared in unison, chanting the name of "A"!

The grandeur of the scene and the overwhelming momentum were enough to make the hundreds of millions of viewers behind their screens boil with excitement, as if pumped full of adrenaline!