On November 1st, everyone following Whale Fall Returns to the Sea on Weibo received a notification:
Whale Fall Returns to the Sea:
"Draw the sword to cut the water, the water flows faster; raise the cup to drown the sorrows, the sorrows are even deeper." The new song, Drowning Sorrows, please enjoy.
A link was attached below.
Before Yu Hai even closed Weibo after posting the message, he noticed comments beginning to pile up rapidly beneath the post.
In just one minute, hundreds of comments had already accumulated.
He was taken aback. Had these people even listened to the song yet? Why were they already making such a commotion?
Yu Hai clicked on the top comment:
"I don't know if Whale Fall will ever become a Grandmaster Composer, but he is definitely going to become the God of Lyrics!!!"
"Good heavens, what kind of divine poetry is this?"
"Just for this line of verse, this one yuan was worth spending."
"This line is so full of philosophy!"
"..."
Yu Hai suddenly understood. It was all Li Bai's doing.
The parallel world had no Li Bai. This verse appeared before Huaxia's netizens for the first time, and anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of Chinese could appreciate its brilliance, let alone the more knowledgeable crowd in this parallel world.
Yet it seemed the poetry had completely stolen the spotlight from the song!
For a moment, Yu Hai didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He had only been doing his routine promotion. How did the poetry manage to overshadow the actual music?
Still, his promotional goal had been achieved. Yu Hai went to sleep with peace of mind.
Little did he know that after fermenting all through the night, the line "Draw the sword to cut the water, the water flows faster; raise the cup to drown the sorrows, the sorrows are even deeper" was pushed to the trending searches on Weibo the very next day.
Because Huaxia culture flourished worldwide, people in this parallel world cherished Huaxia poetry and prose far more intensely than people on Earth did.
This fostered an exceptionally high status for poets in this world, which in turn elevated the standing of lyricists.
If people were accustomed to calling top-tier composers Grandmaster Composers, then the most brilliant lyricists were universally hailed as Gods of Lyrics.
After all, there were songs whose lyrics alone could sweep the world without anyone even needing to hear the melody.
This poem and the song Drowning Sorrows made many people realize Whale Fall's talent for lyricism for the very first time.
Many users checked out his Weibo feed, where they stumbled upon the two poems he had previously published:
Facing the Sea, with Spring Blossoms and Xing Xiang Zi.
Literature enthusiasts followed his Weibo like prospectors unearthing a treasure chest.
On a certain literary forum, a thread dedicated to the two poems he published had already been created, drawing over a thousand participants in discussion.
Naturally, this development caught the attention of Xie Yun, who had been keeping an eye on Yu Hai.
He immediately decided to ride the wave of hype to promote his own film.
On the afternoon of November 1st, the verified Weibo account for the movie Expedition to the Frontier released a teaser trailer:
"Thank you, Teacher Whale Fall @Whale Fall Returns to the Sea, for specially writing this poem for our film. See you on the Winter Solstice, come rain or shine."
Netizens instinctively clicked on the teaser.
The video opened with a lavish banquet. Flickering candlelight cast a shimmering glow over the armor worn by the soldiers, while ripples danced across cups of fine wine under the cover of night. Just as everyone was about to raise their cups in unrestrained celebration, a brisk and lively pipa suddenly struck up, and a dancer swayed gracefully to its notes.
It was a truly bustling and exuberant scene.
The camera gradually pulled back, focusing on a slender hand holding a wine cup in the corner. Against the backdrop, a deep, resonant male voice intoned: "Glazed cups filled with glowing grape wine."
The camera panned slowly upward, resting on the male protagonist's face. Raising his cup slightly with half-closed eyes, he listened as the pipa music grew increasingly urgent. He drained the wine in a single gulp, then flicked his wrist, the camera tracking the spinning cup as it dropped to the floor:
"Drinking now, the pipa on horseback urges us to hasten."
The camera shifted to a low angle, following the protagonist as he stumbled to his feet, drew his sword, and began an unsteady, drunken dance.
"Drunk on the battlefield, lord, do not laugh."
The background music gradually softened, giving way to heavy drums that seemed to echo the sounds of slaughter on a battlefield.
Sure enough, the frame shifted to the battlefield, where combat and blood intertwined as soldier after soldier fell.
"Since ancient times, how many return from the wars?"
The entire teaser was carefree and spirited in its first half, while the second half carried a tragic grandeur accompanied by a lingering melody.
It left viewers' blood boiling and their hearts deeply stirred, unable to calm down for a long time.
Many people searched for related information.
The background music for the trailer was the film's theme song, composed by Lin Wenze. The poem was written by Whale Fall.
If the initial promotional verses for Drowning Sorrows had led many to believe that Whale Fall's success was merely a fluke, this poem Liangzhou Ci convinced the vast majority of his genuine talent for poetry.
Many heavyweights in the literary circle could no longer sit still, with quite a few directly posting their analyses right beneath the Weibo post.
The line "Glazed cups filled with glowing grape wine" was pushed to the trending searches that very day.
Many who finished watching the teaser left comments declaring that they simply had to see the movie to find out what kind of story could inspire Whale Fall to write such heroic poetry.
Yu Hai didn't lose out on this wave, but Xie Yun had utterly won big.
For a single poem, he had paid Yu Hai an authorship fee of one million, yet he achieved promotional results that ten million wouldn't necessarily have bought.
Thanks to the buzz surrounding Whale Fall's poetry and Director Xie Yun's film, the momentum of the song Drowning Sorrows was initially suppressed.
Though its download numbers kept climbing, the online discussions about it remained bottled up.
Until two days later.
Some busybodies dug up the background details of the vocalist, Zhou Mingxuan.
This sudden revelation lent a unique flavor to the ears of listeners who had previously felt the song's melody was too simple and its lyrics overly packed with ornate phrasing.
Without personal experience, listeners at first could not fathom why this young boy sang with such a weathered sense of vicissitude.
That was until they learned about Zhou Mingxuan.
He had dropped out of school at a young age to enter society, struggling to make a living in the metropolis in all his lonely youth. Perhaps, in his experience, the bustling nightlife of this giant city always felt incompatible with him; he longed to belong, yet only found himself locked in painful struggle.
Deep down, perhaps he had never truly felt like he belonged here.
Often, when you haven't lived through something yourself, you shouldn't dismiss others as being overly sentimental or groaning without cause.
Lying alone on his dormitory bed, Zhou Mingxuan looked at the comments pouring in under Drowning Sorrows:
"Eight cups of wine, and every single one is filled with confusion and sorrow."
"This cup of wine, I'll drain it first as a toast!"
"In the dead of night, I'm damn near drunk all by myself."
"As a depressive patient dragging out a meager existence alone in the city, this song is enough to make me weep for a whole night."
"The sober ones are the most absurd. Take me for example!"
"As expected of Whale Fall, even whining over nothing can be written so beautifully?"
"..."
As Zhou Mingxuan read on, his eyes grew moist, difficult to restrain.
When he recorded this song, he had felt a powerful resonance with it, and listening to it now brought back that exact same feeling.
Making a living away from home all by himself, he often felt out of place in this circle, frequently at a loss and entirely adrift, longing for his hometown and feeling lost about the road ahead.
It was a pity his own talent was limited and he couldn't write songs, but Whale Fall's track had truly captured every single nuance of his state of mind.
From this day forward, Teacher Whale Fall was simply the greatest of all time.