Amateur talent show? Top mentors are my students.

He Xu admitted that he had underestimated Yang Sheng.

It's not that we underestimated his ability or perseverance, but rather his acting skills.

He originally thought that the child would need at least a few days to process the situation and practice in front of the mirror a hundred or two hundred times before he could portray the vulnerability of "being bullied but still holding back from crying" in front of the camera.

After all, Yang Sheng has been single-minded ever since he joined the company at the age of fourteen.

Unexpectedly, Yang Sheng started performing the very next day.

Indeed, the kind of teacher you have determines the kind of students you produce.

The next day, the behind-the-scenes filming crew came to the practice building to shoot footage as usual.

Two photographers carried their equipment, and a director held the script, scanning each practice room one by one, providing more detail than with fixed cameras.

Each group is given 15 to 20 minutes to film some rehearsal routines, which will be edited into the final film as behind-the-scenes footage.

The contestants were already used to this kind of filming.

Some people will deliberately make exaggerated expressions when the camera pans over, some will pretend not to see the camera but secretly adjust their angle, and some will pull their teammates to have some "natural" interactions.

But Yang Sheng was different.

Yang Sheng began performing the moment he walked into the practice room in the morning.

He Xu sneaked over to take a look at the place at noon.

He hadn't planned to come. Group A's morning rehearsal had already ended, and he had a sore throat and wanted to go back to his dorm to lie down.

But when I passed by the B group practice room, I heard a noise coming from inside and my steps stopped involuntarily.

The sound coming from inside wasn't music.

It was an argument.

Yang Sheng's voice came from the crack in the door. It wasn't loud, but every word had a deliberate, just-right tremor.

"I know I didn't dance well enough... but I'll try harder, can you please stop?"

He Xu leaned against the door frame, the corners of his mouth already starting to curve upwards.

He peeked through the crack in the door—Yang Sheng was standing in front of the mirror, clutching a lyric book in his hand, head down, shoulders slightly hunched, looking as if he could be described as "pitiful and charming."

The person standing opposite me is Zhou Ziheng, a contestant from Class D in our group. He was the one who made sarcastic remarks about "someone from Class F" in the practice room yesterday.

At this moment, Zhou Ziheng's expression was quite interesting; his anger hadn't subsided before it was overshadowed by panic.

Because the red light on the camera was pointed directly at him.

Two photographers were on set. One was shooting a close-up of Yang Sheng, while the other had somehow moved to the side and captured Zhou Ziheng's impatient face in full view.

The behind-the-scenes director stood in the corner, a slight smile playing on his lips, clearly very satisfied with the scene before him.

"That's not what I meant—" Zhou Ziheng's voice was dry. He wanted to explain but didn't know what to say, so he could only swallow the rest of his words.

Yang Sheng looked up and glanced at him.

He Xu saw it clearly in that glance.

Her eyes were slightly red, and there was still a little water on her eyelashes, as if she was trying hard to hold back her tears.

Then Yang Sheng lowered his head and said in an even softer voice, "It's okay, I know you didn't mean it."

Zhou Ziheng's face turned a deep purplish-red.

The other two group members next to them, who had been making trouble yesterday, were now one looking down pretending to look at the lyrics book, and the other turning around to rummage through their backpack, wishing they could extricate themselves from this scene.

He Xu bit his lip outside the door.

You can't laugh.

If you laugh, you'll give yourself away.

Yang Sheng's move was even more ruthless than what he had taught him.

Not only did they not utter a single word of criticism, but they also subtly shifted the focus of the camera towards themselves.

Before Zhou Ziheng could say a word, he was already branded as a "bully" in front of the entire online audience.

He Xu took a deep breath and suppressed his laughter.

He recalled what he had said in the cafeteria yesterday—"Wait until the camera comes on before you cry."

Yang Sheng not only remembered it, but also exceeded the target.

He Xu stood at the door for a moment, about to turn and leave, when the door was suddenly pulled open from the inside.

Yang Sheng stood at the door, his eyes still red, but the corners of his mouth were already turned up.

His expression instantly changed from aggrieved to a little smug.

It happened so fast that even He Xu was stunned for a moment.

"Brother He Xu," Yang Sheng lowered his voice and took a step towards the door, "when did you get here?"

"I've been here for a while."

Yang Sheng's eyes lit up: "So you saw it?"

"I saw it."

"How is it?"

He Xu glanced at him, his eyes carrying a look of disdain that seemed to say, "Do you still want me to praise you?" But the curve of his lips betrayed him.

"It's alright," he said.

This is the highest praise He Xu could give.

Yang Sheng's mouth stretched from ear to ear in a wide grin, but he quickly composed himself—because footsteps came from the other end of the corridor.

He instantly switched back to "feeling wronged mode".

He Xu almost couldn't help but laugh when he saw how quickly the man's expression changed.

The selection manager arrived, holding today's schedule, and called out from afar, "Yang Sheng, remember to attend the backup interview this afternoon, don't be late."

Yang Sheng nodded, his voice soft and obedient: "Okay, I understand, thank you, sister."

The selection manager was taken aback by being called "sister," and her expression softened visibly: "Drink more hot water after practice, don't push yourself too hard."

Yang Sheng nodded obediently.

The selection manager has left.

Yang Sheng switched back.

"Teacher, didn't I say 'sister' really well just now?" He leaned closer, lowered his voice, and his eyes were full of "Praise me, praise me!"

He Xu looked at him and remained silent for two seconds.

"If you can't debut in the future," he said, his voice hoarse and deep, "you can go into acting."

Yang Sheng blinked: "Is this a compliment?"

"you guess."

-

The trainees at the training base were still scheming against each other, unaware that the outside world had already changed drastically.

"Absolute Debut" has officially premiered.

Moreover, it aired four episodes over four consecutive days, from the initial stage performance to the end of the group assignments, with each episode lasting two and a half hours.

The first episode was released on Friday night at 8 PM.

The broadcast started simultaneously on major platforms, and the barrage of comments flooded in like a torrent the moment the countdown reached zero, completely submerging two-thirds of the screen.

The production team was clearly prepared – the server capacity was tripled, but it still crashed once in the first minute after the broadcast started.

The technical team frantically worked for four minutes to get the page reloaded.

But this four-minute "black screen incident" turned out to be the best publicity.

The hashtag #AbsolutelyDebutFailed# trended on Weibo seven minutes after the show started, and clicking on it revealed screenshots and complaints from netizens.

"I've refreshed it thirty times! Show it to me!!!"

"How many people would it take to crash the server?"

"How are you going to pay me back, production team?!"

The page crashed for four minutes, and I cursed for four minutes, but once it was restored, I still had to watch what I needed to watch.

The first episode lasted two and a half hours, starting with the initial performances of one hundred contestants and continuing until the end of the first ranking assessment.

The style of the comments quickly evolved from "Let me see what handsome guys are here" to a large-scale family reunion.

When Qi Xunan appeared, the camera lingered on his face for a long time—so long that everyone thought the video had stopped.

"This isn't the one in the center position from the previous music video!!!"

"Qi Xunan! Twenty years old! Works for a big company!"

"Why is my baby's debut stage a B??? I don't understand, why did they give my baby a B!!!"

"Doesn't this mean his theme song was a complete smash hit?!"

When Yang Sheng and his group appeared, the comments section took a different turn.

"Banxing Entertainment!!! Shen Yiheng's junior apprentice!!!"

"Seventeen years old and jumping like this?? What was I doing at seventeen? I was doing my homework."

"How did he train this core control?"

"Did you guys hear that part he sang a cappella? No backing vocals, no auto-tuning, and he was so steady??"

"They're so handsome! Each of them has a different style of handsomeness!!!"

The barrage of comments was flying everywhere. Before the individual cam clips of the three members from Banxing Entertainment had even finished airing, people were already asking in the comments section for "Yang Sheng, Song Yingwen, and Jiang Yang to debut as a group."

But what truly caused the second crash of the bullet screen server was He Xu.

He Xu appeared in the latter half of the first episode.

The show's editing was perfectly timed, featuring one hundred contestants on their first stage performances. The first half used amateur contestants from small companies to warm up the audience, the second half used trainees from large companies to raise expectations, and then, just as the audience was about to experience viewer fatigue, He Xu was brought out.

He was tilting his head to talk to Lu Yiming next to him, a slight, ambiguous smile playing on his lips.

The moment he appeared in the center of the screen, the barrage of comments abruptly stopped.

"??????"

"Who is this???"

"Paused, is that face real?"

"I thought it was some actor making a cameo appearance, but it turns out they're contestants???"

"What's his name? He Xu? That's a nice name!"

Then He Xu spoke.

The moment the sound came from the speakers, the direction of the comments suddenly changed.

"His voice... was so low."

"You injured your throat? He said the day after tomorrow??"

"This voice is so unique, I feel like I've heard it somewhere before..."

"Wait, wait, wait, doesn't this voice sound familiar?"

"Theme song!! The bass harmonies in the second verse of the theme song's chorus!!!"

"Holy crap!!! It's him!!! It's definitely him!!!"

While the comments section was still debating, He Xu had already started dancing.

During the dance segment, the comments section completely abandoned any attempt at verbal communication.

"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!"

"Is this dancing???"

"His wave exploded from each vertebra of his spine?? Can the human spine really do that?"

"Wait, Professor Zheng, aren't you getting a little too excited? You're practically shoving the microphone in their face!"

Jung Jae-won: I've been dancing for twenty years and I've never seen anyone like this.

"So handsome! So handsome! So handsome!!! 'Absolute Debut' really dropped a bombshell!"

The comments section went completely crazy.

When the first episode of "Absolute Debut" finished airing, it was already 12:47 AM.

But nobody was sleeping.

Of the top ten trending topics, six are related to "Absolute Debut"—

#AbsolutelyDebutFailed# is still in first place, followed by a purple "Explosive" character.

But no matter how crazy the outside world is, it has nothing to do with the trainees in the base.

because--

They don't have cell phones.