by Feng Yue
However, Ye Qingxuan was not a black musician, otherwise, he would upgrade himself to the level of a Scepter simply by integrating the clothes of original sin into his own music movement of sound of heart.
In the old times, in the Auschwitz, the clothes of original sin would change to a new host every time the “perishing praise” was played. Every black musician who had become its new host could reach the level of Scepter Musician.
The clothes of original sin had a strong simulation ability, and with the help of it, Ye Qingxuan managed to turn it into an exoskeleton that looked exactly like the gospel armor. Thus, he no longer needed to worry about lacking strength.
Ye Qingxuan’s Aether sensing had grown extremely powerful. When he was transforming the clothes of original sin, he found out how he could become a Master. There was a big chance that he would reach the level of Master in less than a month.
While half a month earlier, he just reached the Resonating level!
This has never happened before. If anyone knew about this, I would definitely be caught by people from different schools, then I would probably be cut to pieces and observed under a microscope.
Thinking of this, Ye Qingxuan sighed.
I received so much from Abraham when he died. All his knowledge, his experience, his interpretation of the Way of Deciphering, as well as all the music theories he had mastered as a Catastrophe Musician—they were all transferred to me via the perception thread.
Because Abraham had been sealed by the Aether, he could never reach the level of Master. Day after day, he worked so hard, and he finally reached to a level that few people could reach.
He had been waiting for this for decades, but he gave everything he had to me…
“How shameless I am!”
Ye Qingxuan cursed and forced himself to stop thinking about Abraham.
Ye Qingxuan realized that inside his body, the music movement of sound of heart had grown very powerful, and soon it was going to upgrade and become a real music movement of Fate.
Moreover, there were three cores in his music movement of sound of heart. The “seal of moonlight” of Ye Lanzhou, the “stone of sage” of Auschwitz, and the “Catastrophe Resonation” of Abraham.
He felt like there were three hearts in his body, and the three music movements were constantly resonating with each other in three different Aether waves.
If Ye Qingxuan managed to combine the three music movements into one and made it his own sound of heart, he would become a Master and reach the highest level a Master could reach.
However, to reach this level, there was one more step, which had been bothering him very much.
He needed to intensify all three cores to the same degree. Compared to the seal of moonlight that combined with the Heaven Ladder, and the stone of sage that combined with the sub-originator, the Catastrophe Resonation was not intact.
This was not due to the neglect of Abraham, rather it was because of the problems of the music movement itself.
The Catastrophe Resonation would only work when resonating with a catastrophe. The reason that Abraham was so powerful was partly due to the compatibility of his own personality with the “Silver Tide.”
However, Ye Qingxuan was not the same person as Abraham.
Although he knew the music movement that could resonate with the “Silver Tide,” he did not dare to play it. He was afraid that once he played it, he would be assimilated by the Catastrophe and simply become a “phenomenon”—a pool of moving hydrargyrum.
I’d better not play that music movement.
Since Ye Qingxuan was different from Abraham, he was afraid that if he did play that music movement like Abraham did, he would only cause trouble for himself.
Then, which Catastrophe should I resonate with?
Ye Qingxuan was completely lost.
Among the catastrophes, every one of them had different characteristics and disturbing aspects as well. Ye Qingxuan could not find any catastrophe that suited him.
After excluding all the weak ones, Ye Qingxuan drew closer to the catastrophe that suited him among the top-class catastrophes: the Three Pillar God, the Three Wise Men, the Eight Phenomena…
I think I should exclude the Eight Phenomena. Although they are really powerful and destructive, if I resonate with them, I shall lose all my sanity.
Among the Three Wise Man, the God of the Immortals had not been seen by anyone for many years; Nibelungenlied had been sealed by the Church; and Boss, who Ye Qingxuan was most familiar with, had basically become a useless man after coming back from Auschwitz. He could not even be called a catastrophe.
As for the Three Pillar God, the Holy Ax never responded to anyone’s summoning, and the mortal could only prove its existence via the music theory of the musicians of the Seven Systems. Throughout history, only three men had been aided by it, and they were the Kings of the Musicians: Blue, Red, and Yellow.
Ye Qingxuan knew he was clearly not as strong as the three Kings of the Musicians, and thus could never be aided by the Holy Ax.
How about Hyakume? Not possible. As for Quiet Moon, well, not impossible either.
Thinking of this, Ye Qingxuan could not help laughing. He shook his head and stopped trying to find a suitable catastrophe.
The Quiet Moon stood for extreme balance and punishment, and was even crueler than Hyakume and the Holy Ax.
Throughout history, many people who dared to resonate with the music theory of the Quiet Moon had been eradicated by its power.
Resonating with the Quiet Moon was playing with fire.
For example, Lola had decided to finish her life and dedicated herself to the Quiet Moon. She went through many hardships and managed to survive after finishing her transition. However, she would endure extreme pain as long as she was still breathing. After she died, she would become a part of the music theory of the Quiet Moon and never be free of the Quiet Moon.
Thinking of this, Ye Qingxuan felt headache coming on.
At the same time, the door behind him opened and Lola walked in.
After extracting much blood, Lola’s face finally grew a bit rosy and looked like a living person’s face. Behind her stood Samuel and all his disciples. They all looked very compliant and serious; clearly, Lola had successfully reshaped their personalities.
“All done?”
Ye Qingxuan stood up and said, “We should leave here immediately. On the ground, Hyakume is going to declare a war with the people of the Sacred City. It is too dangerous, and I have decided that I will never get involved in this fight.”
Hearing his words and seeing his anxiety, Lola did not feel relieved at all.
“What is wrong?” Ye Qingxuan asked.
Lola was silent for a while, then she sighed. “Ye Qingxuan, I just felt the Aether wave of my teacher… I think he is also in the Sacred City.”
“…”
Ye Qingxuan was shocked.
Lola’s teacher was actually Ye Qingxuan’s father, Ye Lanzhou.
Ye Lanzhou? Are you f*cking kidding me?
Ye Lanzhou had not shown himself for many years, and Ye Qingxuan had already accepted this fact and pretended to believe that he had been hiding someplace where no one could find him. After all these years, Ye Qingxuan had given up the hope of finding him, and kept telling himself that his father had already died.
Ye Qingxuan thought he had already gotten over this business, but when he heard that Ye Lanzhou was still alive, his heart began to beat rather fast.
He wanted to meet his father, which was perfectly fine and reasonable. But this mere idea also annoyed him very much.
He was silent. After a long while, he lowered his head and sighed. “Are you sure?”
Lola nodded.
“Fine…”
Ye Qingxuan massaged his face and took a deep breath and said, “Give me my Aether ball.”
Lola handed him his Aether ball. Then Ye Qingxuan turned around and began to walk in another direction.
There was
a huge instrument of harmonious melody in the Sforza family’s underground palace. It was the foundation of this region, and secretly connected with many other countries.
Ye Qingxuan put his Aether ball into this instrument and began to make connection.
After a while, someone replied.
“Hello?” a man said in a hoarse voice.
“Naberius, this is Ye Qingxuan.”
“Ye Qingxuan? You managed to get out of the underground palace? I see that you are connecting with me via the line that belongs to the Sforza family… Are you trying to ask me to do some dirty work, or be your scapegoat again?”
Suddenly, Naberius’s voice became very high-pitched and he screamed, “I won’t do it! I will never do it! By the way, what have you done to get Hyakume involved in this? Anyway, it is none of my business, I am currently moving to a new place, I have got no time to…”
Ye Qingxuan laughed and said, “You are so afraid of Hyakume?”
“Yes! And so what? A decent and powerful man like you isn’t afraid of Hyakume, are you? I don’t care what are you intend to do, just leave me out of it. I am gonna cut off the connection now.”
Ye Qingxuan said, “I want to join your team.”
“Nonsense.” Naberius laughed. “I heard that you even rejected Ludovic’s offer, and he is much more powerful than I am.”
“So you knew it already?”
“Of course,” Naberius said. “I know many things, but I do not think there is any need to for me to tell everything I know to someone else.”
“Then let’s get back to business,” Ye Qingxuan said. “Give me what I want, and when I succeed, I will lend you the clothes of original sin, so you can have a good look at it.”
Ye Qingxuan then told Naberius what he wanted.
Naberius didn’t reply, and Ye Qingxuan could hear screaming and yelling from Naberius’s side.
After a long while, Naberius said in a very hoarse voice, “Ye Qingxuan, my dear friend. I know you are a genius and you may be even stronger than me. But I have to tell you that the way you have chosen won’t work.”
“It won’t work?” Hearing this, Ye Qingxuan laughed and said, “I like a way that won’t work.”
497 Prologue
The moment Ye Qingxuan walked out of the underground palace, he almost suffocated.
In the chaotic streets, the crowds were screaming.
The sun alternated between strong and weak. Sometimes it even looked within reach. One side of Ye Qingxuan was dazzling and warm like he was walking under the sun, but the other side was so cold that his marrow was nearly frozen.
Under the sunlight, the shadows danced abnormally like living things.
The twilight sky became like a pot of boiling molten iron, spilling turbulently. Cracks appeared in ancient buildings, and the boom of something collapsing came from the depths of the earth.
The color of reality peeled off and faded under the erosion of the Aether waves. The steel city was gradually being corrupted into a magic world.
The roaring bells were deafening, ringing one after another. The enormous enchantment protected the foundation of the city and fought against the erosion of the Aether waves, trying to save the city from falling apart.
Thousands of towers spouted blazing lights and opened the dancing darkness, illuminating the world.
In this twilight where all the lights were rapidly dying, the Sacred City glowed as if it was on fire and red-hot cracks were spreading everywhere.
The power of the abyss blew out, impacting the Sacred City.
The first to be affected there were the human senses.
People who were more sensitive had already peeked into the large shadow emerging in the sky. Under the weight of countless pairs of cold eyes, their will was tortured and brought to the brink of collapse.
Insensitive people were unaware of that, so they just screamed and ran away when they saw others suddenly fall to the ground, vomit blood, and go insane.
They were like rats that didn’t know they were in a hot iron house.
As soon as the celebration of the Sacred City was over, the funeral started in a hurry.
The city had already became the center of the battlefield.
A scorching fohn swept through, a sign of a tragic war to come.
Musicians with strong competencies like Ye Qingxuan would be fine under such circumstances. In the chaos, many musicians suddenly fell to the ground and died on the spot with their five sense organs oozing blood and their heart sounds having collapsed.
Even Ye Qingxuan felt the pressure of suffocation at the moment. Without the protection of the clothes of original sin, he would have been close to death, losing 40% of his fighting force.
Now the enchantment of the Sacred City was running at full capacity, so that the order of the human world could be maintained and the city wouldn’t devolve into a dark world.
The Physical World seemed to be chaotic, but had no other anomalies.
But in the deepest part of the Aether World, the vast abyss had already collided with the Sacred City, bursting out endless turbulence.
The Sacred City glowed with endless flames.
The abyss trembled, shaking off a layer of dust—that was the seed of the demon.
The combat between the two giants affected the whole Aether World. Under the impact of the terrible waves, even the far-reaching Scepter Light was like a candle flickering in the wind.
Numerous mysterious places fell apart.
It was the ants that suffered first in the combat between the giants.
Countless oddities in the Aether World panicked and scattered, fleeing to the rest of the world before the arrival of the next waves of terror.
The Aether World was in such chaos. Beneath the sea of Aether was brewing turbulence.
When the shock of terror spread through the nine layers of the Aether Sea to the physical world, it almost shattered the nearest Sacred City. The turbulent music theory and the terrible changes, for musicians, were like a storm and a tsunami mixed together.
The drastic changes in the outside world caused imbalances of the music theory inside human bodies, with disastrous consequences.
The orientals called this phenomenon the “dead wind.”
Almost all the musicians with weak foundations and unreasonable construction of music theory inside their bodies were affected more or less, with the light symptom of feeling nauseous and the severe of vomiting blood.
As for the musicians who hadn’t stabilized their music theory after taking precious pharmaceuticals to gain higher levels, or those who had long been controlling serious injuries from their early years, some suffered from the Aether riots inside their bodies, some burned themselves to death, and some went into shock because the Aether density in their blood soared and influenced their hearts and brains.
At this moment, the constant changes of Aether density in the Sacred City exploded numerous Aether balls for measuring. Just like being thrown into the eye of wind, the Aether density sometimes became as harmless as that of the White Area, and sometimes soared to a terrible degree that even the Black Area couldn’t be compared with.
For musicians, the Sacred City had instantly become a forbidden place with extreme horrors in the World of Dark or the ruins after catastrophe.
It wouldn’t be any better for the ordinary people.
At this moment, the Sacred City had turned into a huge cauldron for alchemists to mix their drugs. Even if it was enveloped in enchantment, the fierce reactions could still be carried out without a break.
The Aether World overlapped the Physical World in the areas where the alchemy matrix gathered, forming a series of “flooding outlets” through which the chaotic aftermath blew out.
Innumerable oddities and ethereal shadows flew through the air.
Some were harmless, but the others were the demons that rose from the abyss.
Human beings would be drawn into an empty shell in a twinkle, with no way to resist at
all when they encountered those demons.
Even priests dressed in robes lost their protection from God and were slaughtered mercilessly. The young friars who went everywhere to preach the Word struggled and fled .
Then invisible things bit their heads off.
Blood splattered.
Fell on Ye Qingxuan’s boots.
When Ye Qingxuan walked onto the ground, the first thing he saw was such a chaotic scene.
“Help! Help!”
A young priest fell to the ground, screamed and trembled in confusion.
When he saw Ye Qingxuan, he saw him as a chance to save his life, and pleaded, “Help me, gentleman! Please help me! I will repay you! I swear!”
Ye Qingxuan hesitated and sighed.
“This is really … terrible.”
After saying that, he reached out and pointed at the priest at a distance.
A faint moonlight stretched out from his fingertips and pierced the priest between his eyebrows.
Just like a pot of boiling water, the scene in front of him suddenly twisted with strange screams and ear-piercing cries.
Viscous blood splattered everywhere.
The fierce turbulence of music theory left the demons nowhere to hide.
Around the young priest, a dozen demons were “pushed out” of the air with the all-pervasive fire of moonlight burning on their bodies. They were burnt into ashes before landing.
Ashes mixed with blood and became black mud.
Even behind the priest’s head, an eyeball-shaped demon fell down and burst into a mass of stenchy slurry.
Although the Sword of Moonlight ran through his head, the young priest was still safe, without even a scratch. He sat dully in a pool of blood and didn’t know what happened.
Lola saw the cowardly reaction of the young priest and couldn’t help but mock Ye Qingxuan.
“This coward was frightened silly. What’s the point of saving him?”
When the young priest heard Lola’s voice, he looked over and couldn’t help staring at her sharp ears and the tiger teeth protruding slightly between her lips.
As the young priest perceived the identity of Lola and the servants behind her, his face suddenly became pale and his teeth trembled.