musicians of old

Chapter 846 A Dream
"Whoosh—!!!"

A feeling of weightlessness washed over me instantly, and the cold, damp air rushed up, instantly overpowering the scorching heat of the ground.

The two plummeted rapidly, with the whistling wind in their ears and the faint sounds of roars and explosions overhead.

"Pfft!"

The expected hard impact did not come. The two of them crashed heavily into a cold, bone-chilling stream of water. The enormous impact almost suffocated Fanning. He clung tightly to Nancy and struggled to surface.

Nearly ninety percent darkness, with only a faint light shining through the cracks overhead, illuminating that this was a huge underground cavern, with a slowly flowing underground river beneath one's feet, and the air filled with the cold aura of millennia-old dust, algae, and rocks.

"Can you still walk?" Fan Ning asked, panting heavily.

“I’m fine, Mr. Fanning, why are you…” Nancy said weakly.

“I said everything I needed to say on stage, and that’s the reason. And what I don’t understand is why you received so much glory and inspiration from sacred music? In a way, I feel that the March in A minor and the Chorus were completed entirely with your help.”

“I don’t understand either, Mr. Fanning. That might have originally been yours.”

"It was originally mine?"

"After meeting you at the celebration two years ago, I often dreamed of you. Then I started submitting my works to your Sacred Music Review Board because the materials were all revelations from my dreams. So I think they might have originally been your creations. I heard about them, and then in another time and space, they were handed back to you."

"..." Fan Ning was silent for a moment, then finally stood up. "Let's go first, we'll talk about it again when we have the chance."

He identified the direction of the water flow and the characteristic curves on both sides, and pulled Nancy towards the location of the "Black Monk Tunnel" through the water.

A crack in the sky allowed a sliver of light, but the water was terribly cold, quickly drawing away the little body heat the two had left.

Every now and then, forks in the road flashed by, their deep, unknown destinations unknown, and the sound of flowing water amplified into an eerie echo within the cave.

"Oh no, we may have reached a dead end."

Nancy looked at the tributary in front of her, which had become extremely narrow, so narrow that the two of them could not even stand side by side, and the water level was so high that it almost submerged the entrance to the cave.

Just looking at it is incredibly depressing and terrifying.

"No, this is the only way to go."

Fan Ning only now truly confirmed that he had not misremembered; this was indeed the characteristic of the "Black Monk Tunnel" recorded in the scroll!
"Its branching paths are very long, and a person's lungs definitely cannot support walking down them, but the actual main trunk is not too long. As long as you find the right one, hold your breath, and you might be able to make it through!"

He stepped into the underground river first, and Nancy held his hand tightly from behind, like a drowning person grasping at a last straw.

The icy underground river water soaked through my clothes until it reached my mouth and nose, and the biting cold almost froze my blood.

In this predicament, Fanning still had to desperately try to recall the fragments of memory on the scroll.

If there is even the slightest mistake or disruption, you will end up on a dead-end road!
No matter what, Nancy must be safely brought to the surface.

Fan Ning forced himself to calm down. He recalled the piece of music he had heard when he jumped down, and one of the melodies, a beautiful and soothing tune, gave him great support. It was an idealistic, utopian expression that seemed more complete and had more real and multifaceted meaning than the "divine conscience" moral principle he had always believed in.
As I thought about it, I still felt a suffocating dizziness and unavoidable physical pain.

In this calm, speechless agony, Fan Ning's mind gradually began to dissipate. He barely managed to maintain a sliver of clarity in his mind, grabbing Nancy behind him with one hand and desperately feeling along the stone wall with the other.

The "utopian" melody gradually transforms into a deathly silent chorus-like fragment, with the wind, string, and woodwind sections successively introducing introductory material led by octave leaps. Even the eerie arpeggio fragments in the final movement gradually weaken and become quiet.
The entire space of music and thought became desolate. Just as Fan Ning's consciousness was about to fade away, the clear and ethereal "ding-a-ling~ ding-a-ling~" sound suddenly rang out again in the darkness ahead.

A cowbell?
Why would there be a cowbell here?
The music once again plunged into a disengaged "dreamlike passage," but the alternation of V-I notes in the double bass inexplicably stirred a sense of restlessness and enchantment in Fanning's thoughts. He inexplicably recalled the final movement of his Symphony No. 3, "A Summer's Dream," and the timpani striking that symbolized the opening of the gates of heaven.

The sixth movement, "Love Tells Me"?
The opening of the gates of heaven is not necessarily purely sacred; another meaning may relate to the "Gate of Whirlwind Fire," also known as the "Gate of Ecstasy."

Or perhaps it's about that Baroque term "Ecstasy".

A white mist suddenly appeared ahead of the dark water.

The salty, fishy smell, the sound of waves, the hoarse cries of water birds, and the girls laughing and giggling.

The sun shone brightly on the white sandy beach where footprints were left, so bright that it was hard to open one's eyes. The sea pounded against the shore with short waves, and cotton candy-like clouds were blown by the wind, flying swiftly across the azure sky like birds.

"Hey, I'm telling you, this is the place you most wanted to bring us to, isn't it?" Roy said with a forced smile, gathering his long hair.

“Of course, look how excited he is.” Joan glanced back and accidentally kicked over the cold drink at her feet.

"To be honest, uh... that's true." Fanning admitted with a dry laugh.

"It could have been done a long time ago, why are you only saying it now?" Xilan bit open the candy wrapper in her hand with her teeth.

"Because our boss, Fanning, is stingy, but he's also shy!" Roy joked, looking up at the sky, but then exclaimed "Wow!" and was sent flying into the air.

Three swings were lined up on the beach. Fanning gave her a hard shove, then went around to the back of Joan and Sheeran.

"Hold on tight!"

"Wow, is this how you play it?"

Girls dressed in light and bright clothes swayed back and forth on the swings.

Fanning moved around, her footsteps making a crunching sound on the beach. The sand, moistened by the waves, was soft and hot.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait."

"I can't go on, let me down and have a drink of water first."

"How awful!! How awful!!!"

A string of silvery laughter echoed across the sky.

Fan Ning, in high spirits, laughed heartily, his worries and melancholy vanishing without a trace. He saw steamships and small sailboats floating on the clear sea in the distance, and the tops of the black volcanic rock formations were visible in the water. The seawater was so transparent and dreamlike that even the difference in elevation was indistinguishable.

I don't know why, but I suddenly feel so cold.

Yes, why is it so cold in the south during the height of summer?
The illusion, with its multiple layers of metaphorical meaning, began to fade away little by little.

Only white mist remained, and then the white mist dissipated.

Of course it will be cold; even on a windless glacier, it will be cold enough.

Fan Ning looked at Ruoyi, who was separated on the other side of the rift, and pulled his thoughts back from his inexplicable reverie, giving a bitter smile:
"Ugh, it's so annoying, it was probably only three or five seconds late."