Courtyard House: My Long and Hard Body Makes Me Play with All the Women in the Courtyard

Clear and distinct, like the chirping of cicadas on a summer night in my childhood:

Can you hear me?

Su Ting suddenly grabbed her wrist, his voice hoarse: "You fucking... only asking now?"

Xiaoman smiled.

Chapter 1403 The Worn Leather Jacket

In the rain, she looked up at the fading silver crescent moon.

And in the last halo of the waning moon

Another figure slowly appeared.

It was a man, wearing a tattered leather jacket, holding a guitar with a broken string.

A extinguished sound core was also embedded in his chest.

He looked at Xiaoman, a slight smile playing on his lips, and silently said:

"Sweetie, Daddy's song... should be returned to you."

The rain suddenly stopped.

The water droplets suspended in mid-air reflected the man's image in every single drop—his worn leather jacket was patched with three layers of pudding, and his broken guitar string hung down like a withered vine, its core dim, yet it trembled slightly in his chest, as if gently awakened by something distant.

"Dad...?" Xiaoman's lips barely moved, but her voice was like the wind whistling through the forest, so low that only Su Ting could hear it.

The figure didn't approach; he simply raised his hand and rubbed his thumb against the rusty neck of the guitar. His movements were slow, as if his memory had been stuck for three hundred years.

Then--

He dialed it.

A guitar without strings should be silent.

But a sound wave rippled out from the void!

"Om-"

Like a stone thrown into an ancient well, ripples spread out in layers, causing the entire city to tremble slightly.

Dust fell in wisps between the high-rise buildings; sparks flew from the broken power lines deep in the ruins; underground, a loudspeaker that had long been rusted out suddenly emitted a half-sound of static before exploding!

"He...he's playing the piano with his mind?!" Duoduo's eyes widened. The recording pen went out completely, but in her mind, the complete melody rang out—an old song that had never been recorded in the database, with a hoarse, off-key tone and a laughing and cursing interlude.

“…This is… ‘The Nail-Clad Ballad.’” The old man continued in a trembling voice, the copper bell in his hand ringing softly as if sobbing. “Before the war, street performers sang it to children…saying that a pair of nail-clad shoes can take you anywhere, unafraid of cold iron stomping your heart…”

The gray child slammed his fist into the ground, and the war drums boomed in response to the melody, their rhythm unsteady yet carrying a primal ferocity.

“Damn… that tune… my grandpa hummed it!” he roared, his eyes reddening. “He was dragged into the soundproof room… and that was the last line!”

Xiao Yin covered her ears and squatted down, tears mingling with the rain as they streamed down her face: "There are so many... they're all ringing... the broken radio on the street corner, the shredded alarm on the roof, and... and the burnt music box from the kindergarten... they're all playing along with him!"

Su Ting stared intently at the illusory figure, his throat tightening: "He is... the original creator of the sound core?"

Xiaoman did not answer.

She walked step by step toward the light and shadow in the rain. With each step, a ripple of light spread out beneath her feet, like water ripples formed from musical notes.

Until she stood in front of the man and looked up at him.

The man finally spoke, still without making a sound, but his words resonated directly in everyone's minds:

“Girl, three hundred years ago, I put you in the ‘winter box’ not so that you could ‘live’, but so that you could ‘wait’.”

"Waiting for what?" Xiaoman asked softly.

“Waiting for a world where children can sing.” His gaze swept over Su Ting, Duo Duo, the gray child, Xiao Yin, the old man… and finally settled on her face. “Waiting for them to stop using their voices as weapons.”

Xiaoman looked down at her hands, which were gleaming faintly: "But now... I can't speak."

“Because you are not a ‘singer’.” The man smiled and gently tapped her chest with his hand. “You are a ‘listener’. You are the container of sound, not the source.”

He turned and looked at the "Winter Sounds" cold current swirling above the city.

Chapter 1404 It was driven mad

"But it is the real 'song'. For three thousand years, humans have locked their voices into machines, turning songs into commands, broadcasts, and brainwashing noise... It has been driven mad and can only seal everything in the name of 'winter'."

"So you... sealed it inside Mom?" Xiaoman suddenly asked.

The man nodded: "Your mother was the last 'Natural Voice'. She could heal with her voice and awaken the slumbering with her songs. The system feared her... like it feared fire and light. They killed her, but they couldn't seal her voice. So... I used the last piece of sound core ore to seal her and the 'Winter Voice' together in the 'Winter Box,' so that you could wait for spring in silence."

Su Ting suddenly looked up: "Then Xiaoman... she wasn't artificially created?"

“She is the ‘Bloodline of Voice’.” The man looked at him. “Before her mother died, she breathed her last into the ocarina I made—that breath carried fragments of her vocal core and the lullaby she hadn’t finished singing. I used it… to create a child.”

Xiaoman was stunned.

So... I'm not human?

“You’re more human than anyone else.” The man laughed, tears welling in his eyes. “Because you’re not a ‘citizen’ defined by a program, not an ‘identity’ encoded by a voiceprint. You were born from a song.”

The rain started falling again.

But this time, every drop of rain carried a pitch.

Ding, dong, sha, shu... like countless tiny musical instruments, playing an unrecorded melody in the air.

Suddenly, a sharp whistling sound came from the top of a collapsed communications tower in the distance!

A flash of red light appeared, and several surviving surveillance robots crawled out of the ruins, their cameras locked on Xiaoman.

“Target confirmed… ‘Sound source’…Execute final elimination protocol…” a hoarse mechanical voice rang out.

"Damn it! The system still has spies!" Gray Child roared, grabbing his war drum and preparing to charge.

"Don't move!" Duoduo shouted, "They're connected to the residual frequency of the 'Old Voice Network'! As long as we make a sound, we'll be targeted and attacked!"

Su Ting raised his sword and stood in front of Xiao Man: "Then... don't make a sound."

He turned around and looked at the man's illusory figure: "Can you... still play?"

The man grinned, his fingers brushing across the stringless guitar once more.

This time, he played an extremely slow piece.

There are no words, only melody, like a mother patting her baby, like the wind blowing through a wheat field, like snow falling on a lake.

But as the sound waves spread, the robots suddenly froze.

Their lenses flickered, the red light flashing on and off, as if they were struggling.

"It...it's overwriting instructions with 'frequency'!" Duoduo exclaimed. "This isn't an attack...it's 'rewriting'! It's using melody...to rewrite their underlying code!"

Sure enough, one of the robots slowly turned towards its companion, emitting intermittent electronic sounds:

“…Re-…Agreement…Reopened…Source…Not…An Enemy…”

"We...want...to...listen..."

Immediately afterwards, all the robots knelt down, the camera closed, as if they were bowing.

Then, their shells cracked open, and tiny bells, whistles, and children's humming came from inside... all of which were "illegal audio" that had been erased by the system, but now they poured out from the depths of the machine and merged into a tender chorus.

The old man suddenly staggered forward, raising the copper bell high: "Let them hear! Let the whole city hear!"

He shook it forcefully—

"when!!!"

A clear, melodious bell rang out, like a sword piercing through the clouds!

Immediately, all the remaining sound-producing objects responded!

Ocarina, iron pipes, broken glass, wind chimes, drums, whistles, even the vibrations of underground water pipes… all spontaneously began to play, no longer chaotic, but forming a symphony that transcended life and death, revolving around the stringless guitar!

Chapter 1405 Dark Metal

Su Ting stood in the rain, listening to the increasingly loud melody, and suddenly realized—

Even his own knife was trembling.

The ice crystals on the blade peeled away, revealing the original black metal, which was now resonating with a rhythm somewhere in the distance, humming incessantly.

"This knife... was originally a 'sound device'?" he murmured.

Xiaoman gently grasped his hand and placed her palm against the side of the knife.

In an instant, a melody emerged from the blade—it was the song his mother used to lull Su Ting to sleep in the air-raid shelter when he was a child.

He trembled all over and almost dropped the knife.

“It…remembers…” his voice trembled.

Xiaoman nodded and looked at the man: "Dad, what's next?"

The man stopped, and the ghostly image of the guitar gradually faded away.

He pointed to the sky.