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

That cold current, the "Voice of Winter," is slowly descending, like snow falling back onto the mountaintop.

“It’s going home,” he said. “Back to the depths of the earth, back to the buried river, back to where the first cries of children were heard.”

"What about the city?" Su Ting asked.

“It will change.” The man smiled. “There will be no loudspeakers, no broadcasts, no forced ‘sounds of order.’ But there will be whistles, drums, love songs, arguments, laughter, crying… there will be voices that truly belong to human beings.”

He looked at Xiaoman one last time, reached out, and lightly touched her brow.

"And you—you should go and fix my guitar."

The figure vanished.

The rain stopped.

The silvery crescent moon has completely disappeared.

The city was silent, yet it was "loud" like never before.

Su Ting looked down and saw Xiao Man fiddling with the broken-string guitar. Her fingers traced the body of the guitar as she hummed a tune softly. Suddenly, the guitar made a "ding" sound and an invisible string reconnected itself.

"Can you fix it?" he asked.

Xiaoman looked up, her eyes sparkling with starlight.

“Dad’s song… can’t have a broken string,” she said softly. “And…”

She handed him the guitar.

"It's your turn to play the next piece."

Su Ting was stunned: "Me? But I can't..."

“Listen.” She gently placed the guitar in his hands.

He held the cold body of the instrument, and suddenly, his fingertips trembled—

A melody welled up from the bottom of his heart, flowed through his fingers, and into the guitar.

“…This is…” He stared wide-eyed.

It was a piece he had never learned before, yet it felt as familiar as breathing.

Xiaoman smiled; the early sun after the rain shone on her face, as if it were plated with gold.

She leaned close to his ear, her lips barely moving—

"You already knew that."

Su Ting's fingers trembled slightly, but the old guitar resonated gently in his arms, as if it had long recognized this body and this heart.

"I... have never touched a guitar before," he murmured, his fingertips unconsciously gliding over the newly formed string. A clear, melodious note rippled out, like morning dew falling into the heart of a lake.

Xiaoman took a step back, her eyes clear and bright: "But you remember that song. You remember your mother's voice, the walls of the air-raid shelter, her trembling breath as she hummed the tune—these are the seeds of sound, buried in your bones."

Duoduo suddenly interjected, her voice still trembling slightly: "Su Ting, your voiceprint... I just caught a glimpse of it. The frequency curve... is exactly the same as the first generation 'Bardic Code' in the 'Progenitor Resonance Spectrum'! It can't be a coincidence... You are the 'chosen one'!"

"Selected?" Su Ting smiled bitterly. "I don't even know who I am. I'm just a deserter, a modified knife, I don't even have a childhood..."

“But you remember that lullaby,” Xiaoman interrupted him, her tone soft yet firm. “The system can alter memories, but it can’t change the rhythm of your heartbeat. The moment you heard your father play the piano, the knife awoke—it wasn’t a weapon, it was a musical instrument, it was the ‘responder.’”

Chapter 1406 Something's Wrong with This Guy

The gray-haired boy grinned and patted the drumhead: "Damn, isn't this romantic? Swordsman becomes musician, killing becomes singing. I've always felt something was off about you. You're ruthless, but you never cut children or touch the elderly... You're not a 'cleaner' at heart."

Su Ting looked down at his scarred hands. How many throats had these hands severed, how many skulls of rebels had they split open... yet now, they were unconsciously mimicking the gesture of plucking a string.

"Can... I really play?" he asked in a low voice.

Xiaoman nodded: "You don't just 'can,' you 'must.' The sound of winter must return to the earth, but it needs a 'guiding note.' Dad played that awakening song with his last bit of consciousness, and now—it's time for someone to take over."

The old man stepped forward shakily and gently placed the copper bell at Su Ting's feet: "Child, this bell has been passed down through thirteen generations of 'listeners.' Each generation waited for someone who could hear the 'voice of silence.' Now it's not ringing, not because it's broken... but because the person it was waiting for has finally arrived."

Su Ting took a deep breath, raised his head, and looked up at the city sky.

The chilling "Winter's Voice" had ceased its swirling; like a giant silver wing, it slowly sank towards the earth's core. But just then—

"Zi la——!"

A piercing electronic noise tore through the sky!

A crimson beam of light shot out from the ruined tower on the east side of the city, striking the cold current head-on! The light was accompanied by distorted sound waves, as if countless people were screaming, cursing, and giving orders at the same time!

"Stop...voice...order...must...continue..." The mechanical voice was cold and ruthless. "Clear...the source of the sound core...restart...the silence protocol..."

"Damn it! There are still remnants of the master control!" Gray Child roared, his war drum slamming into the ground and creating a sonic barrier. "This is the ultimate command of the 'central throat'! It's directly connected to the sonic pressure core of the underground furnace!"

Duoduo's face turned pale: "That's the system's 'heart echo'! As long as it's still there, all the sealed sounds can't be truly released! It's trying to pull 'Winter's Voice' back into the imprisonment program!"

Xiaoman suddenly looked up, a glint of silver in her eyes: "It wants to rewrite the 'Sound of Returning Home'! We must interrupt it!"

Su Ting gripped the guitar tightly, his knuckles turning white: "How can we interrupt? We can't make a sound, or we'll suffer the backlash..."

“Then use the ‘silent sound’.” Xiaoman suddenly grabbed his wrist and placed her palm on the back of his hand. “Use resonance, use memory, use the song in your heart—play it out, not with your ears, but with your bones!”

"but I……"

“You already knew it,” she repeated, her voice as gentle as the wind brushing past your ear.

Su Ting closed his eyes.

In an instant, memories flooded back like a tidal wave—

Water dripped from the stone walls of the air-raid shelter. His mother sat in the corner, holding him, her baby, in her arms. She sang no lyrics, only soft humming, like moonlight spreading across the water. At that time, he didn't understand that the melody was actually a "decoding key," a "primitive human frequency" that the system could never recognize.

And now, that melody is awakening from the depths of his blood.

He flicked his finger—

"Om..."

There was no loud sound, but an invisible ripple spread out from him.

Broken glass bounced gently on the ground, water pipes hummed softly, and in the distance, a collapsed clock tower's rusted pendulum swayed slightly!

"It works!" Duoduo exclaimed. "He's using 'infrasound resonance' to interfere with the command frequency of the central larynx! This is more ruthless than direct confrontation—he's dismantling its 'language logic'!"

Chapter 1407 Ten Years on the Run

Xiaoman laughed and took a step back: "Continue, don't stop. Let the whole city tremble with you."

Su Ting gritted his teeth and plucked the strings again.

This time, he didn't hesitate.

His fingers slid as if by instinct, and the melody gradually took shape—it was still that lullaby, but he had incorporated the sandstorms of ten years of escape, the anger of killing, the fear of hiding, and... the heart trembling when he first heard Xiaoman sing silently.

The sound waves are invisible, yet they grow stronger and stronger.

In the cracks of the street, copper wires buried for many years began to resonate; in the abandoned subway tunnels underground, the wind seemed to play a chord as it passed through; even the scarlet beam of light began to flicker erratically!

"It...is retreating!" the gray boy roared, grabbing his drumsticks and pounding the drums wildly. "Come on! Let my drumbeats accompany you!"

Thump! Thump! Thump! ——.

The war drums, like a heartbeat, were rugged yet resolute, instantly resonating with Su Ting's melody!

"I'll add some dynamism!" Duoduo shoved the recorder into the crack in the ground, activating the last bit of power. "Old system? Let me show you what 'pirated voices of freedom' really mean!"

A chaotic yet vibrant street rap bursts forth from the pen, carrying the laughter and curses of children, the whispers of lovers, and the shouts of vendors—all audio elements of life that are defined as "noise pollution"!

The old man raised the copper bell, stopped shaking it, and pressed it against his chest, using his breath to create a resonance: "The sound will be passed on to those who hear it, generation after generation—this sound is for all the names that have been erased!"

The bell rang softly, as if lamenting and weeping.

Xiaoman stands in the center, closes her eyes, and slowly raises her hands.

Her lips didn't move, but a clear, melodious voice, like a flowing stream, overflowed from the core of her voice—

That was when she finally "heard" her own voice.

Four frequencies, four emotions, four memories, intertwine in this moment.

Su Ting's guitar is the backbone, Gray Children's drums are the framework, Duo Duo's recordings are the flesh and blood, the old man's bells are the soul, and Xiao Man's singing is the lifeblood.

They are no longer individuals, but a living "humanoid voice-actuator".

The scarlet beam of light finally shattered!

"Warning... Core... Lost... Silence... Failure..." A mechanical voice trailed off, carrying a hint of... fear?

"It's scared!" Duoduo laughed. "The system never imagined that humans could spontaneously create a ensemble without commands or coding! It doesn't understand this kind of 'chaos'!"

At the top of the tower, the beam of light went out.

And in the sky, the cold current of "Winter's Voice" finally stopped falling—it began to unfold, like a huge feather of sound, slowly merging into the earth.

The city was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

But everyone "heard" it.

I heard the gurgling of the underground river flowing again, the soft sound of seeds breaking through the soil under the ruins, and the nursery rhyme that was cut off three hundred years ago, gently echoing in the wind.

Su Ting's fingers paused on the strings, trembling slightly.