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

The clouds in the sky churned again, but no longer oppressively; instead, they receded to the sides like a tide, revealing a clear, azure sky.

The flowers of sound bloomed in full glory, their petals trembling as they slowly rose, drifting into the air like fireflies, each emitting a subtle yet clear harmony.

Su Ting's piano playing soared, Duo Duo's singing became passionate, and Gray Child simply threw himself on the ground, using his body to create the most primal rhythm.

The child sang louder and more steadily, his voice filled with both tears and laughter:

"...I'm not worried if the wind doesn't come, because Mother said—the light will come..."

At this moment——

"Crackling sound—!!!"

In the center of the earth, a crack silently opened.

It emitted no black smoke, nor spewed lava; only a beam of pale blue light slowly rose from the ground.

In that light, countless blurry figures could be vaguely seen, holding hands, with their backs to the light and facing the darkness.

They have no faces, yet you can "hear" them singing.

A song I'd never heard before, yet it brought tears to my eyes.

Xiaoman stood at the edge of the crack, gazing at the beam of light, and softly asked:

"who are you?"

In the light, an aged yet gentle voice slowly emerged:

“We are the first band to be erased by the Silence. We are the first poets to sing the word ‘freedom’ three hundred years ago. We are the sheet music that was burned, the piano that was smashed, and the mouth that was sewn shut.”

"We are... the forgotten beginning."

Su Ting gripped the zither tightly: "Then... do you want to come back?"

“No.” The voice laughed. “We are already dead. But we want someone to live on in our place.”

When Xiaoman closed her eyes, and then opened them again, it seemed as if sparks were igniting in her eyes.

"Then I'll sing for you."

She opened her mouth, but there was no melody, no lyrics, only a long, clear sound.

"what!!!"

Like the cry of an eagle, like the roar of a tide, like the first cry of a newborn.

Su Ting immediately picked up the zither music, Duo Duo sang loudly, Gray Child slapped the ground wildly, and the child clung tightly to her side, also shouting loudly.

The flower of sound exploded in the air, turning into raindrops of light that sprinkled onto the crack.

The singing from underground grew louder and clearer.

Just as the light was about to engulf everything...

Xiaoman suddenly raised her hand, stopping everyone.

She leaned down and whispered to the beam of light:

"Wait a moment."

She turned around, looked at the crowd, and her eyes burned with a mad light.

"We missed something."

"Huh?" the gray child gasped.

Xiaoman grinned, revealing a set of white teeth:

"We haven't even asked you what songs you want to hear yet?"

"We haven't even asked—what songs do you want to hear?"

This sentence is like a drop of water falling into a boiling oil pan, instantly creating a huge ripple.

The underground singing abruptly stopped.

The beam of pale blue light lingered in mid-air, as if even time itself had been frozen in place by those words. The wind ceased its blowing, the flowers stopped trembling, and even the children held their breath, their little hands tightly gripping Xiaoman's clothes.

A few breaths later

"Om..."

The ground began to hum, not with rhythm, not with melody, but with a tremor almost like a sigh. The sound slowly coalesced, finally transforming into an aged, hoarse, yet smiling wave that struck directly into the depths of everyone's heart:

"The song we played together for the last time three hundred years ago."

"What's your name?" Duoduo couldn't help but ask, her voice trembling slightly.

There was a moment of silence in the light.

Then, the voice softly uttered three words:

""breaking Dawn".".

Chapter 1438 Not even a fragment was left

“Dawn?” Su Ting looked up abruptly, his fingers involuntarily sliding across the strings to produce a sharp note. “But that piece…it’s not recorded in history at all! The Silence Society burned all the scores, leaving not even fragments!”

“The sheet music is gone,” Xiaoman said softly, her eyes fixed on the light. “But the sound… isn’t dead. It keeps looping down there, over and over again, like a dream being replayed repeatedly.”

She turned to look at Su Ting: "The melody you dreamed about last night—it started with 'do-sol-mi-la,' right? An ascending scale, like pushing open a heavy door."

Su Ting's pupils contracted: "How did you know?! I... I didn't tell anyone!"

“Because you’re not the first person to have this dream.” Xiaoman took a deep breath. “I was. Gray was. Duoduo was. Even this child…” She gently hugged the child beside her, “He hummed a bit of it too, though he didn’t know it himself.”

The child nodded blankly: "I...I dreamed of bright lights, and many people singing together...There was a man holding a piano, standing at the front, and he...he had a finger missing from his hand."

“Old Pei.” Guangzhong’s voice suddenly sounded in a low voice, with a hint of a smile. “That guy, even after his little finger was cut off, he refused to hand over the sheet music and insisted on playing the last note with his remaining finger.”

The gray-haired boy burst out laughing: "That old man's really tough! He's got guts!"

Duo Duo's eyes welled up with tears: "So... you want us to play 'Dawn' again? With our hands, our voices, our lives?"

“No,” the voice in the light said slowly, “what we want to hear is—your own ‘Dawn’.”

"What do you mean?" Gray Kid scratched his head. "They want to change the lyrics? Add rap?"

Xiaoman suddenly laughed, her eyes crinkling with laughter: "It means—they don't want us to replicate the past. They want us to...create a new dawn."

Su Ting looked down at the zither in his hands, his fingers gently tracing the broken string. Last night's dream resurfaced: flames soared into the sky, crowds knelt on the ground, and a musician with a missing finger stood tall, playing his last chord amidst the flames.

But at that very moment, the music in my dream... changed.

It was no longer a tragic finale, but a chorus I'd never heard before, light and bouncy, with a kind of almost playful rhythm.

“The ending of my dream… wasn’t a tragedy,” Su Ting murmured, “it was a celebration.”

“Because the true dawn is not the end,” Xiaoman said, gazing at the light beneath the ground. “It is the beginning.”

She suddenly looked up and surveyed the crowd:

"Shall we play?"

"Damn it! Do you even need to ask?" Gray Boy jumped up, kicking a stone at his feet. "I've never been on stage properly since I was born! Today I'm going to put on a rock concert right in the center of the earth!"

“Sing.” Duoduo took off the broken drum from her shoulder and threw it aside. “I can tear through the night without accompaniment.”

The child timidly tugged at Xiaoman's sleeve: "I...can I sing the last line of the chorus? The one with 'the light will come'..."

Xiaoman squatted down, cupped his little face in her hands, and nodded earnestly: "When you sing the first line, all of us will follow you."

Su Ting took a deep breath and placed his ten fingers on the strings.

"The first 'Dawn' in three hundred years was restarted by us...."

His fingertips fell—

"Ding--"

The clear, melodious notes broke the silence.

Then came the second and third notes, the scale slowly ascending, the melody of the "door" in the dream being pushed open. But this time, there was no sorrow, no repression, only a kind of pulsation after a thousand years of suppression...

Chapter 1439 Surge Along the Crack

Duo Duo closed her eyes, her voice cutting through the air like a knife:

"The night has burned out, but fire still burns in the ashes—"

The gray child lay on the ground, frantically pounding the rock with both hands. The rhythm was no longer chaotic, but precise and focused, like a heartbeat, like a war drum.

"Thump! Tap tap! Thump thump tap!"

The child clenched his little fists, trembling, but spoke firmly:

"...If the wind doesn't come, I won't panic, because—"

Xiaoman suddenly looked up, and a high-pitched chant soared into the sky:

"Light! Will! Come—!!!"

At this moment——