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

Xiaoman's tears fell silently.

She opened her eyes and responded softly:

"I'm here."

The black light suddenly contracted, coalescing into a blurry human figure, small and curled up, like a child who had never grown up.

It stretched out its hand, pointing to Xiaoman's ocarina, its voice trembling:

Could you teach me how to sing this?

Could you teach me how to sing this?

Xiaoman's breath hitched, her fingertips gripped the ocarina tightly, her knuckles turning white.

She gazed at the figure huddled in the darkness, which resembled an abandoned baby huddled in a corner in the dead of winter, shivering, yet cautiously extending a hand, as if afraid of being pushed away.

"You...want to learn to sing?" Her voice was so soft, as if she were afraid of disturbing a fragile dream.

I've heard so many songs... but they're all sung by other people... I want to... sing one myself...

The sound was intermittent, as if it came from a very distant place, or as if it were an echo rising from the depths of her heart.

Duoduo gasped, "Holy crap...it actually...wants to learn?"

The gray child's eyes widened, and he slapped his face: "No... did I fucking hear wrong? Shouldn't it have just opened its mouth and sucked us all up? Now it wants to enroll in a vocal class at the Children's Palace?"

Su Ting's face turned ashen, but unusually, he did not refute. He stared intently at the figure, his voice low and deep: "...It has 'will'."

"Will?" Duoduo sneered. "Three hundred years ago, didn't it only know how to imitate and devour? How come it suddenly has an epiphany now?"

“It’s not enlightenment,” the girl said softly, floating at the boundary between light and darkness. “It’s hearing a response. For the first time, it was responded to ‘seriously.’ Not suppression, not soothing, not feeding… but—a dialogue.”

She looked at Xiaoman, tears welling in her eyes: "The song you played wasn't a ritual, not a spell. It was you saying to it: 'I heard you.'"

Xiaoman didn't speak, but slowly brought the ocarina to her lips once more.

This time, she didn't blow it directly, but instead softly hummed the line:

"The moonlight climbs the wall, and my mother is singing..."

As the sound faded, the black light trembled slightly.

[...moonlight...climbs...the...wall...]

The voice tried to repeat itself, but it was broken and off-key, like a child learning to speak, each syllable trembling with awkwardness.

Chapter 1448 The Hungry Wolf Hands Over the Knife

But it followed along carefully, word by word.

Xiaoman's tears finally fell.

She raised her hand, gently wiped her eyes, and then handed the ocarina to the blurry figure.

"Here, take it."

"Are you crazy?!" Su Ting suddenly rushed forward and grabbed her wrist. "That's the 'Source of Sound'! Giving it an instrument is like handing a knife to a hungry wolf!"

Xiaoman shook off his hand, her eyes resolute: "It's not a wolf. It's just... a child who hasn't learned how to eat."

She reached out her hand again, her voice soft but unwavering: "You want to learn to sing, right? Then start by holding a flute. It won't burn your hands."

The black light flowed slowly, and the figure hesitated, his fingertips trembling slightly, before finally reaching out towards the ocarina, little by little.

The instant they touched it—

"Boom!!!"

A deafening roar erupted from the Earth's core!

The entire Bridge of Light trembled violently, and the blue and black streams of light surged like a raging tide. The stone gate in the distance collapsed with a crash, and countless gray shadows rushed out from the cracks, screaming and crying, as if they had been forcibly torn from their slumber by something.

"Oh no!" Duoduo shouted, "The seal has weakened! The afterimages of those gatekeepers—they've all been shaken out!"

The gray child grabbed the chains and backed away, exclaiming, "Damn it! We're doomed! If it moves, the entire underground 'sound cage' will collapse!"

Su Ting stared intently at the ocarina in Xiao Man's hand, his voice trembling: "Giving it the 'key' is like breaking the ninth lock! Once it learns to 'make sounds,' it will no longer need the gatekeeper to 'feed' it—it can 'create' sounds on its own! The scale of its devouring will explode a hundredfold or a thousandfold!"

Xiaoman remained motionless.

She stared at the hand about to touch the ocarina and gritted her teeth, saying, "Then let it devour its fill!"

"What did you say?!" Su Ting roared.

“I said—let it devour!” Xiaoman suddenly looked up, her eyes filled with a mixture of tears and flames. “Three hundred years of suppression were useless, imprisonment was useless, sacrifice was useless! Because from beginning to end, it was not a calamity—it was a ‘voice’ that we had all abandoned!”

She pointed to the fleeing gray figures, her voice booming:

“You generations of gatekeepers, who has ever truly asked it—why are you crying? Why are you hungry? You just lock it up, feed it some memories, and say, ‘Be good, don’t make a fuss!’ But it’s not a pet! It’s the ‘first voice’ abandoned by the world!”

She suddenly thrust the ocarina forward!

"Click——"

A faint cracking sound was heard.

On the surface of the ocarina, a crack slowly spreads.

【…? 】

The sound abruptly subsided, and the black light contracted violently, like a frightened young animal.

But then, a very soft light shone through the crack, like the first tender sprout emerging from the frozen soil.

"What...did you do?" the girl asked softly.

Xiaoman looked at the cracked ocarina in her hand and said calmly, "I... didn't use it as a key, nor as a lock. I... treated it as a 'gift'."

She looked up at the huddled figure and whispered:

"You want to learn to sing? Okay. But this time, I'm not bragging, you listen. Nor am I going to imitate you and I'm correcting you."

She gently placed the ocarina on the ground, kicked it with her foot, and slid it toward the figure.

"Yes—we'll blow it together."

Before she could finish speaking, she bent down, picked up a piece of gravel from the ground, and slashed her palm!

Fresh blood dripped and seeped into the cracks in the ground.

"Xiaoman! What are you doing!" Duoduo exclaimed.

Ignoring her injuries, Xiaoman pressed her bloodied palm against the rock and murmured:

"The moonlight climbs the wall, and my mother is singing..."

As the song began, the earth trembled.

Chapter 1449 At this very moment

The figure gazed at the ocarina at its feet, at Xiaoman's bleeding hand, at her hoarse yet resolute singing, and slowly, slowly—

Stretched out his hand.

My fingertips finally touched the ocarina.

[...I...sing...]

It trembled as it brought the flute closer to... lips that didn't exist.

"Woo——"

A very incomplete, almost out-of-tune note rang out, like the cry of a baby, or like the cracking of ice in early spring.

But at this very moment—

Xiaoman's singing voice subtly harmonized with those musical notes.

It's not synchronization, it's not imitation.

It is harmony.

“...The sky will brighten…” Xiaoman continued with the next line, which she had shouted countless times.

And that voice, trembling, followed:

"...The sky...will...begin...to...dawn..."

"boom--!"

The entire underground world suddenly fell silent.

All the fleeing gray figures stopped in place, as if a pause button had been pressed.

Su Ting's pupils dilated in shock: "This...this isn't suppression...this is...resonance?!"

Duoduo murmured, "Holy crap...it...is it learning? Is it really learning?"

The gray child plopped down on the ground, laughing until tears streamed down his face: "Damn it... I've lived this long, and this is the first time I've ever seen a calamity give a music lesson..."

Xiaoman closed her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks, mingling with the blood.

She continued singing, line by line, like a mother lulling a baby to sleep.