Chapter 58: Strings
On this particular evening in the Shenzhou region, people across the globe, whether they were Caucasians in the New York region across the Shenzhou Ocean, or Yumoke people located on the Winter Peninsula, or those in the Southern Hemisphere’s Southern Land, or even in the lands further south at the South Pole, simultaneously and inexplicably erupted into mass hysteria.
The source of this world-altering event originated from the hands of a world-class violinist who played the music of the netherworld.
No one could have imagined that the music created by this musical prodigy could transcend dimensional barriers, break through the shackles of reality-bound beings, and generate this demonic music, akin to a terrifying epidemic.
His music, though not of this world, connected to the underworld, as if the gates of hell and the netherworld had been flung open. Countless vicious devils surged forth, possessing every susceptible human in reality, controlling their bodies to perform stiff, twisted dances, madly tearing at their vocal cords and mouths, emitting ferocious, frenzied, eerie roars.
When a live-streamed concert that spanned the entire world transformed into an epidemic spreading through spacetime, the entire world seemed to be thrown into turmoil.
“Daddy, what’s wrong with these uncles and aunties? Why are they suddenly dancing and not listening to the music anymore?” amidst the “boisterous celebration” and “noisy crowd” at the concert venue, aside from Haimofen, who was meticulously performing the movement, only a simply dressed father and daughter remained unaffected. The little daughter, barely four years old, sat on her father’s lap and innocently inquired.
Li Jiahong, snapping out of his shock at the scene, smiled at his daughter and said, “That’s because they were listening too intently.”
“But I was listening very carefully too,” Li Yuning replied, putting on a slightly defiant yet wronged expression, “So, should I start dancing with them too?”
“That’s quite unnecessary,” Li Jiahong immediately shook his head and patted Li Yuning’s head. “It’s too crowded here, we need to learn to be considerate and give these uncles and aunties space to dance.”
“Oh, right, one must be considerate,” Li Yuning nodded, seemingly understanding, and nestled obediently in Li Jiahong’s arms, continuing to attentively listen to the first great work of this musical feast.
Hummmm—
Suddenly, a strange low note, emanating from an unknown instrument, intruded into the perfect performance, causing the people worldwide who had gone mad from the demonic sound to freeze in place, as if their motor nerves had been severed. Like machines disconnected from their power source, they stood frozen.
This abrupt sound was like an impolite guest forcefully entering this world, breaking the prelude to an otherwise flawless concert. It enraged Haimofen, the host of this concert, and ignited the fury of those who, still possessing their reason, were enthralled by the music of this performance.
Almost at the same moment the eerie sound infiltrated the melody, spatial distortions began to appear and intensify across the globe. Countless deformed cracks bloomed in the air. These distorted spaces tore the world’s colors into irregular, alien hues and shapes. The notes from another dimension originated from behind these indescribable warped spaces. It was as if they came from the hand of an arrogant musical genius who, upon hearing Haimofen’s clumsy imitation of his music, issued a merciless scoff and raised his exquisite instrument to counter-attack Haimofen.
Haimofen laughed in anger, smiling silently, and continued to play his music, pushing the first great movement of the concert, 《Demonic Sound《, towards a shocking climax, issuing a warrior’s battle cry to challenge the chief musician of the Dream Palace hidden behind those distorted spaces.
“Daddy, that line-like thing is so annoying. It’s as ugly as the drawings my classmate Xiao Ming makes. Xiao Ming said he just scribbled randomly because he didn’t know what he wanted to draw. This thing was also scribbled out by some random Xiao Ming, it’s so ugly and annoying,” Li Yuning covered her ears, jumped off Li Jiahong’s lap, stomped her feet in anger, and gazed intently at the distorted spatial scene in the sky.
Li Jiahong nodded in agreement and then stood up, saying, “It is indeed annoying. So, let’s go today. We won’t listen to this one for now. We’ll go to the next concert. After Teacher Hai drives away this ugly fellow, we can continue listening to Teacher Hai’s works without any disturbance.”
“Ah, we can listen to the next one?” Li Yuning’s big eyes sparkled, and she couldn’t stop smiling with joy.
Li Jiahong smiled and nodded, saying mysteriously, “Let me secretly tell you a secret. Actually, Daddy really knows Teacher Hai in real life. We’re even friends…”
Hearing this, Li Yuning immediately looked at her father with adoration, held Li Jiahong’s rough, large hand, and said, “Daddy is so amazing!”
“Hahaha, my darling daughter is not bad either,” Li Jiahong picked his daughter up from the ground and then left their seats.
He walked through the stiff, white-eyed crowd and approached the computer responsible for the live broadcast. After closing the streaming software, he then led his daughter out of the stadium.
He decided not to involve his daughter in whatever came next, trusting that Teacher Hai could handle it.
If Teacher Hai could expel that fellow once before, he could expel him a second time now.
The moment the live broadcast was cut, almost everyone affected by the demonic sound from the stream fainted simultaneously, collapsing to the ground. They dreamt, their minds replaying the melody of the demonic sound they had heard, unconsciously mimicking the pitch and humming softly…
Xin Junmao was completely absorbed in the confrontation between the two pieces of music. With his left ear, he listened to Haimofen’s 《Demonic Sound《, and with his right, he listened to the unknown music of the “dimensional musician.”
The two distinct melodies collided constantly in the depths of his mind, causing Xin Junmao’s brain to feel like it was expanding. At one moment, he felt it was heavenly music, and the next, it sounded like the wails of evil spirits. The two sounds were violently compressing the membrane of his rationality, each vying to penetrate his soul.
Yet, under the violent assault of these two powerful musical magics, Xin Junmao was surprisingly not dead. The high walls of his rationality remained erect and impregnable, and neither of the musical forces could break through his supposedly fragile defenses.
While listening to the “noise” in his ears, Xin Junmao’s eyes were solely focused on the captivating beauty of the qipao-clad woman before him.
At this moment, he once again felt the allure of the qipao beauty. Her beauty was so profound it could shake the heavens and the earth, causing seas to dry up and rocks to decay. Her beauty could make one forget everything and overlook everything.
Therefore, Xin Junmao forgot the danger of his surroundings and completely disregarded the distorted, eerie environment; his eyes were solely fixed on the woman.
“I thought I would get to listen to an elegant and comfortable concert, but it seems that opportunity is gone.” The qipao beauty extended a fair hand, her ten fingers sometimes excessively long, exceeding the length of her face, and at other times slender and frail like withered branches. Such an odd hand, yet it captivated Xin Junmao immensely. He allowed her sharp fingertips to gently caress his face, leaving faint bloody traces.
The qipao beauty’s fingertips lightly traced a line from his forehead, down to his cheek, and finally to his neck. With a delicate gesture, she made a shallow cut on Xin Junmao’s neck, drawing blood but not fatally. Looking at Xin Junmao, who was staring at her blankly, she chuckled and said, “Would you like to visit my home?”
“Yes,” Xin Junmao agreed without hesitation. He then stood up and followed, trailing behind the graceful silhouette. He was captivated by her swaying movements, his heart filled with longing. Even when he saw strands of flesh occasionally exposed within her skin, he maintained a poker face, appreciating her, even feeling aroused by her.
The qipao beauty led Xin Junmao out of the second floor of the stadium to a manhole cover at a certain location within the Civic Sports Center. She opened the manhole cover and led another man, bewitched by her beauty, to her eerie kingdom beneath Cuizhu City.
The battle between the human musical prodigy and the “dimensional musician” continued. In the first round of the confrontation between demonic sound and strange music, with Xin Junmao’s first work 《Demonic Sound《 reaching its end without being able to defeat the “dimensional musician,” the melody of the strange music ultimately gained the upper hand, securing victory in this first round.
Haimofen’s face was flushed, veins bulging on his forehead, his eyes bloodshot, and blood seeped from the gaps between his tightly clenched teeth. The single defeat did not instill even a hint of fear in him. After a moment of silent, mad laughter, he suddenly swung his bow, throwing it to the ground. Then, he removed his white gloves, revealing a pair of hands covered in bloody, mangled wounds. He switched his grip on the violin, fumbled in his pockets, and fitted both hands with claw-like glove attachments equipped with sharp blades.
Haimofen, using his claws as hands and the blades as a bow, then began to play his next long movement.
“This piece is called 《Curse《. Listen carefully, my music is better than yours,” Haimofen grinned maniacally, his smile so exaggerated that his face appeared stiff.
The blades scraped across the violin strings, but miraculously, no matter how rough and violent Haimofen’s sawing motion was, the strings remained unbroken.
The reason for this was the extremely special material of the violin’s strings, an item Haimofen had purchased at a high price from Lin Ling’s forest cabin. These strings were not common nylon or steel wire, nor were they the gut strings favored by classical composers; they were strands of human hair.
Upon purchasing the human hair strings, Haimofen had inquired with Lin Ling about their origin.
Lin Ling smiled and explained, “Legend has it that long ago, there was a beautiful, melancholic woman. She had a childhood sweetheart to whom she was betrothed. They had liked each other since they were children, their love sincere and deep. One day, the woman’s country clashed with its neighbor, and war erupted, engulfing the land in flames. The woman’s beloved was a patriotic scholar who decided to join the battlefield. He promised the woman that he would return immediately after the war to marry her.
Who knew that once her lover left, he would never return. It was said he died beneath the butcher’s blade on the battlefield. Due to the fierce fighting on the front lines, no corpse was ever brought back, and he was left to lie in the wilderness.
The woman was heartbroken and resolved to shave her head and become a nun. She knelt before the Buddha, performing three thousand kowtows daily, striking a wooden fish three thousand times, and ringing a bell three thousand times, casting aside her love and hate, focusing solely on Buddhism.
However, day after day, year after year, as countless springs and autumns passed, the nun found she could still not comprehend the supreme Buddhist Dharma, nor could she discern any Buddhist principles from the scriptures. Feeling disappointed, she sought guidance from the respected abbot of the temple.
The abbot said nothing but led the nun to the bamboo grove in the backyard. There, a black tree rose from the ground, spiraled like a twisted rope, standing straight and tall. The nun approached and looked closely, only to find it was a foreign object composed of black hair, and she was utterly astonished.
The abbot asked, ‘Do you understand now?’
The nun shook her head, confused.
The abbot sighed softly and slowly revealed the truth. It turned out that this black tree was a single thread of worry she had shed when she shaved her head and took her vows, which had then taken root, growing longer and thicker, gradually becoming a black tree in the backyard, hidden among the bamboo.
The abbot said, ‘For every kowtow you perform daily, it grows an inch. For every strike of the wooden fish, it grows a millimeter. For every ring of the bell, it grows a centimeter. Every night, it wilts like a flower and reverts to a seedling, repeating the cycle.’
The nun fell silent, as if she had attained enlightenment. Tears poured down her face, her heart filled with a jumble of emotions.
She realized she had never truly let go of her obsession, her attachment; she still held onto the past and cherished the memory of her lover.
This thread of worry was a manifestation of her state of mind.
Performing kowtows, striking the wooden fish, and ringing the bell seemed to be expressions of her sincere devotion to Buddhism, but in reality, each act caused her inner torment and immense pain. She could not completely sever herself from her past, merely intentionally ignored it. These actions did not allow her to truly let go of the past; her worries were continuously growing.
As for why the black hair tree reverted to hair strands every night, it was because she dreamt of her deceased lover every night, meeting and embracing him in her dreams, relieving her inner distress. When her wish was fulfilled, her heart knot would loosen, and her worries would fall away.
Having attained this realization, the nun understood and decided to temporarily leave the temple to resolve her karma…”
As he reached this point, Lin Ling paused, thirsty, and slowly took a sip of tea.
During this time, Haimofen voiced his speculation about the story’s subsequent direction: “Did that woman fail?”
“Did she fail? Did she succeed?” Lin Ling, having quenched his thirst, smiled and said, “That depends on how you define it.”
Lin Ling continued, “That woman eventually died on her ascetic journey. She encountered a group of bandits robbing a merchant caravan. She stepped forward to dissuade them but was instead killed with a single sword strike. She then returned to the underworld and the netherworld, where she met her lover in the underground, who had long refused to be reincarnated, waiting for her arrival. After her death, the hair she had left at the Buddhist temple grew to three thousand strands and three thousand hairs, and from then on, it ceased to grow.”
Haimofen was greatly moved, truly unsure how to define success or failure.
But at least he now understood the function of the human hair strings. The human hair strings were comprised of several segments from one of the three thousand threads of worry. Despite this, they were immensely useful. As long as there were troubles in the world, the human hair strings would never break!
The story of the human hair strings is a short tale I created myself a long time ago. I can’t recall the exact time, but I had never put it to paper until today. I hope everyone enjoys it. Personally, I feel it’s the most ‘Liaozhai’ styled Chinese national flavor story I’ve written so far.
