ILSITM Chapter 42

“Is it a demon or an immortal?” I shouted at the fierce wind.

The fierce wind did not answer.

I put my palms together and then quickly separated them, pushing both palms outward rapidly, suddenly creating a gust of sharp wind.

The sharp wind collided with the fierce wind, making a loud “bang.”

The sharp wind I generated seemed to hit a solid wall and bounced back.

Old Zhang used his Xiao to play overtones, like a net, encircling the fierce wind.

Old Lin and Wen Rourou, seeing this, quickly picked up their instruments.

Wen Rourou used her Hulusi to play vibrato, like ripples suddenly rising on a calm water surface, circle after circle, gentle yet firm, rippling towards the fierce wind.

Old Lin used his bamboo flute to play triple tonguing, like bullets, shooting directly at the fierce wind.

The three musical sounds mixed together, coming on aggressively, like a raging wave, or the explosion of a blockbuster bomb.

The fierce wind, however, did not retreat, but came straight to meet it.

Seeing this, I held up the Sheng and quickly played chords, several notes sounding simultaneously, like a cannonball fired over.

Our music intersected with the fierce wind, making a “crackling” impact sound.

Then, the four of us seamlessly connected, playing the same piece of music together.

During the ensemble, I used circular breathing to ensure that the piece was played without interruption, which continuously struck the fierce wind.

The fierce wind was gradually penetrated by the music and slowly became gentle.

After we finished playing one piece of music, we played the same piece again for the second time.

But this time, we only maintained the melodic skeleton of the original piece’s theme, using more ornamentation to process the original melody, while also changing the speed, intensity, rhythm, and timbre of the original piece.

After the variations, the music was extremely powerful. The fierce wind was like a piece of cloth, torn apart, slowly vanishing into nothing, and finally integrating with our bodies.

We never figured out whether this fierce wind was a fairy or a demon.

However, in the days that followed, we found that we had wind in our hearts, wind in our steps, and even a breeze caressing our faces when we sat quietly.

And even more surprisingly, we could instantly transform into whatever we thought of.

No matter how big or small the thing we thought of, whether flying in the sky, running on the ground, or swimming in the water, we could “copy” it as is.

After learning the transformation technique, Wen Rourou was very excited and tirelessly played with it.

She transformed into a sewing needle, then into a sika deer, then into a long ribbonfish, and finally into a flying bird, flapping its wings and flying out of the cave.

One day, the four of us walked to the innermost part of the cave while playing our instruments.

At the end of the cave, I looked up at the vertical hole above my head. That patch of sky, the size of a bowl, was full of unknown mystery, like an eye staring at me.

“I want to pass through this vertical hole and take a look at the world beyond the sky,” I said to everyone.

“Brother Tian Dong, I want to go too,” Wen Rourou said quickly.

“Okay,” I responded.

“Little Sister Rourou, don’t worry, after your Brother Tian Dong comes back, Old Zhang and I will play vertical hole travel with you,” Old Lin chuckled.

But everyone knew that this firm hole should not be underestimated. It was located on the main peak of a mountain, and this main peak soared into the clouds, leading directly to the world beyond the sky.

“Little Sister Rourou, don’t think that because we can see the sky in the cave, the cave is very close to the world beyond the sky. In fact, the distance from the cave to the world beyond the sky outside the cave is unknown,” Old Zhang still had self-knowledge.

“Yes, the stars in the night sky seem to hang in the sky, but if we really want to go up to the stars, I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of miles it would be,” I looked up from the vertical hole to the world beyond the sky that seemed within reach, and couldn’t help but have more respect for it.

“Brother Tian Dong, how are you going to cross the vertical hole? Will you transform into a bird or a bullet?” Wen Rourou asked with a smile.

“Guess,” I deliberately kept her in suspense.

Wen Rourou pouted at me, pretending to be unhappy.

I smiled and said, “Here I go, Old Sun!”

I turned around and transformed into a fierce wind, then drilled into the vertical hole.

“A roc rises with the same wind in a single day, soaring up ninety thousand miles.”

Back then, when I read the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai’s “To Li Yong,” I only read his youthful spirit of being fearless, and today I carry this spirit, straight into the sky.

You don’t know what’s outside the sky until you drill through this vertical hole.

I kept leaping upward, not knowing how long I had been leaping, and just when I was about to run out of energy, I finally rushed out of the hole.

I stood on the peak, with white clouds under my feet. I was already in the sky, but the world beyond the sky was even farther above my head.

The world beyond the sky that the ancients spoke of is the immortal world, which is also what we call the Earth’s atmosphere today.

Because the Earth has an atmosphere, it becomes warm and comfortable; because it has an atmosphere, the Earth can block meteors and meteorites outside the atmosphere or burn them in the atmosphere, blocking most meteor and meteorite attacks for the Earth.

If the atmosphere disappeared, the Earth’s water would vanish overnight, life would wither, and the Earth would be like the moon, with only rocks left.

Crossing the vertical hole had already consumed most of my energy.

Standing on the towering mountain peak, looking at the immortal world above my head, so close at hand, I could only sigh that there is a sky beyond the sky.

When I went down from the vertical hole at the peak, I transformed into a stone.

In just a moment, I fell to the bottom of the cave.

Wen Rourou, Old Lin, and Old Zhang sat on the ground looking at me, revealing envious expressions.

“This vertical hole is too difficult to cross, it has almost exhausted all my energy. It seems that the immortal world is really not a place that half-immortals and small immortals can go to,” I had an expression of having to admit defeat.

However, Wen Rourou, Old Zhang, and Old Lin also wanted to try it once. They transformed into a bird, a cloud of fog, and a wisp of smoke, respectively, and entered the vertical hole, but they all only crossed halfway and returned halfway.

After that, we would cross the vertical hole every other day, but every time it ended in failure. I couldn’t reach the immortal world, and the three of them couldn’t cross the vertical hole to reach the peak.

Unconsciously, we had been cultivating in the cave for over a hundred days, preparing to leave this cave today and return to the Tang Dynasty.

This time, we learned from the previous failures of crossing the vertical hole, and changed from a single-person transformation crossing to a combined transformation crossing.

After we four decided to cross together, we didn’t know what to transform into.

Finally, I had a brainwave and suggested that we combine to transform into a miniature rocket.

After ignition, our miniature rocket flew up the vertical hole towards the world beyond the sky.

Unity is strength.

After our miniature rocket flew out of the vertical hole, its power did not diminish, and it continued to fly towards the world beyond the sky.

With a “swoosh,” we seemed to have poked a hole in the sky and suddenly flew into the world beyond the sky.

Download Chapter as TXT