Story 10 - The Spy Who Rocked Too Hard (Part 10 🎸) (Patreon)

Little Spring walked over while carrying a tome on Beast Blood Contractors. His brow furrowed and his eyes lost focus.

“Find something troubling?” I asked.

“It’s just. Very different from what I thought it would be like.”

I grabbed the tome from his hands and looked through it. Since I couldn’t believe what I read, I skimmed through it again.

I didn’t know much about beast taming, but even I knew that there were several standard contracts.

The one most known for being a beast taming trope in Xianxia were slave contracts. From what I remembered, these made the beast die if its master did as well; however, if the beast died, the master wouldn’t suffer any backlash. This forced the beast to keep the owner alive at all costs.

Another one was the Equals contract. In this world, both parties using this contract, agreeed to work with each other so they both improved. There would be equal backlash if either party died which ranged from no pain at all to death depending on the terms.

The rarest type of contract was the subservient contract where the tamer would feel backlash or die when their beast died, but the beast wouldn’t receive anything negative. Usually, this type of contract was reserved for incredibly powerful beasts contracting with weak cultivators. From what I'd seen, it was unpleasant for the tamer as they practically served their tamed beast.

This Beast Blood contract was an equals contract like I’d never seen before. It required a bath in an alchemical solution that included the willingly given blood of the beast. It connected the two as partners for life and allowed the tamer to share their beast’s physical strength. Of course, this manual didn’t mention the major drawback of the technique — that the tamer would grow animal parts and gain the weaknesses of their beast as a side effect.

I closed the tome. As I expected, the bath’s recipe wasn’t listed. Surprisingly, I couldn’t even guess at what spiritual herbs they’d use to accomplish it.

As curious as I was about it, I was not here for beast-taming secrets. I had other things I had to do this month.

I handed the tome back to him.

::I don’t recommend going through with their strange taming method.::

::Yes, sister Lin!::

Gold String frowned. “You looked through that so fast. Did you even understand any of it?”

I shrugged. “I once heard of a man who could flip through books faster than me and still retain all the information.” Of course, that ability was from a different fictional universe.

“Impossible.”

“Jealous?”

“What? No.”

“Well, I am.” I could only replicate a fraction of that ability back when I was in immortal Ascension. “Anyway, I’m done here.”

Gold String blinked. “You just casually flipped through a bunch of manuals. You couldn’t have found out much.”

“I have more questions than answers at this point, which is why I think we should go find some kids we can con—vince into letting us mentor them.”

Gold String frowned. “Are you going to bully them like you did to me?”

I pulled out the bass to show it off.

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“I am giving you the chance of a lifetime. Look at these curves.” I strummed a deep chord, sending a beautiful sound through the pavilion. “And this clear, lovely sound. You know you want to play it.”

He placed his hands behind his back as if preventing himself from grabbing it. He scowled.

I threw it back into the space and shrugged. “Look, I won’t force you into it. Nothing is worse for a musician’s cultivation than playing music they hate.” This was a concept I had firsthand knowledge of.

“You were very forceful earlier,” he said.

“That’s because I want you. You’re a talented sprout who would make an excellent addition to the band I’m putting together. But not if you can’t appreciate rock.”

“… Oh.” His eyes turned thoughtful. Maybe I was finally getting him to consider it?

Little Spring tugged on my sleeve. “Little Sister Linlin, I still have a lot to read here, so I’ll see you later.”

::It will be good for you to read about a different cultivation method. Just keep in mind that this sect practices an unorthodox path. It may look more powerful than what we practice, but it often comes with horrible and sometimes growth-stunting side effects. Their techniques also have weaknesses that can be easily targeted compared to ours.::

::I'll keep that in mind.::

I nodded, then turned to Gold String. “If I find a worthy student, the bass is going to them.”

“It’s your instrument,” he said before turning back to the manuals on demonic musicians. He was totally pretending that he wasn’t fascinated by the new genre of music and a never-before-heard sound.

Maybe I needed to play more songs for him to get interested. Three couldn’t be enough. And after a few more, and maybe a lecture, if he still didn’t want to learn, I’d focus my efforts on more malleable students.

***

All it took was a quick check with my divine sense to find where the demonic musicians practiced in the outer sect. There were several sound-restricted spaces for them to play in private, but there were also a few areas where teachers could lecture to everyone.

A disgruntled-looking attendant guarded those open-air lecture spaces. After coming to an agreement with him, I exchanged a few healing pills for a few hours in the largest space. Next, I paid a random musician walking by to spread the news that I’d be lecturing soon on the Dao of Rock.

When I stepped onto the lecture area’s main stage, I looked out over the empty seating.

In my past life, I’d introduced rock to this world with no master plan. I gave kids several hundred songs — most of them only half-remembered. They took them and explored the genre. But those students never had a cultural connection to those songs. It didn’t help that the music practiced by cultivators tended to mirror Classical Chinese music in that they were often, though not always, monophonic. This meant that they had a single beautiful melodic line with note variations not seen in most classical Western-style music. Of course, the increase in range and variation made it difficult to harmonize or have a counterpoint melody, which the Western styles excelled in.

What my students did was brilliant. They took some of the familiar melodies that could translate well on the guitar and built rock songs around those, artificially creating a bridge between the beautiful songs they’d been studying their whole lives and the rock they’d come to love. Though, I imagine it helped that rock was the child of blues, a style of music that was in between monophonic and harmonic.

Unfortunately, by the time those kids wrote music that connected the two styles, the elder’s perceptions of rock had already been colored in a negative light. They refused to change their minds, the stubborn donkey-brained assholes.

While it was important to find a mentee right away, it was even more important that I introduce rock to this culture in a way that would appeal to these demonic musicians so that the future I remembered didn’t happen again. My plan started with introducing several of the songs that bridged the gap.

Even after I decided how I’d structure the lecture, there was still no audience.

“If you play, they will come.”

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I started by increasing the volume on my guitar to half its max. Next, I played a song called “Phoenix Revived” created by Fairy Winter Medley. It was a piece reminiscent of A Phoenix Seeks His Mate. By the time I finished, I had finally gathered a crowd. Some of them looked confused, others fascinated. A couple of older Qi Condensation musicians had irritated expressions on their faces. One or two Foundation Establishment cultivators even showed up. They secretly held recording crystals. I didn’t call them out on it since I wanted this lecture to spread far and wide.

I played two more gap-bridging songs that became more harmonic before I lectured about music theory, chord progression, and working together to build a complex song made of standardized notes that harmonized with each other.

Then, instead of taking questions, I began to play a series of songs, bringing everyone in the crowd with me through the comparatively short history of rock.

I started with the song that became a model for rock and roll itself, Tutti Frutti from the 1950s, written by Little Richard and Dorothy LaBostrie. Next, I explored the 1960s with While My Guitar Gently Weeps written by George Harrison and originally performed by the Beatles. Obviously, I couldn’t resist adding Purple Haze written by one of the best guitarists in my past-life’s history, Jimi Hendrix, who pushed the technical limits of the electric guitar. Then I moved into the 1970s with a classic that nobody could resist, Free Bird.

By the time I switched to the 1980s with Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey, I’d filled up the whole lecture hall.

Well, they wouldn’t be musicians if they didn’t attempt to understand a new genre of music.

I finished up with Come as You Are by Nirvana from the 1990s.

Of course, without a full band, the effect was muted, but the spirit was there.

Now that I’d explained the concept of harmonic music and shown a progression of music, that was when I started explaining where Rock came from.

Since it would make me sound fucked in the head if I told these cultivators that their universe was inside a dumbass Xianxia web novel and that these songs came from the real universe, I decided to go with a more plausible lie: That I came across these songs in the ruins of an ancient civilization. I described the vast inheritance that included hundreds of songs, both mundane and spiritual, with a rich history that was lost to time.

I then continued by lecturing on the basics of the Dao of Rock before ending my long lecture by saying, “If this music inspired you and you want to learn to play it, come up to me any time, and I’ll teach you.”

I expected a few cultivators to come greet me. There were certainly a few excited eyes in the crowd. But a cultivator at the peak of Qi Condensation with a sour face stepped up.

“Don’t waste your breath. No one here will learn from you.”

I crossed my arms. “Are you going to stop them?”

“No, but if they approach you, they’ll be punished by Eight Blaring Tones.”

“And who is that?”

Sour Face sneered. “Your esteemed senior in the inner sect.”

Again with this stupid hazing?

“Without his approval, no demonic musician will learn from you.”

I grinned. If no one would learn from me publicly, I could just teach them in secret. The idea of creating an underground rock movement was pretty intriguing. When things were forbidden, they became even more appealing to those misunderstood youngsters. And what kids were more misunderstood than those in a violent unorthodox sect?

I memorized the faces of those whose eyes sparkled the most. If I had enough time, I’d make enough instruments for them to practice on and start a secret rock scene. Muahahaha!

Sour Face frowned. “You don’t look upset.”

“That’s because I’m not the one missing out." I waved them all to get out. "My lecture is over.”

As the audience slowly left, I played the best song to end on,  Closing Time by Semisonic.

I added Eight Blaring Tones to my general shit list. If they pushed my buttons I might move them to my Fairy Lin’s People to Kill (When you Can) List.

***

Being denied mentees wasn’t entirely a bad thing. It gave me an excuse to do what I originally came here to do — snoop around the sect. Mostly, I listened in on conversations and discovered gossip I didn’t give a shit about. Some of it was pretty juicy, though. For instance, there was a fairy who was flirting with one cultivator in public but spent the night with another.

There was also a puppeteer who had crafted her most recent puppet to look suspiciously like a senior brother of hers.

The last piece of information I learned was that a poison body cultivator was having trouble and was on the cusp of being labeled ‘trash’. Apparently, he had taken the poisons he needed to increase his realm twice, but they hadn’t worked. Some jerks in an alley I passed were going to use that as an excuse to steal the third set he’d just purchased after saving up for a year.

Frankly, the lack of information about the scroll or demonic cultivators was annoying. Those goddamn movies from my past-past life lied to me. Being a spy was fucking boring.

As I reached a fountain where outer sect disciples gathered water, I heard a rhythmic sound coming from a nearby courtyard like a heavy drum. I used my divine sense to take a peak and found that it was just a poison body cultivator practicing an unorthodox martial art against a leather-covered Iron Wood log. Each of his strikes sent a crack through the metal-strong wood. While I’d never seen his techniques before, I could tell from the force behind his punches that he was proficient in them.

Damn. And here I’d thought I’d found a good drummer. Not for the band I’d need to help wake up Ghosty, but for a mentee. There was no way a guy this talented would give up body cultivation to become a demonic musician.

Just before I pulled my divine sense back, the same half dozen poison body cultivators from the alley burst into his courtyard.

“Three Drops Silent Toxin,” the tallest of them said.

“You could have chosen a better way to talk, Fellow Daoist Broken Serpent.” He nodded to the others in the group. “What brings you to my courtyard?

“Just give us the poison pills and we’ll leave,” Broken Serpent’s familiar voice said.

Three Drops cracked his neck and stretched his arms. “And if I refuse?”

Malicious laughs sounded from the group.

Three Drops Silent Toxin didn’t wait for the mob to answer further. He threw the first punch at Broken Serpent’s face. Even I heard the crack as the hit connected, sending the man flying out of Three Drop’s gate. He landed at my feet, spat out a mouthful of blood, which I backed away from. Next, he jumped up and ran back into the fray.

“It’s not like you need those pills!” One of the guys said while throwing a punch at Three Drop’s weak spot under his armpit. The strike made contact, sending the man barreling into a wall. He coughed, spraying those closest to him with blood.

Yep, that was still the grossest way to tell how damaged someone was.

Broken Serpent sneered. “Come on, let’s take him to the dueling area and put him out of his misery.”

Hmmm. If this Three Drops was at an unsurpassable bottleneck, like these thief assholes believed, I might be able to get him to switch paths. While not everyone could cultivate multiple paths like I could — thanks to my Phoenix Constitution — having a second path wasn’t that rare.

And, if I succeeded, I could snag a mentee.

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Author’s Note: Thank you all for reading! You are the best readers a writer could ask for!

Thank you so much for your patience. I finished most of my edits last night but I couldn’t get everything done so I had to leave the final steps till this morning. I would have pushed myself to get it done, but I’m trying to be good about going to bed early. Reminding myself that going to bed early means, ultimately, that I have more hours I can work.

I had to do research on the differences between Western and Eastern styles of music to make this chapter work. I’m certain my understanding is very shallow, but I did my best. If you’re a musical expert, feel free to correct me and I’ll fix it after double-checking. I’m just an indie writer, but I don’t want misinformation spread based on my fiction (I used to see this happen with science back before the TV studios regularly hired scientists to double-check their facts).

On Health: This marks, I think, the fourth week my boy is sick? We’re all coughing over here at this point. It’s not too bad for me but my husband has asthma, so it’s very rough on him. I called the doctor this morning and we’re getting my Little Dragon something over the counter to help. We’ll have to see a doctor later this week if he doesn’t improve. At least, after I set up a humidifier, my boy could finally sleep through the night with only a few minor coughs instead of whole fits. Not having to wake up every few hours is the main reason I’m able to edit now. This really made me regret not setting it up a couple of weeks ago (not that I knew it would help then).

So, I’m going to aim to get the next part out on Friday this week but I may have to push it back to Saturday depending on our health.