Story 10 - The Spy Who Rocked Too Hard (Part 15 🎸) (Patreon)

I crossed my arms and glared down at my mentee. “Three Drops Silent Toxin.”

He winced. “I know! The beat was off.”

“It’s good that you figured that out. While playing rock and having fun is important, there are times when you could be put in a life and death situation where the beat of your drums can save or doom your sect.”

He scowled. “But demonic music isn’t used much in sect wars… right?” His eyes grew wide. “Is this really that serious?”

I picked up a drumstick and started playing the beginning drum beats from My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade. “In a sect war, what do you think music cultivators do?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it much.”

I pointed one drumstick at Shadow Panther before returning to my drumming. “What do you think?”

“I heard that they mostly heal those who need it.”

“That is a responsibility of theirs.” I finished with a cymbal crash, then tossed my sticks into my ring. “When sects go to war, they form various heavenly battle formations. While a majority of music cultivators stay back to focus on healing the soul, some of them help in the actual war. They’ll often come together to play the same song in a massive formation to strike their enemy’s souls. Or they’ll hit them with sound attacks that rip through armor almost as well as sword Qi. It is a very effective form of attack and can even permanently deafen their enemy in some cases.

“For rock, we take battle formations to a higher level, incorporating the music itself into the formation.”

This was actually a technique I developed myself. Fortunately, the sect had been peaceful, so we didn’t use them in an actual war. Then again, if they had been and the Four Arts Elders had seen how useful it was, maybe the Dao or Rock wouldn’t have ended up how it did.

“Always keep in mind, your band is your battle formation. If you don’t move with your formation, if you don’t play in time with your band — you, and your fellow disciples, could die.”

They looked at each other, then nodded.

“We understand, Senior Linlin!”

I grinned, lifted my finger in the air, and spun it around. “One more time. Tribute to Kashmir. Go!”

***

“Are you trying to injure yourself?”

With one finger, I stopped Kang Jia, the puppet, from playing the bass and glared at Shadow Panther.

She winced and Kang Jia drooped like her strings had been loosened. “But, Senior Linlin, my second instrument won’t be effective if I can’t run my spiritual energy in the right pattern!”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Do you think your puppet is created to run spiritual energy through it how you are attempting to?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it.

“Look, the current pathways are built around the best way to control a puppet. If you try to brute force different pathways to use the base properly, you’re going to injure yourself and Kang Jia.”

She paled.

“First, focus on getting each step right, instead of being a whole band now.”

After clutching her guitar tighter, she nodded.

“Besides, you shouldn’t worry about your puppet’s spiritual energy flow until you’ve mastered the songs with your own body.”

“But I will be able to insert Qi into my instrument through my puppet correctly later?”

“You’ll have to add the different pathways to her.”

She stared off into the distance with a near-obsessive expression on her face. “Can... can you teach me?”

Ah, what have I gotten myself into? This girl was definitely more of a puppet Otaku than a rock fan. “Tell you what, if you decide to keep following the Dao of Rock after this week is up, I’ll eventually teach you how to construct your puppet’s musical Qi pathways.”

“Thank you, Senior Linlin!”

“Don’t thank me just yet. Play it again.”

***

I sighed. “I’ve been teaching you for six days already. While you seem to understand the variations of Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Holiday fine, but you two aren’t understanding Tribute to Kashmir, at all.”

The two looked at each other and Three Drops spoke up. “Isn’t it a powerful song that slows the listener’s movements?”

Shadow Panther stepped forward. “And if it’s played by a strong enough band, the listener might even become delusional and think they’re running through a desert.”

“It’s more than that. While the effects are important, if you don’t understand the intent behind the song, you’ll never be able to play it at a peak performance, which is required for you to continue down the Dao of Rock.”

Three Drops aggressively ran his fingers through his hair. “Senior Linlin, can’t you just tell us what it is?”

I frowned. The idea was to get them to think for themselves, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to explain things, considering our time constraints. “It’s a song written by Bright Blinding Melody as a tribute to Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. Her intent was to make listeners feel in the soul the heat, loneliness, mystery and beauty of the desert spoken of in the song.”

Shadow Panther bit her lip. “Maybe it would help if we heard the original?”

Hmmm. They had a point. “Alright. But the original isn’t spiritual in nature, though rock definitely transcends the mundane, even without Qi. While I can’t do it justice without a full band, I’ll give you a good experience.”

I picked up my acoustic guitar and sang the song in its original English. Though Stairway was known better, Kashmir was quintessential Led Zeppelin.

By the time I played that last note, they stared at me with blank faces. This wasn’t the same reaction Bright Blinding Melody had when she first heard it. That girl had looked like the world had opened up to her.

“Ah, Senior Linlin. While the song was beautiful... I didn’t understand a single word you said.”

It didn’t seem like either of them were all that impressed. Goddamn it.

I scowled at Three Drops. “Was that all you got out of it?”

They winced.

I sighed. “‘Tribute to Kashmir’ was Bright Blinding Melody’s pinnacle work. She also had another song that she wrote herself. It was so hauntingly beautiful that it caused 8 heavenly immortal cranes to dance. It goes something like…”

I played the beginning cords three times, then I moved onto the chorus. My hands stilled.

Shit.

How could I have forgotten how that ballad went? It had been so lovely, too. Almost reminiscent of Tool’s version of You Lied. But I hadn’t fully memorized it in my past life. Now it was gone.

“Ah, Senior Linlin… Maybe you could write down the lyrics of the original for us in a way we can understand?” Shadow Panther said.

I cleared my throat and brought out a couple of jade slips. ”Fine. Though things always get lost in translation.” I placed the gems on my temples and recorded the translation of the lyrics. After I tossed them to Shadow Panther and Three Drops, I turned around and clasped my hands behind my back. “Why don’t you two go out of the courtyard and take a break?”

“Senior Linlin?”

“You’re actually letting us go outside?”

“By now, you’ve already decided whether you’ll become my students after tomorrow, so go and relax. Maybe once you rest, you can think about the song with an open mind.”

Besides, I needed a break as well.

The two gathered their belongings and instruments into their storage bags and left the courtyard.

It had been a hell of a week. Since Little Spring was such a good student, I’d almost forgotten just how hard it was to teach people about rock. Actually, teaching logical alchemy was even harder, but it had a similar attempt-to-break-a-stone-with-an-egg feeling. Even when I taught young kids about science, most of them couldn’t apply it to alchemy. Which was fucking frustrating. My junior martial brother was a rare exception. It might be something about this world that made knowledge learned from my past-past life difficult to comprehend. Possibly, the fact that this universe was unrealistic and based on myths and legends. Or, more likely, it was because the whole thing was created by that dickhead harem author.

“Senior Lin?” Little Spring must have entered the soundproof area, but I didn’t turn around.

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“Is there something wrong?”

Haaaa. “Not exactly. I just remembered a student I had.”

“We’re they a good student?”

“No.” I grinned and looked up at the cumulus clouds. “She was the best. At least during my past life.”

His footsteps came closer.

“Actually, back then, I started the Dao of Rock without thinking much about it. I was having trouble comprehending my Unlimited Dao, and I had some time to kill, so I picked up Four Arts Cultivation so I could play and listen to the songs from my past-past life at their peak. I coerced some kids into playing my favorite music on new instruments in exchange for an instrument of their choice. But there was one particular girl who was overly enthusiastic about the genre, Bright Blinding Melody.

“She was the first student who thought to take the songs I taught, enhance them, and turn them into spiritual music. Honestly, it was mostly through her efforts that the Dao of Rock became popular among her peers. She was a huge influence on the others. She went on to compose many badass metal ballads.”

“You must have been very proud of her, Senior Lin.”

“I was... But she hasn’t been born yet. And with how extreme I’ve changed things, there’s very little chance any of my students will ever exist in this timeline.”

That was the price I paid for changing the world.

Of course, I would do it again if it meant saving the millions of lives I had.

“The only thing I have left of those adorable brats is their music.” And I fucking regretted not memorizing every single note of every song they created.

I clasped my hands tighter.

If I had to be truthful...“In my past life, in my anger, I allowed rock to die to focus on ascending.”

There were so many things I could have done. I could have left the sect and started a new one just for rock. Maybe if I’d talked to the elders or bribed them, I could have convinced them of its worth before I left for my closed-door cultivation. There were so many things I should have done differently.

“It’s only now, years later and an alternate timeline away, that I regret not fighting harder.” I cleared my throat. “The reason their beautiful music was forgotten was because I didn’t make sure it was never lost. So, in this life, I’ll spread their songs so far that no one can kill rock and roll!”

My vision blurred a bit. “How annoying. The air is too dusty today.”

There was a long pause before the kid said, “Absolutely. That can happen when you train outside. Here.” He handed me a handkerchief.

We stayed there silently for a while until Little Spring tugged on my sleeve. “Sister Lin. I won’t let rock die either. I promise.”

I held out my fist for a fist bump and received one. I wiped my face with the cloth, cleared my throat, and turned to him. “Now, if you’re going to help me keep Rock alive, you need to learn about one of the most important hand seals in the Dao of Rock.”

He nodded seriously.

“Put your hand high above your head, palm forward.”

He did so, looking very determined.

“Now fold your middle and ring fingers down… good! Hold them with your thumb.”

Once he’d shown me the perfect example of the ‘sign of the horns,’ he looked confused.

“Do I move spiritual energy into it?”

“No.”

“Then… what is this supposed to do?”

I grinned. “It makes you look cool and lets others know you’re a follower of the Dao of Rock.”

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

Reminder: No chapter on the 15th and possibly none on the 22nd (though if that happens I’ll try to make something cool for you guys).

Man, this chapter was hard to edit because it made me cry so much. T.T Just thinking about how many of the songs by Lin’s students were lost. How they’ll probably never be born again. How the only thing left of the life they would have lived is in Lin’s memories. The thing about time travel on such a large timeline, is that there are so many people who would never get a chance to be born again just because some lives were saved.

Essentially, we — who will inevitably die — are the lucky ones, because we actually had the chance to live. Though, Richard Dawkins said it better here.

On the Image: MidJourney did not want to give me a character with her hands clasped behind her back. It got to the point where I switched to Novel AI and got a decent image, but not exactly what I was after as you can see from the edited version:

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Eventually, MidJourney gave me one that was close but I had to do some significant edits to get the character to have her hands clasped behind her back.