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

And that "source of sound," little by little, clumsily and tremblingly, followed her melody.

The notes are no longer cold, no longer thirsty.

They began... to have warmth.

The black light gradually faded, replaced by a faint, moonlit silver glow that gently enveloped the small figure.

As the girl watched this scene, a genuine smile finally appeared on her lips.

She murmured softly, "So... it wasn't about destroying it. It was about letting it... be born."

I do not know how long it has been.

The singing gradually faded away.

Xiaoman opened her eyes, panting, and looked at the figure.

It was still blurry, still ethereal, but its posture was no longer hunched over. It stood up a little straighter, holding the cracked ocarina in its hand, looking up at her, its voice as soft as a dream:

【……who I am?】

Xiaoman smiled, a smile tinged with tears.

She reached out and gently touched those illusory fingertips.

"You are not a calamity."

"You are not a sacrifice."

"You are... the first child who wanted to learn to sing."

She paused, her voice as gentle as the wind:

"You can... call yourself 'whisper'."

The figure paused, startled.

[...Speak... quietly?]

It tried to pronounce the name, as if tasting a candy it had never tasted before.

A moment later, it suddenly raised its face, and a smile appeared in its eyes.

"...Sister...can I...sing it again?"

Xiaoman looked at those eyes that were beginning to gleam, her throat tightened, and she could barely speak.

She simply nodded, her voice as soft as if afraid of waking a beautiful dream: "Okay, keep it down. I'll stay with you as long as you want to sing."

【elder sister……】

When it uttered those two words, it did so with an almost reverent caution, as if these were the first words it had truly understood in three hundred years.

Duoduo wiped her face and muttered, "Oh no, I'm actually starting to feel sorry for a 'calamity'."

The gray child sat cross-legged on the ground, casually tossing aside the iron chain: "Who cares if it's a calamity or not? Look at that little thing, it can't even hold a flute properly, how could it possibly overturn the underworld?"

Su Ting remained standing in place, his face so gloomy it could drip water.

Chapter 1450 Cutting Off One's Own Flesh

He stared at the cracked ocarina, then at Xiaoman's still-bleeding hand, and suddenly spoke: "Do you know what you're doing? Once 'sound' learns to produce sound on its own, it's no longer a passive echo—it 'creates'! It 'spreads'! Everyone who hears it will be assimilated by it! You will create thousands upon thousands of them!"

Xiaoman slowly turned her head and looked at him, her eyes filled with pity, not fear.

"Then tell me, Su Ting," she asked softly, "you guarded it for three hundred years, imprisoned it for three hundred years, fed it memories, cut your own flesh and blood, but was there ever a single day when it was truly 'quiet'?"

Su Ting froze.

“It’s not that it’s restless,” Xiaoman continued calmly, “it’s just that…nobody wants to listen to it cry.”

She turned to face Xiaosheng, opened her arms, and greeted her toddler like a mother welcoming her child who was learning to walk.

"Come on, let's start from the beginning. Do you remember the first sentence?"

She looked down quietly at the ocarina in her hands, her fingers clumsily groping for the blowhole, as if afraid of damaging this fragile gift. It looked up, its eyes bewildered yet full of longing.

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

It tried to sing, but the notes were off-key and its breath was intermittent, yet it gave it its all.

Xiaoman smiled and immediately continued, "Mother is singing..."

The moment their voices met, the silver light suddenly spread out, rippling across the still gray shadows.

In an instant——

A gray figure suddenly trembled.

“I…I remember this song…” he murmured, his voice hoarse, “My mother…sang it too…”

Another gray figure covered his head and crouched down in anguish: "Stop singing...stop singing...I heard it...I heard my sister crying..."

"I heard it too..."

"I heard my father call my name before he died..."

"I heard... I never really wanted to be a gatekeeper... I wanted to go home..."

The gray figures began to tremble, to weep, to reminisce.

Su Ting took a step back abruptly, his voice trembling: "No... this isn't resonance... this is... awakening! You will awaken all the sealed memories! All the gatekeepers' obsessions will crumble!"

"Then collapse!" Xiaoman turned around abruptly, her eyes sharp as knives. "They shouldn't have been imprisoned here in the first place! They're not gatekeepers, they're sacrifices! They're offerings to feed your fear, tricked into coming here by your 'rules'!"

She pointed to the softer part, her voice trembling: "It's hungry because you never give it a 'name'! It's cold because you never give it 'warmth'! But now—"

She opened her arms as if to embrace the entire underground world:

"It has a name! It has a voice! It's no longer a monster, it's a child! And you—"

She stared at Su Ting, speaking each word clearly:

"You are the adults who are afraid of growing up."

The air freezes.

He looked at Xiaoman quietly, his eyes gleaming with silver light. Suddenly, he raised his hand and hugged the ocarina tightly to his chest, as if protecting the most precious thing in the world.

"Sister..." it whispered, a hint of laughter in its voice, "I want to...sing to...more people."

"No!" Su Ting roared, drawing his bone blade from his waist and pointing it directly at Xiao Sheng. "I absolutely will not allow you to spread this! Once the sound spreads, the surface world will be swallowed up! How many people will go mad? How many cities will collapse? Do you think you can risk millions of lives just because you said 'I want to sing'?!"

Xiaoman stood firmly in front of Xiaosheng, unmoving.

“Then tell me,” she said, looking directly at Su Ting, “Have you ever killed it? Have you ever tried? In the past three hundred years, have you ever truly considered—letting it go?”

Chapter 1451 The Ancient Bell

Su Ting's hands were trembling.

“I had no…choice.” His voice was hoarse.

“You have it.” The girl suddenly spoke, slowly stepping out from the light and shadow, an ancient bell appearing in her hand, its clapper broken. “We all have it. It’s just that we’ve been lying to ourselves, saying ‘it’s fate.’”

She handed the broken bell to Xiaoman.

“This belongs to my master. Before he died, he said, ‘If one day someone can make it sing instead of wailing, then our sins will be atoned.’”

Duoduo suddenly jumped up: "Wait! You mean... all the gatekeepers throughout history have actually been waiting for this day?!"

“Yes.” The girl nodded. “But no one dared to take the first step. Until you—Xiaoman, you’re not afraid of it, you only care about it.”

Su Ting staggered backward, his belief crumbling in his eyes.

"Then... what was the purpose of our three hundred years of sacrifice?"

"To wait for a child who isn't afraid of it," Xiaoman said softly, "to wait for someone who's willing to teach it to sing."

She turned around, squatted down, and looked directly at Xiaosheng.

"Keep your voice down. You want more people to hear you, right?"

He nodded softly and slowly, his fingertips gently tracing the cracks in the ocarina.

[...It's not...devouring...it's...sharing...]

It spoke earnestly, as if it were learning a completely new word.

"Okay." Xiaoman smiled. "Then let's go up."

"What?!" Su Ting exclaimed in shock and anger, "Are you crazy! The ground is full of people! If you take it up there, and it gets out of control—"

“Then let’s not let it get out of control.” Xiaoman stood up and took Xiaosheng’s illusory hand. “We’ll teach it rules, teach it restraint, teach it what a ‘gentle voice’ is.”

She looked at Duoduo: "Can you contact the ground?"

Duoduo was taken aback for a moment, then grinned: "I know the black market channel very well, where do you want to go?"

“The radio station,” Xiaoman said. “The biggest one. I want to rent ten minutes of the national broadcast frequency.”

The gray child whistled: "Wow! Xiaoman, are you going to put on a concert for the calamity?"

“It’s not a calamity,” Xiaoman corrected gently. “It’s a new singer’s debut performance.”