Musical Skill Is Martial Arts Too

Normally, ordinary people finished junior high school by the age of fifteen and had reached the fourth level of internal cultivation. Even without government funding, they could make enough to support themselves as True Qi charging technicians.

Yao Bilian smiled. "Forget it. I don't care about that little bit of money. Besides, I've already collected my payment."

Si Ming was puzzled at first, but then he noticed something unusual about his body. He was shocked. "Why am I not wearing underwear?"

Yao Bilian said gravely, "Have you heard this urban legend? If you collect seven pairs of underage male virgins' underwear, you can find your ideal husband."

"What kind of urban legend is that?! It's obviously a perverted rumor! Is a husband summoned with seven pairs of underwear really going to be all right?"

"Of course he is. They say he'll appear before a huge crowd, wearing golden armor and riding seven-colored clouds, to propose."

"That's Monkey Sun! He'd just freeze the beauty in place and go pick peaches to eat!"

This world also had a novel similar to "Journey to the West: A Tale of Deliverance from Tribulation." Si Ming felt that if his body hadn't still been weak, he would definitely have gotten up and had a good discussion with her.

Yao Bilian stopped smiling and fell silent for a while. "Sure enough, you're different from how you used to be. You've become more cheerful and optimistic. The old you would never have talked to me like that, and you definitely would have insisted on paying me back."

His insistence on paying her back came from a self-esteem that had expanded in the opposite direction because of his intense inferiority complex. He didn't want anyone's charity or pity, and he wanted even less to owe anyone a favor, because he was afraid he couldn't repay it.

The present Si Ming didn't consider a thousand yuan to be charity at all, nor did he find owing someone a favor unacceptable. He was confident he could repay it twofold in the future, so he didn't resist accepting favors.

"People have to change eventually. Otherwise, how can they find hope?" Si Ming said in a deliberately profound tone.

Yao Bilian wasn't a childhood friend like Liu Qingqing. She had only worked at Minggui Orphanage for two years and didn't know much about Si Ming's childhood, so she accepted it without resistance.

"I'm glad you can see things that way. People have to look forward in life, or why wouldn't their eyes grow on the backs of their heads? This is a good change. As the saying goes, 'Man shapes his own affairs; do not say all things are fated. The heart shapes its surroundings; take one step back, and the world naturally widens.' We of the Mohist School believe in 'rejecting fate': we don't believe in fate or fortune, and we strive for everything with our own two hands!"

Then she told Si Ming to get some rest and left the room.

"Don't believe in fate, huh... Mm, man shapes his own affairs. I think so too. Different choices open up different futures. Only by holding fast to your true heart and never wavering can you find a broad road forward."

Si Ming pondered Yao Bilian's words and was deeply touched.

He lay on the bed with his eyes closed for a while, then suddenly remembered something and snapped his eyes open. "Wait, I've been had! Give me back my underwear!"

Chapter 6: Musical Skill Is Martial Arts Too

Fortunately, the next day was Saturday, so Si Ming didn't have to worry about school. He lay in bed all morning and finally became as vigorous as a dragon and a tiger again.

The Six-Transformation Bear and Snake Pill had played a considerable part in that. Although it hadn't restored the weight he'd lost, it had indeed replenished his depleted essence and Qi. He had no idea how such a tiny pill could supply the human body with so much energy; it defied common sense.

Unlike the day before, Si Ming wasn't impatient to practice martial arts again. Instead, he considered a very important question, one that troubled ninety-nine percent of the world's population.

"How am I supposed to make money?"

Yesterday's fainting spell had made Si Ming realize there was something he had to pay attention to when practicing external martial arts: his supply of nutrition.

There was an old saying in Huaxia: "The poor study, the rich practice martial arts." It meant that the poor could only study, while only those with substantial family wealth could practice martial arts. Martial training required a great deal of energy to be replenished, and one had to eat plenty of fish and meat to keep up. For an ordinary family, eating meat once a month was already considered good.

There was also a saying in Su State: "The poor practice internal arts, the rich practice external arts." The poor could only practice internal arts, while the rich could practice external arts. The requirements for internal cultivation were very simple: a place to sit was enough. Plant your backside down and close your eyes, and you could start practicing immediately. Moreover, internal cultivation reduced the body's consumption, so one wouldn't feel hungry even when eating only once a day, yet the more one practiced, the stronger one grew. It truly was a fine way for poor families to save on expenses.

If a homebody were in this world, he would probably be like a fish in water. He could save on living expenses to buy merchandise and figurines while diligently practicing internal cultivation and improving day by day. When questioned by his parents, he could answer with righteous confidence: I'm studying hard, striving for the rise of China. I'm working so hard I've even forgotten to find a girlfriend!

Practicing external arts wasn't so simple. Tempering the body consumed a great deal of vital essence. If one's daily nutrition couldn't keep up, the more one practiced, the weaker one became, until finally one trained oneself into a skeleton spirit.

Of course, after the advent of modern industrial society, ordinary families could eat plenty of fish and meat every day, and their standard of living far surpassed that of ancient times. If Si Ming had grown up amid fine clothes and rich food and built a solid foundation, he wouldn't have needed to worry about this. He would only have had to control his training time and avoid overdoing it. But he had grown up frugally in an orphanage, and his body was much weaker than an ordinary person's and couldn't withstand such strain.

"I could accept it if I didn't have a talent tantamount to sudden enlightenment. I'm not without the patience to take things slowly, one step at a time. But knowing full well I have a Gundam at home, you want me to ride a BMW tricycle into battle against the Federation? That won't do."

At an ordinary cultivation speed, it took twenty years of hard work to reach the realm of progressing from external to internal. But with this body's terrifying talent, tempering his flesh with the highest-level body-refining technique could greatly shorten that time. It went without saying what Si Ming would choose, but under those circumstances, nutritional supplements became crucial. Ordinary food couldn't provide that much energy.

"The Six-Transformation Bear and Snake Pill... If I could eat one a day, it wouldn't matter how much I pushed myself. It's just that the price is far too unfriendly. Why doesn't this world have Taobao? Why didn't Ma Yun transmigrate along with me?"

According to Yao Bilian, the Six-Transformation Bear and Snake Pill cost a thousand yuan apiece. Si Ming's monthly living allowance couldn't even buy two, so his most pressing task was to find a way to make money.

"The usual zero-cost money-making methods for transmigrators are copying songs and novels. But the internet in this world is still primitive. There's no Weibo or fiction websites, so online fiction is a dead end. That leaves physical books. Do I really have to go through a traditional publisher?"

Si Ming still felt some resistance to plagiarism. Claiming someone else's work as his own was no different from cultural robbery. But he wasn't morally fastidious. If he really had to make a living, he'd have to sell his conscience by the pound. It was like how everyone knew lying was wrong, yet when necessary, they still couldn't avoid telling a few lies.

But Si Ming soon rejected the idea of submitting a book for publication. This world wasn't the kind of culturally castrated world that literary plagiarists loved to transmigrate to. The Hundred Schools of Thought included the School of Fiction, and it was even one of the mainstream schools. Although it ranked last among them, its status was considerably higher than that of the Painting School, the Calligraphy School, and the merchants. Its members were anything but lacking in imagination, and novels of every kind could be found on the market.

The Jin Yong trilogy that literary plagiarists loved most wouldn't work either. In his previous life, wuxia novels were fairy tales for adults, hard to write without imagination. But in this world, wuxia novels belonged to the documentary genre. Writing them required no imagination at all. There were handfuls of historical and real-life material to draw on, and novelists had long since unlocked every position.

"So in the end, can I only copy songs? But I don't know the first thing about composing. Nobody would think much of lyrics alone, would they? And without a melody, who'd be willing to pay if I just hummed a song?"

With a thousand tangled threads and no clear idea where to begin, Si Ming admitted he was no great genius and decided he might as well act first. Following the original owner's memories, he returned to the place in the room where his elementary-school textbooks were piled up. After rummaging through them, he finally found an instrument he had used in elementary school.

"This thing looks like a harmonica." Si Ming examined the long, narrow instrument in his hand and put it to his lips for a blow. "It plays like a harmonica too... This damn thing is a harmonica, isn't it?! Why would the Mohist School invent a Western instrument like this? You could at least have given me a traditional flute instead!"

On closer inspection, however, he found it was different from the harmonicas of his previous life. Although both were shaped like a horizontal bar, with a row of blowholes along the side and a metal cover on the outside, this one had several additional buttons on the back. They allowed the harmonica to switch between high, middle, and low registers, as well as a flute tone.

Si Ming could understand the first three, but the last actually made the harmonica sound like a flute. He couldn't imagine the principle behind it and could only credit the Mohist School's unscientific mechanism arts.

In fact, the harmonica had originally come from Huaxia as well. Its prototype was the sheng, an instrument that produced sound with strips of bamboo. Though its appearance was worlds apart from the harmonica's, the principle behind its sound was the same. In the late eighteenth century, the sheng was introduced to Europe, became popular throughout the musical world, and gave rise to the structure of the modern harmonica.

Si Ming had known nothing about music in his previous life. He could only sing some pop songs and nostalgic oldies, so naturally he knew nothing of this history and thought the harmonica was a purely Western instrument.

"When you get right down to it, harmonica technique is just a combination of breathing and fingering. If I treat it as a martial art, my talent for learning things instantly should work on it too."

Si Ming leafed through his elementary-school music textbook, concentrated, and imagined harmonica playing as a martial art.

Sure enough, every musical technique became extraordinarily simple in his eyes. His brain grasped the underlying patterns with ease, and after reading through them just once, he had learned all the basic techniques.

He tried playing a piece from the textbook called "The Lark." On his first attempt, he played the whole piece correctly, without a single mistake. Although it had no highlights and was rather mediocre, there was nothing to fault.

By the second attempt, the piece had come alive, full of liveliness and lightness. It was as though a black-and-white picture had suddenly turned to color, and a number of highlights appeared.

On his third attempt, the artistic conception of the piece came through clearly. Though the notes did not sound like a lark's voice, they made the listener feel as if a lark were truly singing right before them. Even the composer in person could only have achieved this much.