His ten fingers deftly pressed, plucked, picked, strummed, swept, and flicked across the seven strings. The music was sometimes impassioned, sometimes rising ever more fiercely. Accompanied by his la-la-la harmonies, it could make one forget every grievance and worry in one's heart. At this moment, there was no need for worries—only to be swept along by him and face A Laugh in the Vast Sea with him. Even the sea seemed infected by his singing and music, its waves sometimes surging violently, sometimes settling into calm. The seagulls flying above the surface grew ever less heedful of the raging sea, daring to cut through the billowing waves.
Yan Zixia's gaze grew somewhat dazed and intoxicated. Then the music suddenly changed, and Yue Qianchou sang once more, "The vast sea laughs, tides roll along both shores; drifting and sinking with the waves, remember only this day. The blue heavens laugh, the courts of this mortal world rise and fall; who loses, who wins, only Heaven knows. Rivers and mountains laugh, mist and rain stretch afar; the crashing waves wash away the worldly dust—how much is left to know? The common folk laugh, no longer lonely; heroic passion remains, foolishly laughing still... La la la la la..."
Yue Qianchou played and sang it over and over, his ten fingers pouring themselves out as if he wanted to vent more than a year's worth of frustration in a single burst. Fortunately, the white fox was not here. If she had known she had missed her younger brother playing and singing such a fine song, she would surely have regretted it bitterly.
The gaze from atop the cliff remained fixed on that free and unrestrained back, that back brimming with bold passion, and gradually became ever more unfocused. A thread of affection she had