The Remnant of the Musical Scale

Fan Ning had already left early.

Worried that he would be surrounded and gawked at again, he hurried away without saying goodbye to anyone.

His pocket watch pointed to one in the afternoon.

"This really dragged on..."

The relaxation brought by the performance finally gave him enough spare attention, as he walked, to take in the campus around him.

His most immediate impression was that his nose was suffering far less.

In these cities rapidly swollen by industrialization, construction had lagged far behind population growth. Excessive overcrowding and a lack of necessary sanitation had made even middle-class living conditions terribly cramped, while industrial workers had no "life" to speak of at all.

Even the wealthy could not completely isolate those damp, overcrowded dwellings. Filth and sewage rotted in the city gutters, their stench mingling with the billowing smoke from factories before eventually congealing in the haze and being breathed into people's lungs.

But on the campus of Saint Leniya University... winding streams and ponds, fountains, colonnades, sculptures, and flower trellises could be found everywhere. Combined with the natural changes in elevation across the grounds, they formed a carefully arranged garden-like landscape. The small arrangements of snapdragons, begonias, and cherry trees nearby gave off a sweet fragrance tinged with the scent of fresh grass. Higher up stood towering oaks, camphor trees, and branched birches, with red brick walls visible through them, revealing a classical elegance and unhurried composure.

The rain had stopped. Young men and women strolled and chatted in twos and threes across the pristine white stone paving and lush lawns, their soft laughter occasionally drifting through the air. The sight left Fan Ning somewhat dazed.

Four or five months ago, he had been one of them too.

Well, now I am again.

Yet ever since he had stepped out of the Public Security Bureau, that feeling of being real and unreal at once had remained.

He always felt that everything in his field of vision was a contradiction—open yet cramped. The campus scenery, the colors of the plants, the faces of handsome men and beautiful women were all as pleasing as bubbles, while the friction of skin against clothing brought an inescapable sense of detachment.

Maybe it was a lingering side effect of transmigration.

"Key?..." Fan Ning once again looked at the flashing symbol beside [135/100].

Turner Art Gallery?...

It had been closed for three years already. Could there be something unusual there?

He should go take a look now.

After leaving the campus and walking down Green Peacock Street for several minutes, Fan Ning finally realized how hungry he was.

He rummaged through his pockets and found three or four shillings. In the Theolan Empire's gold, silver, and copper currency system, they were the middle tier: one gold pound could be exchanged for twenty shillings, and one shilling for twelve pence.

Every alley entrance was packed with wandering vendors and stalls. Cries of hawking rose one after another as coffee, lemonade, ginger beer, and pea soup were ladled out and passed into the hands of hurried workers.

A young man who looked like a company clerk walked along while tearing apart a huge brown smoked sausage with both hands. The red-and-white meat split open, steaming and trembling, and he stuffed it into his mouth in great bites as grease dripped down. Several textile girls on break stood nearby, looking at a stall displaying salted eel and smoked herring, clutching their flat purses as they hesitated.

With one shilling in hand, Fan Ning bought coffee and a fruit pie for four pence, then spent another ten pence on a hired carriage from Lenia District to East Mechelen District—four or five times more expensive than a public omnibus, but more comfortable and private.

"Clip-clop... clip-clop..."

The carriage traveled farther and farther from the clean, orderly university district before finally disappearing beyond the end of Green Peacock Street.

Fan Ning opened Teacher Anton's notebook. After flipping past the manuscript and diary, his gaze once more stopped at the end of the diary.

"Don't record your own dreams? And don't try to verify or control them? They will emerge on their own??"

Whether Teacher Anton had originally intended to seek Inspiration for his creative work,

or wanted to become a Knower. The result was that he became troubled by The Remnant of the Musical Scale and the Mystic Chord. Or perhaps his very method of recording dreams and experiencing Clear Dream was flawed; his mental state had deteriorated sharply, and he might even have encountered something indescribable.

As he thought, Fan Ning's expression suddenly changed, and he reached into the inner pocket of his coat.

He pulled out another notebook, one the size of his palm:

"October 14. I dreamed again that I was walking through a corridor resembling an exhibition hall. The lighting was dim, and the floor was clean. The walls on both sides had evenly spaced recesses, and behind glass partitions were illogical, bizarre objects: a banana preservation box made of pure white marble, a giant's tooth propped up by a spring stand, a hard-shelled insect with scarlet wings, a golden plaster cast model, and surveying instruments covered in gears and pipe junctions. There was something on the wall at the end of the corridor. Whenever I was about to reach it, other thoughts occupied my mind, and I drifted into other dreams..."

"October 15. I dreamed I was running through a rainy night, chasing my Museum Key. It had been snatched away by a stray cat at the roadside. While running, I fell into street graffiti painted on the road and dropped into a vast ocean. I felt the despair of drowning, but Inspiration reminded me to recite certain characters so that I could float on the water..."

"November 16. I dreamed that I leapt from the window of a castle about to collapse and fell into a mist-shrouded pond thick with flowers and grass. Fruit grew among them, clear as sapphires. I picked one and sucked on it. Its taste was rich and sweet. On the roots and stems of the plants, I saw a language I had never learned, yet I understood it. There was another place beneath the pond. I burrowed underneath and saw the bedroom ceiling..."

"November 20. I dreamed again that I was walking through a place resembling a corridor..."

Fan Ning read through some of the bizarre dreams recorded by the original owner of this body.

In one hand, he held the dream notebook. In the other was Professor Anton Conall's warning at the end of his diary: "Do not record dreams!!"

The original owner had really been courting death... Fan Ning's face looked terrible.

And this recurring dream of walking through a corridor... did it hold some special meaning?

Fan Ning turned another page in the diary and saw staff paper printed from engraved plates, covered in densely handwritten notes.

This was Teacher Anton's handwritten copy of The Remnant of the Musical Scale.

As for the original he had previously studied, Hiran had said that the Special Inspection Office had confiscated it as contraband.

The handwritten copy consisted entirely of evenly distributed chords. There were eleven sheets in total, numbered the same way as the original scroll.

Melody and harmony could roughly be regarded as two opposing concepts.

When notes of different lengths and pitches were organically combined and progressed one after another over a span of time, they formed a melody.

But when multiple notes sounded simultaneously... two notes sounding at once were called an interval, while three or more were called a chord.

The Remnant of the Musical Scale before him consisted entirely of large chords with five to seven notes each, meant to sound at the same time and requiring both hands to play.

They had no rhythm indicated. If one insisted on hearing how they sounded, one only needed to play them group by group, at any speed one chose.

Naturally, Fan Ning had no piano beside him at the moment, but that did not stop him from imagining their general tonal colors.

Fan Ning reviewed them quickly. He stared at each page and thought for a moment, skipped through a few passages, then turned to the next page.

About twenty minutes later, he had gone through all eleven sheets of The Remnant of the Musical Scale.

"Now this is interesting..." Fan Ning wore a strange smile inside the carriage.

With the original owner's memories, he had assumed it was some mysterious, incomprehensible ancient artifact. Yet now, he recognized every bit of it.

Because these were harmonic skeletons from classical works of music in his previous life.

Eleven sheets, eleven pieces. Every single one of them.