Then he noticed Tetsu no Sosuke staring at the musical score, holding the box without moving...
Yuichiro waited a while, but Tetsu no Sosuke remained frozen. Growing anxious, he asked cautiously, "Master?"
"Do you understand music?" Tetsu no Sosuke asked him.
Yuichiro shook his head. "No one ever taught me."
"..." Tetsu no Sosuke fell silent. He set down the box and continued reading.
Realization dawned on Yuichiro. "You don't understand it either?"
"Ask your master's wife when we get back." With that, Tetsu no Sosuke kept reading.
The story continued. After studying music, the man seemed to lose his way. He traveled through mountains and across rivers, witnessing terrible suffering wherever he went.
Conflict and bloodshed were everywhere. He tried to teach people through writing, but failed.
He tried to help them through arithmetic, but that failed too.
Finally, he hoped music might move people to change, but that failed as well.
In the end, he lost all hope and collapsed on the road. A passerby rescued him.
When he woke, he found himself in a village where every household forged weapons.
He was furious. He seemed to believe the world was in such chaos precisely because people like them kept forging weapons.
But the Village Chief told him that weapons had never changed the world. Something else could.
The man earnestly asked what he meant, but the paintings did not show what the Village Chief told him.
From that day on, he stayed in the village and began learning to forge.
After mastering every forging technique the village had to offer, he still wanted to learn more. The Village Chief pointed him toward another place.
Following the Village Chief's directions, he crossed a high mountain and arrived at the Cloud Recesses. A city seemed to stand atop the