"People passed below the stage, but the colors of old were nowhere to be seen!
The performer sang upon the stage, a heartbreaking song of parting!
The word 'love' was hard to set in ink; she had to mix it with her blood to sing...
The curtain rose, the curtain fell, who was the guest..."
"Was the Way heartless, was it compassionate? How could one tell? The Way was heartless, the Way was compassionate, a riddle to ponder!"
When the song ended, Ling Yi fell silent, while Ma Dongmei was sobbing too hard to speak.
By then, Ling Yi had forgotten his original purpose, the plot progress, and the system. He had never before been so completely immersed in an emotion.
In his previous life, he had been an orphan, abandoned on a trash heap by his biological parents. Luckily, an old man who scavenged for trash had taken him in, and they had depended on each other until the old man died of illness when Ling Yi was fifteen. After that, Ling Yi had taken to the streets.
At fifteen, he had had no choice but to fight his way forward. No one had respected him, so he had won their respect with his fists. Every day, he had either been fighting or on his way to a fight.
Gradually, he had made a name for himself, with countless brothers at his side. But from the moment Ling Yi had decided to fight his way forward, he had put on a false mask, and behind it, he had perceived a world full of masked faces.
The glory of those years had only made him lonelier in the depths of the night, leaving him to live like a walking corpse.
After transmigrating to The Smiling, Proud Wanderer World, Ling Yi had felt something real in Jianghu and found true love in Dongfang Bai's eyes. After transmigrating to Xia Luo's world, he had felt a relaxation unlike anything he had ever known.
Ups and downs made up life in the mortal world; the seven emotions and six desires were his true self.
In that moment, Ling Yi gained some understanding.
Perhaps following his heart in all things was the true meaning of his rebirth. If he could not follow his heart while he lived, if he had transmigrated and gained a cheat yet still could not live freely, what was the point?
"Teacher, what's this song called?"
"Red Ridge! Got that?"
Ma Dongmei nodded. "Got it."
"Then sing it well. I'll find you an opportunity, and when the time comes, you can stand onstage and sing it for everyone."
Ma Dongmei had not told anyone in her class that she wanted to become a singer.
But all her classmates could see the changes in her.
With the boost from her Yang Soul, Ma Dongmei now looked radiant. Her figure had improved, and she had become prettier.
Nor were those the only outward changes. Ma Dongmei's grades had also improved rapidly over the past half month or so. In the previous week's test, she had gone full Transcendent God and taken first place in her year, drawing everyone's attention.
Xia Luo had not been idle either. "The You of the Past" had become a campus-wide hit after playing on the school broadcast.
It had quickly spread beyond the school as well, passed from ten people to a hundred, until it soon became a popular song on every campus.
Xia Luo became famous and began attracting the attention of entertainment companies. Sister La, a judge on Good Voice, was stunned when she heard "The You of the Past" and rushed to Xihong City overnight, intending to meet this "musical genius."
Sister La had just walked out of the airport with her assistant and was hurrying to catch a ride to Xihong City No. 7 Middle School when a voice drifted down from a nearby pedestrian bridge, making the hair on her body stand on end.
"People passed below the stage, but the colors of old were nowhere to be seen; the performer sang upon the stage, a heartbreaking song of parting!"
"That voice, that voice..." Sister La looked in the direction of the sound and saw a girl in a high school uniform, lost in her own singing as she sang with deep feeling.
Sister La walked over involuntarily, and by the time she reached the girl, she had heard the entire song...
Ling Yi crouched on a distant rooftop, a smile curving his lips. His hard work had not been for nothing after all; the plan was going smoothly.
At that moment, Ling Yi could not help looking at his system interface.
"I didn't expect to get it done in one go."
Looking at the 50% plot progress, Ling Yi was quite satisfied.
Thinking it over, it made sense. Although Xia Luo was the protagonist of Xia Luo's Special Troubles, in the end, the outcome was merely to make him understand one thing... cherish the person before you; the one who loves you is the one worthy of your love.
After Ling Yi's alterations, Ma Dongmei's voice had long since become exceptionally gifted, inferior to none of the top divas.
With Red Ridge on top of that, Sister La invited Ma Dongmei to take part in Good Voice without hesitation.
Afterward, Sister La took Ma Dongmei to Xihong City No. 7 Middle School, where they met Xia Luo.
After hearing Ma Dongmei's Red Ridge, Sister La felt unprecedented pain when she listened to Xia Luo perform "The You of the Past" live.
Was "The You of the Past" amazing? Of course it was. The problem was that Xia Luo himself was far too mediocre.
In the end, though, Sister La still took both of them to Good Voice.
From there, the plot veered completely off course.
After leaving Ma Dongmei more than a dozen songs from the future, Ling Yi left Xihong City.
Over the next ten years, Ma Dongmei never heard news of Ling Yi again, until he left the world and time froze...
Xia Luo's Special Troubles had been an unprecedented experience for Ling Yi. Or rather, every world was a rare experience for him.
His greatest gain in this world had been understanding himself and seeing clearly into his own state of mind.
For ten years, Ling Yi traveled the entire world as an ordinary person, keeping his mind-reading active the whole way and listening to the truest thoughts in the hearts of the bustling crowds.
Among them was the deepest darkness and the brightest light, the simple pursuit of desire and the chains on the heart born of self-discipline.
What Ling Yi loved most was staying beside true artists, listening to their hearts' pursuit of the highest art, to minds utterly self-forgetful and wholly absorbed.
In ten years, Ling Yi's realm had not changed at all; he was still a Great Peak Grandmaster. But his soul seemed to have been elevated.
After seeing the world's myriad colors, all that remained was a pot of clear tea.
"System, let's leave this world."
"There wasn't even the slightest transmigration experience. One-star review!"
Ling Yi's vision blurred, and his surroundings changed.
There was none of the supposed dizziness of transmigration. It was as though he had not moved at all, and only the backdrop had been changed.
Before him stretched a vast ocean, with no land in sight, much less an island.
Fortunately, his Human Grade light-body cultivation method had already given him the ability to fly, so he did not fall into the sea.
What world is this? Something to do with the sea... One Piece?
What Ling Yi could be sure of, however, was that this was definitely not a modern world. The energy here was far more active than the power of heaven and earth in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer World, and far more abundant as well.
Compared with The Smiling, Proud Wanderer World, the energy here seemed more primitive, with no distinctions between energy attributes. It was simply energy.
Moreover, this energy was very gentle and extremely easy to control.
Ling Yi could even clearly sense that the Passive Cultivation Aura had become active again.
After Ling Yi reached the Great Peak Grandmaster realm, the Passive Cultivation Aura seemed to have stopped working. Or rather, even if it was still operating, it could no longer improve his strength.
That had been true in both The Smiling, Proud Wanderer World and Xia Luo's world. Perhaps the upper limits of those worlds had prevented Ling Yi's strength from increasing further.
But in this world...
Ling Yi's realm was rising almost every second. Not only that, the fusion progress for the Earth Grade cultivation method had begun to change as well.
Host: Ling Yi Life: 1032 Internal Energy (Spiritual Power): 1180 Cultivation: Early Grandmaster Cultivation methods: unnamed Human Grade internal cultivation method (Great Perfection), unnamed Human Grade fist technique (Great Perfection), unnamed Human Grade palm technique (Great Perfection), unnamed Human Grade sword technique (Great Perfection), unnamed Human Grade movement technique (Great Perfection), unnamed Human Grade hidden weapon technique (Great Perfection), unnamed Human Grade Body Tempering technique (Great Perfection)... Cultivation method fusion progress: Earth Grade martial arts fusion progress (7%) Skills: none Points: 96000. Plot progress: The Smiling, Proud Wanderer (35%), Xia Luo's Special Troubles (50%), Seven Dragon Balls Z (0%). Passive Cultivation Aura lv3 (0/8000) (activated): when activated, all learned cultivation methods and skills enter automatic cultivation. Current cultivation speed bonus: 4x. Automatically activates cultivation method and skill fusion; similar cultivation methods and skills automatically fuse into higher-grade forms, with no restrictive upper limit. Passive Transmigration Aura lv1 (activated): transmigration becomes available when participation in the current world's plot reaches 30% or more. The destination world is random, and its timeline begins at the start of the plot.
So this was the Dragon Balls world.
Was it really all right to jump straight from an ordinary urban world to a high-combat-power two-dimensional world?
Ling Yi could not shake the feeling that this random transmigration seemed a little unreliable.
He could at least get by in the Dragon Balls world, but if he were sent to the ancient Primordial World, wouldn't any random spirit or monster be able to kill him in an instant?
That was just outrageous.
It seemed he needed to hurry and level up the Passive Transmigration Aura first. There were too many uncertainties with random destinations, and he felt uneasy about them.