After being lost in his thoughts for quite a while, Ji Li finally looked at the nervous standing Shixuan and Qianyu and told them “From now on, I want you guys to do two different things.”
He took a break and looked directly at Shixuan as he said “Ahh, you know how I am a bit picky about design and the right atmosphere, so from now on, you will randomly be moving all pots and stones in the room, don’t stop till I tell you to.”
Shixuan shivered at that. They were by no means normal stones or pots; they were cultivation resources which could very well weight hundreds of kilograms. He would have to move them one by one for as long as Ji Li wanted him to do so.
He knew very well what kind of person Ji Li was, and if he didn’t like something, then one would really have to work for hours and days till it fit him. Normally this wasn’t too obvious of a characteristic of his, but when you get to see him annoyed, then he will nitpick on everything… and it was Shixuan and Qianyu that always had to correct things for him.
Stone hurriedly went to the stones, having the same name, he naturally felt closer to them… yes, because of the name, not because he was an Earth Giant! He tried to use all his strength to pull up the smallest stone, and he had barely been able to lift it a few centimetres above ground, before his hands pulled back and the stone fell down. It was really heavy.
While Shixuan was still trying, Ji Li looked at the other that was now shivering even more and told him “Since you have been a wind elf, I never saw you really act together with the wind. Since you are a monkey too, and climbed a lot of things, how about you combine both of that?
I want you to run around the hall… of course I mean around the whole hall, from up to down. You should use your balance abilities that you got from climbing, and your natural speedy run that was passed upon you by your ancestors.”
Running around could have been easy, but running on the ceiling? That was really something way too hard, especially at the cultivation rank Qianyu was, but he kept quiet and started running. While running, he thought to himself ‘He told brother Shixuan until when he should work, what about me?’
The thought was too crazy, but Shixuan’s duration of training was honestly just as vague as if not being told, so Qianyu just felt bad for Shixuan while also pitying himself. They were once again in Ji Li’s training, and it was barely the warm-up physical training…
Ji Li was happy as he looked at their sweating faces, he was someone that wanted to… share his suffering with others. You could call it a forced empathy, if you wish to. Most people would rather call him a bit sadistic, but he couldn’t hear all those that did, so he just forgot about them.
On the stone platform, he took out his music instrument – one that worked similar to a flute but wasn’t actually. The reason he liked playing the flute was because he took it as practice till, he would play his favourite instrument again.
It was a special instrument was one that became especially prominent through a game – The Legend of Zelda. That was also how Ji Li in his past life came to know about it, although it was invented much earlier by an Italian, most people still only know it through the game.
He also favoured working with clay and creating porcelain because of this instrument, which was made of said clay. Ji Li had worked for a long time during his trainee years to perfectly recreate the instrument that he had wished to play once again.
He didn’t create them previously, as he could just buy it. But now, in this new world, he took it to himself to recreate it fully, and let others experience the lively and epic sounding instrument.
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The instrument was of course the ‘Ocarina’, also called the sweet potato, as it looked pretty similar. Ji Li took out his ocarina, one that looked very beautiful. He had several of them in a chest, but this one he kept close to himself in his sleeves.
It was his masterpiece, he called it the Pink Rose Ocarina, as it was painted very carefully with just two different main colours. It had the design of roses that flowed throughout the whole instrument. He looked at it deeply before he took it to his mouth and started playing one of the most known songs that were played on the ocarina.
It was ‘Song of Time’, a very powerful yet also tranquil sound. It made one feel as if time was being slowed down, giving one the strength and focus while doing their tasks. Ji Li wanted to train in his instrument while also helping his brothers.
In this world, there was the path of musical cultivation in the Emerald Brilliance Empire. That is what Ji Li was doing, he was pouring in essence into the instrument. The tones that came out with the essence mirrored their sound into real happenings.
So, the ‘Song of Time’, which would only make you feel like time was passing slowly as it gave you strength, actually made the essence inside the area of sound much calmer and easier to absorb. That was the way of music, as it could cooperate with the essence in the area through sound waves.
There were many different possibilities, but ‘Song of Time’ was a very good song that helped during training. Ji Li’s mentor and elder brothers were very surprised when he first created the instrument, but they didn’t really feel much, as the instrument then was very breathy.
But as time passed, the instrument had evolved much more into a proper musical cultivation weapon. They too listened to Ji Li’s songs, and especially liked a few of them that gave them the feeling of relaxation. They praised Ji Li again and again as a musical genius, which made Ji Li feel slightly guilty – as it wasn’t his creation at all.
Still, Ji Li thought to himself that he was a second ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’. The game brought the unknown instrument to the light of people, and he planned to do so as well. He had not yet played it to anyone he didn’t personally know, but he wanted to use it as his main instrument for his musical cultivation, so it was just a matter of time till he and the instrument were known.
Ji Li played the Song of Time and the sweating faces of Shixuan, who was trying to carry a boulder on his back, and Qianyu, who was running at the corners of the room, trying to speed up, brightened up. They knew that their big bro tried to cheer them up, and they also enjoyed the sound of that unique instrument, so they gave it their all.
Together, they passed the time and trained for a long time. ‘Song of Time’ not only revitalised the listeners in the area, but also made one’s feeling of time dwindle, so they had not realised how much time they had truly spent.
The song itself didn’t seem too long to them, so they just worked while listening. Soon, Ji Li finished his first song and looked at a jade tablet that showed him the time. It was a tool that was connected to the central astronomy tower, showing them always the precise position of the stars, the sun being among them, to measure the time. It was helpful for those closed cultivators that couldn’t go out to look at the sun, so it was widely spread among the cultivators.
Ji Li saw that he had actually spend around ten minutes on the son, even though the song itself wouldn’t really take more than two minutes. He also felt that he could measure the time spend nearly to the second if he really focused, but if not, then the passage of time that was ten minutes would have truly felt like two minutes.
For the music instrument to dwindle one’s perception of time by five is a very strong effect, and Ji Li thought that it was probably because he had played with essence, something he could only do since he joined the ranks of Essence Awakening Stage cultivators.
He was happy with himself, as the effect of the ocarina was truly breath-taking. So, he took the instrument to his mouth and played the Song of Time again, he planned to only play this song for the duration of the whole training.
The listeners wouldn’t perceive the number of times they had listened to the song and would take it as a background sound, so over time, the song seemed more like the sound of a breeze that was flowing around the air while they were training.
Ji Li also stopped taking breaks and connected the start and end of the song, making it a continuous loop. He played the song over and over again, till he himself also felt like he breathed out the tunes while his fingers were dancing in the air.
It gave him such a strong sense of tranquillity, that he slowly fell down in his mind and entered cultivation passively. He absorbed the calm and free essence in the air, much easier thanks to the song he played, which was influencing the essence.