Silent Crown

Chapter 354 Existence of Knowledge

For the first time, Ye Qingxuan experienced the depression that came with not being able to make any progress no matter how hard he worked. It was not serious enough to be traumatizing, but he could imagine how crazy he would feel if he were stuck here for three or four years.

So many musicians were willing to turn to the dark side just to obliterate this obstacle. One must make sacrifices and be determined to abandon everything. Otherwise, they had to be prepared to never take another step forward.

Ye Qingxuan sighed and closed his eyes. Reaching out, gentle music notes sounded as his fingertips pressed down. The fog dissipated. The formless aether sea gradually showed its vast appearance, filling the sky and earth. Compared to it, he was even smaller than dust. However, in this speck of dust, his perception extended boundlessly and delved deep into the aether sea.

Ye Qingxuan could feel four paths slowly unfurling before him. They varied in length and led in four different directions. They represented the four schools that he had knowledge in.

One of them seemed to be made from countless stars. The stars rotated, illuminating the fog for him. They faintly pointed out the direction of the end. This was the music theory path for the School of Revelations.

One path was fleeting like a hallucination, fading in and out of existence. This was the School of Illusions.

One path extended from under his feet and spiraled upward. Countless unclear faces appeared, stared at him. They were filled with incessant temptation, luring him to come forward and walk to the end. This was the School of Mind.

The last path was the longest and the firmest. It extended from his body into the sky, extending steadily inch by inch to the core of all. This was the School of Abstinence, which was the school Ye Qingxuan grasped the most of.

He could feel that he was only a tiny bit away for his consciousness to go through the musician path and enter the heart of the aether sea. Then, he could project into the aether world, nail himself into a spot, and resonate with the world to enter the Resonance level. He only needed a bit more. However, this little bit was as vast as an abyss.

Ye Qingxuan knew he could not cross the abyss until he broke through the Barrier of Knowledge. This was why he was frustrated. The Barrier of Knowledge would not be known as the cliff of despair if it were easy to cross, would it?

Only the cream of the crop could use their ability to cross the Barrier of Knowledge. The cost of using a spirit or demon was too small, so small people easily lost sanity due to this difficulty.

Ye Qingxuan retracted his senses and opened his eyes again. "Is it time to eat?" he muttered to himself. He touched his stomach and it grumbled.

He was once again whiling his days away. During the day, he would go to Caligula's house if he was bored. They would talk about classics and history and other small talk. He had learned a lot about Romulusian history and the elder had given him some drugs to get a high as well. Ye Qingxuan memorized the former and tossed the latter into the trash. Other than that, he had no accomplishments.

Occasionally, he would go to the Church to see if the priest made any progress in the virus research.

As for the King of Yellow? Ye Qingxuan had forgotten all about him. After all, he did not come here for the Pope's reward.

Just as he was tossing on the chaise and wondering if he should eat some fried pancakes or dried grains, a shadow fell across his face.

"Hey, sunbathing?" The white-haired senior from the East bent down and smiled at him.

"Mr. Hu, you're taking a walk again?" Ye Qingxuan rose and invited him in. He poured a cup of coffee from the stove for the man.

"I'm taking a stroll," Mr. Hu said, kicking at the covers. "I used to really like walking. When I was still a student, my teacher would tell me to take a walk whenever I am feeling down or feeling indecisive about something."

"Does it work?"

"I guess?" Mr. Hu scratched his head. "Once, my teacher met with the emperor. He was troubled when he returned so he took me out on a walk. We left from the capital and walked west for ten years before coming back slowly. In the end, my teacher thought it through."

Ye Qingxuan was curious as to what question had taken Mr. Hu's teacher more than ten years to think through. "Then what?"

"Then?" Mr. Hu shrugged. "Then he died and I took his ashes back to the capital. He was enshrined in the Lingyan Pavilion. It's been many years."

Ye Qingxuan did not know what to say. He cleared his throat for a while and sighed, "The East is a strange place."

"Yeah, it's a nice place." Mr. Hu pulled out a thin pipe and stuffed it with tobacco. Lighting it, he sucked in two breaths and let out a plume of smoke. He smoked while squatting on the ground like a farmer taking a break rather than a scholar with students. He smoked happily and lazily. "Hey, kid," he suddenly said. "Have you thought about visiting the East?"

Caught by surprise, Ye Qingxuan shook his head.

"You should go." Mr. Hu glanced at his white hair and said, "Otherwise, you'll regret it."

After a moment of silence, the youth could not help but scratch his head. "Sir, there's nothing regretful. There's only a few things people like me can do. Everything will be good if I can do it right. If not, nothing will happen. But right now, I can't even handle the things that I need to do. I don't have the effort to think about the East."

"But have you ever thought that there's something waiting for you there?"

After thinking a bit, Ye Qingxuan shook his head. "Never."

Mr. Hu nodded. He suddenly chuckled. "Then that's that." He let out a breath and rose as if he was relieved. "It's good this way."

He nodded in farewell but Ye Qingxuan called out to him just as he turned to leave. "Mr. Hu, you're an important figure in the Imperial College. You must have your view on music theory, right?"

Looking at him in confusion, Mr. Hu nodded. Thus, the youth smiled happily and moved closer to him, rubbing his palms in anticipation. "Can you help me with a question?"

Half an hour later, they were in a quiet corner of the inn's hall.

"I see." Mr. Hu nodded after listening to Ye Qingxuan's current troubles. He had some ideas. Soon, he asked, "Ye Qingxuan, have you ever thought about what the source of the world is? How does life produced and evolved?"

"No." Ye Qingxuan shook his head.

"The nature of time and space, the laws of the natural world, the existence of souls?"

"I don't know."

"The relationship between humanity and the world?"

"Never thought about it."

Ye Qingxuan nodded crisply, but Mr. Hu looked at him with sharp eyes as if trying to see through his disguise. "You've never thought about it or you're not willing to think about it?"

Ye Qingxuan froze, his expression stiffening. After a long while, he scratched his head awkwardly. "Sir, what do you mean?"

"The upper path of mind and thoughts is intangible, the lower path is tangible. This is the explanation of the musician paths by the ancient East. There is a separation between inside and outside. The seven schools can also be categorized as such. If I'm not wrong…" He reached out and grasped Ye Qingxuan's wrist. His three fingers fell lightly onto the youth's pulse. Sensing his sound of heart, understanding filled Mr. Hu. "Revelations, Mind, Illusion, and Abstinence? I see… Ye Qingxuan, how long has it been since you've dreamed?"

"Dreamed?" Ye Qingxuan was confused. "I dream every d-"

He stopped. He just realized that it had been a long time since he had dreamed. At some point, he had stopped dreaming and he no longer remembered any dreamscapes. Thinking back, he could only remember that person in the dream telling him to go to the end of the dream…

"This is where your problem is." Mr. Hu toyed the thin pipe in his hands and asked lightly, "Ye Qingxuan, other than the way of abstinence that focuses on aether, you've learned practically all the 'paths of self.' However, there's disparity between your sense of self and reality. You've felt this before, correct?"

Ye Qingxuan stayed silent because Mr. Hu was correct. He had long realized that there was something wrong with him but he could not pinpoint what it was.

"That's why you feel you don't fit with many musicians. You never saw yourself as part of the same world as them, and you lack the real sense of being a musician. So many people swarm by and you're caught in the middle as a bystander, unable to integrate into them. It's just like how a zebra can't find their place between black horses and white horses."

Mr. Hu studied him with pity and sympathy.

"Ye Qingxuan, what would you do if you realized the world is completely different from what you thought?"

Ye Qingxuan hung his head. He could not reply.

Mr. Hu rose to bid farewell. He patted Ye Qingxuan's shoulder, saying, "This is your Barrier of Knowledge."

-

In his room late at night, Ye Qingxuan finally snapped out of his deep thoughts. To be honest, he really had no other solutions. If this problem was his Barrier of Knowledge, then he truly had no idea how to solve it.

"So I have to rely on you?" He looked up at the weathered skull on his desk. The eye sockets were pure black as if it contained all the darkness in the universe with unknowable secrets.

It was the Skull of Truth.