Chapter 7: The Suspended Piano Platform of Qin Qi Shu Hua

  The colorful mist on the stage changed from three colors to four colors, and Li Tu's qin skills also entered the sixth grade from the seventh grade.

  The chief examiner, Gong Yang, stared at all of this with his eyes wide open and his mouth agape. The harmony between man and nature was truly a profound and mysterious realm that allowed for a deeper and more thorough understanding of the art of qin, elevating it to new heights. And yet, in just a few breaths' time, he had managed to break through the seventh rank and enter the sixth rank.

  "If I could enter a state of perfect harmony between heaven and man, I would become an unparalleled master even faster. Unfortunately, such a state is hard to come by."

  The old ram felt a tinge of regret in his heart as he watched the young man enter this profound and enviable state.

  "He actually entered the realm of unity between man and nature, this..."

  The other two examiners were also extremely shocked, and what was happening before their eyes was really too astonishing.

  The perfect harmony between man and nature is the ultimate pursuit of every musician.

  The examinees under the stage had an inexplicable sorrow in their hearts, tears streaming down, but their minds were clear. They stared blankly at the sound fog changes on the stage. Although they didn't know the realm of unity between man and piano, the sound fog on the stage changed from three colors to four colors, although it was still very weak, it appeared.

  This means that this blind man broke through the seventh rank and became a sixth-rank zither master.

  A 15-year-old sixth-grade pianist, and also a blind person, this is really too shocking to be believable.

  A 15-year-old sixth-grade guqin player, how is this possible?

  In this art of Qin, being able to reach a master level before the age of twenty is already an extraordinary talent.

  Tanxiang County's talented girl, Hantai Ji, was born into a noble family. She had exceptional musical talent and received meticulous guidance from famous teachers. After years of hard practice, she became a 9th-grade zither master at the age of 15. Her fame spread throughout Tanxiang County and Tanxiang Academy, earning her the title of "Talented Girl".

  "He has just become a sixth-grade guqin player."

  Ding Taiji stared blankly at the figure on stage, her heart unable to calm down at this moment.

  …………………..

  "Where is this? How did I end up here?"

  Suddenly, Li Tu found himself standing on a stone platform several feet high, rather than playing the zither in the square, and his heart was filled with intense shock and doubt.

  "What's going on?"

  Li Tu's face was filled with confusion and doubt, standing on the stone platform, unable to snap out of it for a long time. This happened too suddenly, leaving him unable to react.

  "What's going on?"

  Seeing the white clouds floating around him, Li Tu's eyes were filled with confusion, and he couldn't understand what had happened or where he was.

  "This stone pedestal seems to be floating in mid-air."

  Li Tu looked down from the stone platform, but it was just a piece of cloud and fog, and he couldn't see clearly at all.

  "But where is this place, and how did I get here, what happened?"

  "And also, why can I see again with my eyes?"

  Li Tu stretched out his hand in front of his eyes, looking at it carefully and blinking repeatedly. After several attempts, he confirmed that he could indeed see again.

  "I can see again!"

  In an instant, his heart was filled with joy and excitement, for these blind years had brought him endless suffering.

  Today can finally see the light again.

  Nothing in the past will be repeated, and life will have a new beginning.

  After a long time, Li Tu finally calmed down from the excitement and began to pay attention to everything in front of him. He wanted to figure out what had happened and why he suddenly appeared here.

  The stone stage is several meters in size, irregularly circular in shape, and floats in the sea of clouds.

  In the center of the stone platform, a stone table and a tatami mat were placed, on which a guqin was placed. At the rear end of the stone platform, a stone tablet stood, with two characters engraved: Ninth Rank.

  Apart from this, there is nothing else on the stone pedestal.

  Li Tu looked around curiously at all this.

  What does it mean to put an ancient zither on a floating stone platform?

  "Am I supposed to practice piano here?"

  Li Tu was slightly perplexed, and he gently lifted his head to see the floating islands in the sea of clouds, appearing and disappearing. The floating islands were like steps, one higher than the other, as if they formed a ladder leading to the depths of the unknown.

  In the sea of clouds, floating islands appear and disappear, with white clouds one by one.

  A breathtakingly stunning scene.

  "What kind of place is this? Could it be a heavenly paradise?"

  The scenery here is really shocking, like a fairyland.

  Li Tu stood on the stone platform, slightly raised his head, and stared blankly at the floating islands in the sea of clouds.

  The floating islands were like steps, one by one leading all the way up to the sky.

  "This place is really too beautiful, just like a paradise in heaven."

  "Before entering this stone platform, I was playing the guqin in the square, and there is also an ancient guqin on this stone platform. The stele has two characters 'jiu pin' written on it, what does this mean?"

  "Could this be the guqin of a 9th-grade zither master?"

  Li Tu walked towards the couch in confusion, sat down cross-legged, and his right fingertips slid over the strings of the zither. Suddenly, a surge of information flooded his mind, and he understood everything.

  "Guqin, Go, calligraphy and painting, a suspended guqin platform, black and white Go city, boundless book mountain, ten thousand mile painting corridor, where one can learn relevant skills everywhere, it turns out to be like this."

  "I thought my eyes could see the light again, but it turned out that my consciousness was just wandering and inadvertently entered this fairyland."

  "This ninth-grade piano platform is the first piano platform of the suspended piano platform. As long as the piano art breaks through the ninth grade and the piano sound is perfect, you can enter the next eighth-grade piano platform."

  "Why is my zither skill, which is already at the seventh rank, being evaluated on a ninth-rank zither platform instead of a seventh-rank one?"

  "Breaking through the nine grades, the piano sound is perfect."

  "Is it that my zither music is imperfect, so I couldn't enter the Seventh Rank Zither Stage? However, even a more brilliant zither master can't achieve perfect and flawless zither music, right?"

  "The guqin has a range of four octaves and two notes, with seven open strings, ninety-one harmonics, and one hundred forty-seven stopped notes. In ancient times, there were over a thousand techniques, but nowadays only several dozen are commonly used, and some ancient techniques have been lost, making them extremely difficult to use. Because the notation has become simplified, some complex and difficult-to-use techniques have been replaced by common ones, which inevitably affects the expression of the guqin's tone color, failing to achieve perfect sound without any defects."

  "The fingering techniques I use are also among the dozens of commonly used ones, so they must result in a somewhat imperfect expression of the guqin's tone color, and cannot achieve perfection in the sound."

  "If you want to achieve perfect piano sound, you must learn more than a thousand techniques and master fingerings that are smooth and effortless to use. But is this possible? If these over a thousand techniques were easy to learn and use, then the dozens of techniques commonly used today wouldn't be so few in number, some complex fingerings wouldn't have been replaced by easier ones, and some ancient fingerings wouldn't have been lost."

  "Moreover, where could a blind person like me, who has lost both eyes, go to learn these complex and difficult fingerings? The fingerings I use now were also taught by my piano teacher when I was young."

  While in distress, the sound of a guqin suddenly floated over from the sea of clouds, like a divine melody that was beyond words, without any flaws, with perfect timbre.

  Li Tu suddenly looked into the sea of clouds and saw a white-clad person sitting cross-legged on a cloud, stroking a zither with both hands. Golden notes floated up from the zither one by one.