“Let’s go line up to register first,” Ruo Xuan said. Mu Yanxi followed her to a small table next to the booth. A senior sister was here distributing club application forms.
You just had to come get a form, fill in your information, and then the senior sister would issue a waist token. That would make you a member of the wind instrument department.
Mu Yanxi took the registration form. Besides basic details like name, grade, class, and contact information, the most unique section was “Instruments you are proficient in.” Mu Yanxi wrote down the flute, guzheng, and dulcimer that she knew how to play.
“Huh? Yanxi, you can play the dulcimer? That’s not very common,” Ruo Xuan said, leaning over to look at Mu Yanxi’s form with some surprise.
“It’s not that rare, is it? And it’s not difficult either. Anyone who understands music theory and knows guzheng pieces can pick it up relatively easily with a bit of study,” Mu Yanxi said modestly.
The dulcimer was a typical string percussion instrument where you held two hammers (also called bamboo beaters) to strike the fan-shaped soundboard to produce music.
In the Sect banquets of her past life, dulcimer performances were common, and she had learned a little.
Mu Yanxi looked at Ruo Xuan’s application form and saw an unfamiliar name in the “Instruments you are proficient in” column: “Guitar?”
“I wouldn’t really say I can play it. I can just strum it a few times to make noise; it doesn’t even count as chord accompaniment. But the guitar is an easy instrument to start with. I should be able to learn it quickly,” Ruo Xuan said, somewhat embarrassed.
She didn’t really know any music theory or instruments; she had come to the wind instrument department entirely to accompany Mu Yanxi.
When filling out the proficient instruments section, she could only write down the guitar she had played with as a child, but that was just fooling around and was far from actually knowing how to play.
However, the current wind instrument department probably wouldn’t be too strict about requiring members to master an instrument.
But what Mu Yanxi was actually concerned about was something else—she had never even heard of an instrument called a guitar.
Not only that, she had noticed earlier that she didn’t recognize most of the instruments on the stage. It seemed the instruments of this world were quite different from those of her past life.
This wasn’t a big problem. Mu Yanxi walked towards the booth and looked at the instruments left on the stage after the performance. Her immortal brain immediately displayed the name and detailed introduction of each instrument.
At this sight, Mu Yanxi froze. She hadn’t expected that upon seeing the specific instrument names, she would find even more unfamiliar instruments than she had imagined, and the classifications were incredibly detailed.
Violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, harp, glockenspiel, trombone, trumpet, French horn, euphonium, flute, woodwind, clarinet, single-reed clarinet, oboe, bass drum, snare drum, timpani…
According to the immortal brain’s annotations, many of these instruments had been introduced and become popular from other conquered minor worlds.
Just this long list of instrument names was enough to make her head spin, let alone the specific introductions.
And there were also many instruments she recognized, like the pipa, xylophone, suona, bianzhong (set of bronze bells), and xiao (vertical flute).
With such a complex variety of instruments, it looked like this orchestra would need at least seventy or eighty people, and the timbre and melody of each instrument were different.
Wanting so many musicians to form an orchestra and play in harmony? Mu Yanxi’s first reaction was: impossible, absolutely impossible!
This was harder than setting up a hundred-person sword formation. In a sword formation, at least all the disciples used swords and learned the same few sword techniques.
They just needed to train their coordination and changes well in peacetime and listen to commands during battle.
But these instruments—each had different principles, and even the supporting Music Path cultivation methods were different.
To perform a piece of celestial music in harmony, the score needed to be arranged into versions suitable for each musician’s instrument, and the combination and matching effects between different instruments had to be considered.
The arranger and conductor needed to be familiar with the timbre of every single instrument. The difficulty was simply not on the same level.
No wonder the ensemble earlier was so chaotic and disorganized. Before, Mu Yanxi just thought their skill level was too low.
Now, looking at it, the fact that they could even manage to play a complete piece in harmony seemed pretty good, considering it was a combination of so many different instruments.
And this was after the split, with a large number of Music Path disciples having left.
According to Ruo Xuan, during the wind instrument club’s peak, they really could form such a large orchestra and perform perfect celestial music in harmony—that was truly terrifying.
“Yanxi, what are you thinking about? Weren’t we going to submit our application forms?” Ruo Xuan asked Mu Yanxi, who had suddenly stopped.
“It’s nothing. I was just thinking about how difficult it must be to assemble such a large orchestra and have them play a piece in harmony,” Mu Yanxi said truthfully.
“It really is remarkable. But that’s in the past. The current wind instrument department can’t possibly manage an ensemble of more than ten people, let alone a large orchestra.”
“But we don’t need to worry about that. If Yanxi really wants to explore the Music Path, we could form a small band of three to five people and have some fun,” Ruo Xuan said, her voice growing softer and softer.
Although her words were still audible, Mu Yanxi had a strange feeling—Ruo Xuan’s tone seemed to carry a hint of happiness. Did the idea of forming a band with me make her happy?
Mu Yanxi and Ruo Xuan together handed their club application forms to the senior sister in charge of registering new disciples.
The senior sister just glanced at them lazily, but when she saw Mu Yanxi had listed three instruments in the “proficient instruments” column, she asked with some surprise, “Are you really proficient in these three instruments?”
“I wouldn’t say proficient. I can just play a little,” Mu Yanxi still replied modestly. She had joined the wind instrument department to slack off and take it easy; she didn’t want to attract too much attention.
“It’s rare for someone who’s actually good at instruments to come to our wind instrument department. Most go to the light music club next door,” the senior sister smiled, then looked at Ruo Xuan and asked, “And you can play a little guitar too?”
“Not really. Rather than saying I can play a little, it’s more accurate to say I can only mess around with it a bit,” Ruo Xuan said, even more embarrassed.
“It’s fine. There are plenty of people in this department who haven’t even touched an instrument. But we still have to follow procedure. Here are two waist tokens for you.”
“They are proof of identity for the wind instrument department, and they also contain the department’s basic cultivation method.” The senior sister tapped two blank jade waist tokens with her finger, inputting the basic information of the two girls into them, then handed them over.
She hadn’t expected these jade waist tokens to also function as Jade Slips. Mu Yanxi took her token and pressed it to her forehead, wanting to see what the wind instrument department’s basic cultivation method contained.
It turned out this basic cultivation method was simply called Music Path Basics, a very straightforward name.
It taught the most fundamental, universal knowledge of the Music Path, such as how to read musical scores, how to operate instrument-type divine artifacts, and the classification of musical scales.
But the next part made Mu Yanxi’s eyes light up—what followed were introductions to Music Path spells and combat-type celestial music.
Mu Yanxi knew from her past life that some instrument-type divine treasures could be used in battle, even possessing all sorts of unpredictable and ever-changing special divine abilities, making them a relatively powerful category among divine treasures.
But that was because the divine treasures themselves were powerful, not due to the function of music. What was recorded in Music Path Basics, however, was that—the musical composition itself was the spell, and even the divine ability.