A month had passed and the day of Jiang Mang's departure had arrived. Jiang Mang was already outside waiting by the carriage accompanied by Xiao Lu, Li Yang, and his two newly assigned guards. They were waiting for the king and queen to send them off. The king and queen came and sent their son off towards the academy. Everyone boarded the carriage before setting off towards the Chu empire. Jiang Mang picked up his flute and started practicing under Li Yang's guidance. Jiang Mang was extremely talented after the awakening of his twin spirits. He overcame the difficult threshold of learning the fundamentals as a blind person in three weeks of practicing when his progress shot through the roof when he learned to play a couple of well-known but easy pieces in only a week to a perfect degree.
He was now playing such a piece and the music brought everyone into a trance while they forgot everything besides the music. This is the most regular skill musical cultivators have but normally they would have to infuse their qi in their instruments while Jiang Mang did this through pure skill. He hadn't even tried infusing his life or death qi out of fear for the consequences.
His cultivation base had also improved to the point that it was thoroughly stabilized in the early foundation realm in comparison to his just broken through peers. He had also become profiënt in all of his master's skills and he had even killed a wolf king equivalent to a peak stage foundation realm cultivator without alerting its pack. Xiao Lu was also slowly growing but it still stuck close to Jiang Mang as a cub would to its mother.
Jiang Mang suddenly stopped playing when they left the capital when he thought back to his only friend Song Meilin. She had awakened a rare water elemental bow as her profound spirit and had left for Imperial Academy three years ago. Which was also the last time they had met.
He hoped to restore their friendship at the academy but he didn't know if she would be willing after his joke of awakening twin spirits as he didn't tell anyone about his cultivation level or the destruction that his death qi was capable of. He guessed that if he was able to hit a vital point with a throwing dagger coated in death qi then even an early manifestation stage cultivator would be critically wounded if not dead.
These thoughts and emotions compelled him to play a popular song called illusionary dreams and as he became immersed in playing the piece, he subconsciously infused some of his life qi in his flute. The life qi changed the soundwaves produced from the flute almost like the music came alive. This startled everyone but Jiang Mang out of their trance and what they saw shocked them. Their surroundings had changed to a lush oasis inside a dessert. The two guards and Li Yang instantly noticed that they were trapped in an illusionary realm and they could even break out with a single wisp of their qi but what shocked them was the fact that a mid or even high foundation stage cultivator would be trapped in the illusion without being able to break out of it.
This was a common technique for musician cultivators but Jiang Mang's is peculiar on two fronts. The first would be that it can trap stronger cultivators than the user, while the second is its execution. Normally the user will pull its target or targets into a dream realm in their consciousness but Jiang Mang had instead clouded their senses to produce the illusion. The common technique would normally be broken if its target realized that it was an illusion and had to simply wake up while Jiang Mang's technique required its target to break the illusion itself with their strength.
They never broke the illusion to not disturb Jiang Mang and to also experience the technique for themselves. This resulted in them becoming even more astonished because they realized that if they spend too long inside the illusion, the disparity between true and false would become vaguer and vaguer until they became lost in the illusion forever. Luckily this process would take months if not years but they looked forward to the effect when Jiang Mang would become more and more proficient while also increasing his cultivation level.
Jiang Mang stopped after finishing the song and realized that he had infused his life qi into his performance which startled him. He asked about their experience and their answers stupefied him. Later on during the trip, he would keep playing a variety of songs while also learning new ones. He had become able to learn music scores during his performances after his month of practice through his unique ability to view his surroundings, which he had refined to the point that he could conjure it up immediately every time he played music and was willing to view his surroundings. He could keep this ability active as long as he played music, even if he moved around but he could still not attack with a hidden weapon while he played or his internal view would instantly collapse. This had enabled him to learn songs at a shocking rate of one song an hour to four hours where it depended on the length and difficulty of the song. Unfortunately, he had only learned common songs that were incomparable to qi songs. A qi song was a song that had to be played by music cultivators by infusing the notes with their qi. These qi songs were the equivalent of qi techniques used by other cultivators and had certain effects and purposes while also being able to amplify the abilities of musician cultivators. A normal song infused with qi could induce certain effects, but these effects would vary from performer to performer while a qi song would be able to bring out a musician cultivator's true potential and every song would have the same effect for every performer and would only vary in power.
Jiang Mang also continued his cultivation during the trip at night. He would then always be accompanied by Xiao Lu which gratified him. At night he would also further experiment with infusing his qi during his performances and he had found out three key points. He could disrupt people's senses to form an illusion realm when he infused his life qi and he would pull people into sleep by infusing his death qi and the qi's effect would be amplified if they were used in conjunction with the instruments represented by the corresponding profound spirit. These abilities would work on any cultivator or beast equal to or weaker than the high foundation stage if they were not protected or interrupted by a stronger cultivator's qi or profound spirit.