255: Chapter 255 The Strange Eastern Boy - Bonus Chapter Sponsored by <Xuan Hang>

Although the rain in Vienna had stopped,

the storm regarding the "Orient" had only just reached its climax.

In the days that followed, the European classical music scene felt as if a giant boulder had been tossed into a calm lake.

Ye Xi's tour was like a meticulously planned riot.

From Prague's Smetana Hall to the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, and then to the Salle Pleyel in Paris,

the encore segment of every stop became an unrepeatable blind box game.

She was no longer satisfied with the gentle redemption of the ferryman.

In Prague, she wove the madness of fan jin passes the imperial examination into Dvořák's melodies, leaving the gentlemen and ladies in the audience breaking out in cold sweats yet unable to stop listening.

In Berlin, she was even more demonic, directly striking out that indescribable nature belonging to the cthulhu mythos on the piano keys.

The roar of the bass range was like a deep-sea behemoth breathing right next to one's eardrums,

while those unconventional vibratos in the treble range were like the final scream before reason snapped.

The habitually fastidious European media, after a brief moment of speechlessness, erupted with near-frenzied praise.

The front-page headline of Le Figaro used massive bold letters:

[The Oriental Witch with a Thousand Faces].

Critics no longer obsessed over whether her technique met classical standards,

but instead frantically interpreted the "mysterious Oriental philosophy" within her playing.

Even fashion magazines staked out her hotel entrance for a day and a night just to get a single street-style photo.

As the camera zoomed out, the applause and flowers were left thousands of miles away.

A thousand kilometers away in Sarajevo, the twilight wind carried a chill.

Lin Que wore a leather vest bought locally over a white T-shirt with sunglasses hanging from the collar.

Carrying a mesh bag of mud-stained potatoes and onions, he was leisurely strolling down an old street riddled with bullet holes.

At this moment, he was unshaven, and his hair was as messy as a bird's nest.

If those old scholars back home saw him, they would probably think he had been kidnapped to Eastern Europe to mine coal.

"Hey, Oriental boy! That path is for people; don't step in my puddle!"

A second-floor window burst open, accompanied by Mrs. Zola's signature loud voice.

Lin Que skillfully jumped to the side, avoiding the non-existent puddle, and looked up at the window with a grin:

"Mrs. Zola, the onions are very fresh today, only two Marks a kilo."

"Two Marks? Oh, heavens, you were ripped off by those profiteers!"

Zola leaned halfway out, her silver hair dancing in the wind, her face full of frustration at his perceived incompetence:

"Those kinds of onions are only fit for feeding pigs! And wipe your soles clean before you come in!

Yesterday I found a grain of sand on the carpet—one grain!"

"Yes, sir."

Lin Que carried the mesh bag, his mood incredibly good.

This feeling of being disliked and pointed at as a life-skills idiot was, for him, simply top-tier mental massage.

Here, no one cared that he was the master of healing who wrote the ferryman, nor did anyone care that he was the madman who had reduced the Sanity of millions to zero.

At this time, Mrs. Zola didn't know

that this young man, who couldn't even figure out the price of onions, would later become a new legend of this city and even the world.

Not until years later, when countless readers would come on a pilgrimage along this bullet-riddled old street,

would she, now white-haired and in a wheelchair, still point at that second-floor window,

rambling to the camera about that 'hardworking but not-so-bright' strange Oriental tenant...

Returning to the apartment, Lin Que obediently rubbed his feet for a full two minutes on the doormat that he had almost rubbed bald.

Just as he entered, he saw Zola fretting over an old-fashioned radio.

It was a vacuum tube radio from the 1980s with a thick patina on its wooden casing, the oldest item in the house besides Zola herself.

Usually, Zola relied on it to listen to news and old songs while cooking,

but these past few days, it had gone completely silent, only emitting harsh static.

"Damn thing, as useless as my knees."

Zola slapped the top of the radio hard, then blew the dust off it with concern.

"Broken?" Lin Que put down the potatoes.

"Poor power connection, or maybe a tube inside burned out."

Zola sighed and grabbed her old coat hanging on the wall.

"I have to go to the market; old Popovich, the repairman, is setting up his stall today. Watch the house, and don't steal my jam."

"I'll go with you." Lin Que wiped his hands.

"That thing is quite heavy."

Zola looked at him suspiciously but ultimately didn't refuse the free labor:

"Fine, carry it. Don't bump it; it's something my husband left behind."

...

Baščaršija Bazaar.

This is the heart of Sarajevo, a distribution center for all kinds of junk and treasures.

Old Popovich's stall was in the furthest corner, surrounded by dismantled TV casings and tangled wires.

The old man had a bulbous nose, and his eyes were cloudy yet sharp with shrewdness,

clearly a slick old fox who had spent a lifetime navigating the streets.

"Oh, Mrs. Zola."

Popovich took the radio, twisted a few knobs performatively,

poked it with a multimeter, his brow furrowed so deeply it could crush a fly.

"The situation is very bad."

He clicked his tongue twice and turned the radio upside down.

"The motherboard is fried, and the capacitors have burst. This is an antique; parts are hard to find. Only I can manage to fix it here."

Zola nervously pinched the hem of her clothes: "How much will it cost?"

Popovich held out a grimy palm, five fingers spread wide:

"Fifty Marks. That's a friend price; anyone else, I wouldn't even fix it for eighty."

Fifty Marks.

In Sarajevo, that was enough to buy twenty kilograms of top-quality beef or pay Zola's water bill for two months.

Zola's face instantly turned pale:

"Fifty? Last time you said it only needed a fuse..."

"Last time was last time! These things break more as they get older!" Popovich waved his hand impatiently.

"Are you fixing it or not? If not, take it away; don't block my business."

Zola gritted her teeth, reached into a pocket close to her body, and tremblingly pulled out a cloth bundle.

That was her pension money she had saved for a long time.

Just as she was about to count the money, a hand pressed down on the bundle.

Lin Que had squeezed to the front at some point.

He stared at the pile of messy parts, the faint smell of solder occasionally wafting past his nose.

This smell made him a bit dazed, as if he had instantly returned to the narrow tube-shaped apartment building of his past life.

Back then, the family was poor; when the fan stopped spinning or the TV showed static,

his father, Lin Jianguo, would wear his reading glasses and fix it himself.

He would always nag while holding the soldering iron:

"These appliance repairmen are all black-hearted. It's clearly just a capacitor issue, but they insist the motherboard is fried.

Son, remember, any problem that looks incredibly dramatic is usually just a poor connection."

He didn't look at Zola but instead bent down,

and from Popovich's messy box of parts, he pinched a blackened capacitor with two fingers.

"Boss, you've got a good business going here."

...