Ling Ling Deep Ling -

He had entered the "Deep Ling"—the legendary, unreachable dimension where time stretched infinitely to accommodate the impossible.

Elias opened his eyes. The walls of his practice room had dissolved. He was standing on a floating platform of pure, polished resin. Surrounding him was an endless, bottomless void of swirling sheet music. Tonalities and polyrhythms drifted past him like cosmic dust. Ling Ling Deep Ling

Elias gasped for air, collapsing onto the cold floor of his real-world practice room. The morning sun was bleeding through the blinds. He looked at the clock. It read 7:00 AM. He had entered the "Deep Ling"—the legendary, unreachable

How would you like to further—should we explore Elias attempting to return to the normal world, or delve into the reactions of his terrified rivals at an upcoming music competition? He was standing on a floating platform of

To an ordinary listener, his playing was flawless. To the phantom standards of Ling Ling, it was trash. He wasn’t playing with the speed of light. He wasn't playing double-stops with his toes while blindfolded. He was merely human.

The entity began to play. It was a sound so complex, so impossibly fast, that Elias’s brain could barely process it. It was flight of the bumblebee played at Mach 5, layered with Bach's Chaconne, transposed into fifteen different keys simultaneously. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. "Match me," Ling Ling commanded.

"I am the standard," the entity replied. "You have only practiced twenty-four hours today. You are a disappointment to your ancestors."