Nightfall

Awakened from a dream at night, Ning Que effaced the sweat on his forehead. While sitting on the bed and watching the sleeping Sangsang beside him, he subconsciously stretched out his fingers to gently touch her frowning eyebrows, and then became lost in thought.

Reflection made no sense for this strange and frightening dream. After a moment of silence, he left the contents of the dream behind, even not willing to memorize it. He stood up to pour a cup of cold tea and slowly drank. Listening to the loud discussion from the narrow alleys in the back of the yard, he knew it was still early and people were still enjoying the shade.

“What he sees is the reflection of the Primordial Qi from the nature in his heart, and the purer this cultivator’s psyche of meditation is, the farther range of Primordial Qi he can sense.”

He was too excited during the day, but now he was completely calmed down. Thinking of the old man Lyu Qingchen’s argument on the road, he found himself forgetting the most important issue—When he went into the Initial Awareness State, how much did he feel the Qi of Heaven and Earth, rainwater, or a stream, or a shallow pond, or a river or… the sea?

Now was not the first time that he entered the Initial Awareness State. He did not know whether the sensed Qi of Heaven and Earth world could still be regarded as a real projection. After a moment of thinking, Ning Que slowly closed his eyes, calmly resting his hands on his knees, and re-entered the meditation state to pass his thoughts over to the Ocean of Qi and Mountain of Snow, and then scattered them all over his body.

After a brief moment, his cautious meditation in the spiritual world had been transitioned to the Perception State in the real world. He opened his eyes and extended his right hand into the air, as if trying to catch the faint candlelight. At that point, he reconfirmed that he could clearly sense the Qi atmosphere in the eaves, walls, and the air. Besides, he shockingly confirmed what he had felt…

He thought it was the sea, the quiet sea.

The old man Lyu Qingchen once said: “The most powerful cultivator in the world today, who is considered the most likely to break through to the five states, the vulgar South Jin Kingdom Sage of Sword, Liu Bai, sensed the surging Yellow River in the beginning of his cultivation.” Ning Que had said at that time: “If someone could sense the sea, would this man be a cultivation genius more powerful than the South Jin Kingdom Sage of Sword?”

For more than 10 years, he kept his meditation when he ate, gambled, read, wrote, slept, rode a horse, killed people, and went committing arson. This lad’s spiritual world contained a great deal of extremely pure Psyche Power. When he finally went through 10 acupoints out of 17 in the Ocean of Qi and Mountain of Snow, his accumulated Psyche Power finally ran out through the passage, and turned into a sonorous and forceful musical song.

The Breath of Nature felt the song. Although the number of holes in the body’s vertical bamboo flute was still small and the song was a bit sluggish, it felt the power of each note in the song.

However, this power was so concentrated as to make the Breath of Nature produce a certain sense of exclusion. If the Breath of Nature Ning Que had felt was like the sea, then the Psyche Power he used to sense the Breath of Nature was like a tempered iron needle that was extremely small, but very hard and sharp.

This sharp iron needle gently fell into the sea, causing no waves or sounds, but easily and silently penetrated the water surface with an infinite depth and then slowly fell into the dark abyss in silence.

Ning Que did not know these very specific issues or think about any negative things. Just like a boy that had cried for an entire half a year hugging his mother’s thigh and finally getting the new toy he had been longing for, Ning Que spent all night in constant meditation with the use of Psyche Power to feel that kind of novel and wonderful Qi.

He kept weaving his palm in the air, trying to seize the bleak candlelight in the shabby room and to influence the bean-shaped candlelight on the table. Though he did not succeed, it did not affect his interest at all and he repeated the movement.

It was wonderful that the next morning, as he left Old Brush Pen Shop, he did not look haggard because of being awake all night. Instead, he looked very well and healthy. Maybe a blithe heart made a blooming visage?

…

…

Ning Que rode the horse carriage to the Academy and watched the green meadow, the lush green trees, the clouds flowing over the mountains, the beautiful oriental morning light, the black and white buildings, and eaves shrouded by the clouds. In his eyes, there was a beautiful halo over the world, and the Academy mountain that had already been very beautiful became even more charming, which made him want to laugh louder.

Because of his excellent mood, in the face of classmates who just came down from their horse carriages and students who held pancakes in one hand and books in the other hand at the Academy, he changed from his usual alienating temperament and stepped forward to greet them. However, today the Academy’s atmosphere was a bit strange. More accurately, the atmosphere around Ning Que was a little strange. Classmates seemed to be not interested in his greeting and some students came from a distance and circled around to face him and gossiped with contempt.

Ning Que confusedly went into Classroom Three and then surprisingly found that those relatively familiar classmates also behaved very weirdly, all casting a strange eye at him. Suppressing the doubt in his heart, he nodded to Situ Yilan in the front row and walked to his own seat.

Situ Yilan looked down at yesterday’s review papers arranged by math, as if not seeing his action. But when he passed by, she turned back to look at Ning Que’s back, and shook her head with a sigh.

I took two days off. Why do I feel that people see me with different eyes?

Ning Que sat down to look at Chu Youxian next to him, and asked with a smile, “Do all people know that I got a cliff jump and have become a little jealous and hateful?”

This was a joke, of course. However, cheerful and easygoing Chu Youxian had no smile on his face this time. He stared at Ning Que’s face and seriously asked, “You really don’t know what happened?”

“I don’t know.” Ning Que spread both hands and innocently said, “The Empire began attacking Northern Yan again? Today there is an etiquette class and the Lecturer is a bad-tempered Yan. So it’s really worth worrying.

“Will it be a bit improper when joking at this time?”

Chu Youxian watched him and sighed, saying, “The entire Academy, from instructors to students, were staring at the semester exam the day before yesterday so as to see which one, you or Xie Chengyun, could win that gamble in the end. But nobody could predict that he took a plus in five courses but you didn’t take the exam at all. This is why you think people behave weirdly.”

Ning Que was slightly startled and, after this reminder, finally remembered what had happened after Xie Chengyun and other Grade A Dormitory students broke into Classroom Three that morning, and that the semester exam in that gamble had ended the day before yesterday.

What was he doing then? At that time he was leaning on the wall of the second floor of the old library, becoming unconscious as his chest still had an invisible spear stuck in it, and waiting to die in the company of a bowl of water and two cold steamed buns.

“It turns out that the semester exam was the day before yesterday. I really forgot it, but I remember asking a female professor to take leave for me,”

Ning Que explained with a smile.

In his eyes, it was very naive and funny to gamble with Xie Chengyun on the semester exam scores. At that time, however, he had to accept it because of the anger of Situ Yilan and his Classroom Three classmates.

Now as the semester exam and the gamble had missed because of other things, what had already happened could not be changed. Although it was indeed a pity to miss the chance of winning against that high-profiled Xie master, he would not lament, feel deep sorrow, or cry like a high school sophomore who forgot to take his admission card for the entrance examination.

In that morning when the Academy held the quiet and serious semester exam, he killed a man of strong cultivation at a small lakeside house and spent a very enigmatic time on Vermilion Bird Avenue. Having been back and forth between life and death, he met the greatest crisis of his 16 years of life and the greatest fortune. Compared with these things, that gamble meant nothing.

“The problem is that you asked for leave.” Chu Youxian looked blankly at him and said, “As long as you participated in the exam, even if the final result was bad, far worse than Xie Chengyun’s, we wouldn’t have any opinion of you. There is no doubt that nobody can always win in exams, and you accepted the gamble just for proving your courage that day… However, no one ever thought that you were too afraid to attend the exam, which made everyone so disappointed in you.”

After listening to these words, Ning Que could not help but be slightly startled. A moment later he said with a smile, “What the hell? Does it mean I have courage if I struggled to go straight into the exam room regardless of my illness, looking pale and trying hard to hold the brush to take the test, and answered every question vomiting blood, and ended in only answering half of the questions with the snow-white papers all dyed red, and then I died due to blood flowing non-stop?”

The remark was funny, but it revealed his extreme sharpness and anger.

“You were really sick?” Chu Youxian felt his angry tone hiding in the words and said after a shock, “But now you look so well, who will believe you?”

Then he sighed and said, “Yesterday the exam results were announced. Linchuan Wangying took an A+ for one course and Xie Chengyun got the remaining five A+. I heard that he studied extremely hard during these months to beat you.

“Now there are rumors in the Academy that you came up with the idea of asking for sick leave because you knew you couldn’t beat him but you also didn’t want to lose in the exam.”

Ning Que frowned and said, “It is shameful to retreat without a fight, not to mention to not even participate in it. Although I think this semester exam gamble is boring to the extreme, I wouldn’t be afraid, because I have promised it. If it was really like what you said, that I wasn’t ill but asked for sick leave to avoid the semester exam, then wouldn’t that be a coward’s behavior?”

Chu Youxian at this time really believed that he was very ill the day before yesterday. He looked at Ning Que sympathetically and patted his shoulder to comfort him. “I believe you, but the problem is that others, especially Grade A Dormitory students, don’t believe you. In their eyes and even most Academy people, now you… are a coward.”

Ning Que became speechless and could not help but smile and shake his head. He had been kind of angry and unwilling in his heart. But thinking of those wonderful feelings last night, he decided not to think about these things. Since now he was a genius student of cultivation, why should he be angry with these naive kids?

The word “show” was a very simple noun and required interaction between the two parties when becoming a verb. He did not want to have a show for the classmates who thought of him as a coward, but he could not stop some, who were automatically victorious because of his quitting, from showing off in front of him.

And this was where most conflicts of the youth idol drama came from.