For a long time afterward, he never went up to Wujin Peak again, nor did he see Shen Yu alone. Occasionally, when they ran into each other within the sect, it would only be a unilateral, distant nod of acknowledgment on his part, making them seem more like complete strangers.
It wasn’t until half a year later, feeling that his progress was too slow, that Song Huaiyan resolved to start his morning training half an hour earlier. Just past the mao hour that morning, as he went to the dining hall for breakfast, he ran into Shen Yu.
He was carrying his sword, thin sweat still clinging to his temples, and his breathing was somewhat hurried evidently, he had just finished practicing his sword.
So, he woke up this early every single day.
Consequently, Song Huaiyan moved his morning practice time up by another half-hour, heading to the dining hall only after finishing his sword drills. From then on, during that period, he would run into Shen Yu every single day.
Though the junior brother always wore a keep-away-from-me expression, Song Huaiyan brazenly shared a table with him day after day without being chased away, eventually growing bolder and starting to buy breakfast a step ahead to wait for him.
Shen Yu remained unmoved, leaving Song Huaiyan with no choice but to eat double portions by himself. Half a month later, Shen Yu finally spoke up: “You eat too much in the morning.”
Only then did Song Huaiyan realize that dealing with the junior brother required shooting straight from the hip, because the boy simply couldn’t read between the lines or discern hidden meanings.
After that, the two of them frequently entered and left the dining hall and study hall together. Shen Yu rarely initiated conversation with him, but occasionally, when he saw him finishing his sword practice or struggling over books in deep thought, he would drop a few pointers out of the blue.
Objective, blunt, piercingly direct, yet exceptionally effective pointers.
Song Huaiyan finally came to fully grasp the gap between a genius and an ordinary person.
In his previous life, he hadn’t been the exceptionally brilliant type either; it was only by relying on double the diligence and hard work of others that he maintained fairly decent grades. Now, in the world of Yunzhou, he was likewise giving it his all just to barely keep pace with the rhythm here.
Yet Shen Yu was both a genius and a hard worker. Having entered the sect at age eight—though already past the optimal age for cultivation—he had leaped forward by bounds and leaps within a mere three years, reaching the Profound Realm. Among the four realms of Heaven, Earth, Profound, and Yellow, the Profound Realm was a stage ordinary disciples took over a decade of practice, reaching it only by age eighteen at the earliest.
Against his backdrop, everyone else was eclipsed in dull obscurity, which was why most disciples in the sect disliked him and targeted him at every turn.
One day, when Song Huaiyan arrived at the dining hall, he saw seven or eight disciples surrounding Shen Yu, the bowls of porridge and steamed buns on the table knocked and overturned onto the ground.
“What’s with that sissified look? You even went and got your ears pierced?” One person with sharp eyes spotted the hole in Shen Yu’s left earlobe and immediately began to mock him.
“Hmph, isn’t he just relying on this face to win so much favor from the sect master? Such a like (seductive/flirtatious) look at such a young age!”
“Born to be a cheap seed who serves others with his looks!” The tall fellow at the side looked utterly disgusted.
Yet Shen Yu merely sat there holding his chopsticks, without even lifting his eyes.
Song Huaiyan stepped forward, pushed the crowd apart, and shouted sternly: “The sect rules explicitly forbid bullying the weak and humiliating your fellow disciples—have all of you forgotten?”
Though nominally the eldest senior brother of the sect, ever since his severe illness and “amnesia,” the others had grown increasingly distant from him, showing little respect even on the surface. Seeing him stick up for Shen Yu now, those disciples promptly redirected their hostility toward him as well.
“Big Senior Brother woke up so early not to sneakily memorize texts, but to play the hero here?” one of them said with a sarcastic tone.
“This little cheap seed relies on being the sect master’s personal disciple to suppress us on ordinary days isn’t that bullying the weak?” another argued indignantly.
“You idiot, are you even insulting yourself?” A disciple nearby pulled that person aside. “Speaking of sect rules, Shen Yu is arrogant, haughty, shows no respect for his elders, and even beats up fellow disciples the precepts he’s broken are plenty! Why is Big Senior Brother showing such blatant favoritism toward him?”
“Probably because he’s no longer favored himself, so he’s rushing to suck up to the junior brother!” someone laughed in a low voice.
With everyone chattering away all around them, Song Huaiyan felt a buzzing in his ears and his mind spun into a chaotic mess. In his previous life, because his parents had passed away early, there were always people pointing fingers at him or bullying him openly and covertly at school. Back then, he only knew how to swallow his anger and yield over and over. But now, living a second life, he had cultivation and he had a junior brother.
As the eldest senior brother, he ought to… protect his own junior brother.
Thus, before his consciousness could make a rational judgment, he had already thrown a punch at the person right in front of him. A brawl broke out between them shortly after. Song Huaiyan didn’t use spiritual power, and the other disciples exercised some restraint by only engaging in hand-to-hand combat, but with their numerical superiority, Song Huaiyan quickly found himself at a disadvantage.
As for the person at the center of it all, Shen Yu merely watched coldly from the sidelines.
It wasn’t until Song Huaiyan spat out a mouthful of blood with a muffled groan that the other disciples, worrying things might blow out of hand and realizing he wasn’t even their target to begin with, scrambled away from the scene in a panicked rush.
Shen Yu put down his chopsticks, walked over to Song Huaiyan’s side, but showed no intention of helping him up. He merely said: “They can’t beat me. You didn’t need to help.”
Beaten until his vision danced with golden stars, Song Huaiyan felt dizzy in his head, yet upon hearing those words, his ego took a bit of a hit, along with a twinge of hurt feelings. But immediately afterward, he heard Shen Yu say: “You can’t beat them. I’ll teach you.”
The moon gradually shifted westward, blocked by the well’s opening.
The moon held within the water dissolved away as well.
The person before him who had already calmed down and fallen into peaceful slumber possessed refined and handsome features, exactly as he did back then.
It was thousands of mountains burdened with snow, the cold moon hanging high.
The moon in the water was the moon in the sky.
The person before his eyes… was the person in his heart.
Song Huaiyan lowered his eyelashes, concealing the emotions swirling in the depths of his eyes. He realized with a sudden jolt that he had housed Shen Yu inside his heart for so many years.
Clearly, they had long since reached the point of you-die-me-live; clearly, they were already separated by time and space.
Yet he dared neither hate nor love.
On the snowy mountain, the biting cold wind sliced like a knife through the vast, freezing grand hall. Its walls were cold and hard, echoing with the sorrowful wails of the gale.
An ice coffin sat quietly in the center of the hall. Lying inside was a person dressed in blue and white robes, their face as pale as snow, still refined and handsome, yet devoid of the slightest breath of life, as if they had long since fused into one with this freezing palace.
A man clad in dark robes stumbled into this place of dead silence, his posture wretched, his garments stained all over with blood. His expression was frantic, and the madness and despair in his eyes surged like a hurricane over an open sea, swallowing everything in its path.
“Hahahaha…” His laughter echoed throughout the grand hall, shrill and twisted. “Deceiving me, you’re all deceiving me…”
Clutched tightly in his trembling hand was a dazzling bead. Dark spiritual light radiated outward, and the bead was crushed into powder.
The dark-robed man walked unsteadily, struggling over to the side of the ice coffin, his gaze locked fixedly onto the person inside.
“You’re deceiving me too…” His voice was hoarse, his fingers brushing lightly against the edge of the ice coffin. “Why…”
In the cold, desolate hall, only the sobbing wind responded to his roar.
When the morning light shone through the octagonal well opening into the subterranean chamber, Shen Yu slowly opened his eyes.
His consciousness had not yet fully returned. Feeling somewhat cold, he unconsciously curled inward, and when he turned his head sideways, his figure stiffened slightly.
There was nothing beside him.
His grayish-blue pupils trembled, and he subconsciously called out: “Song Yan…”
Then he saw a human figure moving gently outside the translucent dark-toned coffin lid.
Leaning against the profound coffin, Shen Yu half-sat up. The coffin stood half a person high, rising above the crown of his head. Tilting his head back to rest against the coffin wall, he closed his eyes.
And the person outside, maintaining the exact same posture as him, had already been sitting there for a long time.
Separated by a layer of icy profound crystal, the two of them sat in silence without a word.
A long time later, Shen Yu opened his eyes and said in a low voice, “Senior brother, I’m hungry.”
When they returned to “Two Can’t Be” (Liangbuyi), Song Aiguo was still fast asleep. Song Huaiyan prepared breakfast before calling him downstairs.
Rubbing his head and yawning, Song Aiguo still looked as though he hadn’t fully woken up. Glancing sideways at Shen Yu, who was seated with proper posture, he let out a “hmph” from his nose: “Brother Shen.”
Today’s breakfast consisted of plain congee, pickled mustard tubers, and a boiled egg. As Song Aiguo slurped his congee with the bowl raised, his dark, rolling eyeballs darted back and forth, sizing up the two of them.
Neither Shen Yu nor Song Huaiyan showed any unusual expressions on their faces, save for looking somewhat fatigued. Song Aiguo had a gut feeling that something had happened last night, yet clearly he had only been feigning sleep at first, only to end up passing out like a dead pig later without hearing a single sound.
“Xiao Ai, go to the Hall of Affairs today and split two hundred strips of bamboo; I’ll check them when I get back,” Song Huaiyan instructed while peeling an egg.
“Huh? So many?” Song Aiguo dropped his bowl with a clatter. “Also, where are you going?”
“Your Brother Shen and I have some business to take care of and need to go out.” Song Huaiyan glanced at Shen Yu, seeing that he didn’t display any extra emotion, as if leaving everything entirely to his arrangements.
“I want to go too!” Song Aiguo protested with dissatisfaction.
“You wouldn’t want to go,” Song Huaiyan said with a half-smile.
“Is there even a place like that?” Song Aiguo expressed his disbelief.
“Your elementary school.” Song Huaiyan finished peeling the egg and handed it to him. “Wanna go?”
Song Aiguo shuddered all over, his face scrunching up. Swallowing hard, he asked with a complicated expression, “What are you guys going to school for?”
Song Huaiyan picked up another egg and began slowly peeling it, saying leisurely, “Isn’t the math teacher in the class next to yours named… Xu Jiachen?”
Changning Town Elementary School had a history of over twenty years. It was renovated ten years ago, and recently, after merging with the elementary school of another town, it was undergoing expansion once again, with the roads along the perimeter undergoing simultaneous renovation and widening.
It being the weekend holiday, there were no teachers or students in the school, but the teaching building next door was still under construction, making it somewhat noisy.
After exchanging greetings with the security guard, Song Huaiyan and Shen Yu entered the campus.
“It’s been over a dozen years, and this place has changed quite a bit.” Walking and looking around, he spoke as much to himself as introducing it to Shen Yu. “I used to go to school here too.”
“People who achieve nothing always feel like thieves when returning to their alma mater.” Laughing self-deprecatingly, Song Huaiyan didn’t dwell on the sentiment, heading straight toward the faculty dormitory.
The faculty dormitory was a two-story building with outdated facilities. Blocked by the teaching building in front, the lighting was rather poor, and over the years hardly any teachers lived here anymore, save for a single room on the ground floor with a light turned on.
Song Huaiyan stopped in front of the flower bed, and Shen Yu asked, “Aren’t we going in?”
“It’s almost lunchtime; let’s wait for him to come out.” Finding a spot free of standing water, he gestured for Shen Yu to come over and stand with him.
Standing under the corridor eaves, Song Huaiyan cast an involuntary glance at Shen Yu. Today, when heading out, Shen Yu had donned a new ink-wash-style Neo-Chinese long robe, with his hair simply tied back behind him. While his attire remained relatively everyday, his face was still glaringly striking, drawing stealthy sideways glances from quite a few people along the way.
Song Huaiyan suddenly burst into laughter. Hearing the sound, Shen Yu turned his head, questioning him with a look.
“Don’t we look a lot like we’re being punished to stand in the corner right now?” Song Huaiyan’s eyes curved into crescent moons. “Junior brother, do you remember that time we were both punished to stand?”
At those words, Shen Yu’s eyebrows twitched slightly, as if recalling the memory.
“It was that time we drank together.” Song Huaiyan looked up into the distance, his eyes narrowing slightly. “You got drunk, and the next morning we both slept past our alarms. For the first time ever, we were punished by the instructor to stand as punishment for being late.”
“Actually, I wasn’t drunk. It was just that seeing you sleeping so soundly that day, as if you were having a wonderful dream, I couldn’t bear to wake you up. So I closed my eyes as well, and slept until the sun was high in the sky.”
He paused for a moment and said, “That day, I too had a wonderful dream.”
The wind ruffled the stray locks of hair across his forehead, brushing past the corners of his eyes. As he blinked his eyelashes, the hint of a smile flowing in his eyes dissipated.
“Junior brother, tell me are people in this world all greedy for a beautiful dream, unwilling to wake up?”
Standing at his side, Shen Yu also fixed his gaze upon the distant horizon. He stood in silence, resembling an unblemished sculpture of white jade.
Ever since waking up that morning, he hadn’t brought up the events of the previous night, nor had he asked questions like the ones from yesterday.
He had asked “Who are you?” a total of three times.
The first time was when waking up with amnesia in the profound coffin.
The second time was when plunging into frenzy once again during the night.
The third time was when emerging from the Samsara Realm yesterday.
Yet now, he asked nothing at all.
However, both of them already held the answer in their hearts.