"Ha, well said. Bye-bye means bye-bye — the next one'll be sweeter." Wang Mo laughed, and out of the corner of his eye glanced at He Jiyu; seeing that he said nothing, he let the subject drop.
The three of them went up and into the private room.
All of them were warriors in the Golden Age Bracket with ambitions on the martial path, so naturally they were careful about food; they ordered one high-energy nutrition set each and added nothing to it.
For Fang Yu and Wang Mo, who you ate with mattered more than what you ate.
The three of them talked — about their first and second years, mostly Fang Yu and Wang Mo, with He Jiyu listening... and as time went on he loosened up, and asked, seemingly idly, about Ye Zhiyin.
"You both know roughly how it went."
"At the start of second year, at the mixer for the new intake." Fang Yu said. "She was hosting, and that's how we met. She's lively, her character's good, she just likes her fun... There were a few more events after that, we got to know each other better, and she often asked me out."
"Mm." Wang Mo nodded. "There were plenty of events in first and second year."
At a martial junior college, students mainly trained the martial path.
But through generations of practice and follow-up study, at the schools and across society, it had long since been found that managing students on purely military lines and driving them to train under high pressure tended to produce psychological problems on a wide scale, and warped character more easily.
Warriors especially.
Powerful force, staggering destructive capacity — and if the character warps, the consequences can be irreversible... So for many years, even martial arts universities and junior colleges had organised social activities of every kind for their students.
Teaching too was arranged to give students more time to train on their own initiative.
Speaking of the martial path.
The so-called tempering of a martial heart also required experience enough and sights enough before the heart grew full and strong, and the road could be walked further.
"A woman chasing a man has only a gauze curtain to get through. You really weren't tempted?" Wang Mo joked.
"To say I wasn't tempted at all would be a lie," Fang Yu said, smiling. "But people want different things. I turned her down a few times... She must have sensed what I was thinking, and after that we were in touch less."
"Neither of us ever said it out loud. If we run into each other at school we say hello... Old Mo, you went a bit far back there." Fang Yu shook his head.
If it had ever been said out loud, the meaning would have changed.
"Not my fault. I thought she was the one who turned you down and I was standing up for you." Wang Mo spread his hands. "I mean, at our age, who turns down a pretty girl throwing herself at him? Only a training maniac like you."
"Take my dad."
"He was worried I was young and someone would run a scam on me for money, so to strip the mystique off girls he took me to a hostess KTV himself once I got into junior college." Wang Mo said. "The result being that I no longer believe in love at all."
Fang Yu blinked.
A hostess KTV? He had only heard of them; he had never been.
Still, Fang Yu believed in love. He simply held one thing to be truer: that he must keep his fate in his own hands... and the martial path was the most important thing in his life right now.
In this age ordinary people lived past a hundred, and the legal retirement age was seventy-five.
Powerful warriors lived far longer.
Marriage? There was no need to think about it this early.
And in martial training, efficiency before thirty far outran efficiency after... particularly in the Golden Age Bracket, where a year of hard training was worth five later, or ten.
"Old Fang. Old Mo." He Jiyu spoke suddenly, his voice a little muffled. "Do you think I chose wrong back then? That I shouldn't have married so young?"
Fang Yu and Wang Mo exchanged a glance.
They had been talking so long... and in truth, most of it had been said for He Jiyu's benefit.
Three years as roommates, temperaments that suited, and they knew his situation fairly well.
"There's no right or wrong to it," Fang Yu said. "Marrying and having children early has its advantages too... Your kids may be at university before either of us is married. It'll save you trouble later."
He Jiyu listened, and said nothing more.
"Old He."
"We've eaten this meal, and none of us knows when we'll meet again." Wang Mo turned serious. "Have you run into some difficulty?"
"If you have, just say it. We'll help where we can," Wang Mo said.
"I wouldn't call it difficulty." He Jiyu shook his head. "Only that marriage turned out far more complicated than I imagined. You know about Liu Ying being pregnant and having the babies."
Fang Yu and Wang Mo both nodded.
The three roommates had made very different choices in their private lives: Wang Mo went through girlfriends one after another, and Fang Yu concentrated on training.
He Jiyu had found a girlfriend in the second semester of his first year and fallen deeply in love.
In his third year his girlfriend fell pregnant — twins — and they married... The children were born in the second semester of that year, and since the full-month banquet was held in Wuling City, Fang Yu and Wang Mo had gone specially to attend.
"I used to think marriage and children were nothing much."
"The way I planned it, my parents and Liu Ying's parents aren't old, so they could help out a bit." He Jiyu said. "And there are childcare robots to assist now... But once the babies came, none of it was anything like I thought."
"Two children... The state's first subsidy is substantial, a hundred thousand Star Coins per child, but Liu Ying has high standards for them, and the outgoings are heavy.
"And there's buying a flat to arrange. If we take on a mortgage the pressure of that is heavy too.
"Neither set of parents is fully retired, and I've a younger brother, and she has an older brother and a younger sister. They all have jobs to go to, and a childcare robot still can't fully replace a person... Liu Ying is at home with the babies full time." He Jiyu shook his head. "The financial pressure is heavy. In short, it's a tangle right now."
"Nothing at all like what I imagined."
Fang Yu and Wang Mo exchanged another glance.
They had known roughly that things were not going smoothly for He Jiyu, but they had not expected trouble like this.
"The crucial thing."
"My Life Tier still isn't Level 15, so even finding a decent job is hard." He Jiyu's voice dropped. "There are too many martial junior-college graduates now. If your skill isn't good enough you can't even get in as an assistant coach at an ordinary martial society."
Fang Yu understood, more or less.
Martial junior-college graduates were fewer than academic junior-college or even academic university graduates... but if your martial attainment was low, a well-paid job was not easy to find.
Level 15 was a threshold for most martial junior-college students.
Even with an Aspect awakened, what a martial junior-college student awakened was basically always a Lower Aspect, and without buying training drugs... reaching Level 15 by the end of the third year was no easy thing either.
Fang Yu had reached it.
Partly through what his family put in, which most people could not match, and partly because he had an Innate Divine Ability and an extraordinary talent for skill, so that his tempering efficiency after Subtlety far outran what it had been before.
And the last thing was that Fang Yu committed himself to the martial path completely.
It was not as though swallowing drugs and treasures sent a Life Tier climbing by itself... Natural treasures that raised you with no effort at all were far too rare, priced in the hundreds of millions, and nobody short of a super-rich man could buy them.
Ordinary drugs and treasures, even ones worth millions like the Ice-Heart Marrow-Cleansing Fruit, still required the user to train hard himself before they gave their full effect.
Martial training, in its successive gains, was a great pleasure.
And equally a great pain.
Pleasure and pain did not contradict each other... and this age held far too many temptations.
Love and pleasure, good food, projection games, the exhaustion that comes each time the body is pushed to its limit, the laziness of the mind... To overcome all of it is in fact extremely difficult.
It takes absolute self-discipline and focus.
And focus is itself a kind of talent.
That was exactly why Fang Yu was convinced Wang Mo was not as simple as he appeared... Without a certain resolve and endurance in training, money alone would not have got him to Level 20 that fast.
Most martial junior-college students went on training after graduation and reached Level 15 before the Golden Age Bracket ended at twenty-five... and even without spending extra money, that meant paying out a great deal of time and energy.
In a situation like He Jiyu's, putting more time into training was plainly not realistic.
"Old He."
"We've been roommates. I won't make a speech about it," Wang Mo said. "A friend of mine has just opened a company and he's short of people. I'll send you the contact details in a moment, and I'll tell him your situation... Go and try."
"Would I be up to it?" He Jiyu hesitated.
His instinct was to refuse... but the thought of his wife's call just now stopped him.
"Try first and see. If you think it doesn't suit, that's fine too." Wang Mo made it sound easy. "Right, it's nearly time. Fang Yu and I are off to the Martial Arts Building. You'll still be in Wuling City, so there'll be chances to meet."
"Right." He Jiyu saw Fang Yu and Wang Mo out of the room.
He watched the two of them go down the stairs.
He drew a deep breath.
He Jiyu took out his phone and called the number pinned at the top; it connected in three seconds, and a smile came onto his face. "Love — how are the babies? All right? Feeding and sleeping properly? I'll be back this afternoon. About the job — don't worry, we're good friends, they offered to help before I'd even opened my mouth. Don't worry, the pay won't be low."
"Mm, you eat first..." He Jiyu ended the call smiling.
He put the phone away.
The smile went off his face.
"You've had a hard time of it, following me."
"If I'd never fallen in love back then... even if we hadn't married and had children, things would be a lot better now." The thoughts came crowding. "If I'd put more into martial training — I couldn't have hoped for a university recommendation like Old Fang and Old Mo."
"But at least I wouldn't be struggling to find a decent job, and needing Old Mo's help."
His talent for skill was nowhere near Fang Yu's.
But it counted as decent among this year's junior-college students... With enough effort, training with everything he had, a Life Tier of Level 15 should not have been hard.
And then the small business of living tangled around him, and everything changed.
"No wonder."
"I used to read history and see a strategist give his lord an upper, a middle and a lower plan, and the lord would take the middle or the lower one, and I thought every one of those lords was a fool." He Jiyu sighed inwardly. "Old Fang and Old Mo both warned me at the time... How am I any different? I took the lower plan."
As a friend.
If life had not driven him to it, why would he ever have bowed his head and poured out his troubles to his two brothers?
He had not wanted their help — otherwise he would not have been out sending CVs.
He Jiyu understood... From today, he and his two roommates were on entirely different roads. They were still chasing the martial path, still chasing greater strength.
And he had to go on facing that monster called living.
***
Walking along the road.
"Fang Yu, I used to blame my old man for shattering every illusion I had about love." Wang Mo shook his head. "After seeing Old He today, suddenly I don't blame him."
"Don't be too pessimistic about it," Fang Yu said, shaking his head. "There's plenty of pain in marrying and having children, but there's happiness in it too... As my dad says, after my mother went missing on the Primordial Star, if it hadn't been for the three of us he could never have come out of that dark stretch."
"True enough." Wang Mo remembered something. "My mum's said the same — the thing she regrets least is having me."
"Old Mo."
"This job you've introduced Old He to?" Fang Yu asked.
"Don't worry, it isn't my dad's company." Wang Mo smiled. "It's a relative's, and I'll call and explain properly... Old He never speaks up until he's desperate. I won't embarrass him."
"Besides."
"Three years of junior college, and I've only got a handful of friends... I don't want to lose one of them entirely." Wang Mo said it with feeling.
***
Two in the afternoon.
Not long after Fang Yu and Wang Mo got back to the ground-floor hall of the Martial Arts Building, once the crowd had more or less gathered.
The ten places on the second recommendation list, and the names of the seventy students qualified for the combat assessment, went up on the big screen together.
"I'm on it."
"Yes! Tenth — just made it."
"Not selected after all. Nothing for it but the combat assessment in September... the Primordial Star. I've never been."
"Damn it! I didn't even make the combat assessment list? Am I really that bad?" Talk broke out across the hall at once; some delighted, some wretched.
The most excited, naturally, were the ten students recommended outright.
The other seventy taking the combat assessment still had hope of a sort... The most disappointed were those who had not even made the combat list.
"Old Fang, I'm on the recommendation list." Wang Mo's delight lasted a moment before his brows drew together. "Wait — that's not right! Old Fang, how are you not selected?"
"Your name isn't even on the combat assessment list."
"What's going on?"