The game they had played for barely more than an hour was left sitting forgotten in Ji Wangcheng’s house for nearly the entire following month, quietly gathering dust.
Meanwhile, Li Xingchuan was like a wild horse that had finally broken free of its reins. He went on a spree of unapologetic fun, determined to make up for all the entertainment and leisure time he had lost during the better part of half a year spent studying relentlessly.
He spent a week traveling with a few classmates for their graduation trip. The moment he returned, he arranged to play basketball with the guys from the local outdoor court. Before he had even properly recovered from that, someone called him out in the middle of the night to eat grilled skewers. The next day, he woke up at two in the afternoon, had a meal, then headed out to an internet café to play games… He was having the time of his life.
His grandmother even suggested that he go abroad for half a month to travel, but he turned her down.
Li Xingchuan declared with righteous conviction, “Traveling abroad is expensive! Do you even know what the exchange rate is these days?”
His grandmother scoffed. “Oh, please! Do you think I’m some clueless old woman who doesn’t know anything? Fifty or sixty thousand yuan would be enough for you to have a wonderful trip for several days. You have the time right now, so you should go out and broaden your horizons.”
Li Xingchuan replied, “Then by not going, I’ve basically earned myself fifty thousand yuan. Aren’t I impressive?”
His grandmother shot back, “You little brat.”
The grandmother and grandson lived together in an old, run-down two-bedroom apartment. Their savings, however, were quite substantial, enough that they could consider moving to a new home whenever they wanted. Nevertheless, Li Xingchuan always felt that if something unexpected happened, such as his grandmother falling ill, even the largest amount of money might not be enough to cover the expenses. Because of that, he had never been particularly demanding when it came to food, clothing, or other daily necessities.
He didn’t think there was anything wrong with their little apartment in the city center apart from the fact that the furniture was old. At the very least, the location was genuinely convenient. A ten-minute walk was all it took to reach Yucheng’s largest commercial district. Besides, even if he really wanted to travel abroad, his grandmother shouldn’t be the one paying for the trip.
His grandmother complained, “Shanshan, you’re far too stingy.”
Li Xingchuan started spouting nonsense. “The richer you are, the stingier you become. The stingier you are, the richer you get. That’s the secret to building wealth.”
His grandmother was practicing calligraphy at the time, holding a brush in her hand as she scraped the excess ink against the edge of the inkstone twice. Upon hearing his words, she let out an almost imperceptible sigh before asking, “Are you worried that our family doesn’t have enough money? Don’t let your imagination run wild.”
She was getting old, but her mind remained remarkably clear. The children of the same age in the neighboring households were always asking their parents for this and that. Some even demanded basketball shoes that cost two thousand yuan a pair. Shanshan, on the other hand, had never once asked her for anything of the sort.
“My English is terrible. If I went abroad, people would just laugh at me, and I’m not particularly interested in traveling overseas anyway.”
Li Xingchuan remained perfectly composed as he casually came up with an excuse that the older generation could hardly refuse.
“Let’s save the money for now. I’ll need it to buy a house when I get married in the future, right? How about that, Grandma?”
This move of fighting magic with magic worked instantly. His grandmother, who had been frowning just moments earlier, immediately broke into a smile and repeatedly agreed that it was a good idea. Then she began asking whether he had any female classmates he liked at school, whether he had secretly started dating anyone, and whether he would be bold enough to pursue a girl he was interested in. Li Xingchuan responded to every question with an assortment of fabricated nonsense.
And just like that, he smoothly managed to get past the whole matter.
Before long, the day when the college entrance examination results were released finally arrived.
Although Li Xingchuan had already checked his answers against the official ones, he couldn’t help feeling nervous. When entering his examination admission number, he accidentally missed a digit, which delayed him by a moment and prevented him from getting onto the website immediately.
It wasn’t until a score appeared on the screen—one considerably higher than Yuda’s admission cutoff from the previous year—that he finally let out a sigh of relief.
Getting into his preferred major might be a little uncertain, but admission to Yuda itself was practically guaranteed.
Only then did Li Xingchuan finally remember Ji Wangcheng, whom he had more or less left on the back burner for an entire month.
It wasn’t as though he had completely ignored him. They had occasionally exchanged a few messages on WeChat, but they hadn’t met in person even once.
Li Xingchuan: “Have you checked your results? How did you do?”
Ji Wangcheng: “Not bad.”
Li Xingchuan: “I got 671. What about you?”
Ji Wangcheng: “690.”
Li Xingchuan: “Holy shit, that’s amazing!! Xiao Chengzi, you’re incredible! Want to come to my school with me tomorrow and have a look around?”
On the day after the examination results were released, Yucheng No. 1 High School was holding a university application consultation event, where teachers would help students evaluate their scores and make decisions about which universities and majors to apply for.
Under normal circumstances, Yucheng No. 1 High School maintained strict entry and exit regulations. From Monday to Friday, students needed a permission slip just to leave the campus. On this particular day, however, outsiders were rarely allowed such an easy opportunity to enter the school grounds.
Ji Wangcheng agreed.
The following day, the two met at the school gate.
In July, Yucheng was like a giant steamer, oppressively hot and unbearably humid. The scorching sun was so fierce that it seemed capable of baking the fresh paint right off the rooftops.
After entering the school, they walked straight ahead for several hundred meters. The basketball courts and the athletics field were located on the left.
Despite the sweltering weather, there were actually several high school students beneath the two basketball hoops, sweating profusely as they played. They seemed tireless, continuing to throw themselves into the game and work up a sweat under the blazing sun.
Li Xingchuan couldn’t help sighing. “It’s great to be young. Even when I was at my most enthusiastic about playing basketball, I never had this much energy.” He pointed toward the court farthest away from them and unexpectedly began reminiscing about the past. “Our class basketball tournament used to be held over there. We played against the class next door, which was the top liberal arts class. A whole bunch of pretty girls showed up, all competing to be cheerleaders for that pretty-boy point guard of theirs. The guys in our class immediately turned green with envy. In the second half, we completely crushed them and gave them a shutout. We didn’t let them score a single point…”
Ji Wangcheng liked listening to him talk about these little things. He remained quiet and composed, his expression peaceful as he listened.
“Did anyone cheer for you?” he asked.
Of course they had. Quite a few people, in fact.
There had even been two girls from the neighboring class who had practically defected to the enemy’s side, standing with their group and quietly cheering them on.
“I’m this handsome. How could nobody support me?” Li Xingchuan shamelessly praised himself. “Even if I played football, people would still come to watch.”
Ji Wangcheng asked, “Then why don’t you play football?”
Li Xingchuan replied, “What if I make it onto the national team?”
Ji Wangcheng looked at him. “Can you actually do that?”
Li Xingchuan answered confidently, “Probably. I’m a man, I can lose matches, and I’m not afraid of getting scolded. That should be enough to meet the selection criteria.”
Ji Wangcheng said, “That’s really impressive.”
His tone was so calm and unruffled that it somehow sounded genuinely sincere. Li Xingchuan couldn’t quite tell whether he was mocking the Chinese national football team or complimenting him.
The consultation event was being held in the school’s gymnasium. Along the way, they encountered students and parents walking in small groups, and once they entered the gymnasium, they found themselves surrounded by plenty of familiar faces.
Numerous long consultation tables had been arranged throughout the venue. Several reputable universities from within the province had also taken advantage of the opportunity to promote themselves, all hoping to recruit the outstanding students of Yucheng No. 1 High School.
Yucheng University had its own dedicated booth labeled Yucheng University Admissions Consultation. Four or five teachers were seated there, along with two students.
Li Xingchuan walked over and struck up a conversation with one of the admissions teachers, who wore a staff badge hanging from a blue lanyard around his neck.
The teacher explained that this year’s mathematics examination had been particularly difficult, so the admission cutoff was expected to be somewhat lower than in previous years. He encouraged Li Xingchuan to be bold and list Yuda as his first choice. Then he pointed toward the young man sitting beside him.
“Look, this student here also graduated from your school. He’s your senior, and he’s currently studying computer science. You can talk to him and ask him about his experience.”
The senior student was wearing a collared short-sleeved shirt. He had a narrow face, monolid eyes, and an even, wheat-colored complexion. He was a healthy-looking, handsome young man with an athletic build. His hair wasn’t particularly long, and under the indoor lighting, it had a subtle reddish tint. He had probably dyed it, although the color hadn’t taken very strongly.
The senior student’s gaze was fixed on something behind Li Xingchuan. He seemed to have simply drifted off for a moment, yet there was an inexplicable tension about him, as though he were standing on high alert, bracing himself for something. His right hand, which had been tucked into his pocket, slowly curled into a fist.
Following the direction of the senior student’s gaze, Li Xingchuan turned his head. He had assumed there might be a pretty girl standing behind him, but instead, all he saw was Ji Wangcheng.
The young man was tall and slender, like an elegant bamboo stalk standing upright.
People flowed back and forth around him, the crowd constantly shifting as students and parents passed by, yet none of that movement seemed to disturb him in the slightest.
Li Xingchuan knew that Ji Wangcheng’s social aversion had kicked in again. He waved at him and called out, “Come over here.”
Ji Wangcheng obediently walked over.
The two of them stood together in front of the senior student.
The senior looked at them, his expression turning slightly bewildered. He resembled a computer that had been overloaded with calculations and frozen completely, its screen stuck on the dreaded blue screen of death, unable to produce an immediate response.
A second later, he finally recovered and broke into a warm, friendly smile before introducing himself. “Hello, you two. I’m Lin Enze.”
“Hello, Senior. My name is Li Xingchuan.” Li Xingchuan patted Ji Wangcheng on the shoulder and said with a cheerful smile, “This is my childhood friend. He’s also planning to apply to Yuda for computer science.”
Lin Enze nodded, looking as though he had suddenly realized something. “Oh, Student Li, I know who you are. I’ve seen you play basketball before. I didn’t expect you to be such an excellent student as well…”
He spoke at an unhurried pace, as though recalling things from memory while he talked. That made his compliments sound particularly sincere, to the point that even Li Xingchuan began to feel a little embarrassed by all the praise.
Every so often, Lin Enze’s gaze drifted toward Ji Wangcheng, who was standing beside Li Xingchuan. After chatting for a while, he asked in a seemingly casual manner, “Is your childhood friend also a student at our school?”
Li Xingchuan interpreted the other man’s scrutinizing gaze as an attempt to familiarize himself with someone’s face and didn’t think much of it. “No, he isn’t. He goes to school in the capital.”
Lin Enze picked up the conversation pleasantly. “I see. No wonder I don’t really remember seeing him around.”
The two continued exchanging a few remarks and added each other as friends on their social media accounts. Throughout the entire exchange, Ji Wangcheng remained thoroughly uninterested, standing to the side like a mobile air conditioner that had no ability to speak.
Li Xingchuan was only interested in Yuda. Compared with his preferred university, all the other schools were nothing more than plain white rice or the blood of a mosquito—completely unappealing and not worth considering further. After finishing his conversation with the senior, he was ready to pull Ji Wangcheng away and leave.
However, just then, a familiar face appeared in front of the consultation desk.
It was Wang Wenyuan, the very same guy who had supposedly awakened a superpower at their graduation gathering.
He had come with his mother. Normally, he was a rather arrogant person, but at this moment, he followed meekly behind her like a little chick trailing after its mother hen.
Wang Wenyuan’s mother pulled over a plastic stool and sat down, looking extremely anxious. “Teacher, my son didn’t perform well. He only scored a little over 640. Does he still have any hope…?”
Her tone made it sound as though her son had contracted some strange illness and she was asking a doctor how to treat it.
Li Xingchuan was amused by the comparison that popped into his head.
Wang Wenyuan might have been a little lacking in character, but academically, he was an exceptionally capable exam-taking machine. He usually ranked among the top five students in their class, and he had even stood a chance of getting into one of the country’s top two universities. For someone like him, scoring just over 640 was indeed a disastrous fall from grace.
A few seconds later, Wang Wenyuan noticed Li Xingchuan and stared straight at him.
That only made Li Xingchuan feel even more delighted at his misfortune. As he headed toward the exit, he asked Ji Wangcheng, “What should we have for lunch?”
Ji Wangcheng replied, “Anything is fine.”
“Hey, Li Xingchuan!”
Wang Wenyuan called out to him.
Li Xingchuan hadn’t expected anyone to voluntarily come looking for him just to invite ridicule. Wang Wenyuan strode over in only a few steps, adopting an attitude that seemed deliberately aggressive. His expression was angry, and every step landed heavily against the floor, as though he were trying to make his displeasure known through the force of his footsteps alone.
“I didn’t do well on the exam. If you want to laugh at me, then go ahead. You don’t have to pretend you don’t even consider me worth noticing.” Wang Wenyuan forced out those words in a defiant tone, trying to sound tough. “It’s just one college entrance examination. Who knows what will happen in the future?”
Li Xingchuan was so astonished that he nearly clicked his tongue in disbelief. Not only was he not angry, but he actually let out a laugh.
Idiots were a common sight, but an idiot who was so enthusiastic about inventing imaginary enemies and picking fights with them was a rare specimen indeed.
Li Xingchuan’s reaction was like a single drop of oil falling into a fire. In an instant, it ignited Wang Wenyuan’s anger.
“What the hell is so funny?!”
“Do you really think you’re so amazing? Who knows whether you had your mother perform some kind of ritual for you, or whether you put a curse on someone else…”
By the time he reached that point, his confidence began to falter. He seemed to realize that he had no real grounds for making such accusations, and his voice grew quieter and quieter as he continued.
“Maybe the reason I didn’t do well was because you told her to… to…”
Li Xingchuan’s smile faded, and his gaze turned cold.
Wang Wenyuan’s lips moved as though he wanted to say something more, but under that icy stare, his words gradually died in his throat.
Li Xingchuan was usually all smiles and jokes, the kind of person who seemed to take everything lightly. Seeing him suppress his anger like this, however, made him seem particularly unsettling.
Silence descended between them, while the surrounding voices continued to echo throughout the venue.
The air conditioning inside the gymnasium was running at full blast. Wang Wenyuan suddenly shivered.
“Fine.” Li Xingchuan raised his eyebrows lazily. “I’ll go tell your mother right now that her son failed his exam because I put a curse on him. It’s not your fault. Just wait here.”
With that, he genuinely started walking toward Wang Wenyuan’s mother.
Wang Wenyuan was so startled that he immediately reached out to grab Li Xingchuan by the arm, trying to stop him. “Don’t—”
Before Li Xingchuan could pull his arm away, Ji Wangcheng moved even faster. He twisted his hand and shoved Wang Wenyuan backward. Wang Wenyuan stumbled several steps away, creating a little distance between them.
Ji Wangcheng’s expression was cold and listless, the displeasure between his brows completely undisguised.
As he withdrew his hand, the back of it brushed against the skin of Li Xingchuan’s forearm where Wang Wenyuan had just touched him. The contact was brief, passing lightly over the spot. Using the natural motion of pulling his hand back, Ji Wangcheng casually wiped the area, almost as though he were brushing away a speck of dust.
Li Xingchuan froze.
…That tickled a little.
Ji Wangcheng’s body temperature was so low.
Wang Wenyuan, who had been pushed aside, turned red and then pale, his expression shifting between embarrassment and discomfort. After a long while, he finally managed to mumble something so quietly that it was barely audible.
“Sorry.”
At those words, Li Xingchuan finally came back to his senses.
He had been feeling rather irritated a moment ago, but after Ji Wangcheng’s unexpected interruption, he suddenly couldn’t even remember what he had been angry about anymore.
Whatever.
This was an unimportant person, after all.
Li Xingchuan stared at Wang Wenyuan, who now looked distinctly guilty standing opposite him. After a long moment, he suddenly lifted his foot and planted it firmly on top of Wang Wenyuan’s white shoe. He ground his shoe against it twice, leaving several dirty, grayish marks on the pristine white surface.
It didn’t hurt, but the humiliation was immense.
Because of that movement, the two of them appeared to be standing quite close to each other, almost like a pair of friends who had a good relationship and were simply standing face to face exchanging pleasantries.
Li Xingchuan smiled carelessly, lowering his voice so that only he and Wang Wenyuan could hear him. With complete indifference, he asked, “When have I ever considered you worth noticing?”
Wang Wenyuan stood rooted to the spot, staring blankly at the retreating figures of the two young men. For a moment, he simply remained there in a daze, unable to process what had just happened.
After more than ten seconds, he finally drew a deep breath, overwhelmed by an embarrassment so intense that he hardly knew what to do with himself. If he had been standing somewhere completely deserted, he would probably have wanted to clutch his head, crouch down on the ground, and roll around in sheer frustration just to relieve the unbearable turmoil inside him.
—What the hell was that? Had I gone crazy just now? Why on earth did I say something like that?
The conflict between Wang Wenyuan and Li Xingchuan could be traced back to the very beginning of their first year of high school.
Yucheng No. 1 High School, whose full name was Yucheng Senior High School, was one of the top-performing schools in the province in terms of university admission rates.
Bright, academically successful teenagers tended to carry a certain degree of pride, and Wang Wenyuan was undoubtedly one of them. He had graduated from Yucheng Junior High School and considered himself part of No. 1 High School’s own established lineage of students. Without anyone needing to teach him, he had naturally developed a sense of superiority based on where people came from.
Most of his classmates had graduated from several well-known, prestigious junior high schools. Li Xingchuan was the only one who had come from No. 9 Middle School, an institution notorious for its terrible discipline.
According to Wang Wenyuan’s assumptions, Li Xingchuan should have occupied the very bottom of the class’s invisible hierarchy of contempt. Everyone should have looked down on him and wanted nothing to do with him.
Reality, however, had unfolded in a completely different way.
Li Xingchuan was exceptionally popular. Nobody looked down on him because he had attended a poorly regarded junior high school. If anything, his background had somehow become an advantage. Every now and then, his classmates would gather around him and ask whether the various legendary stories about No. 9 Middle School were actually true.
Even their perpetually sour-faced mathematics teacher had specifically chosen Li Xingchuan to be the class representative for mathematics. And the girl Wang Wenyuan secretly had a crush on would even take the initiative to strike up conversations with him.
His dissatisfaction accumulated day after day, and the more time passed, the more Li Xingchuan irritated him.
Wang Wenyuan’s mother was one of those parents who devoted herself wholeheartedly to turning her son into a successful person. She was either busy pushing him to study harder or visiting temples and praying to the gods, begging heaven to bless her son with admission to a prestigious university.
One day, she met a woman who was supposedly a spiritual medium whose rituals never failed. That very evening, she brought her son along to pay the woman a visit.
And that was the occasion on which Wang Wenyuan encountered a side of Li Xingchuan that was completely different from the person he knew at school.
The woman who was referred to as a spiritual medium had completely lost her composure. She screamed at him furiously, “I never want to see you again!”
Li Xingchuan, meanwhile, had a single-strap bag slung diagonally across his back and a cigarette held between his teeth. A faint crimson ember still glowed at the tip, like a finishing touch that made his already translucent, porcelain-white skin appear even paler and his features even more striking.
He didn’t even turn his head.
He simply raised one hand and gave a casual little wave over his shoulder, responding to her in a thoroughly nonchalant, delinquent-like manner.
“Fine by me. Just pretend you never had a son like me.”
He looked every bit the rebellious delinquent.
Before that day, Wang Wenyuan had already disliked Li Xingchuan. Afterward, however, his feelings became more complicated. He still couldn’t stand Li Xingchuan, but he no longer dared to provoke him directly. He was afraid that Li Xingchuan might gather a whole group of his buddies and teach him a lesson.
As a result, Wang Wenyuan confined himself to making sarcastic, passive-aggressive remarks behind the scenes, never daring to go too far.
He genuinely felt that there was something deeply uncanny about Li Xingchuan.
Li Xingchuan seemed able to acquire the kind of good relationships that Wang Wenyuan desperately wanted without even trying. He was always wasting time playing around and shooting hoops, yet his grades were still excellent. Wang Wenyuan worked so hard, but no matter what he did, he always seemed to fall short of Li Xingchuan in one way or another.
There was simply no way he could avoid resenting the other boy. In his mind, Li Xingchuan had become his number-one rival.
A few days earlier, Wang Wenyuan had genuinely believed that he possessed a superpower that allowed him to win every single game of rock paper scissors.
At first, winning once or twice had been nothing more than a coincidence, hardly worth paying attention to. Winning ten or twenty times could still be attributed to extraordinary luck.
But after putting his supposed ability to the test, he discovered that he could win fifty times, a hundred times, even three hundred times. No matter who he played against, he simply never lost a single round of rock-paper-scissors.
Naturally, he had started to get carried away, convincing himself that something about him had become fundamentally different now that he had turned eighteen.
Unfortunately, that sense of uniqueness hadn’t lasted very long. Once again, it was shattered with ridiculous ease at Li Xingchuan’s hands.
Wang Wenyuan had often made malicious assumptions about Li Xingchuan, but he knew perfectly well that those thoughts were absurd and that he had no real justification for them. Consequently, he had never actually voiced them aloud.
Yet just moments ago, something had suddenly gone wrong with his ability to control his emotions. The restraints holding back his anger and malice had inexplicably snapped, and all those ugly thoughts had surged out at once.
For some inexplicable reason, he had been unable to hold his temper back any longer. He had blurted out everything that had been festering in his mind, only to end up being ridiculed in return.
Wang Wenyuan sighed.
Perhaps he had simply performed too poorly on the college entrance examination, and the blow had affected his state of mind.
After some careful deliberation, Li Xingchuan decided that hotpot would be the best choice for lunch.
Although the so-called careful deliberation consisted of nothing more than rolling a die to decide which hotpot restaurant to visit, followed by Ji Wangcheng nodding in agreement.
When the divided hotpot arrived at their table, Li Xingchuan reached out and pushed the handle, rotating the pot until the clear broth faced Ji Wangcheng.
In summer, hotpot absolutely had to be eaten in an air-conditioned room, preferably accompanied by a glass of ice-cold watermelon juice.
Ji Wangcheng asked, “Who was that person just now?”
Li Xingchuan looked at the female server who was bringing dishes to their table, momentarily confused. He had almost answered, I don’t know him either, but fortunately, he realized what Ji Wangcheng meant before the words could leave his mouth.
Ji Wangcheng was referring to Wang Wenyuan.
Li Xingchuan shrugged and replied without much interest, “Just some classmate I’m not close to. Wang, the Random Passerby.”
The spicy broth came to a boil much faster than the clear broth. While the latter remained calm and undisturbed, the red, oily soup was already bubbling vigorously, releasing an irresistible aroma that seemed to seep straight into their noses and awaken their appetites.
Li Xingchuan, of course, hadn’t eaten breakfast. His eyes practically lit up as he stared at the red broth, silently praying that it would start boiling even faster.
The hotpot restaurant specialized in the flavors of Shancheng, and its interior design paid tribute to the same regional style. Even the tables were simple, square wooden ones, giving the place a rustic, unpretentious atmosphere.
Slices of fatty beef and strips of beef tripe were already arranged neatly on ice, waiting for their moment to be plunged into the boiling pot and cooked.
Ji Wangcheng sat on a long wooden bench without a backrest, yet his spine remained perfectly straight, his posture relaxed and composed.
His eyelashes were long and fine, and whenever he lowered his eyes, they cast a small patch of pale gray shadow beneath them.
After a while, the red broth finally began to boil. Almost at the same moment, Ji Wangcheng suddenly spoke again.
“He hates you.” Ji Wangcheng stated this as a simple fact, then solemnly supplied the subject’s name to make his meaning completely clear. “Wang, the Random Passerby.”
Li Xingchuan immediately burst out laughing. His hand, which was reaching for the beef tripe, shook slightly, sending two drops of red chili oil splattering onto the table.
A mere ordinary classmate with whom he didn’t get along, someone like Wang Wenyuan, wasn’t capable of having much of an impact on him. Li Xingchuan had always been rather carefree and thick-skinned, accepting both goodwill and malice from other people without letting either affect him too deeply. There were plenty of people who couldn’t stand him, after all.
Li Xingchuan teased, “If someone hates me, does that mean I have to pay attention to them? How many pairs of eyes do you think I have? If I tried to keep track of everyone who disliked me, I’d end up with two thousand degrees of astigmatism sooner or later.”
Ji Wangcheng stared at him stubbornly. “He made you angry.”
Li Xingchuan rubbed his nose. “Did he?”
Ji Wangcheng answered firmly, “Yes.”
He couldn’t fool Ji Wangcheng.
That man had reminded him of his mother just now, and the memory had made his mood turn slightly gloomy.
“A little, I guess,” Li Xingchuan replied casually.
Wang Wenyuan was walking along the path leading toward the teaching building.
He told his mother that he had left some things behind in the old teaching building and needed to go back to retrieve them. In reality, the classrooms had already been completely emptied. He simply couldn’t bear to remain in the gymnasium any longer, watching his mother act like a broken record, endlessly complaining about how outstanding her son had always been and how he had somehow failed to perform to his full potential during the college entrance examination.
There was a short, tree-lined path connecting the back entrance of the gymnasium to the teaching building, its greenery lush and flourishing.
It was clearly midday in July, yet the wind had begun to turn cold. It swept through the slender branches of the shrubs lining the path, making them sway and rustle as it brushed over the tender green grass.
Gradually, the sunlight overhead began to dim.
Perhaps the sun had been temporarily hidden behind a cloud. It even seemed to have become a little cooler.
Wang Wenyuan thought nothing of it.
The path was silent, and even the cicadas’ cries gradually began to fade.
The sky darkened to a certain point, then stopped growing any darker. The shadows cast by the surrounding buildings merely became faint and indistinct, lending the entire scene an inexplicably eerie atmosphere.
Rustle… rustle…
A faint, unsettling sound came from behind him, but Wang Wenyuan paid it no attention.
Trees stood in neat rows along either side of the path. Whenever the wind blew, the sea of foliage seemed to sing along with it, the continuous rustling of leaves rising and falling without end.
His shoelace had come undone, so Wang Wenyuan bent down to tie it.
The conspicuous footprint on the top of his shoe stung his eyes.
He was reminded of Li Xingchuan’s unbearably arrogant expression from earlier. He pursed his lips and frowned.
It was only when he straightened up again that Wang Wenyuan finally realized something was wrong.
A long, slender shadow had somehow fallen onto the concrete ground right beside his feet.
Startled, he whipped his head around and discovered that the shadow had extended from the tip of a tree’s shadow. It lay only a few centimeters away from the side of his shoe.
Under normal circumstances, it should have stopped a full three meters away from him. Yet now, it had somehow stretched far beyond its proper length, winding its way toward him like a snake flicking its tongue as it stealthily followed its prey, poised and eager to strike.
Wang Wenyuan shuddered violently in shock and immediately took off running.
The shadow on the ground lunged after him with astonishing speed and precision!