Yang Zengyue didn’t say much, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to keep her emotions in check.
After hanging up, she tilted her head back, and yet the tears kept falling.
Who was it that said tears won’t fall if you tip your head back when you cry?
All lies.
She was still every bit as heartbroken…
For once she let herself be childish and sentimental. Yang Zengyue, the big shot who had walked through all the blood and carnage of the apocalypse, became in this moment a child who had finally found her way home again.
Seven years without shedding a single tear, and now that she was back, she cried her fill all at once.
Before long she wiped her tears dry, composed herself, braced her left hand on the iron bed frame, and dropped lightly to the floor without making a sound.
She found the wardrobe with her name on it, took out a set of light clothes, a white T-shirt and jeans, changed briskly, then walked to the dormitory window and drew back the curtain to look outside.
At the foot of the ring-shaped dorm buildings, students hurried past, clearly rushing to class.
Everything looked so vibrantly alive.
In the seven years of the apocalypse, buildings like a school had long since disappeared. Even if such a building had survived, it would never have held this many people.
After thinking quietly for a while, Yang Zengyue shouldered her backpack and left the dorm.
She had once been a rule-abiding student. Shu Ranran had just said there was class, so she should go and put in an appearance first.
Yang Zengyue was fast. Relying on her hazy memory, and picking out the scent Shu Ranran had left in the air, she found the classroom after several minutes.
When she walked in, every classmate turned to stare at her, astonished.
The usually model student Yang Zengyue was actually late!
Yang Zengyue narrowed her eyes and swept the classroom with a single glance. Her aura was so commanding that these green youngsters shrank back, and everyone hurriedly looked away…
Holy, holy crap, holy crap…
How had the model student’s gaze turned so terrifying? They didn’t even dare meet her eyes.
Yang Zengyue nodded at the teacher, Yan Lingjun, and gave her a cool, indifferent glance, one that nearly made Yan Lingjun take a step back.
This student’s whole bearing had changed!
Yang Zengyue caught Yan Lingjun’s flash of unease and felt a flicker of doubt, but she didn’t stop, she went straight to her seat.
That was where she always sat. Even when she wasn’t there, no one would take it.
Dropping her backpack, Yang Zengyue sat down straight and proper.
Beside her, Shu Ranran was astonished beyond words. Today’s Yang Zengyue was utterly different.
The way she had swept her gaze over them as she entered, it looked a little like a ruler surveying all under heaven…
That was no exaggeration.
That worldly, seasoned air—Shu Ranran was certain she’d seen it on television.
There was the dominance of someone at the top, plus a touch of roguishness, yet without any malice.
Yan Lingjun studied the student and said nothing. When Yang Zengyue had looked her way just now, her heart had suddenly raced, and she had felt a jolt of panic. Had she been overawed by the girl’s aura?
Yan Lingjun didn’t miss it, but she didn’t dwell on why.
She was, however, very interested in this student’s suddenly changed temperament.
After all, this student was famously the type to mind her own business and float above it all, never getting involved in anything, never joining any clubs.
She only ever associated with her roommate Shu Ranran and a girl from the next class named Yu Yingqiu.
Nobody knew her life story.
Not even where she was from, no classmate had ever heard a word about it from her.
She was something of a campus legend: beautiful, top of her class, and above all athletically gifted. Students whispered that she knew kung fu, though no one had ever seen it.
Everything else about her was a blank.
Parents, family, siblings, she had never mentioned any of them.
She had always been a very quiet person.
Quiet, yet impossible to overlook.
Yan Lingjun mused for a moment, then stopped looking at Yang Zengyue and went on with the day’s lesson.
Yang Zengyue sat quietly and upright, eyes fixed on Yan Lingjun at the lectern, though her thoughts had already wandered across mountains and rivers.
Rack her brain as she might, she couldn’t make sense of what was happening before her.
Her memory was stuck on scenes from the apocalypse, she couldn’t pull herself free.
She sat like that for over half an hour, until the bell rang for the end of class and Shu Ranran nudged her. Only then did she come back to herself.
She closed her book, slid it into her backpack, and shouldered it in one smooth motion.
Shu Ranran looked exasperated. “Zengyue, there’s still class in a bit. Where are you going?”
Huh?
She’d forgotten about that.
The feeling in Yang Zengyue’s heart was hard to describe. She could only sit back down.
She checked her phone and finally decided not to waste time, she really didn’t have much of it.
As for studying, there’d be no chance for it later anyway. She needed to free up time to do more important things.
If none of it happened, if the apocalypse never came, it wouldn’t be too late to come back and finish her studies then.
“If the teacher takes attendance in a bit, say I’ve got a stomachache and I’m resting in the dorm,” Yang Zengyue told Shu Ranran, asking her to cover for her.
In her past life she and Shu Ranran had gotten along well, and she’d often covered for her, so she should be willing to do her this favor.
With that, Yang Zengyue shouldered her backpack and headed straight for the dorm.
She left behind an astonished Shu Ranran and the eyes of her other classmates following her out.
On the way, she happened to run into Yan Lingjun, who had finished class and was leaving school to run an errand.
What a coincidence.
“Student Yang, that matter I mentioned to you last time, have you thought it over?” Yan Lingjun’s soft, pleasant voice stopped Yang Zengyue, who was hurrying toward the dorm.
Just about to slip away, Yang Zengyue paused at her words. It took her a long while to recall that Yan Lingjun meant the exchange program at another university next semester.
At that thought, Yang Zengyue smoothly composed her expression, beads of sweat even forming on her brow, and said weakly, “Teacher Yan, I’ll hold off on that for now. My family isn’t well-off, we can’t afford the extra expense.”
But Yan Lingjun’s next words put her on alert. “You could discuss it with your grandfather. He’d probably agree, this concerns your future.”
Yang Zengyue narrowed her eyes. She recalled that when she’d filled out her records before, she had indeed listed only a grandfather. But would Yan Lingjun go digging through her file?
And why would she look at her file?
Head lowered, Yang Zengyue didn’t see the smile at the corner of Yan Lingjun’s lips. What she was turning over in her mind was that this teacher’s interest in her ran too high, there was something off about it.
Burying the doubt, Yang Zengyue told Yan Lingjun, face pale, that she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go rest in the dorm, then clutched her stomach and hurried off.
Yan Lingjun, however, kept gazing thoughtfully at her retreating back, thinking of the name in the “grandfather” field of her file, which was not the person her family had long been searching for.
Could there be some discrepancy here?
Still, a girl this unusual, with such a singular air about her, she couldn’t help paying attention.
Especially since, on her household registration file, the three characters “Sikun Mountain” stood out so conspicuously.
Only after Yang Zengyue’s figure had vanished from sight did Yan Lingjun head to the parking lot, meaning to go home and ask around more.
Not until she could no longer sense that probing gaze behind her did Yang Zengyue straighten up and stride quickly back to the dorm.
She would look into Yan Lingjun, but not now.
There were several families in Nanyuan she needed to comb through, and when the time came she’d untangle Yan Lingjun’s family connections along with them.
She might well turn something up.
Back in the dorm, Yang Zengyue plugged in the power and switched on the computer, fumbling for a while before her old skills gradually came back to her.
Going by memory, she went on shopping sites and bought a great many practical reference books, on engineering, handicrafts, carpentry, agricultural cultivation, and the like, setting the delivery address to Sikun Mountain in every case.
When she went home for summer break, she’d be able to collect them.
She also searched up a lot of technical entries, recorded them carefully in documents, and saved them to a USB drive to print out before heading home, so she could keep them for later.
The documents were dense with material, all about wind power, solar power, biogas lighting, and so on.
Just now in class, her mind hadn’t been on the textbook at all, she’d been making plans the whole time.
She didn’t know why, after dying, she hadn’t returned to nothingness but instead to the time before the apocalypse.
But since she was back, she would make up for every regret of her past life.
She would not let all that pain happen again.
Most important of all was to save her master.
Then she would take Sikun Mountain and Xingyun Temple firmly into her own hands, and give no one else the chance to covet them.
Summer break would start in a few days. Once she was back at Sikun Mountain, she would turn it into a closed, self-sufficient farm.
Then she would raise high walls.
Before the coldest month arrived, she would seal off all the surroundings and every road leading to Sikun Mountain.
There was also a wind farm that had been built not far from Sikun Mountain, in Wind Valley. Once the apocalypse came, she might be able to use it to secure a free supply of electricity.
By the time the deep-winter month passed, Sikun Mountain should have a simple power system up and running, guaranteeing supplies of electricity and water.