The dorm room was a mass of darkness after the lights went out at night. The lights in the hallways were also dimmed. Xu Sheng showered late. His hair was still damp. He sat up, his head full of the word “metaphysics”.
If science couldn’t explain it, then he had to try metaphysics.
The more Xu Sheng thought about this, the more right he felt about it.
This was a damn good idea.
Zhang Feng had just shooed his mother away under the pretense of doing homework. He turned on his phone to play games.
But just as he began the game, his boss called. Zhang Feng stared dumbfoundedly at the two words, “Xu Sheng”, displayed on his phone screen for a while, before the other side suddenly hung up.
Zhang Feng immediately called back. Xu Sheng didn’t answer.
Zhang Feng could only send over a voice message. “What’s going on, Boss, looking for me at this time? Why aren’t you picking up?”
Xu Sheng thought to himself, it’s because he almost forgot who he currently was.
S: My phone has a bit of an issue, I can’t call.
S: I have a question for you.
Zhang Feng sat up straight: Please say.
S: Do you remember at the end of last term, you went to the shopping district near school to get your fortune divined.
Zhang Feng did remember this. At that time, Xu Sheng had mercilessly ridiculed him: I remember. You said only idiots go get their fortunes told. If burning incense and worshiping Buddha were useful, there wouldn’t be a single person in this world who couldn’t pass their exams.
He had said this?
“…”
Xu Sheng’s fingers paused. The follow up message ‘Do you have any recommendations’ didn’t move beyond the chat box.
The street in the shopping district outside the school had everything. Ever since a tarot reading shop had become popular on social media, the Jianghu masters from all walks of life saw their business opportunities. Not only did they open up shops for divination sticks, they also opened up stores for good luck bags to be used in exams, furiously investing…the business was very successful.
Zhang Feng was quite familiar with that part of the shopping district. He liked to go shopping with other girls. Xu Sheng deleted the line of words, and finally used the excuse of “I have a friend.”
“A fortune-telling stall with a good reputation. Let me think, recently there’s a new ‘Half Deity House’ that I’ve heard is pretty good.” After Zhang Feng thought about it, he sent a voice message over and said, “You have to make an appointment online. When you go, you only need to bring your birthday and your horoscopes. They’re pretty good at calculating. Last week Zhang Tong went there and came back half-calling them actual deities. Said the fortune teller was definitely an otherworldly person. If your friend wants to calculate their exam chances, they can go try.”
S: Okay.
S: Thanks.
After chatting, Zhang Feng scratched his head as he faced his phone screen in confusion. He didn’t understand why Xu Sheng was suddenly asking about calculating fate.
[Ding]
[Your opponent has been found in-game]
Forget it, who cares about him.
Zhang Feng entered the game and didn’t think too much about what had just happened. It quickly went to the back of his mind.
Turning off the lights did not affect the school tyrant’s ability to go through practice problems.
At the same time, Shao Zhang was pinching the bridge of his nose as he turned over the last page of the competition papers.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Ktf sbeat tfiv j qfc lc tlr tjcv, tlr mibatfr ralmxlcu ab tlr glulv ragjluta yjmx. We Vtfcu’r olcufgr kfgf ibcu jcv rilw, tlr pblcar qgbagevlcu atgbeut.
Ktf ijwqiluta ygbxf atgbeut atf vjgxcfrr, vlgfmais rtlclcu vbkc bc tlr rilutais megnfv xcemxifr.
Coafg Vtjb Itjc oilqqfv atf qjuf bnfg, tf qjerfv obg akb rfmbcvr. Mbg rbwf gfjrbc, tf revvfcis gfwfwyfgfv atf lwjuf bo We Vtfcu tbivlcu atf ygert.
On the back was one final big problem: Let V be a set of 2019 points in space, where any four points are not coplanar, and some points are connected with line segments. Note E as the set of these line segments…
Shao Zhan retracted his gaze and hurriedly scanned through the question prompt. Before he had time to find the solution, someone knocked twice on his door.
Xu Sheng had sent Shao Zhan a message. After waiting for a few minutes without any response, he directly went to knock on his door.
When Shao Zhan opened the door, Xu Sheng was currently leaning against his own dorm room door, fiddling with his phone from across the hall.
When he saw him opening the door, Xu Sheng handed over his phone and shook it as he said, “I sent you a message. You might have missed it.”
Shao Zhan truly hadn’t seen it.
When he did practice problems, he didn’t look at his phone other than to keep track of time.
Xu Sheng’s usual boneless posture looked very peaceful, but right now he was in his body. When looking at it, Shao Zhan always thought it was weird. He turned to the side and said, “Come in.”
This was originally his dorm room. He didn’t need to give a greeting. Xu Sheng very naturally sat down on the bed and directly explained his reason for coming. “I thought of a solution.”
Shao Zhan couldn’t guess what he was about to say.
Xu Sheng, “I have a story to tell you.”
“…”
Shao Zhan, “Story?”
Under Shao Zhan’s gaze, Xu Sheng changed his posture and said, “My cousin accidentally fell into a river as a kid. When he was fished out he had a high fever, and no matter what medicine he took or how many doctors he saw, he couldn’t be cured.
This time, Shao Zhan had absolutely no idea what he wanted to say.
Coming over in the middle of the night to tell him a story about his cousin.
The genius youth who could score 145 points in literature lost the battle and couldn’t understand the main point.
Xu Sheng told his story up to this point, then stopped and asked, “Can you guess how my cousin was cured?”
“…” Shao Zhan played along, and asked, “How was he cured.”
“Metaphysics.”
“…”
“There’s a fortune teller on our street. She drew him a talisman and he was better the next day after drinking the concoction.”
“So?”
“So sometimes when science can’t explain something, we can also ask for help from the power of metaphysics.”
Shao Zhan unscrewed the cap of the bottled water on his desk and walked over to the bed to hand it to him.
Xu Sheng took it and said, “I already asked Zhang Feng. There’s a new ‘Half Deity house’ near school and its reputation is pretty good.”
The lamp light was not strong, and the bedside light was even weaker.
When Xu Sheng took the water and was about to tilt his head back to drink a mouthful, Shao Zhan didn’t retract his hand. He reached his index finger out and neither gently nor heavily poked Xu Sheng’s head. “What’s going on in that brain of yours every day?”
The scorching temperature at the tip of the youth’s finger gently touched him.
Xu Sheng clutched at the water bottle and blinked a few times. For a moment, his thoughts were burned away with the heat.
Shao Zhan, “When do we go.”
Xu Sheng had been worried that Shao Zhan would think his suggestion was too outlandish. A school tyrant going to look for a divination master were two things that were unthinkable together. “After evening self-study?”
Shao Zhan had also thought that he would think that this suggestion was too outlandish, but in the face of the Four School Competition League, even inflexible people had to bow their heads.
“Okay.”
Xu Sheng only managed to swallow a gulp of water after Shao Zhan retracted his hand and went back to the desk to continue working on the exam paper. He then capped the bottle.
Xu Sheng’s palms were slightly sweaty. He carried the water bottle over. “Are you doing competition questions?”
Although Xu Sheng couldn’t understand a single question on the practice exam on the desk, he was the one who had brought it back from the conference room.
Xu Sheng skimmed it and saw Shao Zhan was currently performing a large calculation on the scratch paper. The question was very long. Xu Sheng noticed several numbing numbers. They looked very frightening. To satisfy the conditions, if E has n elements, E must contain 908 binary subsets’.
908，二元子集。
908, binary subsets.
What did that mean??
Shao Zhan looked at him. “Do you want to try? This problem isn’t hard.”
Xu Sheng, “…”
Shao Zhan, “To familiarise yourself beforehand.”
The worst case scenario was that he would have to use Shao Zhan–the Four School Competition League’s demon king’s identity to participate in the competition.
Xu Sheng hesitated for a while. He decided that taking a look at the world with Shao Zhan beforehand was okay.
It was okay if he didn’t know how to solve the problems. At that time, he definitely needed to display the right aura.
Anyways, even Shao Zhan said it, this question wasn’t difficult…maybe he was also a competition talent?
Every poor student who had never studied always had, to some degree, a fantasy within them that once they turned on their study switch, they were capable of doing something shocking.
Xu Sheng said without any idea of what was in store for him, “I’ll just try.”
Actually, listening to Shao Zhan explain problems was a type of enjoyment; the youth’s tone was cold, his logic clear. He wrote down the simple equations on the paper in accordance with his logic. “This problem first proves a lemma. Let G=(V, E) be a simple graph, and G is connected, then G contains…”
Xu Sheng gave up very decisively.
He immediately sobered up.
Shao Zhan’s ‘not hard’ that fell from his lips was a completely different understanding from a normal person’s ‘not hard’.
Shao Zhan finished explaining this section and handed the pen to him, indicating that he should solve it once by himself.
“…I’m leaving,” Xu Sheng said. “I can’t solve it.”
In the face of the true nature of the competition and the difficulty of the test questions, Xu Sheng became even more eager to go to the Half Deity House.
The next day.
After the evening self-study, the two of them cleaned up their things and got ready to escape through the back door.
“Zhan ge, Sheng ge.” Hou Jun and Tang Kai patted their shoulders from behind. “We’re going to the shopping street to eat. There’s a new noodle shop that just opened up, shall we go together?”
They were all going to the shopping street. It wasn’t appropriate to say no at this time.
Xu Sheng, “You guys go ahead. We’re going to the shopping street to buy something else…”
Before Xu Sheng had even finished speaking, Hou Jun directly squeezed in between the two of them. “Aren’t we all going to the shopping street? Let’s go together.”
After school, the shopping street was decorated with lights. The school name “Lin Jiang” partly came from the school’s environment. Surrounded by a chilly river, the shopping street was built in the style of an ancient town, with wooden buildings. Square doors stood in a row at the entrance of the shopping street, and advertising cries came from the shop doors.
“New noodle shop, twenty percent discount—”
“Tarot cards, test your luck on exams—”
Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan thickened their skin and walked with them for a while.
Other than going out to eat, Xu Sheng seldom came out to shop on this street. Only when Zhang Tong and other girls occasionally wanted to go buy things and looked for his opinion， would he go over to stroll about for a while.
Last night, he had made an appointment with the spiritual master for 7 P.M., but the ‘Half Deity House’ wasn’t easy to find. The two of them scouted out the shop signs as they walked.
“The noodle shop is in front.” Yuan Ziqiang asked out of curiosity, “What did you guys come out to buy?”
Xu Sheng said absentmindedly, “Isn’t the Four School Competition League about to start. I’m going to buy some competition practice books.”
Yuan Ziqiang turned towards Shao Zhan. “What about you, Sheng ge?”
Shao Zhan, “I’m accompanying him.”
Oh.
As Xu Sheng searched, Shao Zhan tugged at him. “Isn’t it this shop?”
Xu Sheng looked towards the direction Shao Zhan was pointing in. At the corner of the intersection, there was a shop separated from the crowded area. The shop was not specially decorated, and even the name of the shop had not been hung. It only had a sign in front of it with the three words “Half Deity House” written on it with a brush. It had the faint feeling of an otherworldly aura. It was very easy to pass by if one didn’t pay attention.
Xu Sheng, “It’s this one.”
But Hou Jun and the others were still here. What should they do at this time?
Xu Sheng was thinking of deliberately slowing down and silently increasing his distance from Hou Jun and the others, but Shao Zhan moved more directly than he did. He directly pulled Xu Sheng into the surging crowd and hid himself within as the crowd went forward. In the blink of an eye, he drew them away from the people in front. Only after they had been blocked by layers of people did Hou Jun turn back and find that the two people behind him had gone missing since who knew when.
A curl of smoke wafted out of the door crack of the Half Deity House.
Incense burned in the lobby.
When they opened the door, there was no one to be seen. They first heard a voice, an old, husky voice. “…What troublesome things have you encountered? I see that the two of you are surrounded by an extraordinary aura.”
That voice continued, “Come in to talk.”
In the next second, a gust of wind came from an unknown direction. Immediately afterwards, the door that had just been pushed open shut by itself with a bang!
thanks for the chapter ❤️
Ahhhhh im so excited to know what will happen next.
Thank you for the chapter 🤍
(≧▽≦)
❤