After the door closed by itself, Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan noticed a silhouette in Taoist robes that had suddenly appeared behind a screen in the lobby. He was sitting in front of the reception desk, stroking his beard as he said, “Give me your birth data.”
It looked so mysterious that it really did seem like the real thing.
There were two seats in front of the screen. Xu Sheng sat down.
He saw that Shao Zhan was still standing there without moving. “Sit, what are you standing there for? This master really does look divine.”
Shao Zhan had lived for seventeen years. Due to the education he had received the past seventeen years, he didn’t really believe in superstitions, so he felt very complicated about this ‘Master’ standing in front of him.
It was just that once he thought about the Four School Competition League, all his hesitation evaporated.
A moment later, he calmly sat down on the other side.
Xu Sheng, “What should we call you, sir?”
The master, “My surname is Hu, the people of Jianghu call me Hu Half Deity.”
Xu Sheng, “Sir, can you really take a look past reality? Can you really tell there’s…something different about the two of us?”
The master did not respond immediately.
Because Master Hu’s hand, covered by the long-sleeves, was secretly holding a remote control—after pressing a button, the door would close automatically.
“Weird.” The master let go of his hand on the door closing button, and pressed the screen button instead. He looked more than 60 years old and his beard was white. He muttered to himself, “Is it broken? Why isn’t it working even after I pressed it? The screen hasn’t moved at all!”
Forget it.
The screen was fine. It gave off an air of mystery.
The master pondered.
Xu Sheng didn’t receive an answer, and called out again. “Master Hu?”
The master hid the remote control in his sleeve, coughed heavily, and returned to his senses. “Although I understand the circumstances and I can guess why the two of you have come, I cannot reveal too much of the secrets of heaven and earth, so I cannot say much.”
Professional!
Those few seconds of silence just now also seemed very mysterious!
When he was younger, Xu Sheng didn’t believe the story about his younger cousin.
Now he really believed it. There really were such otherworldly people.
There were indeed things in this world that science could not explain.
After speaking, the master continued stroking his beard. His other hand lifted the cover of his cup of tea. He lifted the tea cup up as if to drink, giving off an otherworldly air.
It was rare for Xu Sheng to sit so obediently. His back was straight as he directly asked, “Master, can you really see that my soul is in his body?”
The master almost spat out his mouthful of tea.
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.
The master, “?”
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He had already prepared everything he was going to say to them during this time, including explaining their surnames and their family members.
But instead…what was he saying, his soul was in another person’s body?
Why did they come to his Half Deity House for this situation, they should go to the hospital to get their brains checked out.
But the master quickly calmed down: People wandered about Jianghu, money sent to his hands couldn’t be rejected, he couldn’t just send clients over to the hospital for a check-up.
In the end, Xu Sheng took the thing that the master gave him, and pushed the door open to leave.
The red strings in Xu Sheng’s hands were two necklaces, 150 Yuan a necklace. He had also gotten a favorable price, 250 in total for the two of them. The red strings looked very normal; the only thing special about them was that this red string had a crystal stone pendant attached. According to the master, this was a black crystal. It could eliminate disasters and reverse bad luck.
Hu Half Deity had mysteriously said a lot of things before finally bringing out the two red strings from under the table.
“The two of you need to wear this at all times. The chest is the position closest to the heart. It can connect the distance between the two souls. Other than that, in order to completely solve the problem, there is a condition that must be fulfilled.”
Hu Half Deity’s bullshit had some foundations to it. Since it was a soul swap, shouldn’t there be some kind of ritual touching?
Hu Half Deity had stroked his beard again. “Tomorrow, when the sun begins to set, look into each other’s eyes for thirty seconds, then hug each other.”
“…”
The crystals looked pretty cool.
The sharp black facets were like lines drawn with the deepest ink on a painting, both thick and thin strokes, tautly bound within a crystal. The design was very good.
But when he thought of the conditions the master had spoken of…
Xu Sheng looked at the black crystal lying in his palm, his thoughts drifting.
Did they…really have to hug?
The next day.
Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan entered the classroom one after another. Hou Jun greeted both of them as usual. The first person he saw was Shao Zhan. “Good morning, Zhan ge. You two were gone when I looked for you… Zhan ge, what’s that around your neck?”
The Study God’s image was one everyone was familiar with. His uniform would be spotless, with not a single speck of dirt on him.
Even seeing his phone in his hand was very rare.
As Hou Jun asked that, Xu Sheng lowered his head, and it was only then that he noticed the red string had slipped out of the uniform’s collar.
Xu Sheng raised his hand and stuffed the red string back under. Shao Zhan’s skin was pale; his entire being seemed infused with coldness. The redness created a slight contrast.
Hou Jun said, “Oh”, then continued writing the day’s schedule in the bottom right hand corner of the blackboard.
The chalk slid across the blackboard, Hou Jun wrote “afternoon” under the line, then looked up to see the school tyrant who was also wearing a red string around his neck: “…”
Xu Sheng usually wore a black necklace around his neck. Along with the fact that his T-shirts were usually black, it wasn’t very noticeable.
But when replaced with the red string, the effect was different.
Hou Jun wasn’t overthinking it. The indisputable evidence lay right before his eyes.
Hou Jun thought that he truly knew too much. “Sheng ge, morning. Also, that thing around your neck looks very familiar.”
Shao Zhan still wasn’t very used to people enthusiastically greeting him the moment he entered. He didn’t ignore him as he usually did, and replied with a “Morning.”
Nothing of note happened during today’s classes.
The teachers in each class probably knew that Shao Zhan was preparing for the competition, so they didn’t dare bother him. The number of times he was called over to the office or to solve a problem in front of the class dropped sharply. Xu Sheng felt much more relaxed.
Shao Zhan wasn’t as relaxed as him. On average, Zhou Yuan had managed to accurately throw five or six pieces of chalk at him per class. “Xu Sheng, listen to class while standing up!”
After saying this, Zhou Yuan continued, “Forget it. Xu Sheng, stand outside the classroom. If you stand inside the classroom, you’ll block your classmates’ views.”
Shao Zhan didn’t quite understand Zhou Yuan’s line of thinking. “…Teacher, I’m in the back row.”
The entire class burst into laughter.
Yet another piece of chalk was thrown at his head. Zhou Yuan shouted furiously, “Of course I know that! I’ve been looking for an excuse to send you out of my class, you’re an eyesore, and since you want to talk back – Get out!”
The one laughing the hardest just so happened to be his deskmate. Xu Sheng was bent over the desk, shoulders shaking with the effort of keeping his laugh quiet.
The reason Shao Zhan had been called to stand up was only because five minutes ago, Xu Sheng had reminded him to sign into the game for log-in bonuses. “Have you any heart?”
Xu Sheng smiled as he said, “Nope.”
“I’ll deal with you after class.”
Xu Sheng was used to being treated like that by teachers, but watching the Study God suffer was hard.
There was nothing Shao Zhan could do except stand in the hallway.
Zhou Yuan’s math class was the last one of the day, and because it was almost dismissal time, the atmosphere in the classroom was more relaxed.
Zhou Yuan picked up a new piece of chalk. “All right, stop laughing. Anyone else that laughs will be joining Xu Sheng.”
Zhou Yuan assigned some simple assignments, and gave everyone a few minutes to copy down the questions. Xu Sheng glanced out the window, and had to move his gaze from the cold-looking version of his own body that had been punished to stand outside. He looked at the scorching sun behind Shao Zhan, then reached under his desk, starting to type with one hand.
-The sun’s about to go down.
Xu Sheng typed haltingly.
-Where should we meet later.
-There might be people at the staircase. Should we go back to the dorm or go to the roof?
The aloof “Xu Sheng” outside the window moved a bit, lowering his head.
-Roof.
They had worn the red string that the master had given them for the entire day, and truth be told, they did not feel any different.
Xu Sheng lifted his hand to touch that piece of string, unsure if it would have some miraculous effect later on or not.
Perhaps the only effect it had so far was causing Hou Jun to look at them weird.
Xu Sheng hadn’t browsed the school forum in a long time, so he wouldn’t know that the front page of Lin Jiang Sixth’s forum was getting filled with tons of new information. After the military training at the base with all the other schools, the website had been flooded with people from the other schools, causing a real surge in traffic.
The bell sounded.
“Class representatives, please come to my office for a bit,” Zhou Yuan said. “The rest of you can leave after you finish your work.”
The roof of the academic building was Lin Jiang’s famous scenic spot, where you could see the river in the distance, connected to the sky by a horizon.
But Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan had chosen a most inopportune time to go up there. In order to prevent any safety hazards, the door to the roof had been locked.
Xu Sheng jiggled the doorknob. It would not budge at all.
“This will have to do,” Shao Zhan said. “We don’t have time to go to another place.”
He was right.
Luckily, there was no one near the staircase that led up to the roof.
When school hours ended, most of the crowd would be heading out of the school gates, very few would come up the stairs here.
“Then we’ll do it here. The master said we should first…”
Xu Sheng loosened his grip, and only then noticed how tight this space between the stairs and the door to the roof was. It was just enough for two people to stand in. His back was against the metal door to the roof, and if he turned around, he would pretty much bump into Shao Zhan.
He was way too close.
Close enough that Xu Sheng stopped halfway through his sentence, completely forgetting what he had wanted to say.
What was the first step the master had said?
There were students downstairs, with their packed backpacks on their shoulders, laughing and chatting as they walked, the sounds of their conversations continuously floating up towards them.
The wind up here was just too strong.
Gradually, Xu Sheng could no longer make out the sounds traveling up towards them, and after a short moment of silence, he heard Shao Zhan say, “The 30 seconds is up.”
It was his own voice, but the tone was still different. Colder, and lower.
The next sentence was.
“Do you want to hug.”
Thanks for the chapter ❤️❤️
Hug (つ≧▽≦)つ Ty for the translation 😍
Thanks 4 the chapter!!!
AAAHHHHHHHH HUG HUG HUG HUG
thank you for the chapter. and dang, what a cliffhanger!
❤️