The newest idiom was “heart like ashes.”
It was an astoundingly accurate description of Xu Wang’s current disposition.
Constant failure rendered him so helpless and exhausted that he found it difficult to force himself to concentrate on miming idioms or explaining them. He had half a mind to blurt out the idiom so a new one would pop up, but then he considered his current state and changed his mind.
Taking a deep breath, he took solace in a few seconds of silence, regaining his composure, all in the hopes that the moment the next idiom popped up, he’d be able to feel a shred of hope.
His teammates were befuddled by his behaviour. Wu Sheng stared at him questioningly, Kuang Jinxin was repeatedly asking him “Bro, why aren’t you talking?”, and then there was Sun Jiang, who had given up all hope and said, “If you ask me, we shouldn’t have started guessing in the first place. This bullshit is just a sham, whoever takes it seriously is an idiot.”
The ten second countdown ended, and “heart like ashes” was gone, replaced by “five strikes of lightning.”
This time, Xu Wang was ready. He threw his arms up in the air, spreading them out and grappling about in a weird dance in the shape of thunder. “Kacha–Kacha–Bong!” he said quickly, miming the sounds of lightning. At the last sound, he smacked himself on the forehead.
“To split in two by a thunder strike!” Wu Sheng suddenly cried out.
Kuang Jinxin seemed to get the message and followed up with, “A thunderbolt on a clear day!”
“Something to do with that, but the word ‘thunderbolt’ isn’t in there!” Xu Wang was going crazy, this was the first time they’d gotten so close to the right answer, but the closer they got, the more anxious they became.
Sun Jiang: “I think it moved!”
Xu Wang was overjoyed that Sun Jiang had finally decided to partake in their quest, but: “Brother, no matter how off your guessing is, it should at least be an idiom, don’t you think?”
“I’m talking about the bear!” Terror was quickly gathering in the man’s eyes. “The bear moved!”
Xu Wang felt a chill go through him and he shifted his gaze from the icefall back to the bear lying at the feet of the other three men… Sun Jiang was a liar. “The bear moved” his ass, it was already freaking getting up on all fours, for fuck’s sake!
As if feeling Xu Wang’s burning gaze on it, the bear shook and wobbled until it finally gained its balance, then locked its beady eyes right on Xu Wang.
One man, one bear, with less than two metres between them.
Xu Wang, still wearing skate shoes, took one slow, sliding step backwards, his throat parched and sweat pooling in his palms. The bear took a tentative step forward, and when it found that the invisible wall it had crashed into before wasn’t there, it took another step forward.
The tension gathering in Xu Wang’s heart had reached its limit. He kicked off on the skate shoes, flying off at the speed of lightning to the bottom of a tree some seven or eight metres out, then held tight to a tree branch and stared unblinkingly at the black bear.
Instead of taking a second step forward, the bear began pawing at the ground with a forepaw — one time, two times, resembling the blasting of a race car throttle before a race.
Roar!
With a thunderous cry, the bear charged forward directly at Xu Wang like a giant cannonball!
All sanity was lost; the wind kicked up from beneath his shoes and he started off, running for his life. Even though they were surrounded by mountainous forests, it was only in this tiny area that the snow was compact and hard. It would be impossible to get anywhere on skate shoes in the deep snow elsewhere, so all Xu Wang could do was skate around his teammates in circles as the bear chased him.
Inside the invisible protective barrier, the other men couldn’t do anything to help him. Kuang Jinxin shouted in his terribly anxious way, “Brother Xu, why don’t you just let it kill you? Then you’ll be able to be bounced back into reality like yesterday!”
Xu Wang dodged a swipe from the bear, increased the distance between them, and cried out, “My son, I can’t gamble away my life! What if yesterday was just a coincidence? If I straight up commit suicide right here, I could be handing this messed up place my life!”
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.
“Ktfc iegf la rbwfktfgf firf jcv ibrf la! Qts jgf sbe pera gecclcu lc mlgmifr tfgf?” Gfrqlaf tlr mjnjilfg jaalaevf ogbw fjgilfg, cbk Vec Aljcu kjr ageis mbcmfgcfv obg We Qjcu’r ilnfiltbbv.
“The snow is too thick everywhere else, I wouldn’t be able to skate!” The more Xu Wang explained, the more aggrieved he felt. When they were still guessing idioms, he’d been thinking that the skate shoes seemed to be complete useless, but now he saw how wrong he was. He was too foolish, too naive. Just like how the fish tornado lured away the bears, and the reindeer sleigh brought them to their designated coordinates, it was clear that receiving the skate shoes meant he was obligated to skate along to the devil's beat.
“Bffq ublcu,” Qe Vtfcu revvfcis lcafgpfmafv.
We Qjcu, ktb’v pera rxjafv qjra tlw, aegcfv tlr tfjv yjmx. Qe Vtfcu’r ojmf kjr rbifwc jcv vfafgwlcfv.
“We don’t have any other choice, no?” he continued with a raised brow. “So continue, I’m sure this will stop once we start guessing the right idioms.”
What Xu Wang wanted to reply was something along the lines of “Easy for you to say, you’re not the one being chased by a bear,” but at the sight of the familiar steadfastness on the other man’s face, he swallowed those words.
This was Wu Sheng. Whenever he really decided to resolve a problem once and for all, he’d always shut out all the extraneous thoughts and nonsensical musings that he perceived as useless and get to the main point, the key, the core issue at hand, in a concentrated, efficient manner. To Xu Wang, this Wu Sheng was the most attractive — both decades ago in high school, and decades later in the present.
“Xu Wang!” Kuang Jinxin screamed so loudly that his voice broke.
Xu Wang skated forward by instinct, scalp prickling, and the bear paw just barely managed to slice through his winter jacket, sending a few white goose feathers into the air.
His near escape from death terrified Wu Sheng so much that his heart nearly stopped; his last bit of composure evaporated and he went berserk: “What are you staring at me for, focus on the idioms and the bear!”
Even without his reminder, Xu Wang didn’t dare lose focus again. He started up his devil step dance once again, taking a few forceful strides to widen the distance between himself and the bear, then turning back to glance quickly at the icefall.
At some point, the idiom had switched yet again — currently, it was “glowering round eyes,” the timer at seven seconds.
Up till now, the idioms on the icefall had changed countless times. It suddenly occurred to Xu Wang that there might not be an endless supply of idioms in its “storage.” They could be at the end of the rope right now, with each new idiom being close to the last. If they kept getting it wrong, they would lose this entire game. The sudden pressure from this knowledge made his heart flutter nervously, but it also sparked in him the motivation to make this last stand count.
He took a deep breath, steadying his mind, splitting his body and consciousness. He would rely on muscle memory to keep his body skating in circles, so that he could focus his whole consciousness on the idioms. Wu Sheng had taught him this trick back in the day for getting through exams; it was particularly useful when one got stuck in the middle of solving problems.
Xu Wang began, “How did our headmaster in high school always look?”
Wu Sheng paused for half a second — just half a second — and then his voice rang out. “Evil eyes and demon brows, straight eyes and horizontal brows, round and glowering eyes!”
Ding–
At long last, the long awaited sound.
“You got it? He got it, didn’t he?!” Kuang Jinxin was the first to start whooping, more ecstatic even than Xu Wang himself.
Xu Wang didn’t have time to answer him, but the raised corners of his lips were enough. For the very first time, the idiom changed before the timer count ended. He took a look at the new idiom, then said earnestly, “Yu Haiyang singing!”
Wu Sheng: “Screeching ghosts, wolf howls! Makes one's hair raise! Is despised by man and god!”
Ding–
Xu Wang: “Zhang Lei wanting to court Zou Lulu!”
Wu Sheng: “Wishful thinking! Daydreaming!”
Ding–
Xu Wang: “Qian Ai eating!”
“A tornado clearing away clouds!”
Ding ding ding–
[Owl: Congratulations on passing, 1/23 tasks submitted! Dear, see you tomorrow~~]
The familiar voice sounded in his ears once again, except this time the “let’s bring you home early” had changed to “congratulations,” although its tone was as infuriating as ever.
Darkness descended before Xu Wang’s eyes. All he could sense was the feeling of gravity disappearing again; he wanted to call out to the rest of the men, but no sound came out. He wanted to grab onto something, but there was nothing to hold on to. Time passed strangely — it simultaneously felt like a very long time and the blink of an eye, before his feet finally landed on solid ground again.
A gentle breeze brushed across his face.
Xu Wang inspected his surroundings. It was impossible to make anything out in the pitch black darkness, and with a touch of unease, he called out, “Wu Sheng?”
“Here,” came a reply from somewhere close by.
“Brother Xu, I’m here too!” Naturally, Kuang Jinxin called out before anyone could ask after him.
“What kind of hellish place are we in now?” came Sun Jiang’s frustrated venting some distance away.
With all his teammates accounted for, Xu Wang’s nerves relaxed slightly. His eyes were finally adjusting to the darkness after coming so suddenly from the brightly lit snowfield, and when he raised his head, he could make out the glowing edge of the moon from behind the clouds.
Another gentle breeze brushed past. It should have been the crisp air of a late autumn evening, but rather, it made Xu Wang’s frozen, red cheeks feel warm and ticklish.
It was night, night in Beijing.
They were back home.
Finally completely relaxed, Xu Wang turned his gaze to his surroundings, assuming that he would once again be standing in the intersection from yesterday. But what he saw gave him pause. There were no roads around them. The four of them were standing on a bridge overlooking an average-sized lake that seemed man-made, like those in public parks. Iron guardrails lined the sides of the bridge, minimalist yet exquisite. Across from the bridge were a cluster of green trees and lush vegetation. Tree branches fluttered gently in the moonlight, indistinct shadows dancing…
Wait.
Squinting, Xu Wang observed this environment more carefully. The more he looked, the more he recognised its familiarity, until–“Isn’t this Qingnianhu Park?!”
At his exclamation, Kuang Jinxin, who happened to live nearby said park and often walked through its grounds to breathe fresh air, said to Sun Jiang in sudden realisation, “It is!”
Xu Wang had a head full of questions and was about to continue discussing their situation with the rest, but then Wu Sheng suddenly cut in, reading off a string of numbers, “116.4085,39.9616.”
Xu Wang looked in Wu Sheng’s direction to see him staring down at his phone, the light from the screen illuminating his scrunched up eyebrows.
“Where’d… you get the phone?”
“I put it in my pocket before getting sucked into that place, but it didn’t matter, there wasn’t any signal there anyways…” Wu Sheng’s voice trailed off, then suddenly, “The phone isn’t the point!”
“Okay, okay,” Xu Wang said consolingly, getting back on topic. “What were you reading just now?”
“Coordinates.” Wu Sheng raised his phone and turned the screen towards Xu Wang. On it was a satellite map with labeled with coordinates. “The coordinates of the place where we’re standing is exactly the same as the one written on <Cheat Sheet>.”
Beside them, Kuang Jinxin’s first reaction was to look down at his arm to check on the coordinates again, but belatedly, he realised that the strange image on their arms had disappeared upon their arrival back into the real world.
“What you mean is that place and the real world share the same geographical longitude and latitude lines?” Xu Wang didn’t have the energy to ask for evidence — he knew that Wu Sheng’s brain was like a calculator. If he said the coordinates matched, they matched. But still, none of it made sense. “It was daytime over there, and it’s nighttime here. That place was a giant field of snow, and we’re in the middle of a park. They have absolutely nothing in common, how can they share the same coordinates?”
“Who’s there?!” a voice suddenly called out from the end of the bridge, putting a stop to the four men’s conjectures. It was one of the park’s security guards. Then there was the sudden beam from a flashlight, illuminating the shadowy figures of these four “suspicious characters.”
Xu Wang had always been a law-abiding citizen, Wu Sheng’s mind was still on the coordinates, and Kuang Jinxin had never even left his house past midnight before. The three of them stared into the flashlight like deer caught in the headlights.
In that moment, Sun Jiang’s extensive street smarts kicked in and he immediately replied, “Mate, we’re working out, out on a night run!”
The security guard frowned dubiously.
Sun Jiang raised his arm suddenly and began jogging ahead. “Brothers, break is over! Let’s go, one-two-one! One-two-one!”
Xu Wang, Wu Sheng, and Kuang Jinxin raced to catch up with him, the four of them forming a vertical line-up, running in an extremely convincing manner.
Their bright, clear chanting pierced the still air of Qingnianhu Park at 3 AM: “One, two, one! One, two, one! Excerising improves the people’s physique!”
If one listened closely, they would hear random chattering in between the chants–
Kuang Jinxin: “Xu Wang, who were those people you brought up during the idiom game?”
Xu Wang: “High school classmates.”
Kuang Jinxin: “….”
Sun Jiang: “Did you guys spend your entire time in school gossiping about your classmates behind their backs?”
Xu Wang: “They did too, they said he was a poser.”
Wu Sheng: “They said he never shut up.”
Xu Wang: “They called him a teacher’s pet.”
Wu Sheng: “They said he thought everyone was his best friend.”
Xu Wang: “What the fuck, who said that?!”
Wu Sheng: “….”
When youth has already passed one by, why turn to stare it in the face?
Thank you!! 🙂
They have a good memory to remember that stuff ten years later lol And is Xu Wang running barefoot + 1 shoe or in his skate shoes? x’D
Thx for the ch (ㅅ˘ㅂ˘)
Kuang Jinxi & Sun Jiang :“….” These two were not talking about their school days, right?
Thanks for the chapter<3
Thank you for the chapter! Bwahahahaha their banter is great
thanks for the chapter! <3
thanks for the chapter! ♡
Haha thank you for the chapter 😁💕
Those two!!! Ahahhah I can’t
Thanks for your hard work
Akdjdks this novel is so funny. Honestly, remembering so much about high school classmates to help win an idiom game 😂😂
Thank you for the chapter!
I’m almost the same age as them so I totally relate to being “old” but immature lol