Ning Tiance came to me, his face full of undisguisable fatigue.
He looked at the bed plank I was drying and asked, "Is this from the bed you slept on last night?"
My heart had yet to recover from its fresh shock. I calmly nodded and gave up my seat. I said to Xiao Ning, "You must be tired from running around all night. Why don"t you… sit down on the bedplate?"
I pulled over the bedplate and put it in front of Xiao Ning. Ning Tiance looked down at it, moving his lips, which were turning white from exhaustion. He asked in a serious voice, "Tell me about your experiences last night."
I told him every detail of what had happened between me getting on the bus and me falling asleep reciting Marxist principles. With my mind full of love and my IQ lowered as a result, I described Mu Huaitong"s poor makeup technique, unhealthy physique, and cold limbs, Tian Bowen"s hobby of playing with insects, the driver"s misunderstanding and telling Tan Xiaoming to be careful, Tan Xiaoming"s abuse by his father, all without any concealment.
Perhaps my students were too pitiful. Ning Tiance"s expression looked worse and worse as he listened to me. Finally, he looked at the bedplate with a sympathetic gaze. He must have felt very sorry for Tan Xiaoming.
I felt the bedplate. The top of it had already dried, so I turned it over to dry the other side.
"I"m having Xiao Ming move to my place. That child is insecure and seems to have an obsession. He absolutely insisted I bring the bedplate along," I explained. "But the bedplate has been in that gloomy morgue so long, it"s all damp. I"m trying to dry it out in the sun before taking it with me."
Ning Tiance said, "If you do dry it out, Tan Xiaoming may never be able to move again."
"Hm? Why?" I didn"t understand. "Surely a bed is only comfortable if it"s clean and freshly aired out in the sun?"
Ning Tiance stared at me, his gaze full of unspoken words, but finally he just said, "Take the bedplate back to your dormitory now."
"What about you?" I asked. "You should have a good rest after running around all night. Didn"t you want to go back to your sect? If you have enough money, you"d better take a plane this time. The train is too tiring."
I thought some more, then with great difficulty said, "Actually, last night it was only because you were worried about me that you came rushing back. I should pay for your plane tickets."
Although I was very poor, I would still give everything good I had to the person I liked. That was the true way of love.
"No, I"m not going back to my sect anymore." Ning Tiance looked at me and said, "I wanted to go back to my sect because there were some things I couldn"t understand. I wanted to ask for my shifu"s help. But now it seems that I"ll have to cross this barrier on my own. It was heaven"s will that sent me back here last night, and my own fate."
I didn"t really understand what he was saying. After all, I didn"t know much about feudal superst.i.tion. But today, love made me reconsider. Since I loved Xiao Ning, I should try looking at things from his point of view. Before, I"d said that I wanted him to believe in science, but if I didn"t even understand feudal superst.i.tion, how could I use science to refute, guide, and influence him?
"I really don"t believe in ghosts and G.o.ds, but it would still be all right to understand more about my country"s old traditions." I extended this olive branch to Ning Tiance.
"No need," he said, looking at me, his face wan. "If a normal person has a lot of contact with ghosts, even if his Yang energy is great, over time it will be worn down and gradually weakened by Yin energy. His life span will be reduced. The ghosts around him will absorb the Yang energy and become stronger because of it."
"Hold on," I interrupted him, "just a moment, I want to take notes."
I quickly took the notebook out of my backpack. It was very thick. Even with my lesson plans and the student roster in it, there would still be room to write down Xiao Ning"s ideas.
I started from the back this time. I wrote down what Xiao Ning had just said and gestured for him to go on.
Xiao Ning looked at the notebook in my hands with an indescribable expression. He must have thought it was too old. There were few such old notebooks in modern society.
"My colleague, Teacher Liu, gave it to me. He"s my roommate. He also lives in 404. He"s a very nice person." I explained the notebook"s origin, then described my living conditions so Xiao Ning could also understand more about me.
Ning Tiance looked up at the sky. At ten o"clock on a summer morning, the sun was brilliant. Under its rays the peculiar musty smell of the notebook gradually unfurled. It smelled quite bad.
"Let"s find somewhere to rest, then keep talking." Ning Tiance"s expression was suddenly full of compa.s.sion. "You must be tired after sleeping in the morgue all night. We need a quiet place with some shade, not too much sunlight or too many people."
I considered the requirements he"d named; didn"t that perfectly describe my dormitory?
"Then let"s go to my place. You also need to rest. At the very least you should drink some water. Look at how dry your lips are." I stared at Xiao Ning"s dry, white lips.
This time Xiao Ning didn"t refuse. He only said, "OK."
I called a pickup truck and threw the bedplate into the back. There was only one pa.s.senger seat at the front of the pickup. Naturally, I generously let Xiao Ning have it and sat in the back with the bedplate.
Back home, I wanted to let the bedplate finish drying out in my sunny bedroom, then put it in Li Yuanyuan"s bedroom, but Xiao Ning said that he wanted to rest as soon as possible, so I could only arrange the bedplate for Tan Xiaoming right away, letting Xiao Ning lie down on my bed to sleep.
When I finished putting the bedplate away, I snuck a look into my room. Xiao Ning wasn"t asleep. Instead, he was sitting up in bed and staring out the window.
I went to pour him a cup of water, then brought it to him.
Ning Tiance looked at the water in the cup and asked, "You"ve been drinking this water?"
"Don"t worry, I boiled it," I said. "Or would you prefer tea?"
If he wanted tea, I could go downstairs and buy some.
Ning Tiance shook his head. "There"s hardly any Yin energy. It must have run off. In another few days the remaining Yin energy will have dissipated."
After saying these words, which were incomprehensible to me, he drank the cup of water in a single gulp, looking relieved.
It was a little difficult to communicate with Xiao Ning, but what did that matter? Back when I was bad at sports, hadn"t I relied on my perseverance to become a man who could match up to that senior? Come on, Shen Jianguo, you can do it!
"You should sleep," I said. "We"ll talk when you wake up."
"There"s no need. A cultivator can absorb the power of the stars and moon at night. I only need to rest a little, and I won"t be so tired anymore."
I took the notebook to write down what he had said, planning to review it later. Ning Tiance said, "Could you use a different notebook?"
"Why? Isn"t it more convenient like this? Having everything in one place." At school I"d had all my subjects in one thick notebook. I"d never encountered the problem of not being able to find the right notebook.
"Please use a different one. I don"t want my words written down in that notebook. It"ll be better for both of us this way," Xiao Ning insisted.
All right, then; Ning Tiance"s words did require special treatment. I rummaged around in my bookcase and found a notebook with only a few pages of writing, tore out those pages, then wrote on the first page: "For Xiao Ning"s Special Use," then drew a heart after it.
This was so obviously that, given that Xiao Ning had touched me in the elevator, he had to be able to understand my intentions.
Ning Tiance saw that I had swapped notebooks and went on speaking: "I am the chief disciple of the Maoshan Sect. I am destined to inherit the sect in the future. My shifu and the elders regard me as the future sect leader. I left the mountain in order to complete my training. When I"ve finished the a.s.signment my shifu gave me, I will formally be a Celestial Master, defending justice and destroying evil, keeping to the true path."
"Hey, can you marry if you inherit the Maoshan Sect?" I asked with concern.
What if their sect was like Buddhism and didn"t allow them to get close to women… No, I wasn"t a woman. Even if he couldn"t marry he could still do gay stuff.
"We aren"t permitted to divide our Yang source until our cultivation is strong enough. We need our Yang energy to protect ourselves from evil spirits every day," Ning Tiance said. "But when our skills are sufficient, then we can take a wife and have children. In fact, I"m the current sect leader"s own son."
That was all right. I carefully wrote down "superst.i.tious family" in the notebook, then said to Xiao Ning, who was focusing on my writing, "Go on. What was your a.s.signment? Can you tell me?"
Xiao Ning hesitated and said, "It"s strange. Since the time I started leaving the mountain at twelve, I"ve never received such a bizarre a.s.signment. My shifu told me to send a resume in response to a specific online job posting at midnight, but on that day I couldn"t find the posting, so I haven"t found out my a.s.signment so far."
This sounded something like my experience in searching for a job. It turned out that it wasn"t easy being a Celestial Master, either.
"By going back to my sect, I wanted to clear my thoughts, and also to ask my shifu about the a.s.signment," Ning Tiance said.
"Why don"t you call and ask?" I looked at Xiao Ning"s phone. He didn"t seem to be an otherworldly master who couldn"t use a phone.
Ning Tiance sighed. "It may involve our sect"s secrets, so it"s better to ask in person. You may not know that the development of talismans is very advanced now. Some sects can listen in on other people"s calls by attaching talismans to their phones. There"s no way to defend against it."
So they had this kind of capability, too… I was suddenly wondering whether the Maoshan Sect and the rest were actually backwards or advanced.
"Then why aren"t you planning on going back anymore?"
Ning Tiance looked at me deeply, his gaze extremely focused. After the burst of emotion I"d just experienced, that look of his made me a little fl.u.s.tered. I grabbed the closest thing to me and clutched it to get a sense of security.
As soon as I"d done that, I thought that it wasn"t a very good move, so I tossed the thing I"d picked up back onto the bed.
In this way, Teacher Liu"s notebook got picked up then tossed away again.
Xiao Ning took a deep breath, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Before, I believed that however plentiful a man"s Yang energy was, he would still sooner or later be harmed by fierce ghosts. Even if he was an experienced cultivator, if he didn"t take care, it would still be difficult for him to repel their attacks. But these past few days have shown me that actually with integrity, steady belief, and a pure heart, you really can overcome all the evil in the world.
"I thought I had already seen the vastness of the world, but it turned out that my thoughts were still too shallow. Rather than return to my sect, it will be better for me to stay in H City to cultivate my heart."
"Oh." I only somewhat understood, but I had grasped that he wouldn"t be leaving for now. "I don"t believe in ghosts, but Ning-tianshi"s perseverance has inspired me. I would also like to understand these matters."
This way Xiao Ning and I would have things to talk about in the future. First we"d be friends, and then... hehehe.
"There"s no need," said Ning Tiance. "You"ll be all right staying the way you are."