Chapter 151

The class bell rang. Eight o’clock morning classes usually had the highest absentee rates.

Though college students with actual nightlife were a minority, that did not stop the ones without nightlife from staying up all night anyway.

Especially for non-major courses, if the professor did not take attendance often, the classroom would usually be nearly empty.

Professor Zhu never took attendance.

Li Zhuiyuan had personally witnessed the number of students in his class go from many to few, then from few to many again.

Some students came in sleepy-eyed, yawning and swaying as they walked into the classroom.

Students knew very well who was worth listening to and who was not.

It was not that teachers did not understand how impressive and confident it was to keep a full class without relying on attendance checks. They just did not have that kind of skill.

There were fewer and fewer students in class who deliberately argued for the sake of arguing. Quite a few of the former troublemakers had now become active thinkers and eager contributors, enriching the lessons themselves.

This semester’s political theory course was almost over. Before class ended, Professor Zhu told everyone to open their books and start marking passages.

“This is the first question.”

“This is the second question.”

“This is the third question.”

The students went from disbelief to broad smiles.

This was no longer just narrowing the scope. It was basically handing them the answers outright.

Professor Zhu closed the book and said:

“Students, I will be very strict when I proctor the exam.”

The whole class laughed.

After they were done laughing, Professor Zhu spoke earnestly:

“The reason I marked out the answers for you so early is because I do not want you cheating during the exam. I want you to have enough time to memorize all of this.

From elementary school to middle school, high school, and then university, you have learned a great deal. But once you step into society, most of that knowledge will not be directly useful.

But this…”

Professor Zhu raised the book in his hand and lightly patted it.

“This can help you better understand society and recognize it for what it is. It is something you can keep reflecting on for the rest of your lives.”

Class ended.

Li Zhuiyuan still sat in the last row of the lecture hall. He had just finished recording the fourth wave in The Zhuiyuan Secret Scroll.

Recording it was only the first step. What mattered next was revising the Code of Conduct for River Walkers once again.

It was a massive undertaking, involving a fresh review and re-understanding of the results of this experiment.

In theory, he had already passed through his fourth wave. Before it arrived, he had taken the initiative and stepped into it himself.

But having learned from earlier lessons, he could not grow complacent because of that. The road ahead was still long.

As usual, after the other students had left, Professor Zhu walked to the last row and came to the boy’s side.

“Xiaoyuan, writing something?”

“Yes, making a summary.” Li Zhuiyuan closed The Zhuiyuan Secret Scroll. As he put away his pen, he looked up and asked, “Professor Zhu, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”

“Go ahead.”

“There’s something that keeps pushing and influencing my life, and I really hate it.”

“That is normal. Have you observed it?”

“I’ve been observing it all along.”

“Go on.”

“Sometimes I hate the way it influences and controls me. I suspect it carries an innate malice toward me.

But at other times, I partly accept some of its logic. I even take the initiative to use it… to take advantage of it.”

“You’re wrestling with it?”

“Yes.”

“Does it know?”

Thinking of the wave from the Five-Organ Sealing Diagram last time, Li Zhuiyuan answered, “I think it probably does.”

“The thing you are uncertain about, the thing leaving you confused, is that you do not know, or are not sure, what specific way you ought to face it?”

“Yes.”

Professor Zhu nodded and said:

“The development of contradiction is the result of both the unity and the struggle of contradiction. Unity is the foundation of development, and struggle is the driving force.”

Before Li Zhuiyuan’s eyes, it was as if a river appeared, flowing onward.

He smiled.

Professor Zhu smiled too. “Looks like there is no need for me to elaborate further?”

Li Zhuiyuan stood up and bowed deeply to Professor Zhu. Very sincerely, he said, “Thank you, Professor.”

When facing the river, he had once tried to find a fixed rule and a fixed answer. Then he realized he had been wrong. Now, through experimentation, he was searching for a new angle from which to understand it.

He had not expected that the answer had already been summed up long ago, written down on paper.

Professor Zhu shook his head and pointed at The Zhuiyuan Secret Scroll Li Zhuiyuan had just closed.

“I only repeated the concept to you. The reason you were able to understand it is because you conducted investigation and practice yourself.”

“You’re right.”

“And besides, even the same concept, even the exact same sentence, will be understood differently at different stages in the future.”

“I’ll keep working hard. Thank you, Professor.”

“No, I should be thanking you. You helped my wife fulfill her final wish. I dreamed of her last night. She was smiling so happily in that beautiful place of green mountains and clear waters.

I plan to retire to her hometown once I’m too old to keep teaching and spend the rest of my life there.

By the way, do you have anything on this afternoon?”

“Is there something you need, Professor Zhu?”

“I do not need anything.” Professor Zhu pulled out two tickets from his pocket. “The Jinling University Student Arts Gala. Want to go?”

Li Zhuiyuan also took out an identical ticket from his own pocket.

Tan Wenbin had given it to him that morning.

Some time earlier, the department had required every class to put on one performance, and Tan Wenbin was the class monitor.

Originally they had asked for volunteers from the class, but the result had been zero sign-ups.

Their class was truly an artistic wasteland.

Fatty Wu had made it very clear to Tan Wenbin that the school took this selection seriously. Even the department preliminaries would be watched by school leaders, so he absolutely could not fob them off with some lame group poetry recitation.

At the time, the program list in Tan Wenbin’s hand had read: Class One Group Poetry Recitation: “Ah, My Haihe, Cradle of My Growth!”

There was no help for it. The class secretary handled most of the routine business, and Fatty Wu had always taken good care of him. As the hands-off class monitor, Tan Wenbin had to stand up at a crucial moment.

So Tan Wenbin had no choice but to bring out his trump card and send out Lin Shuyou.

A performance by the Officers of the Command Banner would not be suitable. There was only one person, and the stage effect would be poor.

They could hardly have Lin Shuyou stand in front of the guests and perform Invite the Child Medium onstage, could they?

Still, Tan Wenbin had a solution. He had Lin Shuyou perform a lion dance instead.

They rented a lion costume, and there was no need to find a partner. He could dance alone. Then they set out some desks and chairs on stage to make improvised plum-blossom poles.

Back in his hometown, Lin Shuyou had been around lion dancing before. Though he had never formally learned it, he was naturally agile and skilled.

During the department selection, the moment he stepped onstage he conquered all the school leaders in attendance and made the other performances pale by comparison.

In the end, it was decided on the spot that his act would represent the university.

“Oh, you already have one.” Professor Zhu was about to put the two tickets away.

“But I have friends who want to go too, and we were just worrying about that.” Li Zhuiyuan took the two tickets. “Thank you, Professor Zhu.”

After leaving the classroom, Li Zhuiyuan headed toward the residential area with his backpack on.

He walked into the Bargain Shop Bandit Camp.

It was between the morning’s two class periods, so there were not many customers in the store.

Runsheng stood in front of the counter. At Yin Meng’s insistence, he was trying on clothes one piece at a time.

Ah Li had designed a set of going-out clothes for everyone before, and that was still Runsheng’s best outfit.

Normally, he liked wearing undershirts. He had many old clothes he had brought from his hometown in Nantong, and he could never bear to throw them away.

First under Aunt Liu’s influence, and later after becoming good friends with Zheng Jiayi and often going shopping together, Yin Meng’s clothing style had gradually begun to change.

With the principle that Runsheng should improve along with her, Yin Meng had once forcibly dragged him out on a shopping trip.

Back at Taigong’s house, Runsheng could work like a beast of burden all day without calling himself tired.

But after that shopping trip, he had been exhausted to the point of collapse. Mostly mentally.

He had to try on one outfit after another, haggle over each one, and after all that trying and bargaining, they still probably would not buy it, because they had to go check the next store.

During all that, he also had to coordinate with Yin Meng according to her instructions. For instance, when he put on a well-fitting piece of clothing, he could not just nod and say, “Good, good, good.” He had to find flaws first.

So when Yin Meng later tried to drag him out shopping for clothes again, Runsheng shook his head like a rattle drum and absolutely refused to go.

With no other choice, Yin Meng could only go with Zheng Jiayi herself, tell the shopkeeper Runsheng’s measurements, buy the clothes, then keep whatever fit and return whatever did not.

“Brother Xiaoyuan, Xue Liangliang called earlier.” Yin Meng tugged at Runsheng’s shirt, gesturing for him to turn around, then continued, “He said he’ll be back at school in a couple of days. Luo Gong has a project.”

“Was it just now?”

“Yes.”

Li Zhuiyuan walked over to the phone, pressed a few buttons, and pulled up the earlier incoming call.

Sure enough, the area code was from Nantong.

After handing the two tickets to them, Li Zhuiyuan ignored Runsheng’s pleading look and walked out of the store.

He went to Liu Yumei’s house. Ah Li was in the study, painting.

The painting was already starting to take shape. A crowd of Unseeables were bent in worship, while the boy and the statue behind him had not yet been painted in.

After hearing about the fourth wave, Ah Li had immediately chosen that scene.

When Li Zhuiyuan walked in, Ah Li set down her brush and sat before the guqin. There was a stool beside her, and Li Zhuiyuan sat close beside her as well.

When the boy was not around, she could still paint, but learning the qin did not work that way.

The girl first played a short passage with one hand, then the boy imitated it with a passage of his own, and they repeated the process over and over.

This method of teaching could truly be called doodling in the most literal sense.

But given the intelligence of the learner in question, it was also the simplest and most efficient approach.

On top of that, Li Zhuiyuan already had a foundation in music theory.

Aunt Liu came in carrying two plates of fruit. She set one between the two of them and kept the other in her hand, leaning against the study door while eating with a toothpick and watching and listening.

Compared with a year ago at Li Sanjiang’s house, both children had clearly grown up a little.

Back when the two of them were together, they had been the very picture of a golden boy and jade girl. That description no longer quite fit.

The girl’s heroic bearing was gradually beginning to show, and the boy’s calm steadiness was already visible in his eyes and brow.

Though they were still young, looking at them now, you could already imagine what the two of them would look like sitting together ten or twenty years from now.

For Aunt Liu, this was realism mixed with fantasy, and that made the fruit on her plate taste even better.

So one taught and the other learned, while time passed slowly.

Aunt Liu had eaten her fill.

She went to the kitchen to make lunch. When lunch was nearly ready, she heard a relatively complete melody coming from the study.

She walked over, intending to call them out to eat, and saw that the boy and girl were each using one hand, performing together in duet.

She could not help sighing inwardly. Back then, the old madam had always liked saying to her and Qin Li, “I’ve never seen two people as slow-witted as you.”

At the time, she had not been convinced. But now look at these two. At the same age, she and Qin Li had been no better than a couple of silly village kids playing in the mud.

At that moment, the old madam came downstairs too. She walked to the dining table and sat down quietly to listen.

Aunt Liu came over, laid out the tableware first, then bent down and muttered softly into the old madam’s ear, “The child raised in this house really can’t compare to the one born into it.”

The old madam laughed despite herself and pinched Aunt Liu’s cheek. “Well now, since I’m getting old, you’ve started taking little digs at me with that nonsense about children raised in the house?”

Aunt Liu did not dodge. She deliberately let her face move along with the pressure of the old madam’s fingers.

“How could I? I’m just speaking from the heart. Listen for yourself. It really is different.”

“What’s so strange about that? When I was young…”

“You were like this too when you were young?”

“When I was young, I still didn’t play with such refinement as these two little ones.”

“Well, that makes me feel much better.”

“Go on, go on, bring out the dishes. They’re almost done playing.”

Liu Yumei waved Aunt Liu away. Her fingertips lightly tapped against the table in time with the rhythm.

She knew very well how extraordinary her granddaughter’s talent was. Otherwise those flies would not have swarmed in such numbers trying to ruin her.

And the boy’s brilliance was even more plainly visible to the naked eye.

For generations, the Qin and Liu families had produced remarkable people. Their horizons should have been broad already, yet they truly had never seen monsters like these.

If the two children could steadily and safely grow to adulthood, not only would the two Dragon King households rise again, they might even surpass what they had once been.

So what if the families were small in number? Each generation could only have one Dragon King anyway.

Besides, being small in number did not mean they could not have children…

Before, all she had hoped for was Ah Li’s recovery from her illness. Now she was beginning to dream of much more.

Her eyes turned toward Qin Li, who was tending the vegetable patch in the courtyard.

When Qin Li had suffered that disaster back then and failed in his river walk, Ah Li had still been an infant in swaddling clothes. She had had no choice but to endure it.

This time, she was absolutely not going to endure it again.

In any case, she was old now and had lived enough. The inheritance of both families now had successors. So it was only natural that she had begun thinking about how to maximize the value of this old life of hers.

Taking revenge afterward by going to their door would be the lowest strategy. Logically, she ought to go to their door beforehand and issue a warning.

Whoever dared make another move in the dark or trip them up again, she would stake her life on it and kill her way to their door. However many she could drag down with her, she would. She would aim specifically for the old ones and the small but elite ones.

But the problem was that Xiaoyuan’s method of river walk was simply too strange. Even she had never seen anything like it.

That made her suspect that if she went around making a grand public warning, it might instead create a disadvantage for Xiaoyuan.

At least for now, Xiaoyuan was progressing very steadily. In fact, in the intervals between each wave, he still had the leisure to attend class, paint, and play a little qin.

The song came to an end.

Liu Yumei came back to herself, and when the two children came out, she looked somewhat embarrassed.

The final close of the piece had turned a little messy and lost some of its flavor, because she had unconsciously let out a trace of killing intent and disturbed them.

After lunch, Li Zhuiyuan returned to the shop. Tan Wenbin had parked his little pickup in front of the store, and everyone climbed in together and headed for the theater.

On the way, Yin Meng asked curiously, “I thought you were going to pick up your class monitor.”

Tan Wenbin answered with righteous conviction, “How could I? Brothers are my hands and feet; women are just clothes. Of course I take care of my brothers first.”

Hearing the word clothes, Runsheng, sitting in the back under the truck canopy, quietly let out a sigh.

When they arrived at the theater entrance and had just parked, they saw Zhou Yunyun and Luo Mingzhu standing there with a huge bag full of food and drinks.

Yin Meng teased, “Clothes, please get out of the vehicle first.”

Tan Wenbin explained, “I didn’t give them their tickets. Luo Mingzhu’s family is handling the banquet after the performance, so she got the tickets from her father.”

Luo Mingzhu had originally been standing on the steps, laughing and chatting with Zhou Yunyun. But the moment she caught sight of Li Zhuiyuan and the others walking over, her expression froze. The bag slipped from her hands, and everything spilled out.

She had seen all these people before in her dream.

“Senior, what’s wrong?” Zhou Yunyun asked.

“I… I…”

Tan Wenbin stepped forward first and helped pick things up.

Luo Mingzhu grabbed Tan Wenbin’s arm and said excitedly, “It was you, wasn’t it? You were all together, weren’t you? You were the ones who saved us together, right?”

Tan Wenbin looked up, and while Zhou Yunyun was still bent down picking things up and not looking over, he shot Luo Mingzhu a glare.

“Senior, if you keep acting so startled, be careful, or tonight when you sleep you might go right back into that nightmare.”

Luo Mingzhu immediately shut her mouth.

“Xiaoyuan,” Zhou Yunyun said.

“Class monitor,” Li Zhuiyuan replied.

They had their tickets checked and entered the theater.

Zhou Yunyun and Luo Mingzhu did not sit with Li Zhuiyuan and the others. Their seats were in another corner, quite far away.

Tan Wenbin did not go sit with them either. Even though swapping tickets and seats would have been easy for him, he still chose to sit beside Li Zhuiyuan.

A date could be done privately some other time. He really was not the sort to bring a companion along to a group outing. Zhou Yunyun and Luo Mingzhu coming at all was something he had only learned afterward.

Li Zhuiyuan knew that even if he said something, Tan Wenbin still would not go sit over there, so he skipped that whole exchange entirely.

By the time the performance was about to begin, the grand theater was nearly full. Many banners from different schools and departments hung from the surrounding walls.

The hosts were from Jinling Television, and cameras were recording the event.

A leader gave a brief opening speech, and then the host introduced the leaders seated in the front rows. After the applause ended and the necessary formalities were completed, the show began.

The performances really were excellent. At the class level, you might get some sloppy poetry recitations thrown in to fill time, but at the university level, talented people truly were everywhere.

While a male-female high soprano duet was underway, the stage behind them was being reset.

A high platform was erected, its top nearly reaching the highest point of the stage, almost twenty meters above the ground.

Four pairs of ropes extended down from the high point and were fastened below, with four lion heads mounted at the top as markers.

Li Zhuiyuan asked, “Did A-You get this much of a production?”

Tan Wenbin was also surprised. “This isn’t A-You’s.”

“Did two acts get scheduled into the same slot?”

“Very likely.”

“Wasn’t there a rehearsal here?”

“A-You did rehearse. Something like this shouldn’t have happened.”

The host began announcing, “The next performance is jointly presented by Jinling University and Haihe University: ‘The Contest of Northern and Southern Lion Kings’!”

The stage setup had already whetted the audience’s appetite, and the title of the act set off the whole theater. Everyone burst into enthusiastic applause and cheers.

Tan Wenbin said, “A-You never told me about this. I suspect the organizers messed up and made a last-minute change.”

Li Zhuiyuan nodded.

The first to appear was a golden lion, with a red knot on its head. Its design was simple, yet lifelike in an almost startling way.

The two performers moved it as they came onstage, interacting with the audience in the manner of a real lion. It was vividly convincing and full of spirit.

Film and television often showed lion dances, but the true force and aura of one could only be clearly felt in person.

Then, on the other side of the stage, a white lion appeared.

“That’s A-You,” Tan Wenbin said.

The white lion’s head took its cues from operatic face paint, giving it a fierce shape and brilliant colors.

But Lin Shuyou was not, after all, a professional lion dancer. In terms of technique, he was indeed not as skilled as the golden lion troupe, and since he was performing alone, the lion’s full form was at a major disadvantage.

Still, relying on his more agile body movement, with one rolling leap after another, Lin Shuyou drew cheers no less enthusiastic than the other side.

After all, this was not some professional lion dance competition. The audience was here for excitement as much as anything else.

Next, the two lions began circling each other, blinking and weaving around.

During this, Lin Shuyou lowered his body, bowed his head, and gave three sharp shakes.

This was a gesture of respect to a senior.

And in this line of work, he truly was the junior. The only reason he was standing here performing lion dance at all was because Brother Binbin had given him the task.

The golden lion reared up, then leaped high. The two performers ran up the ropes in smooth, steady motions. Even while maintaining the lively sway of the lion’s body, they went straight to the top.

“Good!”

“Bravo!”

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