Chapter 225
Chapter 225
After finishing the bath,
I climbed out of the wooden tub.
Roundy stood on the rim and shook its feathers vigorously.
Splash, splash…
Water flew everywhere, as if a light rain had fallen all around us.
Its own feathers immediately became dry and fluffy again.
I glared speechlessly at the damned fat bird.
“Good thing I haven’t dressed yet, or my clothes would be wet again.”
After putting on clean clothes, the two of us returned to the main room to eat.
My father pointed at the table full of sumptuous dishes and joked,
“The Immortal Lady told your mother how hard these past two days were for you, so she worked for ages and made many of your favorite dishes. I get to benefit too. When you’re not home, I never get anything this good.”
My mother glared at him.
“Nonsense!”
Then she smiled, set bowls and chopsticks before Roundy and me, and urged me to eat.
I looked over the table laden with hearty country dishes.
There was shaobai–steamed pork belly with preserved mustard greens–crispy steamed pork, twice-cooked pork, diced chicken stir-fried with pickled radish, spicy fish chunks… Every dish was a favorite of mine, and each took considerable effort to prepare.
My mother had probably begun preparing everything early that morning.
My nose began to sting.
At the same time, my resolve hardened. I had to break the fate that said I would not live past fifteen!
Otherwise, I dared not imagine how devastated my parents would be.
“My fate must remain in my own hands! Even heaven can’t simply take me away. Not only will I live well, but someday I’ll see the wider world beyond this place.”
I made the vow silently!
…
…
Time was perhaps even harder to resist than fate.
No matter what happened to anything in the world, time would never stop, slow, or quicken for it.
It moved forever forward, calm and indifferent.
The passing stream flows on, never ceasing day or night.
My days of cultivation and study slowly passed with each rising sun and setting moon…
In the blink of an eye, the year 2001 arrived.
Many major events occurred both in China and abroad that year.
Shenzhou 2 launched, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was founded, construction began on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, Beijing won its Olympic bid, and China joined the WTO…
Every one of these events may have shaken the world!
Even in my quiet corner of a small southwestern town, I learned about them through television news, newspapers, and teachers’ casual remarks during politics and history classes.
Although those events remained extremely distant from me, they still made me proud to be Chinese.
And in my own life in that southwestern town, a major event also occurred in 2001!
By late May and early June, southwestern China was already sweltering.
Yu City, known as a “furnace,” was already approaching thirty-five degrees Celsius.
Even after dinner at six or seven in the evening, the air remained oppressively hot.
Cicadas in the trees outside the classroom called out the sound of summer.
Behind me, Wang Dachun sprawled across his desk with his tongue hanging out like a husky and moaned,
“It’s so hot! I’m dying. Why won’t our school install air-conditioning? These electric fans can’t cool anything down.”
Before I could speak,
Yao Nan rolled her eyes at him.
“Student Wang Dachun, how is that any different from Emperor Hui of Jin asking, ‘Why don’t they eat meat porridge?’ in the history books? This is a town middle school. Lianghe may be the most prosperous large town in Fubei County, but the school could never afford something like that. Even Fubei Secondary School in the county seat doesn’t have air-conditioning.”
Wang Dachun answered weakly,
“I visited Yu City No. 1 Middle School during winter break. Even the classrooms, cafeteria, and dormitories in its junior division all had air-conditioning. Why don’t we?”
This time, Yao Nan did not need to answer. I turned around and smacked him on the head.
Wang Dachun immediately clutched his head, aggrieved.
“Why’d you hit me again, Boss? My grades have finally improved rapidly this year. What if you knock me stupid again?”
Both annoyed and amused, I said,
“You’re comparing Lianghe District Middle School to Yu City No. 1 Middle School? Something’s wrong with your brain, Dachun. Now I suspect you cheated to rank eighteenth in the class on the last final exam.”
Even Zeng Jin, who usually followed Wang Dachun’s lead in everything, murmured weakly from the side,
“I think Brother Wu is right too. Brother Chun, that comparison is going too far…”
Yu City No. 1 Middle School stood in the heart of the city proper and was the best middle school in all of Yu City.
It included both junior and senior divisions, making it a complete six-year secondary school. Naturally, students from other junior middle schools could test into its senior division.
Supposedly, getting into Yu City No. 1 Middle School meant you were already more than halfway into a top university.
After all, over ninety percent of its graduates were admitted to elite universities year after year!
Every year, more than forty students got into leading universities such as Tsinghua, Peking University, Harvard, and MIT…
How could Lianghe District Middle School compare with a school of that caliber?
After the three of us teased Wang Dachun for a while, evening self-study began.
School ended at nine thirty.
We walked out laughing and chatting.
After crossing Lianghe Bridge, the students split off toward different residential areas around town, and our surroundings grew quiet.
At that moment, the sound of flapping wings came from the night sky.
Then a fluffy, round white bird descended onto my shoulder.
Who else could it be but Roundy?
“You walk too slowly, Wu boy. Your big brother left school when you did and has been waiting here forever.”
“You flew. I’m walking on two legs. How could that be the same?”
I laughed and cursed it a few times.
Human and bird headed together toward the coffin shop in eastern Lianghe Town.
“Oh, right. There’s something I want to tell you. Have you paid attention to the feng shui pattern and ley-line energy around Lianghe District Middle School lately?”
For once, the damned fat bird Roundy unexpectedly raised a serious matter.
Oh?
I paused and asked in puzzlement,
“Why are you suddenly paying attention to that? Unless there’s a major accident or deliberate alteration, feng shui patterns formed by large mountains and rivers remain fairly stable. Nothing has happened around Lianghe District Middle School, has it?”
I had to admit, Lianghe District Middle School occupied an excellent geographical position in terms of feng shui.
I had noticed that two years earlier, when I first enrolled.
It possessed the exceptional feng shui pattern known as Three Stars Attending the Moon!
Lianghe District Middle School stood at the foot of the mountains inside a hollow enclosed by three great peaks.
It was built on a rare stretch of flat high ground. From there–especially the rooftop of the teaching building–one could see nearly all of Lianghe Town.
The small road connecting the school to Lianghe Bridge curved in an arc as it entered the school gate, forming the precise shape of a half moon.
The three great mountains behind it corresponded perfectly to the so-called “three stars”: Mercury, Mars, and Saturn.
Such a pattern readily produced outstanding people!
Lianghe District Middle School might be only a town junior middle school, but its results in citywide joint examinations ranked third across Fubei County–better than most junior middle schools in the county seat.
Its former students included overseas-educated doctoral graduates, writers, and nationally renowned scholars.
For a junior middle school in a small town, that was already an extraordinary achievement!
The auspicious Three Stars Attending the Moon feng shui pattern deserved much of the credit…
But it was true that I had not examined it carefully in a long time.
Roundy’s sudden mention of the matter made my heart lurch. I grew slightly nervous.
“Tell me, damned fat bird. You haven’t noticed something abnormal, have you?”
Standing on my shoulder, it flapped its wings several times.
“Your big brother doesn’t understand feng shui. How would I know?”
After a pause, it continued with unusual seriousness,
“It’s just that… lately, when I’ve been flying around and playing near the school, something has always felt strange! I can’t say what’s wrong. I don’t know whether there’s a slight abnormality in the ley-line energy or a change in the feng shui pattern. My whole body simply feels uncomfortable. Tonight, the feeling was especially strong.”
Was that so?!
My expression gradually turned grave.
I knew that although Roundy usually acted careless and rather foolish, it was reliable when it mattered.
And as a raptor-type demon with considerable cultivation, its senses were extremely keen.
The fact that it had brought this matter to me tonight meant there might truly be a problem at Lianghe District Middle School…
Yet I had not noticed at all!
“It seems that when I go to school tomorrow, I’ll need to use the golden compass Master gave me and examine Lianghe District Middle School’s feng shui pattern carefully.”
But to my utter surprise, a tremendous upheaval occurred early the next morning!