Did You Fail Theology?

"Feel free to look around."

Wuma Xiu's voice drifted lightly back to them from ahead.

Yang Zhi and the others were taken aback.

Look around? At what? The Moon God Palace?

With that in mind, they began to examine the palace interior in earnest. They had been too nervous when they came in, focused entirely on walking and feeling the coolness beneath their feet, like a pool of liquid moonlight.

They hadn't even looked up for a proper look.

Now that they had permission, they finally pulled their gazes away from their toes.

The inside of the Moon God Palace was completely different from what it looked like outside.

From the outside, it was a palace.

Cold and magnificent.

But from the inside, it had no roof at all.

Yang Zhi looked up and saw an unobstructed expanse of stars.

Stars shone overhead, and a galaxy surrounded them on all sides.

But he distinctly remembered that, from the outside, the Moon God Palace had a roof. Yang Zhi remembered it very clearly.

On the way here, he had caught a glimpse of it from afar aboard the spaceship.

The palace dome had looked like an overturned crescent moon.

Yet now, standing inside and looking up, he saw a galaxy with nothing blocking the view.

"H-how was this done?"

Yang Zhi regretted the question as soon as it slipped out.

Why did I ask that?

How could the Moon God possibly have time to explain the building's structure to him? As soon as he asked, he had already prepared himself for the question to go unanswered.

Yet Yang Zhi heard the Moon God answer.

"Curious about that?"

Wuma Xiu's voice came from ahead, carrying the faintest hint of a smile.

"My younger brother, the Star God, did it. He insisted that 'it looks better this way.'"

Yang Zhi raised his head again after repeatedly lowering it just now. He couldn't actually see the Moon God's true face clearly.

The god's face was shrouded in a thin layer of moonlight. It wasn't a dazzling light; looking at him was like looking through a pane of frosted glass.

Yang Zhi could make out his outline and his features...

But whenever Yang Zhi tried to focus and discern them carefully, that layer of moonlight would gently push his gaze away.

Unless a god was willing, one could not look directly at them.

The most immediate consequence of forcibly looking directly at one was blindness.

Just as a person couldn't stare directly at the midday sun, swim in lava, or step into a vacuum without protection...

Still, perhaps it was because the god standing before him now was the Moon God.

Though the surrounding moonlight was bright, it wasn't dazzling.

It was cool and refreshing.

Like a small patch of soft light falling on the back of one's hand on a summer night.

Yang Zhi could still make out a few details through that layer of light.

The slight upward tilt at the corners of his eyes, his lashes falling with an air of indifference, and the faintest curve at the corners of his mouth when he spoke.

It suddenly occurred to Yang Zhi that if the one standing here now were not the Moon God, but the Sun God...

An image involuntarily surfaced in Yang Zhi's mind:

Brilliant golden light burst from the god, bright enough to penetrate his eyelids, bright enough to burn his retinas white. Never mind looking at his face—even standing in that direction for another second would make him afraid of being roasted into a wisp of smoke.

His eyes would probably be blinded on the spot.

As soon as the thought appeared, Yang Zhi hurriedly pushed it back down.

Making up stories about the Sun God in my head—did I have a death wish?

But then again.

The Moon God had just said that the "roof" of this palace was made by the Star God? Why would the Star God help the Moon God with this? And could there be some connection between the Moon God and the Star God?

Yang Zhi's mind was still turning when a voice drifted over from beside him, its tone indifferent.

"Did you fail theology?"

In the end, Yuexi couldn't hold back.

He had kept his mouth shut and held himself back again and again.

But in the end, he couldn't keep it up.

From the moment Yang Zhi and the other humans stepped through the gates of the Moon God Palace, he hadn't liked the look of them.

They had clearly been outside the gates earlier, and had only gotten in by tagging along with those two annoying fellows.

And now, of all things, they actually dared "shamelessly" draw their god's attention.

They kept asking this and that, and worst of all, the god had actually answered him.

The little sour bubbles in Yuexi's heart were bubbling up now, and he couldn't suppress them.

"Lord Star God is our god's younger brother. What's so surprising about that?"

His tone was even, and his expression remained as cold as frost, but every word concealed a tiny barb.

Translated:

You didn't even know that? How can you show your face here?

Yang Zhi awkwardly scratched his head.

Theology?

It wasn't as though he had never heard the word before.

The Federation education system did indeed offer the subject.

But it was an elective, and it didn't count toward admission scores.

Some of Yang Zhi's friends had taken it back then, poring over textbooks and memorizing divine genealogies until they were practically bald, then scratching their heads during exams over questions like "In precisely which era was the Sun God born?"

What had he thought at the time?

It's the interstellar age. Who still believes in this stuff?

In short, he had dismissed it and hadn't even chosen the course, much less studied it.

Now, standing in the Moon God Palace before the Moon God himself and hearing the Moonlight Clan chief casually toss out a "Did you fail theology?", Yang Zhi felt his face burn, as if an invisible hand had slapped him twice.

Was it too late to study it now?

The thought had barely crossed his mind when he seemed to hear an invisible sneer.

The theology elective, now so popular that classes were unavailable across the entire internet and the waiting list stretched three years into the future, was looking down at him from on high. Its lips curved in a smile that was thirty percent mockery, thirty percent coldness, and forty percent indifference as it spoke:

Heh.

You ignored me before, but now I'm out of your reach.

Yang Zhi: I'm sorry. I was too young back then.

He silently bowed to his younger self in his heart.

If he had known this day would come, he definitely would have devoured all that material. Divine genealogies, the chronology of the age of gods, and especially everything about the Moon God—he would have known it all backward, and he could even have memorized the notes and appendices. Believe it or not!

Unfortunately, there was no knowing beforehand in this world.

Bai Yang and Li Ze watched, their shoulders touching. Identical, knowing smiles curved their lips, and they chuckled.

The tips of that kid Yang Zhi's ears had turned red, the color burning all the way from the lobes to the rims, as if someone had dabbed them with rouge.

He was still keeping a straight face, but his neck gave him away.

The red had already spread from the base of his ears down his neck. Any redder and he would turn into a boiled shrimp.

He was probably beating his chest and stamping his feet with regret right now.

Served him right. Who told him to refuse to take theology back then, no matter what?

Yuexi took in Yang Zhi's embarrassment and gave a soft "heh" through his nose. His thin lips parted, ready to deliver another eight-hundred-word sarcastic essay and teach this human who didn't know his place a proper lesson.

A hand landed on his head.

Yuexi froze for an instant. Then all the snide remarks he hadn't yet had a chance to say, all the biting mockery he had spent so long composing in his head, were like accumulated snow under the sun.

They melted away without a sound.

He tilted his face up slightly, and his previously frosty features relaxed without his noticing.

The "keep strangers away" aura around him vanished completely.

Yuexi: ˚ʚ｡･-･｡ɞ˚

As well-behaved as an angel.