Awakening

A wave of heat surged and ebbed like flames, yet at some point, without a sound, the world froze for a brief instant.

Lin Shuguang slowly opened his eyes where he lay sprawled across his desk. Blazing sunlight passed through the old locust tree, which rose as high as a three-story building, and through the glass beneath the half-drawn curtains before finally falling across his face. His skin was fair and flushed, while his eyes, gazing at everything before him, still held the drowsiness of someone who had just awoken. But in the next instant, that drowsiness turned into... confusion and alarm.

A face he had not seen in years blocked his entire view the next second. "Old Lin, quit sleeping! It's almost time for our awakening. I wonder if we'll succeed..."

"Xu... Jie?" Lin Shuguang was dumbfounded. For a moment, he did not even realize what Xu Jie meant by "awakening."

The person before him was clearly his old deskmate, whom he had not seen for nearly ten years since they had gone their separate ways after graduating from high school!

Yet this very person had put on the bowl cut he had worn back in high school and appeared before him once again... Had he mistaken him for someone else? Impossible!

"Did you sleep yourself silly? You're really something. We're about to awaken, and I'm so nervous my palms are covered in sweat, yet you can still sleep? Do you still want to get into a martial arts school or not... Forget it, I won't say anything else. Old Fu's here!" Xu Jie felt creeped out by Lin Shuguang's stare. The endless muttering he had originally wanted to continue immediately died away as their homeroom teacher, Old Fu, was about to enter the classroom.

"Am... I dreaming?"

Lin