Sunset and Gossip

As Yun Jingheng saw Tang Wulin and his group off, Xie Xie turned back and shouted at him, "The spot is settled, no backing out!"

He waved his hand without turning around, closed the door, and leaned against it for a few seconds. The room still smelled of charred barbecue and the sweetness of cold drinks.

The glass pot was empty, and six cups were scattered haphazardly on the desk. The cover of the meeting minutes had been turned upside down by Xu Xiaoyan.

He walked over and stacked the cups one by one on the tray, flattened the minutes again, and then folded the oil paper package that Xie Xie had left on the windowsill and threw it into the trash can.

The surface of Sea God Lake outside the window shimmered like scattered gold under the midday sun.

He glanced across the lake towards the Outer Court and could vaguely see several students in school uniforms walking in twos and threes toward the cafeteria, their pace neither hurried nor slow, just like any other ordinary first day of school.

He sat back down at his desk and turned to the next page of the meeting minutes.

First, finish compiling the minutes, then investigate Xu Lizhi's matter.

He mentally prioritized his actions, and as he wrote the fourth line, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind: Had he actually repaid the 260,000 yuan?

He stopped writing, flipped through the folders on the table, but found no repayment records.

Never mind, we'll know once we find them.

During the afternoon's recovery training, Zi JI scolded him again in her Sea of Spirit.

The content of his scolding was similar to that of the previous days. The cold energy left over from the Fourth Trial had not been completely expelled from his meridians. During the meeting in the morning, he had been using his Soul Power to suppress the remaining cold energy, which caused the flow of Moonlight in his meridians to slow down by half a beat. Zi JI noticed it at a glance.

"If you want to attend the Sea God Fate with a limp, just say so. I won't need to help you regulate your meridians every day, saving me some energy."

Yun Jingheng sat cross-legged under the Moon Laurel Tree with his eyes closed, and replied, "I will not participate in the Sea God Fate."

"Then go to the meeting limping." Zi JI retorted coldly, but she poured all her Soul Power into his meridians without diminishing her strength.

After the training session, he went to the finance department to file the signed expense approval form.

As he passed the corner on the second floor, he ran into the same deacon who had withheld his funding on his first day of work. This time, the deacon greeted him and even asked, "When will the first phase of the array plate experiment begin?"

Yun Jingheng said quickly, "We'll start once the rune array is finished," his tone as usual.

The deacon nodded and left. He continued walking forward, already calculating in his mind how many hours he could squeeze out to draw runes that night.

In the evening, Cai Yue'er came over and brought him a draft of the revised version of the new part of the Sea God Fate.

Yun Jingheng read through the entire document from beginning to end, offering two suggestions for wording revisions. Cai Yue'er nodded and put the document away, pausing briefly at the door before leaving.

"Your dad said you've been busy until the wee hours every night lately."

Yun Jingheng was taken aback; he hadn't expected her to bring this up so suddenly.

"Not every day... just occasionally."

"Occasionally..."

Cai Yue'er repeated the two words, her tone carrying a knowing quality that only someone who had been through it could understand.

She didn't say anything more, just left a message saying "Take care and get some rest," and then left.

Yun Jingheng stood at the door watching her come downstairs, without saying much.

Xie Xie came again for dinner, this time without bringing barbecue, but with two portions of braised pork taken from the cafeteria.

He said that Xu Xiaoyan and Yuanen Yehui went to help Ye Xinglan prepare for tomorrow's second round of assessments, and Tang Wulin went to the city to buy ingredients. As for what ingredients he bought, he looked away guiltily halfway through his sentence, and Yun Jingheng did not ask further.

After the two finished their two servings of braised pork, Xie Xie took the initiative to rummage through the cupboard, poured himself a cold drink, and after drinking more than half of it, wiped his mouth and asked a question that he had clearly been preparing for a long time.

"Jing Heng, do you think anyone will confess their feelings to you this year's Sea God Fate?"

Yun Jingheng was swallowing the last bite of braised pork when he heard this and looked up at Xie Xie.

Xie Xie's eyes were unusually bright, probably from the excitement of having already devised a whole script in his mind.

He put down his chopsticks, picked up his cup, took a sip, and spoke calmly.

"Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a man who loved to pry into other people's love lives. Later, he died."

"How did he die?"

"Killed."

Xie Xie shut up.

But he only closed his eyes for three seconds before saying, "I was just asking, why are you so nervous?"

"Hey, hey, hey, if—I mean, if Gu Yue, Xing Lan, Xiao Yan confessed to you at the same time, who would you choose?"

Yun Jingheng paused for a second, then said, "Guess... will there be an extra Yuan En?"

Xie Xie's smile froze. "Not... Brother?"

Yun Jingheng rolled his eyes and ignored him, stacked the empty lunchboxes and threw them into the trash can, then began to tidy up the files on the table.

Xie Xie lingered, poured himself another half-cup of cold drink, and sat on the windowsill, chatting idly about recent events at the academy.

So-and-so confessed their feelings and got rejected; so-and-so practiced extra at the training ground until midnight for the Sea God Fate; so-and-so went around asking people to help write their confession, and their writing was particularly bad.

As Yun Jingheng listened, he was also filing up the meeting materials for tomorrow, occasionally responding with a short phrase such as "um," "oh," or "serves you right."

The setting sun shone in from behind Xie Xie, gilding his entire body with a golden edge.

This scene briefly overlapped with an evening many years ago, when they had just moved into the Work-Study Student Dormitory. Xie Xie was sitting on the windowsill, telling him gossip about so-and-so from the Outer Court. He listened while drawing, occasionally making a sarcastic remark, and sometimes laughing.

Back then, there were no God Trial, no Sea God Pavilion Meeting, and no Di Tian.

My biggest worry back then was whether Aunt Cai would beat me up in the practical class the next day.

Later, when Xie Xie was about to leave, Yun Jingheng handed him the blueprints for the Two-Word Armor he had promised Yuanen Yehui, asking him to pass them on.

He closed the door, and the room became quiet again.

He stood at his desk for a while, then organized the meeting materials to be archived tomorrow and put them into a file folder. He then pulled out the half-finished rune array drawing from the bottom of the drawer.

The moon-white patterns on the drawing shimmered under the light. He took a pen from the pen holder, dipped it in the special ink, and made the first stroke on the third node of the first layer of the array base.

The surface of Sea God Lake outside the window shimmered in the moonlight, glowing quietly like the rune array he had drawn.

"Should I add an early warning function? Like for Soul Power fluctuations in a specific frequency band? No... why would an energy conversion array need an early warning?"

By the time Yun Jingheng finished drawing the seventh node, it was already completely dark outside the window.

The shimmering light on Sea God Lake changed from gold to silver. The moon hadn't yet risen halfway up the sky, but its Moonlight was already bright enough to shine through the window, casting a thin layer of silver light on the rune array diagram he had spread out.

He put down his pen, stretched his wrists, and then picked up the now-cold drink on the table and took a sip.

The basic framework of the rune array has been established, and the direction of the energy circuit is roughly clear. The next step is to fill in the details and calibrate the connecting nodes between the array bases one by one.

He picked up his pen again and gently drew an arc at the intersection of the third layer of array base and the core pattern, the ink from the pen tip leaving an extremely thin silver mark on the drawing.

He looked up, shifting his gaze from the blueprints to the window.

At the end of Sea God Lake, the Star Pavilion was slowly drifting over along its fixed trajectory.

Several lights shone above, flickering in the night and reflected on the lake, creating a flowing ribbon of light.

He looked up and saw the Star Pavilion floating towards him.

"How about... I add something to it?"