When Fang Shuwen came in,
Uncle Seven was giving a plump middle-aged woman a perm. Aluminum curlers covered her head, making her look like a hedgehog.
When he saw Fang Shuwen come in, he grinned, revealing teeth yellowed by tobacco.
"Well, Little Fang, you're here? Have a seat for a bit. I'll be done in a jiffy."
Fang Shuwen nodded and went to sit on the long bench against the wall.
On the wall opposite him hung a calendar poster.
The woman in the picture wore a high-slit cheongsam and held a round fan in one hand, her eyes crinkled in a smile.
It was none other than Tang Yue, Shenghai's hottest film star.
After roughly the time it took to drink a cup of tea, the woman's perm was done, and Uncle Seven saw her out.
He turned back, dusted the loose hair off the barber's chair with his apron, and jerked his chin at Fang Shuwen.
"Little Fang, come sit down. The usual? Short on the sides, thin it out on top?"
"Sure," Fang Shuwen replied.
Uncle Seven's skills were certainly nothing to fault. His scissors moved fast and steady, and the haircut was done before long.
Fang Shuwen looked at himself in the mirror in front of him.
The face in the mirror was lean, with a high brow ridge, deep-set eyes, and thin lips.
His looks were ordinary—the kind that vanished into a crowd.
"Uncle Seven, you don't have any Standard here? Bring me a tin. I want to slick some on."
Fang Shuwen looked at his unruly hair and couldn't help asking.
"What?" Uncle Seven's hand paused.
"Standard. That hair oil. Do you have any in the shop?" Fang Shuwen asked.
In the original owner's memories, Guo Ziming slicked Standard hair oil onto his hair every day.
Back then, the original owner had always envied him.
He'd thought only the upper class deserved to use Standard hair oil.
Later, he'd finally managed to get half a tin of Standard from Guo Ziming.
For those few days, the original owner had slicked Standard onto his hair every day.
At school, he'd even walked with a swagger.
He'd been unbearably pleased with himself.
Even now, when Fang Shuwen thought back on it, the memory embarrassed him—but he still wanted to try the hair oil.
"Standard?"
Uncle Seven clicked his tongue.
"You little brat, you've got some nerve asking. That stuff isn't ordinary hair oil. It's foreign goods, and it's expensive. One tin costs two yuan. How would a little shop like your Uncle Seven's have such high-class merchandise?"
"Even if I did, who could afford to use it?"
"Oh."
Fang Shuwen nodded and didn't press the matter. He took out two jiao and placed them on the table.
After leaving the barbershop,
Fang Shuwen ran a hand over his neat short hair and felt a few pounds lighter.
He looked up. It was still early, with two or three hours left before dark.
If he went back now, Mother Wang would surely be in the courtyard bragging to Old Fang about her Cuicui again. He didn't want to listen.
"I'll stop by the bookstore and review my lessons."
Fang Shuwen turned down two streets and arrived at the bookstore on East Street.
The leaves on the crooked plane tree by the entrance were thicker than they'd been a few days ago.
When he pushed open the door, the smell of ink and paper washed over him.
Behind the counter, the young woman in the cheongsam was as usual.
Her head was bowed, and she held a book in her hands, absorbed in reading.
Fang Shuwen glanced at it.
A grayish-blue cover, with traditional Chinese characters arranged vertically.
The cover showed a gloomy old castle, a pale moon hanging above its pointed roof.
The five dark-red characters that made up the title were scrawled in an extremely sloppy hand.
Their strokes twisted and tangled. They were neither regular script nor clerical script, but looked more like some kind of writing he'd never seen before.
Fang Shuwen couldn't make out the characters.
Still, he had a vague feeling.
There was something strange about the book.
As he stared at it, it seemed as if a pair of eyes were watching him from one of the castle's windows.
He tried to look away, but his body felt as if something had nailed him in place. His neck was so stiff he couldn't turn it.
A strange noise began to fill his ears, a buzzing and whining, like something whispering from somewhere impossibly far away and impossibly close.
The window drew nearer and grew larger. In its pitch-black opening, two points of ghostly light gradually came into focus.
They were a pair of eyes.
Human eyes!
Fang Shuwen's pupils contracted, and alarm bells rang in his heart.
He tried to cry out, but it was as if an invisible hand had clamped around his throat. He couldn't force out a single word.
A chill had already seeped through his scalp and into his brain, making his temples throb.
The bookstore before him began to twist and warp. The bookshelves, counter, and sunlight beyond the window were all swallowed by a layer of ashen mist.
Only the castle remained, with the pair of blood-red eyes behind its window.
This was no ordinary book!
Fang Shuwen clenched his teeth, pressed the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and suddenly summoned his strength.
"Boom!"
His qi and blood burst forth.
A string of crisp cracks erupted from deep within his bones, like beans popping in a pan, or firecrackers going off.
One crack, then another.
Yet his qi and blood surged more violently than they ever had during training.
A torrent of heat welled up from his chest and rushed up his spine, like a savage beast awakening and roaring inside him.
The instant the heat surged over his head, the chill abruptly shrank back as if it had been scalded.
The whispers in his ears turned into shrill hissing.
The gray mist churned and retreated, and the castle window, along with the blood-red eyes behind it, shattered into countless pieces like a broken mirror.
"Phew."
Fang Shuwen stumbled back, his back striking a stool and sending it crashing over with a dull thud.
He gasped for breath. The veins on his forehead bulged, and cold sweat ran down from his temples.
The scene before him returned to normal.
The bookshelves were still bookshelves, and the counter was still the counter.
Apart from the woman in the cheongsam, who had put down her book and was now looking at him reproachfully,
everything was just as it had been. Not a thing had changed.
"What are you doing? If you want to read, then read. Why did you knock over my stool?"
Shen Xinyi furrowed her delicate brows. Her displeasure was plain on her face, and she was about to scold him some more when she suddenly fell silent.
She had seen Fang Shuwen's face.
The poor student's face was frighteningly pale. His forehead was slick with cold sweat, and the hair at his temples clung damply to his cheeks.
He panted heavily, his chest rising and falling violently. The veins in his neck hadn't quite gone down, and he looked as if he'd just been fished out of the water.
"Hey, hey, what's wrong with you? You're not sick, are you? Want me to take you to the hospital?"
"I'm fine. I'd just been standing too long and got a little dizzy."
Fang Shuwen wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, but he didn't take his eyes off the book on the counter as he asked,
"What book are you reading? Where did you buy it?"
"This?"
Shen Xinyi glanced down at the grayish-blue book in her hands and casually waved it.
"Tales of the Ancient Castle. It's a new release from the Commercial Press last month. I got it from Shenghai Bookstore. Why? Want to read it? Too bad. You'll have to wait until I'm done."
Fang Shuwen frowned slightly, then stared at Shen Xinyi.
He was puzzled. Why did the shopkeeper seem completely fine?
Could everything that had just happened have been an illusion?
At that moment, a message appeared before Fang Shuwen's eyes.
[Absorbed uncanny energy.]
[Skill points acquired: 5.]