Headband Standard, Skill Points Gained Again (Seeking Follow-up Reads)

When Fang Shuwen walked in, Uncle Seven was perming the hair of a stout middle-aged woman, her head covered in aluminum hair clips like a hedgehog.

Seeing Fang Shuwen enter, he grinned, revealing teeth stained yellow by tobacco.

"Oh, Little Fang is here? Sit for a moment, I'll be done in a jiffy."

Fang Shuwen nodded and walked over 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 qipao, holding a round fan in her hand, her eyes curved into crescents as she smiled.

It was none other than Tang Yue, the most popular film and television star in Shenghai.

After waiting for about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, the stout woman finished her perm, and Uncle Seven saw her to the door.

He turned back, used a cloth to brush the loose hair off the barber chair, and gestured toward Fang Shuwen with his chin.

"Little Fang, come sit. The usual? Short on the sides, thinned out on top?"

"Yes," Fang Shuwen replied.

Uncle Seven's craftsmanship was truly impeccable; he wielded his shears with speed and precision, finishing the haircut in no time.

Fang Shuwen looked at himself through the mirror in front of him.

The person in the mirror had a gaunt face, prominent brow bones, deep-set eyes, and thin lips.

He looked ordinary, the kind of face that would vanish the moment it was lost in a crowd.

"Uncle Seven, you don't have any Standard here? Bring me a tin, let me put some on."

Looking at his slightly frizzy hair, Fang Shuwen couldn't help but ask.

"What?" Uncle Seven's hand paused.

"Standard. That hair oil, do you have any in your shop?" Fang Shuwen asked.

In the original owner's memories, Guo Ziming would apply Standard hair oil to his hair every single day.

Back then, the original owner had always envied him.

He believed that only the upper class deserved to use Standard hair oil.

Later, he had managed to get half a tin of Standard from Guo Ziming.

For those few days, the predecessor had applied it to his hair daily.

When he was at school, he felt like he was walking on air.

He couldn't have been more smug.

Even now, as Fang Shuwen recalled it, besides feeling embarrassed, he actually felt a desire to try the hair oil himself.

"Standard?"

Uncle Seven smacked his lips.

"You little brat, you really dare to ask. That stuff isn't your average hair oil; it's imported, expensive as all get-out. Two silver dollars a tin. How could a small shop like your Uncle Seven's carry such high-end goods?"

"Even if I did, who could afford to use it?"

"Oh."

Fang Shuwen nodded, not pressing the matter further, and placed two jiao on the table.

Stepping out of the barbershop, Fang Shuwen touched his fresh, short hair, feeling a bit lighter on his feet.

He checked the sky; 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 again, bragging to Old Fang about her Cuicui, and he didn't want to hear it.

"I'll go sit at the bookstore and review my lessons."

Fang Shuwen turned two corners and arrived at the bookstore on East Street.

The leaves on the crooked-neck phoenix tree at the entrance were denser than they had been a few days ago.

Pushing the door open, the scent of printer's ink and paper rushed to meet him.

Behind the counter, the young woman in the qipao was just as he remembered.

Her head was bowed, a book held in her hands, reading with total absorption.

Fang Shuwen glanced over.

The book had a blue-grey cover with vertical traditional characters.

The cover depicted a gloomy, eerie castle, with a pale moon hanging over its spire.

The five dark red characters of the title were written in an extremely sloppy hand.

The strokes were twisted and knotted, neither regular script nor clerical script; they looked more like some kind of writing he had never seen before.

Fang Shuwen did not recognize this script at all.

However, he had a vague feeling about it.

The book gave him a very strange sensation.

As he stared at it, a pair of eyes seemed to be watching him from the window of the ancient castle.

He instinctively wanted to look away, but his body felt as if it had been nailed in place, his neck too stiff to turn.

Static began to fill his ears, a buzzing and humming sound, as if something were whispering in the distance and yet right beside him.

That window grew closer and larger, and within the pitch-black frame, two points of ghostly light gradually became clear.

They were two eyes.

Human eyes!

Fang Shuwen's pupils constricted sharply, and alarm bells rang in his heart.

He wanted to open his mouth to shout, but his throat felt as if it were being gripped by an invisible hand, unable to squeeze out a single word.

That chill had already seeped through his scalp and into his brain, making his temples throb violently.

The scene of the bookstore before him began to twist and warp; the bookshelves, the counter, and the sunlight outside the window were all swallowed by a layer of gray haze.

Only that ancient castle and the blood-red eyes behind the window remained.

This was definitely no ordinary book!

Fang Shuwen gritted his teeth, pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and exerted force suddenly.

"Bang!"

His blood and qi exploded outward.

A series of crisp cracks erupted from deep within his bones, sounding like popping beans or firecrackers.

One sound, then two.

The surge of blood and qi was more violent than it had ever been during his training.

A rolling torrent of heat surged from his chest, rushing up along his spine like a waking beast roaring within his body.

The moment the heat rushed over the top of his head, that chill recoiled as if it had been scalded.

The whispers in his ears turned into a shrill screech.

The gray mist churned and retreated, and the window of the ancient castle, along with the blood-red eyes behind it, shattered into pieces like a broken mirror.

"Hah."

Fang Shuwen stumbled back, his back knocking over a stool with a dull thud.

He gasped for air, the veins on his forehead bulging, and cold sweat streaming down his temples.

The scene before him returned to normal.

The bookshelves were still bookshelves, and the counter was still the counter.

Except for the woman in the qipao, who had put down the book and was looking at him with a reproachful gaze.

Everything was as it had been; there was not the slightest change.

"What are you doing? If you want to read, just read. Why are you smashing my stool?"

Shen Xinyi's delicate brows were tightly furrowed, her displeasure evident on her face. She was about to scold him further, but she suddenly stopped.

She saw Fang Shuwen's face.

The poor student's complexion was frighteningly pale, his forehead covered in cold sweat, and his hair plastered damply against his cheeks.

He was gasping for air, his chest heaving violently, and the veins on his neck had not yet fully subsided, as if he had just been fished out of the water.

"Hey, hey, what's wrong with you? You aren't sick, are you? Do you want me to take you to the hospital to get checked out?"

"I'm fine. I just stood for too long and got a bit dizzy."

Fang Shuwen wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, but his gaze did not move from the book on the counter as he asked:

"What book is that you're reading? Where did you buy it?"

"This?"

Shen Xinyi looked down at the book with the blue-gray cover in her hand and waved it casually:

"Tales of the Ancient Castle, a new release from Commercial Press last month, stocked from Shenghai Bookstore. Why? Do you want to read it? That's unfortunate; wait until I'm finished with it."

Fang Shuwen frowned slightly, then looked steadily at Shen Xinyi.

He felt a bit of doubt in his heart—why did the shopkeeper seem to be perfectly fine?

Could everything that just happened have been a hallucination?

But at that very moment, a message popped up before Fang Shuwen's eyes.

[Absorbed eerie energy.]

[Obtained skill points: 5 points.]