Carried along by a surge of excitement, Li Su headed home.
Classes had ended, but he'd been delayed for over an hour before he finally got back. He was undoubtedly late.
His parents had both already come home from work.
At that moment, they were sitting on the sofa in the living room.
"Dad, Mom!"
The moment he saw them, Li Su's eyes flew wide. He'd been fantasizing about entering a World Fragment and slaughtering his way through it, winning top-tier cultivation techniques, but now his vision blurred in an instant.
When he was little, he'd been such a handful that he'd given his parents no end of worry.
At last he'd grown up and could properly repay them for all their care. He'd never imagined that an accident would take them before he'd even had a chance to say a word.
He rushed straight up to them, tears streaming down his face as he threw his arms around them and kissed each of them on the cheek.
"Mom, Dad, I've missed you so much!!!"
In that moment, what did martial arts or the world matter? None of it was important.
He'd gotten used to living alone, to being by himself. Even when he'd traveled to another world, it hadn't occurred to him that coming back meant his parents were alive too.
He couldn't hold back the tears. They came streaming down.
"I missed you so, so much!"
Holding his parents close, Li Su was overwhelmed with emotion. Damn it, damn it all—how could he have forgotten something this important?
Seeing him like that, his mother panicked. She reached out at once and stroked his head. "Sweetie, what's wrong? Why are you crying? There, there, don't cry. Mom made your favorite braised pork."
As expected of a mother—she was always worrying about him. Even when he made her angry, after giving him a good beating, she still remembered to cook his favorite food. And he'd once thought that was just her giving him a slap and then a sweet date.
Li Su lifted his watery eyes. Though he was weeping for joy, he suddenly felt ravenous.
Mom's braised pork. It had been so, so long since he'd tasted it.
"Heh."
Beside them, his father chuckled and reached out to pat Li Su on the head. With a beaming smile, he said, "My boy's gotten clever."
"Huh?" Li Su froze.
"That acting, those tears, that voice, those feelings—you've been practicing for quite a while, haven't you?"
"Ah?"
"Impressive! If I hadn't seen you this morning, I'd have thought you'd been away from us for years."
His father's smile grew brighter. His narrowed eyes and upturned lips made for a perfectly radiant grin, but perhaps because of the lighting, everything above his nostrils was in shadow, giving him a sinister air.
"Dad???" Li Su shuddered. He really had missed his parents, but the shadow they'd cast over him was just as real.
"Teacher Yin called just now. Not only were you dozing off in class, but even after she woke you, you kept spacing out. Well, aren't you something?"
As his father spoke, his mother paused too. Her smiling eyes opened a narrow crack, revealing a dangerous glint.
"N-no, that's not—"
Li Su's eyes widened further, and he started stammering.
Damn it, Devil Yi! He'd thought she'd changed, but that jerk hadn't just taken matters into her own hands—she'd still gone and tattled to his parents, just like before!
********
In his room, Li Su lay on his stomach on the bed, his useless tears streaming down his face.
He'd been beaten again.
The usual two-on-one beating.
And both the bamboo cane and the belt had snapped.
He looked at the broken cane and belt in the corner, their fates no different from their predecessors, and felt like crying.
So even after traveling to another world, not one of his thirty-nine beatings had been spared?
That wasn't even the worst of it. Li Su had discovered a truly fatal problem: while he'd screamed as if his heart were being torn apart during the beating, an endless wave of nostalgia had welled up inside him. He'd actually missed that feeling. God, he wanted to die.
Bah!
Stupid Dad, mean Mom.
I hate you.
Waaah, I'm already a grown man. I was nearly thirty in my last life, and I was almost a father, and you beat me like this? How humiliating.
His family still lived in a walk-up apartment building.
At that time, elevator buildings had only just begun to catch on, and most places still had stairs.
So when his parents beat him just now, the families on all three floors above and all three below had heard every bit of it. Not a single household had been spared.
He hadn't thought much of it before, but now, what was that if not a public execution?
I want to die. I really want to die!!!
Li Su pulled the covers over his head. He felt so awful he wished the whole world would just end.
********
"Hey, should we stop beating him from now on?" his mother asked outside the room, listening to their son cry.
"He's grown up, after all."
"That little punk's hopeless. His senior year is crucial, and if he lets his guard down now, he'll be heading into a World Fragment before long. What if—"
"Enough. At worst, he can find somewhere to hide once he's inside and stay there until it's over. There's nothing wrong with being ordinary. At least he'll be out of danger."
"You..." His father sighed. "All right. If he's set on it, then so be it. Alive is better than dead."
His father shook his head. "Then we'll stop beating him."
Though they'd always believed that a son raised under the rod would be filial, they weren't completely unreasonable. After all, Li Su would turn eighteen soon. He'd be an adult.
Inside the room, Li Su listened to his parents talking outside. He drew a breath, and a smile crept across his face.
It wasn't that he'd never be beaten again. The details were a little different, but after his thirty-ninth beating in his previous life, his parents had said the same thing. They'd never beaten him again after that.
"Mom, Dad, it's so good to see you again!"
"But this time will be different. This time, I won't fail. I'll enter the World Fragment and become the greatest person in the world. I won't make you worry yourselves sick anymore. I won't let that tragedy happen because I wasn't good enough. I won't."
He slowly closed his eyes. His anticipation of entering the World Fragment had grown all the stronger.
In his previous life, he hadn't worked hard in high school, and in the end he'd only gotten into a third-rate university. His parents had spent no end of time worrying about him.
Later, because of him, they'd both gone out to take care of something—and never come back.
By the time the call came, Li Su had finally woken up to what had happened. He'd lost the chance to care for his parents.
That day, for the first time in his life, he drank until he was unconscious. For the first time, he'd cried until he had no tears left, yet couldn't make a sound.
In this life, none of that would happen.
The World Fragment would be his chance to rise. He'd become the kind of child other people's parents pointed to, and make countless people envy his parents.
*******
School.
Classroom!
"Today we're reviewing how people spoke in the Ming Dynasty, so you won't be mistaken for strange outsiders and rejected when you go in.
"First, the capital region.
"Being long-winded, talking too much—in the Ming Dynasty, they'd say 'rattle on' or 'keep chattering.'
"Carrying something: 'dangle it.'
"Pulling: 'tug.'
"Letting go of something: 'drop it.'"
Standing at the lectern, Devil Yi said calmly, "You must remember that the language inside a World Fragment is nothing like the language outside. The way people speak varies greatly from place to place. Locals are already wary of outsiders, and that's not to mention what happens when the person you're inhabiting suddenly starts speaking in a different dialect.
"The people in a World Fragment may be unreal, but don't assume they're stupid or unable to tell. Someone once let a tiny slip show, and the people in that world caught on. They hunted him relentlessly afterward. If he hadn't been lucky, he never would have made it out alive.
"Of course, the Ming Dynasty is relatively easy. If you're not confident about the Tang Dynasty, find a small place to hide and stay there until it's over. Understood?"
"Understood!"
Everyone answered in unison.
At his desk, Li Su felt his sphincter clench, and his face stiffened.
Without thinking, he'd opened his textbook to Tang-era linguistics, right to the section on Luoyang Mandarin.
There, it listed a poem—a poem everyone knew. It was called Quiet Night Thought!
This was how you read it:
Dai diu si guo hang, jiang ze meng nüe guang.
Nie jie di shang shuang, ge diu mang meng nüe.
Li Su sat there in a daze, beginning to question his grasp on reality.
Was Quiet Night Thought really read like that???