The morning sunlight was like a cold veil draped across the windowsill. Gu Yue sat at the dining table, mechanically stirring the plain porridge in her bowl with a spoon. Rice grains rolled through the lukewarm liquid, yet failed to stir even the slightest ripple in her eyes. Her gaze, usually as calm as a deep pool, was now bloodshot, and the dark circles beneath her eyes looked as though she had been punched twice.
Last night, when Xie Xie had been staring at his phone and one of those tacky "beautiful girls dancing" pop-ups had jumped onto the screen with its grating sound effects, he had actually had the audacity to send it to her. She had felt some string in her mind snap with a bang. It was not simple anger, but something deeper—the collapse of her understanding of how the world was supposed to work. The rationality, order, and pride she had always upheld had shattered into nothing before the obsessed expression he wore while chasing the applause of a few virtual gifts.
"Gu Yue, eat something." Tang Wulin's voice was soft, his attempt to curry favor painfully obvious. He picked up the fried egg before him, its edges lightly browned and its yolk still runny, then carefully placed it onto the empty plate in front of her. He moved with the caution of someone defusing a bomb. The dark circles beneath his eyes were no better than Gu Yue's. Clearly, the coming "judgment" had kept him awake all night as well.
Gu Yue did not move. Her gaze remained unfocused, as though it had passed straight through the bowl of porridge and landed on some empty, absurd point in the void.
Across from her, Xie Xie kept his head lowered, as though he wished he could bury his entire face in his bowl of porridge. He jabbed rapidly at the bottom of the bowl with his chopsticks. Other than the faint tapping sound, there was no movement at all. He did not dare look at Gu Yue. Every now and then, he would sneak a glance at her, only to yank his gaze away as if shocked. He had curled into himself, radiating an overwhelming aura of I'm guilty.
"Gu Yue," Xu Xiaoyan leaned closer, her voice soft and gentle as she tried to soothe this bomb that could explode at any moment. "Don't think about last night anymore. Everyone... everyone slept badly. But the placement exam is coming up, and Fundamentals of Soul Tool Theory is a major subject! Pull yourself together, okay? Just think of it as helping us put this behind us. Please?"
Her words were like a small stone tossed into the stagnant pool of Gu Yue's heart, yet they did not raise even a single ripple. Gu Yue remained frozen in that posture, like an exquisite doll that had lost its soul.
Time crawled by in suffocating silence. Tang Wulin's attempts at currying favor escalated from offering her fried eggs to peeling a tea egg for her, then warming up some milk. Xie Xie's guilt turned into restless discomfort, until he finally picked up his bowl and pretended to be conducting a profound philosophical examination of the porridge. Xu Xiaoyan's persuasion also shifted from gentle reminders to anxious pleading.
This silent standoff lasted until the noon sun stretched the shadows of the window frames long across the floor. The entire room lay beneath a gloomy low-pressure atmosphere. At last, Tang Wulin and Xie Xie seemed to reach some tragic agreement. They exchanged a glance filled with remorse, fear, and the grim resolve of men with nothing left to lose.
The next second, they stood up at the same time. Their movements were so synchronized that they were almost comical. Then they bowed deeply toward Gu Yue.
"Gu Yue!" Tang Wulin's voice carried the desperate sincerity of someone burning his bridges. "Trust us one more time! Just this once! I swear, from now on, all I'll have in my eyes is cultivation and knowledge! Those 'beautiful girl livestreams' are nothing but empty illusions, traps set by capital to harvest people! We know we were wrong! We really know we were wrong!" He spoke rapidly, as though reciting a soul-wrenching letter of repentance.
Xie Xie lowered his head even further, his voice muffled as if he had a burning coal in his mouth. "That's right! Gu Yue! We lost our heads. We let desire cloud our minds! We'll never touch that stuff again! We'll even tell you our phone passwords! Please, give us one last chance! If we fail this exam, you can punish us however you want. We won't complain!"
The two of them were now putting on a melodramatic performance that was practically a full-body prostration in the public cafeteria.
Gu Yue finally reacted. She slowly raised her eyes. The exhaustion in them had reached its limit, and the last remaining glimmer of light was pure helplessness toward these two hopeless cases. She looked at those faces full of "sincerity," and the corner of her lips twitched ever so slightly in response. Then, extremely slowly, she nodded.
"...One last time." Her voice was hoarse and dry, like sandpaper scraping repeatedly across rough wood.
"Yeah—!" After a brief deathly silence, the long-suppressed cheers nearly blew the roof off the building. Their enormous joy was like floodwaters bursting through a dam, instantly washing away what little reason they had left. Tang Wulin's face flushed red with excitement as he snatched In-Depth Analysis of Basic Soul Tool Theory from Gu Yue's hand, the book she had been clutching until it was slightly warm. Xie Xie cooperatively stretched out a foot and gave him an apparently accidental trip. The book traced an ironic arc through the air before landing with a plop directly in the trash can beside them.
"Oops! Sorry!" Tang Wulin grinned carelessly, his face overflowing with the pure ecstasy of a survivor. "What's the point of reading that crap? I know every word, but put them together and it's all gibberish! Better not to read it at all!"
Xie Xie immediately joined in, wearing the smug expression of someone who had seen through everything. "Exactly! Gu Yue, don't fight with a few sheets of paper! Passing is what matters! We're smart, quick-witted—just cram a little and we'll pass! And if we fail, we fail together! Nobody gets away! Come on, let's go eat hot pot! You need to be full to have the strength not to study!"
"You—!" Gu Yue looked at that sacred tome of knowledge being treated so carelessly, then at the two radiant faces before her, glowing from their "liberation." Anger, absurdity, and utter powerlessness surged straight to her head. Her teeth itched with rage, and the knuckles of her clenched fists turned white. However, before she could explode, Tang Wulin and Xie Xie had already flanked her from either side. Like men hauling away a defenseless duck headed for slaughter, they half-pushed and half-dragged her out of her chair. Xu Xiaoyan hurriedly packed up and followed, a knowing, sly smile on her face.
And so, an extraordinary sight appeared on the campus main road: a pale girl with panda-like dark circles was "surrounded" by three energetic people with light steps as they marched grandly toward the hot pot restaurant outside the school. Gu Yue struggled the entire way, making one last attempt. Her words came fast and urgently, like a barrage of gunfire:
"...The importance of preparing for an exam! Are your brains full of Sichuan peppercorns and chili peppers?! This is a placement exam! It's a crucial battle to test whether our foundation in Soul Tool theory is solid! If the foundation is weak, everything collapses! Soul Power cultivation can be built up slowly over time, but if your theoretical foundation falls apart, how will you understand complex Soul Tool circuits in the future? How will you analyze core formations? How will you..."
"Got it, got it, Gu Yue!" Tang Wulin shouted back without turning around. He casually patted her back, neither too hard nor too lightly, cutting her off at exactly the right moment. "Theory is gray, but the tree of life is forever green! This spicy red-oil broth is the most direct model of an energy-reaction furnace! Dipping tripe up and down seven times is the most exquisite experiment in controlling Soul Power vibration frequency! Understanding this bite is more useful than chewing through ten pages of a book!"
"Exactly, exactly!" Xie Xie eagerly joined this carnival of crooked logic. He pointed at the broth at the neighboring table, where chilies and Sichuan peppercorns rolled in the boil. "See that? The rhythm of those bubbles is just like an unstable Soul Power circuit seeking dynamic balance! Every slice of meat we cook today is the accumulation of the freshest, most direct combat data! Gu Yue, you're wasting a precious opportunity for immersive pre-exam field instruction!"
Xu Xiaoyan laughed so hard that her shoulders shook, then delivered the decisive blow. "Besides, you have to eat your fill before you can cram at the last minute! Once we get there, we'll divide the work and mark out the key points for you! It'll definitely be more efficient than you studying yourself!"
Gu Yue felt her chest tighten from this absurd theory, which somehow made perfect sense within their own logic. She tried to reason with them, tried to bring up the brutal reality of Soul Master assessments, tried to paint the chain reaction that failing could cause... Yet every word she spoke was like a snowflake falling into the steaming heat of a hot pot, melting away in an instant. No one listened. Tang Wulin was enthusiastically confirming the insane level of spiciness for their broth with the server. Xie Xie was studying the dazzling assortment of meat platters on the menu. Xu Xiaoyan had already begun eagerly discussing whether they should order an extra serving of brown sugar sticky rice cakes to offset the spice intense enough to burn away one's soul.
Every serious discussion about "the importance of preparing for an exam" was drowned out by the noisy orders for "tripe," "duck blood," and "shrimp paste." The mist rising from the boiling red-oil broth, thick with the fragrance of beef tallow, completely blurred and distorted it all before it finally vanished.
Gu Yue gave up completely. She pressed her bloodless lips together and swallowed every rebuttal she had left. Silence was the last calm before the storm, and as the world inside her—which had only collapsed yesterday—was forcefully washed over by the clamor of reality, she simply closed her eyes, relaxed her whole body, and let herself sway along with their steps.
Before you continue