"It's almost midnight. Someone should be coming to relieve me." Gate of Myriad Wonders stood, straightened his Daoist robe, then walked to the door and looked outside.
"I'm going back to sleep too," Chen Shu said.
"Don't! Nights are so boring. Why don't we stay and play cards?" Zhang Suannai said.
"You stay and play."
"What kind of Cultivator needs sleep!?"
"Don't think I don't know you sleep in at the dorm every day."
"Fine! I wasn't begging you!"
Zhang Suannai got up and followed Chen Shu out.
"Benefactor Chen."
Master Tongzhi, who had been sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed in thought, opened them again. The prayer beads in his hand stopped moving as he looked at Chen Shu. "If it were you, what would you do?"
"I..."
Chen Shu stopped at the doorway and turned to meet his gaze. "What I believe in is living comfortably and with a clear conscience, so I rarely do things that would truly leave me regretting them or ashamed. But I can't bear to part with this dazzling world or the people I love either. So I'd probably be like Zhang Suannai..."
"Good!"
Master Tongzhi closed his eyes again.
Chen Shu left the room and headed upstairs.
Behind him came Zhang Suannai's light footsteps. She kept two or three steps between them, close enough for him to hear her muttering under her breath:
"Copy someone else, turn into a sparrow; sparrow flies, turn into a turtle..."
Chen Shu stopped and looked back.
"What are you chanting?"
"A rhyme!"
"Who are you saying copied you?"
"I didn't say it was you!"
"Then who?"
"Whoever copied me!"
"..."
Chen Shu was speechless.
Zhang Suannai ignored him and kept muttering to herself. "Turtle crawls, turn into a bastard turtle..."
Chen Shu: ...
Luckily, he lived