"I must bid you all farewell sooner than I'd hoped."
Inside an elegant, old-fashioned classroom building at Ling'an Academy, an elderly teacher leaning on a wooden cane bowed to the roomful of students in apology.
The students were silent, staring at his aged figure.
He smiled at them. "Young people often feel that parting in life and death weighs as much as ten thousand jun. When you're old, you learn to take it more easily. I only regret that I cannot accompany you to the end. This body of mine cannot hold out much longer..."
His smile was as gentle and kindly as ever.
"Some of you may already have noticed that you are my last class. After I began teaching you, I took on no new students. Even then, I knew this day would come," the old teacher said calmly. "That was nothing unusual. A life between heaven and earth passes like a white colt glimpsed through a crack in the wall—gone in an instant. But I had thought I could see you through your fourth year, perhaps even attend your thesis defenses. The faculty is always terribly strict with our Space and Plane Studies students. If I were there, they might restrain themselves, and your defenses would go a little easier...
"I underestimated it.
"Thinking it over, I ought to say goodbye. Things in life should have a beginning and an end."
One student spoke up:
"Teacher Ou, where will you be recuperating? We'll come visit you!"
"There's no need."
The old teacher declined with a chuckle. "I've contacted an academician whose main research is Spirit Decline Syndrome. I'll help him with some studies. Perhaps I can still do society some good."
He paused. "Besides, the symptoms aren't very dignified. I wouldn't want you to see me like