His mind made up, Xiao Zhan abruptly rose, no longer hesitating for even a moment. His heavy footsteps echoed through the still night. Without alerting any servants, he headed alone toward the secluded little courtyard.
Soon, the gate to Xiao Yi's courtyard appeared before him. As his father, Xiao Zhan naturally felt no need to observe any formalities. He raised a hand and pushed the half-closed wooden gate open with a creak. The moment it opened, the sight before him forced all the questions he had prepared back into his throat.
There was not a trace of tidiness in the little courtyard. Yellowed sheets of paper lay scattered everywhere, each covered in densely packed strange symbols and lines drawn in charcoal. Every sheet was weighed down with an abacus.
At the center of this chaos, Xiao Yi knelt on one knee in an extremely awkward posture. Before him stood a peculiar-looking long tube. He had one eye closed and the other pressed tightly against the end of the tube, remaining perfectly still as he aimed it at the star-filled night sky. His expression was utterly focused, as though the entire world had nothing to do with him.
Frowning, Xiao Zhan bent down and picked up a sheet of paper by his feet. Star trajectories were drawn on it, alongside various numbers and formulas for calculations. He could not understand a single one.
"You brat... don't tell me you know astrology too? Instead of sleeping in the middle of the night, what kind of nonsense are you fiddling with here?!"
That rebuke crashed like a thunderclap, finally blasting Xiao Yi out of his own little world. He jolted and abruptly raised his head from behind the peculiar tube.
When he recognized Xiao Zhan, a flicker of panic at being caught crossed