The Start of Week Fourteen

When he was little, a year had seemed as long as a lifetime.

In his memories, he always seemed to have time to chase and roughhouse in the courtyard, always seemed to be bent over his desk doing homework that could never be finished—long winter breaks, long summer breaks, long stretches of time that seemed to have no end in sight.

But the older he got, the faster time passed.

One hour, two hours, one day, two days, one week, one month, one year—time flowed past him in the blink of an eye.

The older one grew, the stronger that feeling became, as though "some existence" had set a constant acceleration in people's minds, silently stealing the time that belonged to them without anyone noticing.

Just like now.

After the old professors disappeared, the happy days left to the young students flew by. In what felt like the blink of an eye, two weeks had passed. The calendar had turned to the end of November. This was Zheng Qing's fourteenth Monday since arriving at this university.

The feeling of winter was becoming clearer by the day.

The bitter wind howled through campus, recklessly unleashing winter's might. The sycamore trees lining both sides of the Bluestone Path had gone bare, with only a few scattered dead leaves remaining on their branches, shivering in the cold wind. There were no birds, no insects. The treant saplings had simply retreated deep into their tree hollows, hiding in their thick, warm nests and dozing lazily.

In weather like this, even the mermen of Linzhong Lake could not be bothered to surface and retrieve the odds and ends students accidentally dropped into the water.

The atmosphere of the Hunting Moon had completely vanished from Jiuyou Academy—bright banners, signposts, faded flags, and the shrubs once trimmed