The next morning, Wang Xiaoliang, who had planned to get up early, was woken by a blast of shrill music.
He opened his eyes and realized the music was coming from the bed opposite his.
It was Li Jun's phone alarm.
That was a rarity. Throughout their four years at university, Li Jun had always been the one who needed the entire dorm's combined efforts to drag him out of bed.
Wang Xiaoliang sat up and saw Li Jun standing beside his bed, already fully dressed, looking at him.
"Get up. Let's go eat."
Li Jun's voice was flat, betraying neither anger nor pleasure, as though nothing had happened yesterday.
Wang Xiaoliang said nothing and quietly put on his clothes.
They walked one behind the other toward the cafeteria, neither speaking. In the faint morning light, plenty of people were already out on campus, starting their day of studying.
It felt strange.
This was perhaps one of the few breakfasts they had shared since their junior year, and certainly the only time both had willingly gone to the cafeteria to eat.
The cafeteria buzzed with voices, filled with steam from buns and soy milk.
They each swiped their meal cards and found a corner to sit in.
His appetite had yet to wake from its morning drowsiness, so Wang Xiaoliang merely drank his congee mechanically.
"Come see Feng Yuan with me in a bit." Li Jun spoke first, his head lowered as he worked on the fried dough sticks on his plate, as if mentioning it in passing.
"Let's get the notes first. We need to strike while the iron's hot, before anything else goes wrong."
Wang Xiaoliang set down his spoon.
He looked at Li Jun, firm now in the decision he had made last night.
"You go ahead."
The same three words again.
Li Jun stopped eating.
He raised his head and stared at Wang Xiaoliang. "What's that supposed to mean? Wang Xiaoliang, are you pulling this holier-than-thou crap on me?"
"I'm not pulling anything." Wang Xiaoliang's calm left Li Jun's anger punching into cotton. "I'm stating the facts. You're the one who approached Teacher Feng, and you're the one who agreed to testify in court. You deserve the credit."
"Credit?" Li Jun sounded as though he had heard the world's biggest joke. "We're doing this for ourselves! And you're talking to me about credit?"
"I won't testify." Wang Xiaoliang repeated his position.
"Fine. Just fine!" Li Jun slammed his chopsticks onto his tray with a sharp clatter. "You're so fucking great, Wang Xiaoliang! So high and mighty! I'll go myself!"
He abruptly stood, picked up his barely touched tray, and left without looking back.
Wang Xiaoliang remained seated and slowly finished the last mouthful of congee.
The empty seat Li Jun left behind was soon swallowed by the surrounding hubbub. He felt no guilt, only a hollow stillness now that things had settled.
He returned to the dorm.
The old Book of Fate still lay quietly beneath his pillow.
He needed those revision notes. His diploma mattered just as much to him. Since he could no longer count on Li Jun, he would have to rely on himself.
He took out his phone and opened the class contact list he almost never used.
The class's top student-the guy with poor eyesight who always sat in the front row.
He dialed the number.
"Hello? Xiaoliang? What's up?" There was a lot of noise in the background.
"Um... could I borrow your major course notes to make copies?"
"Huh? My notes... I'm in Shenzhen doing an internship right now. Everything's still in the dorm, and the dorm's locked. Sorry."
Wang Xiaoliang hung up and called another classmate with decent grades.
"Hey, Xiaoliang. I'm back home preparing for the civil service exam. I sold my books and notes for scrap ages ago. Can't help you."
"..."
He made five or six calls in a row and received much the same answer each time.
They were either doing internships elsewhere, had already found jobs, or were at home focusing entirely on exam preparation.
An intense sense of defeat and isolation engulfed Wang Xiaoliang.
While he and Li Jun and the others had been lost in the illusions of brotherhood and online games, their classmates had long since set off toward their own futures.
They had been left far, far behind.
This was reality.
The Book of Fate could see into people's hearts and point the way, but it could not conjure knowledge and connections out of thin air.
He tossed his phone onto the bed, dispirited.
Just then, the dorm door creaked open.
Li Jun was back.
His face shone with the excitement of a victory, and in his hands were two thick stacks of freshly printed A4 paper, still warm.
"Here."
He tossed one stack onto Wang Xiaoliang's desk with a dull thud.
"All the key material for the courses you failed. It's all here. Guaranteed pass."
Wang Xiaoliang looked at the hefty stack of notes on his desk, then at Li Jun.
In his mind, the Book of Fate's third art quietly surfaced: Speak kindly.
That meant saying nice things.
Those words were harder for him than understanding his major course textbooks. He was used to joking around with his buddies, used to expressing affection through mockery and snark.
"Big bro..." he began, feeling his vocal cords stiffen.
"Thanks."
Li Jun was sorting his own set of notes. He merely grunted an acknowledgment without looking up.
Wang Xiaoliang knew that was not enough.
He drew a deep breath and continued, "You really came through for me. You... did a great job with this."
Li Jun's hands stopped.
He turned and looked Wang Xiaoliang over as though he were an alien. "What's wrong with you today? Take the wrong meds?"
"No." Wang Xiaoliang tried to make his expression more sincere. "I mean it. You're a true friend."
Li Jun's mouth opened as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he only grinned, looking torn between laughter and exasperation.
"All right, all right, stop fucking grossing me out. Let's hit the library! If we still fail the retakes with these, we really are useless!"
Going to the library was another activity they had shared only a handful of times throughout university.
The library was so quiet they could hear their own heartbeats, the air carrying the scent of books and coffee.
They spread out their notes and textbooks, comparing them page by page.
It was too hard.
Those densely packed formulas and convoluted theories might as well have been written in an alien language.
"Fuck, is this shit even meant for humans to learn?" After a long while, Li Jun finally broke down and complained in a hushed voice. "I don't understand a single word. All I can do is memorize it."
Wang Xiaoliang felt the same.
His brain felt like mush. None of this knowledge would go in.
But why?
The same textbooks, the same teachers, yet some of their classmates earned excellent grades and scholarships.
Were they really that much smarter than him?
Or was it that while they studied late into the night, he fought all-night battles at internet cafés? While they spent their days in the library, he lay in the dorm fantasizing about nonsense.
The Book of Fate had not granted him extraordinary intelligence, but it had given him unprecedented clarity.
The problem was not the books or the teachers.
It was him.
A whole day of rote memorization finally yielded a few meager gains.
That evening, as Li Jun packed his things, he suggested, "Come on, let's treat Feng Yuan to dinner tonight and thank him properly. We can also sound him out about the school's final decision on Third Bro's case."
Wang Xiaoliang stopped packing his books.
Once again, a choice lay before him.
"I'll sit this one out, big bro."
"Again?" Li Jun's temper flared. "What the hell do you want? I got you the notes, and now I'm asking you to have dinner and build the relationship, but you won't go? This is how the world works, understand?"
"I don't want to testify, so I don't want to suck up to him either," Wang Xiaoliang said bluntly. "Besides, I have something else to do tonight."
"Something else?" Li Jun's voice rose. "What could possibly matter more than graduating right now?"
"I want to take a walk in the little park outside the school's back gate."
Li Jun froze completely. He looked at Wang Xiaoliang as though he were insane. "The little park? What are you going there for? To learn square dancing from the old folks?"
Wang Xiaoliang did not explain about the mysterious Taoist priest.
"You go ahead." He shouldered his bag and stood.
Li Jun did not try to persuade him again. He merely watched him.
Wang Xiaoliang left the library alone.
He crossed the sports field and headed toward the small park outside the school's back gate.
Temperatures had risen quickly that spring, and the park was bustling.
Old men playing chess, older women square dancing, couples strolling hand in hand, and a few mobile snack vendors made the place lively.
He searched the crowd carefully for the ordinary-looking Taoist priest in the old robe faded almost white.
No sign of him.
He circled the park once, then again.
Still nothing.
Just as he was about to give up and leave, he stopped.
Beneath a large banyan tree in a corner of the park stood a small fortune-telling stall.
A little table, a little stool, and a cloth banner bearing the words "Fortune-telling and face-reading."
The proprietor was a thin middle-aged man with a small goatee, wearing an old-fashioned white shirt with a yellowed collar. He was watching the passing crowd with utter boredom.
In the past, Wang Xiaoliang would never have spared a con artist like this a second glance.
Today, however, he stopped as though drawn by some unseen force.
He thought of the Book of Fate beneath his pillow.
Hesitating, he paced back and forth a few meters from the stall.
Go over and ask? That would be stupid.
Just walk away? I couldn't let it go.
Just as his inner struggle ended and he finally decided to leave, the fortune-teller, who had kept his head lowered all this time, suddenly spoke.
His voice was neither loud nor soft, yet it cut clearly through the square-dancing music and the surrounding noise, reaching Wang Xiaoliang's ears without fail.
"Young man, don't leave."
"The space between your brows looks dark. Bloodshed will soon befall you."
Before you continue