"What a coincidence! We meet again!" Guan Zhenzhen beamed when she saw Li Xingkong.
"It takes a hundred years of cultivation to share a boat crossing. Looks like there really is some fate between us."
"Hello, hello." Li Xingkong stuffed his luggage into the overhead rack and sat down.
"This is what they mean when they say the world is full of chance encounters, right?" Guan Zhenzhen offered him another handful of melon seeds, stuffing them straight into his hand.
"Definitely. We really are brought together by fate."
Li Xingkong played along, quietly opening his phone as he wondered how to add back the friend he had just deleted. If she found out in a little while that he had turned around and deleted her, how awkward would that be?
He fiddled with his phone on the sly, but just after he tapped to add her again, it suddenly dawned on him that the other person had to accept the friend request...
"Uh..." Li Xingkong gave himself a big slap across the face in his mind. Suddenly, he felt that maybe he didn't absolutely have to go to Prisoner Continent.
Ding-dong. When he heard Guan Zhenzhen's phone chime, Li Xingkong's nerves wound tight as a clock spring. He really wanted to whip out his phone and ask Du Niang what to do after doing something bad right in front of someone.
"Li Xingkong wants to add you as a friend?"
Guan Zhenzhen opened her phone and saw that it was indeed a friend request from Li Xingkong.
She was stunned too. What kind of person deletes a friend right after chatting with them? Am I not pretty? He deleted me just like that. Does he look down on me or what?
"You..." She was just about to stab him with some cutting words when she saw him huddled over there, looking so awkward he was about to break out in goosebumps. Most of her anger melted away.
So the guy has social anxiety. In that case, never mind.
"Young man, you're making this so formal." Guan Zhenzhen waved her phone, its screen displaying Li Xingkong's friend request.
"I added you once, and you added me once. Now we've established two-way diplomatic relations."
Guan Zhenzhen tapped to accept, and Li Xingkong breathed a sigh of relief.
"Next time, only I get to delete you. You can't delete me."
"I won't delete you again, I won't." Li Xingkong hurriedly agreed. He thought that even if she rotted away in his WeChat contacts, he wouldn't touch her contact again.
"Young man, what are you going to Prisoner Continent for? To study?"
Li Xingkong couldn't really answer. He couldn't very well say he was going to be a bomber, so he said, "I guess you could say I'm going there to work."
"True. If you want to make money, Prisoner Continent is the place to go. The pay's good, and the work's easy," Guan Zhenzhen said.
The two chatted a little longer after sitting down. The conversation mostly centered on Li Xingkong, and since he didn't know how to start a topic, he was led by the nose the whole time.
As they were talking, the flight attendants began reminding everyone to turn on airplane mode. Li Xingkong simply switched off his phone.
He was still a little nervous. After all, this was the first time his feet were going to be so far off the ground.
Before long, he felt a vibration beneath him, and the plane began to move slowly.
Li Xingkong turned to look out the window. A row of planes outside was slowly moving backward, faster and faster, while the plane he was on began to shake violently.
It reminded him of the tractor his family used to farm with when he was little. It made the same racket.
The scenery outside raced past faster and faster. Just as Li Xingkong shifted his gaze, the plane took off with a jolt. Outside the window, the plane's wing looked like an oar slicing through the sky as it rose farther and farther from the ground.
As the plane climbed, Li Xingkong stared out the window and felt distinctly nauseous, though he soon adjusted his condition. Looking outside from a plane, it was as though the entire ground were swaying; the earth, unchanged through the ages, seemed to have gotten drunk and begun rocking from side to side. That was also why people got motion sickness on planes.
The plane soon leveled out and flew steadily, weaving between the layers of clouds.
"System, when will I be able to fly?" Looking out the window, Li Xingkong longed for a freer kind of flight and called out to the system in his mind.
"Once you've made some progress in Qi Refining, you can basically fly freely." The system took the form of a tiny person only he could see and sat on his shoulder.
"Speaking of which, I think you need to learn something new, like '99 Ways to Chat Up Girls.'"
The system pointed at Guan Zhenzhen as it spoke. "Look how nice young girls are: pretty faces, perky figures, and sweet voices."
"So, how about it? Want to consider it?"
Li Xingkong hurriedly refused. "I think I'll pass. If only life could remain as it was at first sight. A beautiful woman is at her most beautiful when you first meet her."
"It's like food. The things you can't get always look tastier. Once they're on your plate, they taste just so-so."
"Okay, okay, okay. I thought you were a virgin who didn't know anything. Turns out you're a grand wizard who's cultivated his way to the truth, huh?"
The system laughed. Li Xingkong's twisted logic was just like that fox who couldn't reach the grapes. After going without for so many years, he had really hypnotized himself.
"Heh, beautiful women have to take a shit too, don't they?" Li Xingkong argued, stirring the pot.
Knowing his argument didn't hold water, Li Xingkong stopped paying attention to the system. He turned away from the window and glanced at Guan Zhenzhen. She had put on a little bear-shaped eye mask and was leaning back in her seat. He couldn't tell whether she was asleep or just resting her eyes.
In truth, Li Xingkong understood perfectly well. What kept him from talking to girls was the inferiority complex he had developed as a child.
His family had been poor when he was little, and he had grown sensible early, recognizing from a young age that without money, he couldn't do anything in this society. From the time he started school, he had drawn countless lines around himself, boxing himself in.
Although he had obtained the system, deep down, his sense of where he stood had barely changed. Money had long since stopped holding him back; it was the person he had been years ago who was resisting.
He looked around. Almost everyone on the plane was resting, so Li Xingkong's curiosity faded, and he too sank into a deep sleep.
A few hours later, a bout of shaking woke Li Xingkong.
He came to quickly. Once awake, he noticed that it had grown much dimmer inside the plane. He looked out the window and saw a mass of black storm clouds; he couldn't see very far.
Suddenly, lightning flashed outside, lighting the cabin white for an instant.
A chill ran down Li Xingkong's spine. This was his first flight, and he really didn't know what was happening.
He couldn't help remembering a guide he had read before boarding: if an accident happened on a plane, all you could do was bite down on your ID card, so they'd still know who you were if you kicked the bucket.
As his thoughts ran wild, a flight attendant came slowly down the aisle from the front, holding on to both sides and saying as they walked, "The plane has encountered a thunderstorm and may shake quite violently. Everyone, please make sure your seat belts are fastened!"
Li Xingkong felt much more at ease after hearing the announcement. As long as they weren't crashing, it was fine.
But judging by the looks on the two flight attendants' faces, the risk probably wasn't small either.
He had studied theory for so many years and was finally about to cultivate immortality. If he kicked the bucket now, his resentment would really soar to the heavens.
Only now did he realize how powerless he was in the face of disaster.
"Theory and practice-you can't do without either." He secretly made up his mind that he had to complete his artificial spiritual energy plan faster.
If he could fly, he definitely wouldn't be afraid in a situation like this.
The sky outside was still filled with dark clouds, and Li Xingkong kept peering out. From the ground, clouds seemed to move very slowly, but up close, they churned like boiling water.
After another fifteen minutes of flying, the plane finally emerged from the dark clouds. It was bright outside, and golden sunlight struck the window, dazzling him for a moment.
In the distance, he could vaguely make out a stretch of black reaching to the sky. Looking closely, he saw that it was a coastline stretching beyond sight. That was Prisoner Continent, where he was headed.
This storm really was quite an enthusiastic welcome gift. Li Xingkong breathed a sigh of relief. The nerves that had been taut all the way through the dark clouds found an outlet, and he was no longer tense.
"Prisoner Continent, here I come."