BTO CH58

The rooftop door wasn’t locked tight and could still be pushed open with force, but the range of motion was truly limited. After being pushed open a crack, it was restrained by a long metal chain.

The wind slipped unabashedly through the gap.

Before Xu Sheng could answer, Shao Zhan had already stepped forward two paces. He reached out and rested his hand on the back of Xu Sheng’s head—only this time the movement wasn’t as gentle. He seemed to have unsealed some kind of restriction, shedding the constraints of a “top student.” Furthermore, currently in Xu Sheng’s body, the T-shirt he wore fluttered wildly in the wind.

In an instant of soul displacement, Xu Sheng felt as if the person standing before him was the Shao Zhan from over a year ago—the former school tyrant of Nanping.

Shao Zhan tightened his hand slightly, gripping him powerfully and undeniably, pulling him close.

This hug was quite different from a normal hug.

Xu Sheng was held so tightly he couldn’t move, forcefully drawn into Shao Zhan’s embrace by the strength of the hand behind his head.

The two were pressed very close. The unique cold scent belonging to Shao Zhan swept over him along with the wind. Then, the force pressing on the back of his head loosened a bit, and Shao Zhan’s hand slid down, finally resting on the nape of his neck.

“…”

The boy’s palm was scorching hot, and being in a spot he couldn’t see, his senses grew exceptionally sharp. Xu Sheng blinked, feeling as if a jolt of electricity had passed through his entire body.

If anyone had walked by at this moment, they definitely would have been shocked to a halt by the scene before them.

This hug might have only lasted for a very brief moment.

Or it might have truly lasted a long time.

Through the thin fabric, he could clearly feel the other person’s body temperature rising higher and higher. At the same time, he heard the uncontrollable, secretive heartbeat echoing from within that chest cavity.

Though nothing had changed and no thunder was heard, this moment felt as if it had been frozen, stretching infinitely long in a parallel universe.

Xu Sheng realized that he and Shao Zhan acting like this really looked like they had sneaked up to the rooftop door after school to do something bad.

Xu Sheng muttered a “fuck” in his heart and asked, “How long do we have to hug?”

Shao Zhan asked back, “Did we swap back?”

Xu Sheng glanced at Shao Zhan. Shao Zhan was still wearing that black T-shirt, so clearly they hadn’t.

“…No.”

So they hadn’t swapped back, and they had to keep hugging?

Xu Sheng’s trust in that master began to waver.

Was he being scammed?

Did the master say how long they had to hug for? Xu Sheng tried to recall.

It seemed he hadn’t.

After the master stated the requirement for swapping back, whenever Xu Sheng asked any further questions, the master would only shake his head and say mysteriously, “The secrets of heaven cannot be leaked. I have already said too much. Remember, sincerity leads to spiritual efficacy.”

Sincerity leads to spiritual efficacy—those four words were way too cryptic. What exactly did they mean?

Only now did Xu Sheng realize that the master seemed to have laid a trap in every single sentence.

Normally, Xu Sheng was absolutely not the kind of person who lacked rationality. But right now was a special period requiring special solutions. If he could grow desperate over a monthly exam, what was wrong with losing his mind a bit over the Four Schools Joint Competition?

Xu Sheng didn’t know whether he wanted to escape or was simply helpless against this suffocating emotion causing his heart rate to go completely haywire. He tentatively asked, “Is that Half-Immortal Hu a scammer?”

Shao Zhan didn’t speak.

Xu Sheng tilted his head slightly, only to discover that Shao Zhan was actually smiling.

His smile wasn’t obvious. His Adam’s apple bobbed twice, then he released his grip and said, “You’re very easy to fool.”

Xu Sheng: “…”

“I’m what?” Xu Sheng finally snapped out of it. “Fuck, you played me?”

While at the Half-Immortal Abode, Xu Sheng had been very fired up, but Shao Zhan was much calmer than him.

Even if Xu Sheng’s brain wasn’t enough to process it, Shao Zhan’s IQ was solidly high; it was impossible for him not to hear such an obvious flaw, especially when the master’s subsequent words clearly followed whatever Xu Sheng had just blurted out.

Yet Shao Zhan hadn’t punctured the illusion, letting him mess around, all the way from insulating suits to a fortune-telling parlor.

“Didn’t play you.”

“If this isn’t playing me, what is it?”

“Settling the account.”

“…”

Shao Zhan added, “I told you I’d settle the account with you after class.”

Settling the account was a very convenient excuse to temporarily mask a still-racing heartbeat. After returning to the dorm, Xu Sheng lay on his bed and tapped open Kang Kai’s chat window. The conversation had stopped at the line “Bro, you fucking have something going on!”

He read that line over twice, wanting to send something, but in the end, he didn’t send anything. Tossing the phone aside, he closed his eyes.

Meanwhile, on the other side.

Separated by a mere three steps of corridor, Shao Zhan in the opposite dorm room stared at the few newly distributed competition test papers on his desk, delaying putting pen to paper.

Twirling his pen, he read the problem two or three times over. Yet Shao Zhan, who usually possessed immense self-control and ignored everything else once he started grinding problems, surprisingly didn’t absorb a single word.

He simply set the pen down. Just then, his phone chimed.

You have a new message.

The Nanping discussion group had spammed dozens of messages in the blink of an eye.

• I passed by our school today, tsk, the school got rebuilt.
• I know, looks pretty decent now, fuck.
• They set up security cameras too. I wonder if hopping the wall is still as convenient as it was back in our day.

…

These were all friends he knew from the past. When there were over a hundred days left until the high school entrance exams, Shao Zhan began burying his head in books. After graduation, everyone went to different schools.

This group of friends mostly went to vocational schools, teaming up to learn auto repair.

Shao Zhan rarely popped up in the group. Whether it was out of avoidance or something else, the coursework at Linjiang Sixth High was also genuinely demanding.

But facing these group chats now, the feeling was completely different from before. Perhaps finding out that his hidden secrets—his past self—had been easily smoothed over by someone made a difference.

Coupled with the fact that Shao Zhan genuinely wanted to find someone to chat properly with right now.

He moved his fingers and sent to the group: Is that so.

The moment Shao Zhan appeared, the group messages scrolled even faster.

Even if their Big Boss had washed his hands of the martial world and retired, he was still their Big Boss!

How ruthless was Shao Zhan back in Nanping? Forget one Yang Shiwei; even if ten of them came, they couldn’t shake his position as the school tyrant. Not to mention, his conduct was far more badass than an ordinary school tyrant’s—when he said he was stopping, he stopped entirely.

People in the group still remembered when Shao Zhan had just started studying, and some blind fool from the neighboring class came over to provoke him.

The Shao Zhan back then didn’t even lift his eyelids. Holding the test paper down with one hand, he unhurriedly filled in the answers, while his other hand pinned the guy directly onto the desk: “No time to play with you, scram.”

The group messages scrolled frantically, until someone finally couldn’t suppress their gossipy heart.

• Zhan-ge hasn’t shown up for so long, did you ditch us to go date someone?

The fact that Shao Zhan suddenly started studying back then and scored first place over a hundred days later, getting directly admitted into a key high school—this incident was nothing short of a thunderclap in Nanping. Even Nanping’s enrollment rate increased significantly the second year, and speculations regarding why Shao Zhan suddenly worked so hard multiplied.

Among various speculations, the most widely circulated one was related to “puppy love”: “I heard Shao Zhan did it because of puppy love. Otherwise, why would he suddenly want to test into Linjiang Sixth High? He definitely has someone he likes at that school.”

Many people also came to ask Shao Zhan’s brothers, but Shao Zhan’s former brothers were equally bewildered: “Maybe? We don’t know either! Holy shit, your speculation actually sounds pretty plausible.”

Why exactly Shao Zhan studied became Nanping’s eternal unsolved mystery.

Shao Zhan replied: No.

After Shao Zhan sent this “No,” someone in the group said: See? I told you, that’s pure fucking nonsense! Who is our Zhan-ge? Is he the type to let romantic feelings hinder him from walking the martial world? Dating? Bullshit!

However, right after this person sent that, they watched helplessly as their Zhan-ge sent another message in the chat box: But I do have someone I like.

• ???

He hadn’t come for anyone’s sake, but he had indeed met someone.

Why did he let go of Xu Sheng so quickly at the rooftop door?

Because his heartbeat was simply too fast.

So fast it couldn’t be hidden.

Noticing someone else’s feelings was easy, but when you were the one involved, sometimes the matter wasn’t so simple.

Shao Zhan put down his phone.

The dorm happened to hit lights-out. He sat for a moment before reaching out to click on the desk lamp.

Xu Sheng tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall asleep for a long time. Whenever he closed his eyes, all he saw was the image of him and Shao Zhan hugging on the rooftop. He cursed a “fuck” and opened his eyes again.

And sometimes, the reason it wasn’t easy wasn’t because of a failure to notice.

Many people believed that youthful affection was reckless and unheeding. But before all of that began, there was cautious restraint, and a frantic surge of bewilderment and helplessness.

Xu Sheng nearly suffered from insomnia. Forcing himself not to think about the rooftop, he then remembered being scammed out of hundreds of yuan by the fortune-telling master, and couldn’t sleep even more.

Helplessly, he could only grab his phone from the bedside, intending to find Zhang Feng to play a game.

However, Zhang Feng’s message came first.

In the middle of the night, Zhang Feng was fighting on the frontlines of gossip: Holy crap, Boss, have you checked the forum?

Right now, just seeing the word “forum” made Xu Sheng shiver, unavoidably recalling those peach-blossom eyes and breaking out in goosebumps.

S: ?

Zhang Feng: Go take a look, the forum exploded! Someone from Yinghua came to our school to issue a challenge, calling out Study God by name and provoking him! Fuck, too arrogant!

S: ??

Zhang Feng remembered that Xu Sheng never paid attention to study-related matters normally, so he might not know about this Four Schools Joint Competition. Thus, he planned to give him an impassioned explanation: You might not know, it’s like this. Every year, our school holds a joint competition event with three other schools. In the past, Yinghua won the Four Schools Joint Competition every single year.

Xu Sheng’s two question marks were directed entirely at “Yinghua.” He meant, what the hell are people from Yinghua running over here for?

Of course he knew about the Four Schools Joint Competition; he didn’t need Zhang Feng to explain it. After all, he might very well be the one participating in this year’s Four Schools Joint Competition! As a contestant with a 50% probability of going on stage to compete, could he not know?!

S: I know, skip this part.

S: What are the Yinghua people running over here for… Forget it, just send me the link directly.

Zhang Feng quickly sent over a string of links.

The thread title was simple and brutal: Challenge Letter.

The contents of the thread were roughly as follows: Shao Zhan, consider yourself lucky last year. I won’t lose again in this year’s Four Schools Joint Competition, just you wait. The championship belongs to Yinghua, and it belongs to me.

Below was a signature line.

Never changing my name, never hiding my surname, keeping my word: Duan Yaosheng.

Xu Sheng: “…”

As Zhang Feng said, this person was indeed arrogant to the extreme.

The post had only been up for three hours, yet students from all grades of Linjiang Sixth High were already flocking to bump the thread.

2L: Who are you upstairs?

3L: Where did this guy come from, acting so dramatic?

4L: Don’t recognize him. Last year, Study God won so fast that before I even had time to see all the other contestants, the competition was already over.

5L: Upstairs is so sassy, but I like your sass.

…

Amidst these, a voice of reason chimed in.

89L: I’ve heard of this guy named Duan. He’s genuinely formidable. Heard from a classmate that he supposedly underperformed last year, which is why he lost. He’s Yinghua’s grade rank one, just like our Study God, never having dropped from the top spot… Wait, our Study God already dropped to second-to-last for love.