Dusk hung like a bruise on the sky, and the little boy still played ping-pong alone against the wall, the ball clicking like a metronome in an empty hall.

Unease coiled in Ouyang’s chest like ivy, and he watched in silence, his palm drifting to the backpack like a shadow reaching for a latch. He muttered to the wind, a voice like smoke. Blow it or not? If I blow this place, the world’s projection will shatter like glass, and Azure Bird will wake like a spring startled from winter.

Right as his resolve wavered like a reed in a stream and his fingers sought the bundled charges, the air warped like heat over a road. The tide of people surged back with chatter like sparrows. He glanced up, and morning spread like fresh ink. Far off, the familiar little boy rose in his eyes like a star he knew by heart.

Same as last time: Ouyang drifted like a ghost. No one saw him but the boy, and no one could touch him but that one lone island in a human sea.

“Xiao Xuan… over here!” Ouyang waved from afar, his arm cutting the air like a flag in wind. The boy came over, taller now like a bamboo shoot after rain, his baby roundness pared off, his face calm as still water.

He didn’t speak, because students flowed past like a river, and talking to empty air would mark him as a madman muttering to crows. Ouyang followed him into class, slipping through the crowd like mist through reeds, trying to find one more soul who could see or feel him like a hand finds a warm cup.

No luck. The classroom was a forest of backs, and he was only wind in the leaves, seen by no second pair of eyes and held by no second pair of hands.

Math class began, chalk dust blooming like pale clouds. The teacher on the podium sprayed words like rain, explaining principles that tangled like weeds. Ouyang stared, a so-called great god swallowed by formulas that swarmed like ants.

“So scary,” he whispered, fear crawling back like a tide across a drowned shore. He floated to the boy’s side, heart still thudding like a drum. He turned and saw the boy sitting perfectly straight, like a pine in snow, hands on the desk, eyes fixed on the blackboard like a hawk on a ridge.

“This makes no sense,” Ouyang muttered, his pride stung like a thumb on a thorn. “Didn’t you say you never passed math? Why so serious?”

He felt sucker-punched, a balloon pricked by a pin. The boy didn’t glance over for ages, so Ouyang waved a hand before his eyes like a fan flitting before a face. Still no reaction; the boy sat like a monk under a waterfall, unmoved if a mountain fell before him.

Then Ouyang got it, the truth clicking like a bead on an abacus. The boy wasn’t listening hard; he wasn’t listening at all. If Ouyang hadn’t blocked his sight and gotten nothing, he would’ve sworn the kid was focused like a blade. The bespectacled math teacher’s gaze swept over and kept nodding like a bobbing branch, touched by that counterfeit look of devotion.

The teacher had no clue the boy’s spirit was out wandering like a kite cut loose.

“Alright, class, copy this formula. It’s very important.” The teacher’s tone sharpened like a bell.

At those words, the boy’s ear twitched like a rabbit’s, as if filtering for seeds in chaff. Important detected, his head stirred like a pond ruffled by wind, and his empty eyes lit like lamps. His right hand grabbed the pen on reflex, and scritch-scritch, he wrote like rain on eaves.

Done, he set the pen down, and his head went still again, a stone on a riverbed.

Ouyang stood there, mind blown like a firecracker. Holy crap, I just uncovered a glorious black history. As expected of Lord Xuan—this is a craft honed to glowing coals. Blink and your soul leaves your body, while your ears auto-filter the teacher’s voice. I kneel. Truly a legend.

The bell rang, a silver ripple through the air, and the boy finally noticed the tearful Ouyang weeping like a willow. He said nothing, walked out with the flow like a fish slipping from a net, and Ouyang drifted after him. In a deserted corner, the boy leaned on the railing, eyes on the far view like a swallow measuring distance.

“You’re that ghost from a year ago?”

His voice was cool, a blade laid on stone, and Ouyang staggered inside like a boat hit by a crosswind. A year. He’d only fallen back into that empty campus for a few minutes. He came up for air, and a year had rushed past like a flood.

“It’s been a year since we last met?”

“Mm. A year,” the boy said, the word landing like a pebble in a pond.

Ouyang mirrored him at the rail, the distance before them a painted scroll of light and roofs. “A year for you. For me, only minutes since we spoke,” he said, a smile flickering like a candle, meaning hidden like ink under glaze.

“Xiao Xuan, how about we cut class? Let’s go play.”

The boy’s black eyes weighed him like scales, hesitation tugging him like two tides. He looked torn, a kite straining at its string.

In the end, Ouyang hauled him away like a mischievous wind stealing a hat.

“Bad, homeroom teacher!” The boy rolled and tucked behind a stone pillar like a cat streaking under a gate. The move was sharp as a knife; no rookie pulled that off.

Crouched behind the pillar, he scanned the area with a fox’s caution. He was practiced, all edges smoothed by use, and even Ouyang felt shabby beside that professionalism. A question burned in him like a coal: What had this boy lived through in a single year to harden so fast?

No time to rant. The boy used the cover of grass like a hunter in reeds, bent low, step by careful step toward the wall like a tide creeping up shore. The main gate was impossible; this was a boarding school, a walled pond, and students couldn’t leave during class. The gatekeeper would sniff him out like a hound, ask this and that, and the plan would sink like a stone.

Step by step… closer, and closer, like a needle sliding through cloth.

“Not good, the dean.” Danger snapped like a twig.

A man waddled closer, beer belly taut as a drum, a horseshoe bald spot shining like a little Mediterranean under the sun. Danger flared like a match; discovery was inches away, sharp as a hook. Ouyang’s heart skittered like leaves in a gust, but his hands were smoke in sunlight. He didn’t belong to this time, couldn’t touch this water. He was only a passerby, a shadow on a wall. If the boy weren’t special, even he wouldn’t see Ouyang.

In a panic, Ouyang rushed the dean and threw punches like rain. Left hook, right hook, Taiji’s slow circle, the Pegasus Meteor Fist blazing like starlight—his fists passed through the dean’s head like wind through a screen. He could do nothing.

“Oh? No one.” The fat man with glasses—Dean of Students—looked left and right like a wary turtle. Then he tugged his zipper down with a metal hiss and fished out his soft equipment like a lazy eel. “Ahh, relief,” he sighed, water pattering like a mean little shower. “Which idiot student blocked every toilet in that building? Useless brats.”

Rage flashed through Ouyang like summer lightning. He wanted to beat this fat bastard into the ground like a tent peg. In the teaching area, there were so many buildings—so what if one bathroom clogged? Why pee in this ghost of a corner? He almost ruined their escape plan, split it like a log.

He shook himself off, then shuffled, and his steps drifted closer to the boy’s grass patch like a tide drawn by a false moon. At this rate, he’d spot him for sure.

“Hm? What’s that? Whose clothes got tossed here?” The dean squinted, curiosity slithering like a snake. “Upperclassmen hooking up and leaving evidence?”

Ouyang’s gaze snapped to the grass. A sliver of fabric stuck out like a flag betrayed by wind. “Damn you, fatass—mind your own business. Go catch the lovebirds in the classrooms!” he snarled, but his words were mist in the sun.

Just when Ouyang thought the boy was done for…

Hissss.

Hissss.

A snake’s whisper curled from the grass like a black ribbon. The dean flinched a step back, face blanching like paper. He stuffed his soft pride back into his pants and bolted like a rabbit from a hawk.

“Damn it, snakes on campus? Didn’t we spread sulfur around here?” his voice faded, curses trailing off like smoke until they vanished. The boy popped out of the grass like a spring shoot and flashed Ouyang a V, victory bright as a sparrow’s trill.

“So,” Ouyang said, awe warming him like sunlight, “you’re that skilled… got any secret sauce?”

The boy didn’t answer. He set a fallen stick against the wall like a ramp, and scrambled up like a gecko. The ease, the practiced rhythm—the playbook ran deep as roots, and Ouyang could only bow in respect.

The boy dropped with a thud, and Ouyang slid through the wall like a breeze through paper. On the far side stood an apartment block, grey as an old mountain. The landing jolt set a nearby motorcycle chattering like a startled cicada. The boy didn’t panic; he dusted his pants with a few pats like rain, then jogged to the back of the building and slid along the wall like a shadow.

“We’re already out. Why so careful?” Ouyang asked, puzzled, his voice drifting like a leaf.

“Teacher apartments,” the boy said, calm as a winter pond. “Could run into English, chemistry, physics. Better be careful.”

Teacher apartments? Ouyang reeled inside like a kite tugged by a rogue gust. This kid was good. Strong. Of all routes, he’d picked the one full of tigers. And he was too calm about it, as if counting beads. Which number run was this?

“You ditch class often?”

“No. I just observe,” the boy said, a smile ghosting like moonlight. “All seventeen wall-hopping routes on campus were mapped by me.”

Ouyang: …