In the year 1449 CE, on a cliff outside the capital.
The view was wide and open.
In the distance one could see the dense black mass of the crowd and the blood-soaked battlefield.
Gunpowder smoke and flames of war rose everywhere.
The endless sounds of slaughter were like the final, desperate cries of every life.
Li Jue walked up onto the cliff and stood beside the girl.
Chu Jiuer sat on the ground, hugging her legs, her face filled with sorrow, crystalline tears welling at the corners of her eyes.
The fourteenth year of the Zhengtong era of the Ming Dynasty.
The Defense of the Capital.
“Thousands of years have passed, and you are still the same.”
“Of course I won’t be as cold-blooded as you.”
Chu Jiuer shot her a glare.
“If they lose, you’ll never again be able to eat the candied haws and crisp pastries from there. Aren’t you sad?”
“Trivial things. If they’re gone, they’re gone.”
“What about the common people in the city? They’re all about to be taken captive by the barbarians. Aren’t there people you know among them? Aren’t you upset?”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Li Jue did have a few old acquaintances in the capital, but whether human or demon, their life or death could not stir any ripple in her heart.
She was merely a cold observer, an indifferent spectator.
Chu Jiuer was different from her.
She truly liked humans a great deal.
In 234, the death of Kongming.
In 755, the An Lushan Rebellion.
In 1127, the Jingkang Incident.
In 1276, the fall of Yashan…
Over thousands of years, Li Jue could no longer remember how many times Jiuer had cried for humanity.
If demons had not been strictly forbidden from interfering in the course of human history, she estimated Chu Jiuer would have long since summoned a flood to rush toward Yesen.
“How can you have no humanity at all?”
“I’m not human, so of course I don’t.”
Li Jue glanced at the distant fighting crowd, then turned and left the cliff.
“Finish crying and go back early. Your father is looking for you everywhere.”
***
On the first day of school, after Li Jue finished the enrollment procedures with Ying An, she disappeared without a trace.
He was a day student with no dormitory and no need to make a bed, so he went straight to the classroom.
Looking at the unfamiliar faces one after another in the class, Ying An felt as lost as a cub that had wandered into a pack of beasts by mistake.
Quite a few people seemed very familiar with one another.
Perhaps they had been classmates or friends before, had entered the same school by chance, and had luckily been assigned to the same class.
Ying An found an empty seat and sat down.
The desk beside him was still empty.
He was not a particularly cheerful or outgoing personality and could not muster the courage to strike up a conversation with a stranger, so he simply sat there blankly, listening to the noisy sounds in the classroom while pretending to sleep.
“Quiet, quiet! Everyone find a seat and sit down. We’re about to start class.”
It seemed the new homeroom teacher had arrived.
Ying An lifted his head.
The noisy students were each returning to their seats.
At some point a boy had sat down beside him—wearing glasses, a little thin, taller than him, looking every bit the stiff, dull model student.
“Hello, classmates. I am your homeroom teacher. My name is Xu Yuhuan. You may call me Teacher Xu…”
The young and pretty homeroom teacher was still delivering the formulaic opening remarks on the platform.
Ying An saw that the boy showed no intention of speaking to him and thought for a moment, deciding to take the first step of friendship himself.
After all, they were already classmates, and they might even end up as desk mates later.
In a moment of heat, he blurted out this sentence: “Hey, you… which class are you in?”
The moment the words left his mouth, Ying An felt so embarrassed he wanted to slap himself hard across the face.
The other boy looked at him with the kind of gaze one reserved for an idiot. “I should be in this class. My name is Zheng Qiaonian.”
After a few exchanges, the two gradually became familiar with each other.
The homeroom teacher led everyone through self-introductions.
After the introductions finished, Xu Yuhuan shot a meaningful glance toward the door, and a young man wearing camouflage military uniform walked into the room.
Only then did Ying An learn that before the first-year junior high students officially started school, there was still a painful journey called “military training.”
He had no psychological preparation whatsoever.
When the bell rang, he was called out to the sports field along with the other students.
First they stood under the blazing sun while the school leaders lectured them for half an hour, then the instructors led them to an empty area of the field.
This was the first time Ying An had endured this degree of torment.
At that moment he remembered Li Jue’s words—“Xiao An, you just haven’t tasted real hardship yet”—and found them extremely reasonable.
Now it was his turn to taste it.
Standing at attention, standing at ease, marching in place, goose-stepping, marching in step…
After several rounds, everyone was so exhausted their bodies had gone soft.
Today was also an especially sunny day.
The sun was scorching hot.
Sweat stuck to their backs and glued their clothes together, which was especially uncomfortable.
They finally waited until the ten-minute rest period.
The ground had been baked scorching hot, so they did not dare sit down and could only squat there to relax a little.
The classmates in the class became familiar with one another quickly and chattered away.
Besides various guesses about the new life, some girls were discussing which instructor was the most handsome, a few boys were talking about games and anime, and it seemed some people were asking whether anyone had seen any pretty girls.
But everyone’s faces were covered in sweat, greasy and dirty, and they were still standing under the blazing sun—how could one tell who was pretty or not?
Ying An only cared about when this bitter period would end. “Why do we have to suffer this kind of torture? When is this going to be over?”
“I heard it’s five days of training, and there’s a closing ceremony on the last day,” Zheng Qiaonian told him.
Those words plunged Ying An straight into despair.
He wore a bitter expression and blankly looked around in all directions, only to see at the edge of the sports field, on the distant bleachers, a familiar graceful figure standing there watching him from afar.
Li Jue was wearing a light blue dress, the hem swaying gently in the breeze.
She waved to Ying An.
Ying An looked at her in confusion, many question marks popping up in his mind.
“What are you looking at?”
Zheng Qiaonian followed his gaze.
“Who is that?”
“My sister.”
“Didn’t all the parents leave the school already? Why is she still here?”
“I don’t know.”
Ying An was completely bewildered.
Near the end of the morning training, Li Jue left the sports field.
Ying An followed the loose, scattered crowd back toward the classroom.
The students were so tired they could not even straighten their backs.
The electric fans under the ceiling were turned to the highest setting, swaying and shaking, making one worry they might fall down at any moment.
Ying An lined up with the other students to get food and eat.
During the midday rest that followed, the classmates all lay on their desks and fell asleep.
He had only closed his eyes for a short while when he felt someone pat his shoulder.
Opening his eyes, he saw Li Jue looking at him with a bright smile.
“Sis—”
The moment he spoke, Li Jue raised her index finger to her lips in a silencing gesture, led him out of the classroom through the back door, crossed the corridor outside, and brought him into the teachers’ office.
The air conditioning was on inside, cool and refreshing.
There were no classes today, so most of the teachers were not there—only one or two scattered people.
“Sleep here. Go back to the classroom when the midday rest is over.”
“Sister, why are you here? Didn’t you leave?”
“Sister is your English teacher. Why would I leave?”