Chapter 69: His Memory

“Hold him!”

A tall guy in a number thirty-five jersey stood in front of Feng Yi.
This guy, who was nearly two meters tall, cast a shadow on the young man’s face, as if a mountain were in front of him.

“Catch it!”

Feng Yi suddenly feigned a move, causing the tall guy to stumble.
As their shoulders brushed past, he spun and passed the ball to Xu Zhi.

“Nice pass!”

Xu Zhi shouted, and made a fadeaway jumper.

The basketball drew a perfect parabola in the sun, hit the rim, and made a “thud” sound.

Everyone on the basketball court subconsciously swallowed a mouthful of saliva—would Xu Zhi’s three-pointer go in?

Then, a tide of cheers erupted from the court.
This buzzer-beating three-pointer went in!

No matter what had happened before, at least for now, in this fake game, he was the great hero who had helped the team to victory.

Xu Zhi jumped up in excitement and ran around the court, high-fiving Feng Yi.

The sweat from the young man’s palm stained Feng Yi’s pale palm, sticky, and full of the vitality of youth.

For Feng Yi, it was a long-lost sticky feeling.

Sweat soaked his hair, drawing a crystal clear trajectory on his wheat-colored skin.
The cheerful young man in front of him seemed to have pulled Feng Yi back to the past.

When he was still alive.

When he was a child, he had not seen much of the world.
From as long as he could remember, he had been following the woman he called Master, stumbling and learning to walk.

The small Daoist temple on the mountain was his whole world.

His master was very powerful.
It seemed that there was nothing in the world that could stump her.

She could cut down the clouds in the sky with a wave of her hand, and could tell the shape of things just by their sound.

She also seemed to know everything.
She knew how to fix the old black and white TV in the temple, and how to solve the difficult math problems.

She even knew how to lead troops into battle, and how to build an airplane from those blueprints that Feng Yi couldn’t understand.

Feng Yi later learned that his master, the woman named Ming Yun, had already become famous when she was just starting out.

She was not only a legendary demon slayer, but also a top engineer, a top scholar, and even a top military commander recognized by the Profound Gate Council.

With such a dazzling master, how could he, as her apprentice, bring her shame?

So Feng Yi worked very hard, always holding back a breath, not wanting to bring shame to his master.

But he was very stupid, at least he thought he was.
He had only learned a third of his master’s skills in swordsmanship.

In the summer of his seventeenth year, the cicadas were singing in the leaves.
The pill room was filled with a mist, and the small courtyard outside was covered in green grass.

That day, his master had said that he had grown up, and it was time for him to go down the mountain and take a look.

The world below the mountain was very big, so big that it was confusing.

A seventeen-year-old Feng Yi stood in the crowd at the train station, not knowing whether to go east or west.

Feng Yi remembered very clearly that the summer was very hot, and the air in the waiting room was so stuffy that it was almost maddening.

It was also that day that Feng Yi had heard in the waiting room that there was a place called a university.

In a university, you could learn a lot of knowledge, you could learn how to build airplanes and rockets, how to solve those difficult problems, and how to become an engineer, a scholar.

At that time, Feng Yi had thought: maybe if I go to university, I can learn how to be like my master, and at least I won’t bring her shame.

He had spent two years, traveling and slaying demons, while at the same time learning from the books he had borrowed from others.

Finally, in his nineteenth year, he had been accepted!

The day the Tianque University admission letter had arrived, he was so excited he was about to jump up.

But that year, Fengdu had revived.
As his master’s disciple, he had to go to the north bank of the Xiling Gorge to assist his master in suppressing Fengdu.

And then, his life had been forever frozen on that day.

The basketball kept bouncing on the ground, making a “thump, thump” sound.
Feng Yi suddenly felt that the heart that had revived in his chest a few hours ago was beating faster and faster.

It gradually overlapped with the sound of the basketball.

“Hey! Are you okay?”
Xu Zhi suddenly threw over a bottle of iced mineral water.

“I’m fine…”
Feng Yi imitated Xu Zhi’s and twisted open the cap.
The cold liquid poured into his throat.

Strange, he actually felt that he could feel this cold and refreshing sensation.

Not far away, a few girls were distributing iced mineral water to the young men on the basketball court.
Bai Ling came over with a towel.

She threw the towel to Xu Zhi, and Xu Zhi asked her with a grin, “Am I handsome?”

She kicked Xu Zhi’s calf and said that she didn’t know anything about basketball.

“The afternoon class is about to start.”
Xu Zhi suddenly threw the towel to him.
“A lecture on cultural relics, do you want to listen?”

“I want to listen.”
Feng Yi grabbed the towel.

Even though he would no longer sweat, he still imitated Xu Zhi’s and pretended to wipe his sweat, as if this could make him feel that he was still alive.

When the lecture was over, it was already 5:30 in the afternoon.
There was still half an hour left of Feng Yi’s eight-hour campus life.

“How was this professor?”

When Feng Yi walked out of the classroom, Lu Qingyu was leaning against a corridor pillar, smiling gently.

The setting sun shone on her cheeks with a golden light, just like the first time he had seen her in the morning, when she had stepped into Feng Yi’s sight in the morning light.

“He was very good…”
Feng Yi didn’t dare to look at her.

Whether it was the gentle setting sun or the energetic morning sun, it was too dazzling for him, a zombie.

He had only seen this girl twice, but every time, she was stepping on the sunlight.

“Can you take a walk with me?”

The setting sun dyed the clouds on the horizon purple, and the girl’s heels made a pleasant crisp sound on the cobblestone path.

Feng Yi didn’t know why this girl, whom he had only seen twice, had suddenly invited him for a walk alone, just as he didn’t know why these people had given him eight hours to experience university life.

“I still have half an hour…”
Feng Yi suddenly said.

According to his agreement with Bai Ling, he was about to welcome his eternal sleep in half an hour.

“I know,” Lu Qingyu said softly, the setting sun melting into an amber in her eyes.

“These eight hours, were they happy?”

“I… I don’t know…”
Feng Yi caressed his chest.
Under his skin and bones, a familiar yet strange emotion was stirring.

He didn’t know if it was happiness or some other emotion.

The word “emotion” was too far away for him, so far away that he almost didn’t recognize it anymore.

Attending class, eating at the cafeteria, playing basketball…

Were these things worth being happy about?

In the morning, he had heard that history professor talk about a custom in the Southern Song Dynasty, the prisoner’s lamp.

The jailer would light a long-burning lamp for the prisoner.
If someone added oil to the lamp before it went out, the prisoner’s execution would be temporarily suspended.

In fact, what these young men and women had done was like lighting a long-burning lamp for him for eight hours.

It allowed him to greedily enjoy the illusion of being free from sin for eight hours.

“Letting your humanity gradually revive, and then burying you after you have regained the feeling of being a human.”
Lu Qingyu looked at the setting sun that was about to fall behind the mountain ridge and suddenly said in a low voice,
“This is very cruel to you, but I’m sorry…”

The sky suddenly flashed with lightning and thunder, and in an instant, it started to rain heavily.

The green leaves were hazy in the rain curtain.
The air was humid, and the sky was gloomy.

“It’s okay…”
Feng Yi raised his head and let the raindrops fall on his cheeks, endlessly.
“Thank you for lighting a lamp for me.”

“But I might not be able to return your milk tea.
I’m sorry…”

Feng Yi stepped into the rain curtain, facing the direction of the artificial lake.

Someone was waiting for him there, waiting to draw a portrait for him, and then bury him.

“Click!”

The uniform sound of loading suddenly pierced through the rain curtain.