Spiritual Masters

Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Can’t Fall into the Same River Twice

The next day, Chi Zheng appeared at Qian Tu’s college again.

Different from the previous days, Chi Zheng was holding two textbooks in his hand and was not hiding from others. Instead, he mixed himself into the crowd and walked into the classroom building.

Half an hour ago, Qian Tu ate breakfast and left home for school. Chi Zheng went into the house and dug for Qian Tu’s class schedule.

Luckily, Qian Tu’s first class was a large public lecture with many students and plenty of extra seats in the classroom. Chi Zheng went into the class and glanced around. He immediately saw where Qian Tu was in the half-empty classroom.

Although he warned himself to keep him calm a million times, he still struggled to keep his human form after seeing Chi Zheng’s face.

Chi Zheng went directly toward Qian Tu.

Qian Tu was there alone flipping through his books.

Chi Zheng sat down behind Qian Tu. Not knowing how he would look in front of others right now, Chi Zheng closed his eyes, as his pupils might have turned white.

Last night, the moment Qian Tu’s spiritual energy merged with the energy on the notebook, Cen Tianhe jumped down from the roof and stopped Chi Zheng with all his might, but Chi Zheng still went into the house.

Spiritual masters, like other spirits, couldn’t go into humans’ dwellings without showing their bodies. Normal spirits would instantly start to disappear, but spiritual masters could survive a bit longer.

After entering the house, Chi Zheng could feel the energy surrounding himself burning, but he couldn’t feel any pain.

Chi Zheng went straight to the second floor of the house and saw Qian Tu sleeping in one of the bedrooms.

Chi Zheng walked slowly to Qian Tu’s bed. After half a month of following Qian Tu, this was Chi Zheng’s first time looking closely at Qian Tu’s face.

Qian Tu’s appearance didn’t change much.

It has been too long.

Chi Zheng placed one of his hands on Qian Tu’s head. Countless fragments of memories rushed into Chi Zheng’s mind.

He’s the person. For sure.

After confirming for the second time, Chi Zheng was about to die from being burnt alive. With the final bit of sanity that he had left, he went out of the house.

After almost ten hours of trying to calm himself down, Chi Zheng could barely sit down and look at this…

The person that he had been looking for.

The events that happened before rolled into Chi Zheng’s mind. He took a few deep breaths and heard some chatting. He looked up toward the voice.

The students in this class weren’t of the same major. Although few knew each other, they still at least saw their classmates a couple of times at this point. Noticing that Chi Zheng never appeared before, several classmates got hooked on his extraordinarily handsome appearance. Finally, Qian Tu who was reading a book also noticed his classmates’ glances and looked back…

The two started into each other. Qian Tu was shocked.

At this time, the professor walked into the classroom, and Qian Tu came back to his senses. He smiled and said, “Sorry.”

Qian Tu turned around and flipped through a couple of pages without realizing that he was already on a chapter of the next lecture.

Chi Zheng could understand Qian Tu’s reaction the best.

Just like how one would naturally avoid fire, anyone would try to avoid familiarity, even though there was no actual memory of the events.

Especially when Qian Tu and him and this special relationship.

Sadly, he wouldn’t let Qian Tu off the hook that easily.

If he could, then he wouldn’t have persisted over so many years.

After class, some students took pictures of the notes on the blackboard, and some got up to head to their next class. During this whole time, Chi Zheng kept looking at him and didn’t stand up until Qian Tu left the classroom.

He knew Qian Tu’s class schedule by heart already. His next class was a major class, and there weren’t many people in the classroom, which meant that it would be too obvious for Chi Zheng to follow. Chi Zheng decided to go find a peaceful place to spend his time.

To his surprise, Qian Tu was still in the hallway as he walked out of the classroom.

There was a vending machine outside the classroom. Qian Tu selected a bottle of water and scanned the QR code to pay…

Some spiritual energy flickered on Chi Zheng’s fingertips.

Qian Tu’s phone shook a little, and it showed that the transaction failed.

Qian Tu was not paying much attention at first. He just looked at the signal bars on his phone and tried it again.

Still failed.

The signal in the school buildings was always quite good, and nothing like this ever happened before. Qian Tu closed his cellular data and reopened it before giving the QR code another try. Still failed.

Qian Tu was confused.

Starting from last night, Qian Tu had been having a constant strange feeling.

Probably from a dream last night, he started to feel gloomy. At first, he thought he would be fine the next morning, but since the previous class started, the gloomy feeling intensified.

He couldn’t describe this feeling, just a very unpleasant sensation.

Nothing was going the way he wanted, even his cell phone signal.

Luckily, Qian Tu wasn’t very thirsty, so he just chose to not drink it. The next class was starting, so he put his phone back into his pocket and was just about to leave. Suddenly, with a crisp “beep”, the venting machine suddenly showed a purchase successful notice, and the bottle of water that Qian Tu wanted rolled down from the shelf.

Qian Tu looked back.

Chi Zheng was standing behind him, looking into his eyes.

Qian Tu paused for a moment and said, “Hi there, you’re…”

“Auditing classes,” said Chi Zheng.

Qian Tu noticed that Chi Zheng must be trying to buy a drink as well, and he did take way too much time. He quickly took the water and said apologetically, “I was planning to buy this water. I can pay you back…”

Chi Zheng didn’t say anything and got himself a bottle of green tea before handing his phone to Qian Tu for him to scan his payment code. However, no matter how hard Qian Tu tried, he still couldn’t get it to work.

The next class was about to start, and Qian Tu was a bit worried. He said, “I don’t have cash on me right now. Do you mind giving me your phone number? I can write it down and send you a payment when I get my signal back.”

Chi Zheng nodded, “Sure.”

Chi Zheng gave him a phone number, and Qian Tu typed it into the search friends box. He wanted to just record the number down for now but still tapped the add friend button just as a hopeless attempt. To his surprise, it somehow worked. Qian Tu added Chi Zheng as a friend in less than a second.

Qian Tu wanted to make the transaction while he still got a signal, but his phone stopped working again.

Qian Tu looked at Chi Zheng. The tips of Qian Tu’s ears were even turning red from the awkwardness.

Qian Tu couldn’t understand what was happening to the phone that he had been using for the past few months. He explained helplessly, “It’s just… I lost signal again. I’ll make sure to pay you today. I…”

Chi Zheng opened his bottle of green tea and took a couple of sips, “Don’t worry about it.”

Chi Zheng looked at the time and apologized as he turned and left. But after just a couple of steps, he looked back at Chi Zheng again.

Seeing that Chi Zheng was still there looking at him, Qian Tu made an unnatural smile and walked away.

After Qian Tu disappeared from his sight, Chi Zheng walked out of the classroom building and onto a trail that led to the center of a man-made lake in the middle of the school. He stopped at a pavilion and sat down.

Since last night, Chi Zheng felt a strong wind in his heart, roaring without stopping.

All Chi Zheng could think about was Qian Tu’s fragments of memories from when he was young and what happened just then. There were also memories from Qian Tu’s past life mixed inside, making it even more chaotic. Chi Zheng could feel that his head was about to explode.

“Cen Tianhe, mark my words. I will kill you,” said Chi Zheng as he finished his drink and stared into the empty lake, “Especially now.”

Cen Tianhe didn’t show his human form. He stood on top of the water surface and said nervously, “Can you just kill me and leave him alone?”

Chi Zheng’s pupils instantly turned pale white, “You know exactly how to say the wrong thing at the wrong time…”

“Calm down, calm down. You’re still in your human form!” Cen Tianhe said hurriedly, “With so many people in this college right now, I don’t want to clear all their memories one by one with you later… Just calm down!”

Chi Zheng’s pupils returned to normal.

Cen Tianhe just couldn’t understand his niece, “Normally, one won’t change much even after reincarnation… I went and found out more about him. Not to mention crimes, the most he had done wrong during the 19 years he’s been alive was probably being late to school. What must it be that he made you like this? Was it…”

There was only one thing that Cen Tianhe could think about, “Was it the car accident that we both died in?”

Chi Zheng looked at Cen Tianhe as if he was looking at an idiot, “Do you still have a brain? When we died, he’d been reincarnated for more years!”

Cen Tianhe was a bit surprised, “Oh, right.”

“Then why?” Cen Tianhe looked at Chi Zheng but then changed his mind, “White spirits are rare, and white spirits trying to revenge for love relationships were even rarer. I’ve never even met another one…”

Cen Tianhe glanced at Chi Zheng and said carefully, “You’re almost six feet tall. He can’t… can’t have abused you… or something like that, right? If something did happen back then, you would’ve just dealt with it right away…”

Chi Zheng looked at Cen Tianhe coldly, “What are you thinking?”

Cen Tianhe coughed awkwardly, “Pretend that I never said anything. I just want to remind you. Some things, especially love relationships, can have a lot of coincidences. If you kill him now, other white spirits and red spirits will come after you, and you won’t even be able to figure out what happened at that point. You’d rather…”

“I know.” Chi Zheng’s face was calm on the lake’s surface, “The number of coincidences between us was more than enough…”

Chi Zheng paused for a second and continued, “So much that I don’t even want to mention them.”

Cen Tianhe couldn’t understand, “You…”

Chi Zheng looked at Cen Tianhe, “Cen Tianhe do you think I’ll spend that many years to find a single person just to reason with him?”

Cen Tianhe stopped talking, almost convinced by this mad man.

“Even so, you still can’t…” Cen Tianhe frowned, “Hold up, you almost brought me into it too. You said he never did anything, so what did he do wrong?”

Chi Zheng was silent for a while. “He liked me.” The words came out of his throat as if they were cutting it.

Cen Tianhe stuttered, “Liked… you?”

“Liking you isn’t a crime, is it?!”

Chi Zheng also felt that Cen Tianhe had some problems, “What part of me do you think deserves to be liked by others? My personality or my temper? As for my character… I don’t have any. Do you really think someone’s not wrong for loving a person like me?”

Cen Tianhe was speechless. If it wasn’t because he was too strong, Cen Tianhe really wanted to beat him awake.

“… Although you’re not the best person around, you don’t need to make yourself sound like that,” Cen Tianhe tried to control his anger right now and said, “You met him just then, didn’t you? He… didn’t avoid you.”

Without Cen Tianhe mentioning that he was wondering about that as well.

Logically, when he entered the classroom just now, Qian Tu should have felt very uncomfortable and wanted to leave the classroom.

Unlike red spirits, white spirits were not pleasant to be around. People who had a slight relationship with the white spirit in their previous lives would avoid it when they met again, just in case the white spirit would hurt them while taking revenge.

But Qian Tu just now… didn’t seem to be avoiding me.

Why is that?

What went wrong?

Seeing that Chi Zheng didn’t speak, Cen Tianhe took it as a yes, so he said quietly, “Last night you had your chance to kill him, right? You also had the chance to torture him… But you still want to find out about something.”

Cen Tianhe continued, “You don’t want to disappear right now, right?”

Chi Zheng didn’t hear what Cen Tianhe was talking about, and he wasn’t paying attention either. “I don’t want to die, I just found him… Why should I die?”

Cen Tianhe breathed a sigh of relief.

If it’s a love relationship, then there still might be a glimmer of hope.

Cen Tianhe knew Qian Tu and Chi Zheng had more between them than just a simple summary that Chi Zheng said. If it was, then Chi Zheng wouldn’t have tried so hard for so many years.

Although Cen Tianhe never recalled that Chi Zheng had a lover while he was alive, it doesn’t matter anymore, as long as Chi Zheng wouldn’t commit an impulse killing.

As for Qian Tu, Cen Tianhe was sure that in the past years, he had never seen another person that didn’t avoid a white spirit.

Now it is obvious that Chi Zheng was also trying to understand the new Qian Tu. Perhaps after discovering that Qian Tu was indeed innocent, Chi Zheng might forgive him.

If so, Chi Zheng wouldn’t be demolished either, which is good for everything.

Both of them were thinking about their own plans, and they were silent for a long time.

Chi Zheng’s phone notification was the first to disrupt the silence.

Chi Zheng opened his phone, and Cen Tianhe also looked over.

It was a message from Qian Tu.

Cen Tianhe took a breath in despair. Chi Zheng didn’t even go find him yet, he came to seek death himself.

Chi Zheng held the phone and almost felt like he was hallucinating because he consumed too much spiritual energy last night.

It happened before, and the hallucinations would always be like a placebo…

The second message, then the third and fourth, were quickly sent to his phone, interrupting Chi Zheng’s thinking.

Chi Zheng’s finger tapped the screen.

The messages from Qian Tu opened up.

[I got signal now]