Jiang Zhaoye clicked the screen of his watch awake, clicked it off, and clicked it awake once more.
On the narrow screen, a single line of data quietly displayed: 【Psionic Energy: Metal 13, Water 13, Ice 17】.
He sat cross-legged on his training mat, staring at those numbers for a good long while. Then he threw his body backward, landing on the training mat with a dull thud. He sprawled across the thin mat in an awkward, twisted posture, like a deflated snake.
The ceiling light wasn't on.
Dusk light slanted in from the window, glancing past the frame to carve out a pool of hazy light across the floor. Jiang Zhaoye simply lay there without making a sound, half his body bathed in light, half concealed in shadow. Staring blankly at the ceiling, he felt nothing but exhaustion—sore muscles, soreness deep in the crevices of his bones, an ache coursing through his entire body.
His heart tasted bitter and astringent, a tangle of complicated emotions churning like a bubbling pot of traditional Chinese medicine.
He kicked out his legs, numb from sitting cross-legged for so long. By habit, his finger hooked inside his collar, pulling out a spherical pendant he had worn for years. Nestling it in his palm, he rubbed it between his fingers again and again.
Only the familiar, warm yet slightly cool touch slowly calmed his mood a bit.
Summer vacation had started a month ago—thirty-six whole days. Except for eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom, Jiang Zhaoye had spent nearly every waking moment welded to this training mat.
In the morning, before his mom left for work, he was practicing; in the evening, when she returned from work, he was still practicing. Out of twenty-four hours in a day, he spent fourteen or fifteen absorbing and converting psionic energy. He hadn't pushed himself this hard even when cramming for the high school entrance exams, and yet...
To say it was entirely useless wouldn't be accurate, either.
During the high school entrance exams, Jiang Zhaoye's psionic energy test values had been 【Metal 13, Water 14, Ice 16】. After a month of practicing day and night, he had at least managed to convert one point of his water attribute into ice.
The Heavenly Dao rewards diligence, but it hadn't rewarded him much.
As everyone knew, a single psionic energy value had to exceed 20 to have a chance of officially awakening a psionic attribute, and only after awakening one could one formally begin cultivating.
He had done exceptionally well on the academic subjects during the entrance exam, ranking in the top fifty citywide. But his psionic energy data had been utterly abysmal, dragging his overall score down by a massive margin. Unable to meet the cutoff for the city's key high schools, he slid down to Huaicheng No. 2 High School.
In fact, the only reason Huaicheng No. 2 High School had been willing to accept him was, frankly, because they saw potential in his ice attribute.
Although Jiang Zhaoye's stats didn't make the cut, the ice attribute itself was rare, and the conversion efficiency between water and ice was high, leaving room for development. The school had casually made a gamble, betting that he could raise it.
Jiang Zhaoye wanted it to rise too. In this day and age, all pursuits were base; only psionic energy reigned supreme. The path of a psionic practitioner was the only true broad avenue leading to the heavens.
He desperately wanted to make progress.
The very day the scores came out, he had researched frantically, downloading the tailored cultivation materials recommended by his teacher from the education portal: 《Psionic Guiding Technique》 and 《Water-Ice Attribute Conversion》.
At first, he had been fairly confident. After all, the summer vacation between middle school and high school lasted two full months.
Increasing his ice attribute by four points over two months—an average of one point every two weeks—sounded like it wouldn't be too difficult.
Once the first year of high school officially began, the psionic awakening ceremony would take place. Those who succeeded would enter the psionic class, majoring in psionic energy with academic subjects as a minor, receiving the lion's share of the school's finest resources. Those who failed would be relegated to the liberal arts class, majoring in academic subjects while psionic studies were reduced to an elective—two classes a week, just for show.
Calling it a liberal arts class was just a euphemism for an ordinary academic high school; in fact, it was worse than just going to an academic high school directly.
That Jiang Zhaoye could score in the city's top fifty in academic subjects proved his intellect was up to par, and his comprehension wasn't lacking either; within half a day of getting his hands on 《Psionic Guiding Technique》 and 《Water-Ice Attribute Conversion》, he had successfully circulated them.
Full of confidence, he had begun practicing. After training for an entire month, his ice attribute only went from 16 to 17.
Just one measly point.
In the days that followed, Jiang Zhaoye pushed himself even harder. Aside from eating and sleeping, he spent every moment circulating psionic energy, wishing he could convert his attributes even in his dreams. Yet the 17 on his watch seemed welded in place, not budging an inch.
Sometimes he couldn't help but wonder if his talent had simply hit its ceiling.
Metal 13, Water 14, Ice 17, adding up to just 44 points. Others easily had twenty or thirty in a single main attribute, while all three of his combined might not even equal someone else's single stat.
Jiang Zhaoye felt thoroughly discouraged, but as soon as he grew disheartened, he remembered his father... No, that old bastard, as he should now be called.
A massive upheaval had hit his family last year. The old bastard had been caught red-handed cheating, leading to a bitter divorce between his parents. The scenes back then were so chaotic that calling it an unpleasant parting would be putting it far too generously. Relatives from both sides took turns joining the fray, and the rounds of lawsuits shook the heavens and darkened the sun and moon.
In the end, custody of Jiang Zhaoye was awarded to his biological mother, Ms. Wen Zhiqiu, while his younger sister, Jiang Lianyue, went with the old bastard Jiang Chengsi.
After the divorce and splitting the household, both parents acted as though they would never interact again until the day they died. Jiang Zhaoye hadn't seen his little sister in six months, while Ms. Wen seemed to have turned her grief and indignation into fighting spirit, throwing herself completely into her work, leaving early, returning late, and frequently traveling on business.
When the entrance exam results came out, Ms. Wen hadn't said much. She simply went out quietly and bought an ice-attribute training mat to lay out in his room.
Jiang Zhaoye had looked it up on the official website; a mat like this, not even half the size of his bed, had a price tag of thirty-six thousand.
Ms. Wen's monthly salary was only around ten thousand.
Thinking of this, Jiang Zhaoye wasn't discouraged anymore, nor was he going to give up and slack off. All he wanted was to work hard and push even harder, so that one day he would make something of himself, make that old bastard regret everything, and have him kneel before Ms. Wen in bitter tears.
These juvenile fantasies stacked up like a bellows in the boy's heart, fanning the flames from time to time.
Jiang Zhaoye sat up uncomfortably. He glanced at the data on his watch, took a deep breath, and propped himself against the floor, intending to stand up.
Little did he expect that his legs, numb and sore from sitting cross-legged for more than two hours, would betray him. The moment he exerted strength to stand, his knees buckled, and he pitched forward unexpectedly, smashing his chin right against the edge of the coffee table.
A jolt of fierce pain instantly assaulted his nerves. Jiang Zhaoye let out a sharp howl, grimacing in agony.
He subconsciously clutched his mouth as a coppery, salty taste spread alongside the pain. His lips and gums seemed to have split open. Droplets of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, ran down his chin, and dripped onto the crystal-ball-like blue pendant resting on his chest.
In the twilight hour, within the completely darkened room, the coin-sized sphere quietly began to glow with a faint luminescence. If anyone were to look closely, they would discover that frozen inside the sphere was a cicada, white as snow and misty as smoke.
It was far smaller than an ordinary cicada, its slightly spread wings almost ethereal.
This ice-blue pendant was actually a rare piece of colored amber.
Drops of blood fell upon it, vanishing in an instant as if evaporating. The shimmering blue amber grew brighter and brighter, colder and colder, until it could no longer be ignored—
Jiang Zhaoye looked down. The pendant that had accompanied him for years was glowing, radiating an unprecedented, ethereal, and spirit-infused dim light from the inside out... Jiang Zhaoye couldn't describe it accurately; he could only watch as it grew brighter without dazzling the eyes, and colder without piercing the skin.
It was as if cold flames were burning within it.
Subconsciously, he reached out to touch it. In an instant, the blue amber shattered, fused, and transformed into a ray of immortal light that shot straight into his right eye!
Agony.
Caught completely off guard, Jiang Zhaoye was hit by an unspeakable pain. His right eye felt as though it had been pulverized, or as though it had turned into a block of frigid ice connected to his brain, threatening to freeze his entire skull solid.
This excruciating sensation clearly exceeded what a fourteen-year-old boy could bear. He couldn't even let out a scream, curling up and convulsing on the training mat.
He could see nothing; his vision was completely filled with blinding white and blue.
The overwhelming pain and dizziness made every second feel agonizingly prolonged, until he finally lost consciousness.
When Jiang Zhaoye woke up again, the inhuman throbbing pain had long since vanished. Everything from before seemed like an illusion.
Yet the sight before his eyes served as a glaring reminder that it was no illusion.
Rate on N.U.
