Chapter 33
He clicked save and suddenly felt something was off: Wang Chen was staring intently at his face.
His eyes were filled with confusion.
“What’s wrong?”
“You have Tang Lingwu as a friend?”
“What’s the problem?”
“The problem is huge! You’ve been tricked!” Wang Chen said with certainty. “She doesn’t even have an account!”
Zheng Fa was taken aback. “She added me in person.”
Wang Chen couldn’t hold back any longer. “Haven’t you checked the class group chat?”
“I muted it.”
Their class had a group chat with no teachers, just students.
But a few people were particularly active, flooding the chat with messages every day. Zheng Fa found it too noisy and muted it.
Wang Chen pulled out his phone, practically shoving it in Zheng Fa’s face.
He opened the class group chat interface.
To his surprise, the group was eerily quiet.
The last message had been sent two months ago.
“Tang Lingwu, I added you as a friend. Why haven’t you accepted?”
The sender was a boy from class who was usually very active in the chat.
“She doesn’t have an account,” someone with Tang Lingwu’s name replied.
“? Then who are you?”
“I’m her mom.”
After that, the group fell silent, as if everyone had died; no one had spoken since.
“We’ve already created a new group. I’ll add you,” Wang Chen said quietly, noticing Zheng Fa’s expression of complete ignorance. “I don’t know which idiot added Tang Lingwu’s mom. This group is useless now!”
Zheng Fa finally understood why Wang Chen said Tang Lingwu didn’t have an account. He scrolled back through his chat history with Tang Lingwu. They didn’t have many messages, and the first one was from her:
“Medium cup, five sugar, add pearls, no ice.”
There was another message below:
“Change to a large cup!”
And then a red envelope.
“You guys still drink milk tea together?” Wang Chen looked at the record, intrigued. He hadn’t seen the previous two messages and asked, “What did Tang Lingwu want from you just now?”
“She gave me…”
“Teacher’s here!” A nameless hero at the back of the classroom said in a low voice.
Old Chen appeared at the back door, his face stern. He scanned the classroom before fixing his gaze on Wang Chen.
“Wang Chen! What are you doing with your phone?”
Wang Chen stared blankly at his phone, then turned to Zheng Fa.
Zheng Fa held a textbook, frowning, lost in the sea of knowledge.
“Look at Zheng Fa! He’s studying during break. Why can’t you learn from him?”
Wang Chen: “…”
Zheng Fa thought to himself: As martial artists, we pride ourselves on being observant and quick to react.
…
The videos Tang Lingwu sent were comprehensive, perhaps even overly so.
Domestic and international, in Chinese and English.
Dozens of documentaries about birds lay in the cloud storage, giving Zheng Fa a sense of happiness that left him unsure of what to choose.
But…
“‘The Vanished Sky Sovereign—Pterosaur,’ does this even count as a bird?”
Zheng Fa frowned, thinking Tang Lingwu must have made a mistake.
**Chapter 38: Enlightenment**
The films were excellent.
Tang Lingwu must have put in a lot of effort, as they were all high-quality documentaries.
The clarity was top-notch, the production team elite, and every frame exuded a sense of lavish expenditure.
Some of them had very high ratings online, hailed as classics among bird enthusiasts.
What pleased Zheng Fa even more was that the filmmakers hid their cameras in trees, near nests, and even on cliffs, and some were even attached to the birds themselves.
They aimed to get as close as possible to the natural lives of these subjects.
Even without the intention of grasping the essence of “Ling He Shen” (Spirit Crane Body), these meticulously crafted documentaries were enough to captivate someone like Zheng Fa, who was a bit of a novice.
One film, then another…
Every night, Zheng Fa watched these documentaries.
He observed the birds on screen, their daily lives.
He watched them soar, glide, and land.
Hunt, eat, play.
He felt as if he was seeing some familiar scenes, vaguely reminiscent of the illustrations in the third volume of “Ling He Xin Jing” (Spirit Crane Heart Sutra).
But what exactly it was remained just out of reach, like a thin layer of paper separating him from understanding.
Even after finishing all the documentaries, he still couldn’t connect the two.
That night, he unconsciously clicked on the long-ignored “The Vanished Sky Sovereign—Pterosaur,” and the opening statement left him stunned.
“Among the many hypotheses regarding the origin of birds, the theory that birds descended from dinosaurs is the most widely accepted by mainstream scholars.”
“So some say birds are close relatives of dinosaurs.”
Zheng Fa was momentarily taken aback, surprised by this revelation.
They really are birds!
“Pterosaurs have long been extinct in our world, and we cannot know how they lived, but we can use fossil evidence and observations of bird behavior to model and simulate the appearance and movements of pterosaurs.”
Zheng Fa stared at the pterosaur model created through special effects on the screen, bizarre images flashing through his mind!
This is it!
The author of “Ling He Shen” seems to have had a similar thought process as this documentary, observing the movement patterns and habits of various birds to model—no, to create a being that never existed—a bird-human?
The images in the book gradually aligned with the pterosaur representations on the screen.
Zheng Fa felt like grabbing the author by the collar and asking:
“You drew animations, but didn’t you write a note?”
…
Zheng Fa spent several days and nights watching documentaries, especially after truly grasping the mysteries of “Ling He Xin Jing.” He rewatched the documentaries, breaking down and recombining every illustration in “Ling He Xin Jing,” comparing them with the movements of the birds in the documentaries to deepen his understanding of those images.
After several sleepless nights, even with his foundational training in Songhe Zhuang (Song Crane Stance), he couldn’t help but look haggard at school, with faint dark circles under his eyes.
“Zheng Fa, what have you been up to lately?” Wang Chen asked, concerned about his complexion.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, have you not been sleeping well at night? You look completely drained. Are you sick?”
“Oh, I’ve just been watching videos at night,” Zheng Fa explained, rubbing his face.
“Watching videos? What kind of videos… you, hmm?”
Wang Chen’s expression suddenly turned strange, as if he had thought of something.
“Tang Lingwu sent them.”
“Tang Lingwu sent them?” Wang Chen seemed to be caught in a whirlwind of confusion.
“Just that day, when Old Chen confiscated your phone.”
Wang Chen twitched his mouth; that day was too memorable, and he indeed remembered that Tang Lingwu had sent Zheng Fa a message.
But at that moment, he was more interested in gossip: “Don’t tell me, let me guess!”
“?”
“Is it one of those… without clothes?”
“Why would they need clothes?”
Zheng Fa was puzzled, not understanding why he was asking such questions.
“Is it the kind with very few people?”
“Um… I guess that counts.”
A strange excitement flickered in Wang Chen’s eyes.
“Indoors?”
“No, mostly outdoors.”
“Tang Lingwu actually likes this kind of stuff?”
Wang Chen muttered, as if he had uncovered some monumental secret. He patted Zheng Fa on the shoulder and said with a hint of gravity, “The adult world is fascinating, but you still need to take care of your health!”
Zheng Fa remained silent, looking at Wang Chen as if he were out of his mind.
Then he heard Wang Chen sigh, “Tang Lingwu is in our class, she’s smart and pretty, and Old Chen keeps a close eye on her. The boys in class are too scared to talk to her, but from what I’ve observed, at least half of the boys in our class have a bit of a crush on her.”
“So many?” Zheng Fa had never paid attention to this; who liked whom was never on his radar.
“You’re so focused on studying. I dare say it’s more than you think. Who would’ve thought her private interests were so thrilling…” Wang Chen stroked his chin, looking enlightened. “If all the boys in class found out, wow…”
“Wow what?”
“They’d be head over heels for her!”
Zheng Fa looked at Wang Chen, who was so certain.
For some reason, his words sounded contradictory: crass yet somehow reasonable.
…
The Seventh Young Master saw Zheng Fa in his study looking even more haggard.
“What’s going on with you?”
Zheng Fa had hardly slept in the last two days, all for watching those documentaries.
“I was contemplating ‘Ling He Shen,’” Zheng Fa explained.
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