Chapter 609: Nighttime
Bai Yunfei finished up the class with instructions for the next week’s lecture before announcing the end of today. And with that, they adjourned for the day and left.
Zheng Kai, Huang Bin, and the others were all off doing their own thing when Bai Yunfei was teaching his class, so Bai Yunfei left Tianhun Academy by himself to head for the Soothing Heart.
Feeling thoroughly refreshed a pot of Soul Consolidating Tea later, Bai Yunfei stepped back out onto the streets to find a place to eat. Having not the desire to go back home and train, Bai Yunfei opted to go meander around the Capital after his meal.
Well acquaintanced with the Capital by now, Bai Yunfei had a decent grasp of which direction was which. As a result, Bai Yunfei could take a nice stroll around the place without getting lost.
In the Capital, the northern streets were separated into fourteen streets with North Seventh Street being the middlemost and closest street to Tianhun Academy. Though the streets were so categorically divided as such, each street wasn’t limited to having just one linear street. North Seventh Street alone covered a wide strip of land and had many smaller streets run perpendicular to it in a way that it was rather complicated almost. But on the bright side, many types of shops could be found here.
With how aimlessly Bai Yunfei was wandering around, he soon found himself back at the gates of Tianhun Academy. Looking up at the massive sign that hung overhead and was slightly red with the setting sun, Bai Yunfei hesitated for a moment before striding in.
If he had to be honest with himself, Bai Yunfei had never seen Tianhun Academy at night before, so he decided that he might as well do so today.
The sun was barely setting right now, but the streets were filled with multiple lightstones fashioned like lanterns so that whenever the students came walking past them, the streets looked as busy as it would in the day.
Actually, the daytime hadn’t many students walking on them since they were all in class. It was in night that the students had some free time to themselves, so they usually chose then to walk around the campus.
Bai Yunfei walked through the streets from the first year area to the third year area. Plenty of students hardly in their double digits could be seen walking and talking. The very liveliness of their faces had Bai Yunfei sighing to himself. These students were carefree almost with very few concerns to worry over. Their path to becoming strong was almost without any bumps, and all they had to do was stay here in the comforting presence of the academy and listen to the guidance of their instructors. Through the academy, the students could quickly become strong….
Bai Yunfei compared their lives to his own. Back in Talus City, Bai Yunfei had to struggle deeply in order to live. He lived day by day, earning enough money to keep him alive with only the basic necessities by moving heavy sacks of rice one after another in an ordinary rice shop….
Those days had felt so long ago to Bai Yunfei….it was as if that had simply been another life he had lived.
When he looked at the youngsters walking towards and past him, Bai Yunfei suddenly realized he himself had grown noticeably larger.
He had been eighteen when he left Talus City. Today, Bai Yunfei was somehow twenty-five already….
Seven years had passed since then, and it was like he was living a whole different life. It was an explosion of spectrum of colors whereas the first eighteen years of his life was spent in a monotonous world.
At some point, Bai Yunfei walked to the fourth year area without him being aware of it.
Not many students were here in comparison to the others, as the students here were all Soul Sprites. They were in their twenties, so they looked more mature than the other students, but also a lot more lively.
It was here that Bai Yunfei began to see the students coupled in pairs.
When he looked at the pairs walking shoulder to shoulder and their hands intertwined with each other, Bai Yunfei suddenly grew pensive. Lifting his left hand to stare at the milky-white ring on his finger, Bai Yunfei looked a little contemplative.
How—how was she doing?
A figure popped into Bai Yunfei’s mind then, a feeling of longing filling Bai Yunfei’s heart and mind. At the thought of her, Bai Yunfei wanted nothing more than to throw down his Tempest Sword and return to the Crafting School at once.
For a long moment, Bai Yunfei stood there. Several students were staring strangely at him, but he didn’t seem to notice as he rubbed at his temples forlornly.
“I forgot myself for a moment….that’s not a good omen.”
Gingerly shaking his head, Bai Yunfei continued onwards. He didn’t want to pay attention to those thoughts and so he raised his head to the starry canopus overhead. His eyes shined as if retracting old memories, his mouth curling up in a smile as if to think about happier times.
“Maybe I should go back to the Crafting School for a while….”
Bai Yunfei wistfully thought to both himself and a shooting star in the sky.
With how he wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking, Bai Yunfei soon found himself at the sixth year area near the entrance to the Back Mountain.
It was already eleven at night, how long had he been walking?
The thought came to him in surprise. Bai Yunfei hadn’t even been paying attention to the passage of time. Looking around, Bai Yunfei was prepared to turn back and head home when he saw a glimmer of light.
“Eh? Someone’s up there?”
The place he was looking at was the top of the Back Mountain where he held his class.
He noticed a glimmer of light in the dark skies coming from the Back Mountain. Something was shining red there.
“Is someone crafting?”
Bai Yunfei thought to himself in surprise. Was someone really trying to craft this late at night?
Curious, Bai Yunfei decided to head up the mountain rather than go back home.
……
At the top of the mountain where it seemed almost possible to grab at the stars in the skies, ten pitch-black crafting caves were embedded in the cliff wall.
Ah, no. Nine of the ten crafting caves were pitch-black. The tenth one was shining with red light.
Waves of heat flooded out from the cave in droves, counteracting against the chilly night air and making the area warm. Every so often, there’d be a spike of elemental fire that’d drive up the temperature even more.
“Bang!!”
Suddenly, an explosion of red light came out from the crafting cave with an intensity many times greater than the before ones. The light shimmered intensely for a few minutes before another explosion of sound echoed from within the cave along with a pillar of fire to come spitting out from the depths.
“A failure?”
Bai Yunfei had been close enough to sense the influx of elemental fire and wondered to himself on the situation. He knew someone was inside in the cave, but because he was worried about disturbing the person, Bai Yunfei didn’t want to use his soulsense. Prior to this explosion, the crafting attempt seemed to be going quite well, so Bai Yunfei was surprised to see the attempt suddenly become a failure at the end.
He released his soulsense then to inspect who it was. “Him?”