Prologue

Ninety-Eight was a little donkey, born from the twelfth peach tree in the Ning District of Peach Blossom Spring. On the day of his birth, that very tree had just produced its ninety-eighth berry. And so, the highest authority of Peach Blossom Spring — the grey donkey everyone called Teacher — recorded the name “Ninety-Eight” on the settlement register, a large board carved from peach wood.

The residents of Peach Blossom Spring all felt the name was a bit unpleasant. After all, this newborn little male donkey was quite striking in appearance — his coat of short white fur resembled the first snowfall of winter, and atop his head, a tuft of crimson red stood out like a small flame accidentally lit in a snowy field, tenacious yet humble, fiery yet never burning to the touch. It had been a very long time since such a handsome donkey had appeared in Peach Blossom Spring.

Ninety-Eight himself paid little attention to whether his name sounded good or not. He only cared about whether the peach trees would, every March, produce those berries on schedule — white flushed with pink, sweet and delicious in flavor. The peach trees in Peach Blossom Spring were different from those outside; they produced two kinds of fruit. On the sun-facing side, they grew emerald green peaches, and every resident of Peach Blossom Spring had sprung from one of these green peaches. On the shade-facing side, they grew berries that resembled not peaches but glutinous rice balls.

Peach Blossom Spring was full of delicious food, and its residents were thoroughly satisfied with their three daily meals. The berries, being a fine snack, were widely beloved. Yet only Ninety-Eight held a particular enthusiasm for the very first batch of berries to ripen each year. In truth, the first batch was not especially tasty — those pinkish-white fruits invariably carried a slight tinge of green, a faintly astringent flavor, and were small in size, quietly hiding among the peach leaves, until the second, fully ripened batch grew in and knocked them to the ground.

Before Ninety-Eight came along, the first batch of berries was simply swept into bags and thrown away. Everyone said these were berries that had not “grown to fullness” and were not good to eat. Yong Cui, who had been born on the same day as Ninety-Eight, would not even deign to sniff those fruits.

Yet Ninety-Eight insisted they were delicious. Whenever Teacher the grey donkey saw him munching on the berries with relish, he would smile warmly, ruffle his head, and say, “Very good, very good.”

Ninety-Eight did not understand what Teacher meant by “good.” He only cared about eating. Those sour-sweet berries were, in his opinion, more delectable than the fully ripened ones — more varied on the tip of the tongue, each one tasting slightly different from the last.

Peach Blossom Spring was a place of beauty throughout all four seasons: summers never scorching, winters never bitterly cold, springs lush with blooms, autumns fragrant with fruit. Year after year, month after month, what its residents did was admire flowers, gaze at the moon, eat and drink well, sleep soundly, or tell stories. There were far, far too many books in Peach Blossom Spring — some carved into stone, some inscribed on bamboo slips, and even more written on peach leaves strung together with thread. The place with the most books in Peach Blossom Spring would have to be the archive where Teacher the grey donkey lived. Within the not-too-large, not-too-small territory of Peach Blossom Spring, divided into four districts called Ping, An, Kang, and Ning, the archive stood at the intersection of all four, also the most lively spot in all of Peach Blossom Spring. The vast majority of its residents spent what time others might dedicate to “fighting and scheming” on reading — quite unlike the world beyond Peach Blossom Spring, which preferred to do the opposite.

No one could quite say where Peach Blossom Spring actually was. The only certainty was that its entrance was a single threshold — smooth and jade-green, lying in a space invisible to mortal eyes, stretching across tens of millions of years in a single span.

Yet certain people did know of Peach Blossom Spring’s existence, and knew as well that inside the archive at Peach Blossom Spring’s center lay the most precious treasure of all — the Wisdom Fruit.

This fruit, containing all the wisdom of the universe, was said to render every problem in the world no longer a problem once consumed.

The Wisdom Fruit sat in a flowerpot on the third floor of the archive — this was no secret. Teacher the grey donkey did not even bother with a lock box. He had issued only one rule: any resident caught touching the Wisdom Fruit would be expelled from Peach Blossom Spring immediately upon discovery. Everyone knew that to step beyond Peach Blossom Spring’s threshold was to transform from a donkey into a human, permanently stranded in the world beyond. What a terrifying fate — to become one of those humans forever hitting and fighting one another!

And so, for many years, peace reigned. The generations of residents in Peach Blossom Spring seemed to have forgotten the Wisdom Fruit’s very existence.

Which was why Ninety-Eight was so utterly shocked when Yong Cui was flung out across Peach Blossom Spring’s threshold.

Yong Cui and Ninety-Eight had been born on the same day from the same tree. His arrival had also caused a stir of astonishment in Peach Blossom Spring — never before had a donkey the color of rubies appeared! And he was so clever. Every book in Peach Blossom Spring needed only a single reading before he had memorized it. He could calculate the speed at which stars moved across the sky, solve the most difficult mathematics problems in the archive, and dig pitfalls while calculating exactly how many steps Ninety-Eight would need to take before falling into one. In short, the residents of Peach Blossom Spring were very fond of him, even doting on him. Even as his favorite saying gradually became reduced to simply “You’re so dumb!”, no one minded too much. Only Teacher the grey donkey rarely praised him, instead asking him to spend more time playing and reading alongside Ninety-Eight. Teacher said: you were born from the same tree, so you are brothers.

The thing Yong Cui said most often to Ninety-Eight was: “How can you be this stupid?”

While Yong Cui was brilliantly calculating the trajectories of stars, Ninety-Eight was busy asking the older female donkeys how to effectively remove the pests that grew on the peach trees. In any competition held in Peach Blossom Spring, Yong Cui always placed first; Ninety-Eight might not even make it to the finals. Donkeys from the other districts loved to tease Ninety-Eight from time to time — luring him with berries into caves crawling with itchy-worms, slipping little crabs beneath his bedding, and so on. Each time, it was Yong Cui who came to his rescue, scolding him for being stupid in one breath while teaching him which medicinal herbs could keep the itchy-worms away in the next.

Every time, Ninety-Eight would bray with laughter and say he understood.

Once, Yong Cui fell gravely ill. Ninety-Eight ran for three days and three nights to a distant mountain peak to retrieve the medicinal herbs to cure him. Yong Cui said he was stupid again; he replied simply, “Brothers.”

That year, the time came once more to select a new Gatekeeper for Peach Blossom Spring. The threshold always needed a Gatekeeper, generation succeeding generation.

The selection method was simple: the youngest and most vigorous donkeys from each of the four districts would be assembled, and the matter decided by a game of rock-paper-scissors. In this round, both Ninety-Eight and Yong Cui attended as representatives of the Ning District. Ninety-Eight lost — he always threw rock.

As the gathering dispersed, Teacher the grey donkey called out to him. Before Teacher could even ask anything, Ninety-Eight smiled and said: “Yong Cui is the sort of fellow who can’t sit still — unlike me. As long as I have the first batch of berries to eat, I can stay anywhere.”

Teacher the grey donkey nodded, and after a long silence said: “Guard Peach Blossom Spring’s threshold well. From now on, I will send someone every year to bring you the first batch of berries.”

The one Ninety-Eight was replacing was a black donkey called Old Bai. Old Bai had kept watch for so long that even he had lost count of how many years it had been. In any case, on the day Ninety-Eight took up the post, he saw Old Bai dissolve into a ball of light the size of a glutinous rice ball, which then melted into the jade-green threshold — this was how every Gatekeeper eventually ended. Their hind legs, from the very beginning, would gradually “grow into” the threshold, guarding this sole entrance and exit day and night without cease. On the final day of their duty, their whole body and soul would transform into a ball of light and become part of the threshold itself.

Even so, as long as there were the first batch of not-yet-fully-ripened berries to eat every year, Gatekeeper Ninety-Eight had not a word of complaint. Being a Gatekeeper was admittedly inconvenient in terms of movement, but every day he could see the colorful world beyond the threshold, and Teacher the grey donkey often came to visit him, chat, and bring all manner of books. Ninety-Eight’s life as Gatekeeper was rich and happy — at least, so he himself believed. Only one thing troubled him: when Yong Cui was flung out of Peach Blossom Spring and tumbled out through his threshold, he had seen in Yong Cui’s eyes a stranger — cold, resentful, contemptuous of all…

He wanted to follow after him, but he could not.

Time passed. The day came when Ninety-Eight, too, was to become light. Drowsily he slept into the threshold, surrounded on all sides by a flowing jade-green.

He knew this was not death, only a sleep without end. Many Gatekeepers like himself slept inside Peach Blossom Spring’s threshold. Like him, they had turned away many outsiders who tried to sneak in, blocked some of their own kind who tried to sneak out, and naturally, had come to understand many things that others could not.

What Ninety-Eight had never expected was that his sleep would be interrupted by someone who arrived without warning. That person used a technique to knock out the successor Gatekeeper — without harming them — and had no intention of breaking into Peach Blossom Spring. Using only a small chisel of peculiar and intricate shape, they chiseled out a small section of the threshold, and by unfortunate coincidence, Ninety-Eight had been sleeping in precisely that piece. And so he was packed into a bag and carried away, bumping and jolting, leaving Peach Blossom Spring behind.

Never in his wildest dreams had Ninety-Eight imagined leaving Peach Blossom Spring this way. He demanded of the person who had taken him: “Where are you taking me?”

“To be a companion to someone,” the person replied.

“I refuse to go!”

“She is very beautiful, and her voice is lovely.”

“I only like berries!”

“…”

1

“Before next week — when the city’s largest water treatment plant goes into operation — we need to have already resolved the problem of Borsi’s lossless dissolution in water.”

In the dim laboratory, only the overhead light above the central workbench was illuminated. Situ You’s eyes gleamed with a cold and severe light. Around him, seven or eight young men and women of similar age, dressed in high school uniforms, furrowed their brows as they studied the various instruments and petri dishes arranged on the workbench.

“The reason you were able to become my teammates is that you are the sharpest, most brilliant students at Peach Blossom High School.” Situ You pointed upward. “Up there — our school — has already become a domain that belongs entirely to us, free of teachers who obstruct us and dull classmates who hold us back. With just one more push, next week, human history will be dictated by us.”

The faces of the young men and women shone with a strange luminescence, as they smiled like those possessed.

A boy with a buzz cut and thick-lensed glasses walked into the laboratory and said to Situ You: “The lie about a closed-campus intensive training session may not hold up much longer. Just now, more parents called the teachers’ family members, requesting to speak with them. We may need to speed things up, or perhaps, find a different location…”

A sharp, resounding slap sent his glasses flying.

“All I want to know is whether the remaining students are obedient.” Situ You did not even glance at him. “I detest people telling me how to do things.”

The buzz-cut boy clutched his face, trembling: “Everyone is working very hard to study. No one dares to violate your orders. They are managing the calls from their parents well enough — nothing has raised any suspicion.”

“Good.” Situ You gave a satisfied nod, then turned to a fine-featured girl beside him: “You’re quite skilled with audio processing, aren’t you? Go and forge the voices of those people to handle the calls from anyone who comes looking for them. Let them wait quietly for another week.”

“Understood. I’ll go at once.” Having received his command, the girl obeyed with unusual compliance and left.

“That will do for today. Go rest.” Situ You stretched lazily, then suddenly asked: “Yu Tianyin — she didn’t come today?”

“Before coming to the laboratory, she said she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go to the infirmary to get some medicine,” one of the girls answered.

Situ You frowned slightly but said nothing.

After everyone had left, Situ You sat alone in the sealed laboratory. His slender fingers — rivaling those of a concert pianist — slowly turned the pages of a picture book: The Story of the Fairy and the Grains of Rice.

This fairy tale told the story of a clever and beautiful fairy who transformed all the foolish monsters and humans into grains of rice, locking them away in a box forever.

2

It is only now that I have come to realize that the existence of Jia Yi — a literary, stone-faced Daoist who would never reveal a destination, an eccentric soul who hid a longsword inside a toothpick case, a high-maintenance hired hand who charged extra even to change a tire — serves a purpose beyond testing my patience after all.

The longsword, ordinarily crammed inside the toothpick case, revealed its true form, whistling through the air and cleanly slicing a cockroach the size of Godzilla in two.

This was already the Nth attacker Jia Yi had slain on our journey. Before it, there had been enormous nameless grubs and colossal rats, every single one of them N times larger than us in size. I have always had a natural aversion to insects — back in the shop, a single cockroach was enough to make me scream for several minutes until Ao Chi or Young Master Zhao appeared to deal with it for me. So do not expect me to throw myself into hand-to-hand combat with these things. Even touching one of them would make my hair stand on end.

I suppressed my revulsion and carefully stepped around the cockroach’s carcass, split into two halves, jumping to another clean patch of floor. Beside me, a chair leg towering into the clouds stood tall beneath the fluorescent light. Beyond it, a garbage bin hulked like a monster, looking down at me with cold contempt. And I had to walk with extreme care to avoid falling into the gaps between the marble floor tiles — those cracks, not even a centimeter wide, now yawned before me like vast chasms. I even had to gather a bit of spiritual energy to lift myself into the air just to cross them in a single leap.

Are you bystanders out there thinking I’m filming a science fiction movie? Not a chance! I… I have been shrunk!

I, the illustrious proprietress, am now perhaps only marginally larger than a grain of rice. What else did you think those Godzilla-sized cockroaches and rats were supposed to be? In this world as it is right now, a single ant could challenge me to a wrestling match — and I might not even win.

I pressed my back against a wad of crumpled paper that had fallen beside a chair leg and sat down to clear my head, because otherwise I would not even know how to explain this utterly inexplicable encounter to you all. We have all read enough fairy tales about little people, but when you yourself become one of those little people while everything around you remains exactly the same size, you will understand exactly why, just like me, you would cry and say: fairy tales are all lies.

Only Jia Yi remained as calm as ever, from time to time pulling out his phone, consulting the GPS from multiple angles, and then sketching route maps in the pocket-sized notepad he kept on him at all times.

The GPS was useless — I had already checked my own phone hundreds of times, and the location pinned only as far as “Peach Blossom High School, Peach Blossom City.” The place we were actually in was the basement second floor of Peach Blossom Middle School’s teaching building, a completely sealed laboratory. No one knew we were here, and even if someone from outside found their way to this place, they would have great difficulty spotting us, shrunken as we were into this state.

“The laboratory is approximately three hundred square meters in total, and at our current height of roughly half a centimeter, walking out of the canteen with no stops or rests along the way would take approximately 1.7 days,” Jia Yi calculated unhurriedly. “If you can still fly, it might only take a few hours.”

What a heartbreaking calculation.

“Don’t you dare bring up mathematics with me right now!” I shot him a glare and pointed to my stomach. “I’m hungry. Big ones need to eat, and little ones need to eat too! Hurry up and find me something!”

Before the words were even out of my mouth, a packet of dried fruit flew into my arms. Across from me stood a little girl wearing a knit cap from beneath which curled short dark locks. Her fair melon-seed face bore a fresh dusting of rose-red across both cheeks. It was rare for someone of fifteen or sixteen to already have such a fine figure; even the slightly oversized deep-blue high school uniform could not conceal her shapely silhouette. Most distinctive of all was the small flame-shaped red birthmark on her forehead — far from detracting from her beauty, it lent her an extra measure of spirited charm.

What a lovely girl she was — and yet the thing I most wanted to do right now was to spank her! If not for her, Jia Yi and I should at this moment be traveling along a pleasantly sunlit road, eating and drinking well as we continued our frustrating search for our “98.”

After the Thousand Mechanisms Incident, what Jia Yi and I had become most devoted to was tracking down anything connected to “98,” because the clue our next destination had given us — derived from the “Bird on the Branch” object recovered from Thousand Mechanisms — was simply: 98. Just that one number.

And so I had become someone with compulsive tendencies: driving along Highway 98, visiting countless buildings with addresses involving the number 98, even stubbornly handing over an extra yuan when a meal came to 97, just to make the total 98. I let nothing connected to the number 98 slip past me, and the song looping endlessly in the car was the pop queen’s Rendezvous ’98. Yet sadly, the inscription on the “Bird on the Branch” remained intact, indicating we had never found the right subject at all.

And as if that weren’t enough — no sooner had we found ourselves leaking through the roof than this girl went and dragged us into another enormous mess entirely.

All brought on by doing a good deed.

During the day, my secondhand car had apparently decided to throw a tantrum and refused to move. Fortunately, we had already entered Peach Blossom City by then, more prosperous than Songshan City, and not far ahead was an auto repair shop — not a proper dealership, but I was grateful enough for it. I asked Jia Yi to push the car over; the mechanic fussed for two hours, declared he couldn’t fix it, and said the only option was to call a tow truck to take it to a dealership. I was still debating whether to spend the money on the tow when this girl came sauntering out of the small supermarket next to the repair shop — cap on, arms full of snacks — and without a word, she began fiddling with my car. In less than ten minutes, the engine started up, triumphant and revived.

I remember the scene clearly: the girl, stone-faced, said: “Battery terminal was loose. It’s fine now.”

Impressive… When I was her age, I probably couldn’t even tell a cow from a car. Then again, when I was a teenager, automobiles hadn’t even been invented yet. But that’s beside the point — the thing is, before I could even say thank you, the girl had already mounted a silver racing motorcycle parked by the road, and before riding off, she tossed a parting remark in my direction: “You women. You’re diligent enough about doing face masks but you can’t be bothered to maintain your car? No culture!”

And then, one rev of the engine, and she was gone.

I didn’t even get the chance to retort with “I rarely do face masks!”

But the sales assistant who came chasing out of the supermarket after her gave me that chance — this girl had accidentally left her student ID in the shop when paying, and on it was everything about her.

School: Peach Blossom High School Year: Grade One, Class A Name: Yu Tianyin

3

I do not make a habit of keeping what is not mine. Bearing in mind that the girl had fixed my car, and given that the young sales assistant mentioned Peach Blossom Middle School was just outside the city, only about half an hour away by car, I naturally drove over with good intentions to return it. Before I left, that young sales assistant even said to me with particular admiration that Peach Blossom High School was the most elite school in the area — only one class per year group, and every student admitted was extraordinarily brilliant, the kind who could get into top universities without question. She herself had once sat the entrance examination for Peach Blossom High School, but her score had fallen far too short.

I quietly offered her a silent word of consolation. For an old demon who had never attended school, entered a classroom, or sat a college entrance exam, I truly could not relate to her longing for such a place. Did being some kind of “top student” truly make someone so enviable?

But I digress — back to returning the student ID. This Peach Blossom Middle School was indeed an interesting place, situated in the outskirts of the city at a lovely location backed by mountains and facing a river, surrounded by lush greenery and tranquil quiet. Other than the occasional bird drifting overhead or fish blowing bubbles in the river, barely a sound could be heard. It had something of the feel of an otherworldly sanctuary.

It was afternoon when we arrived. The school’s outrageously high main gate was firmly shut, with not even a security guard at the entrance. Peering through the gap, I could make out a single teaching building — not large, three stories tall, standing in silent warmth beneath the afternoon sun, the grounds completely deserted.

For a so-called elite school, it was a remarkably excessive degree of quiet.

Looking here and there, we found a red button on the left side of the main gate, beside which a seven- or eight-inch screen displayed scrolling text: Welcome to Peach Blossom High School! Please press the button to receive your entry card. Thank you.

How advanced… Fully automated, unmanned? I muttered to myself and pressed the button.

What followed was an event that wounded my self-esteem. The screen’s text changed: Please select the correct answer within three seconds. Then this appeared: If the function y = (x+1)(x−a) is an even function, then a = ? (Please click one of the following four options!)

I was completely dumbfounded. What sort of school is this, using math problems in place of a security guard?

While I, a confirmed mathematical dunce, stood there stunned for a moment, the three seconds elapsed. A large red X appeared in the center of the screen, and a row of red text scrolled past: We regret to inform you that testing has determined your IQ to be zero. Apologies — entry to Peach Blossom High School is not permitted.

“What a delightful school,” said Jia Yi, staring at the words “IQ of zero,” giving me a not-quite-smile as he shook his head.

The thing I can least stand is that expression of his. Every time I make a fool of myself, he puts on that effortlessly amused look, as if thoroughly enjoying himself. Ah, it really is true that what goes around comes around. It must be that I was not good enough to Ao Chi and Chi Pian’er in the past — failing to appreciate what I had — and so heaven sent this jinx to punish me.

I shot him a fierce glare: “I’d say this school isn’t delightful at all — it’s suspicious.”

Curiosity has always killed the cat, or rather — killed the proprietress. Had I turned and walked away at that moment, none of what followed would have happened. But I chose instead to… use my own methods to infiltrate this “elite school” more sealed off than a prison. I wanted to see for myself what sort of three-headed, six-armed prodigies studied here.

For a demon and a Daoist, scaling an impossibly high perimeter wall and moving through the school’s grounds concealed from view was simplicity itself. As we passed through, nothing seemed out of the ordinary — whatever you might expect to find in any school, it was here too. Except for one thing: there were no teachers.

I drifted through the school’s only three classrooms and saw students everywhere, but the lecterns stood empty. In one of the classrooms, a freckled girl with pigtails was fluidly inscribing mathematical symbols I could barely comprehend onto the blackboard, while several other students stood beside her, observing and thinking with great concentration. Jia Yi glanced over and mentioned that the girl was attempting to disprove the Riemann hypothesis. When Jia Yi discovered I didn’t even know who Riemann was, he stopped speaking altogether.

Three classrooms, no teachers, all self-directed study. Not a single person was reading manga, novels, or scrolling through social media. I continued drifting curiously among these students. Two boys at a window seat were each clutching a book and debating heatedly with each other. After catching scattered phrases like “quantum gravity” and “proton lifetime,” I retreated in shame, no longer daring to go near. The rest of them were either discussing abstract philosophical questions or competing on their laptops to see who could infiltrate some foreign central intelligence agency’s system fastest.

On every young and still-unformed face glowed, to varying degrees, an expression of self-assured supremacy, a pride that held the world in contempt. This much was clear from listening to their phone calls. One thin boy said coldly into his phone: “What do any of you know? Your IQ and my father’s IQ combined don’t add up to a tenth of mine. If it weren’t for listening to me, would your stocks have made money? Stop telling me what to do! Don’t come to the school — we’re in intensive closed-campus training!”

After hanging up, the boy tossed his phone back onto his desk with a trace of irritation.

At that moment, the freckled girl sharing his desk suddenly threw down her pen and buried her head, crying softly.

“What are you crying for?” He nudged her with his elbow.

The girl lifted her head, lips quivering: “I… I want to leave. I’m scared…”

“Watch what you say! If he finds out you want to go, he’ll use you as a test subject for sure!” The boy looked around and warned in a hushed voice.

“Even if I don’t try to leave, he holds a test every week — the last three scorers get turned into test subjects anyway!” the girl sobbed.

“Which is why everyone is studying and reviewing as hard as they can! If you keep letting your mind wander, there’s nothing I can do for you.” The boy gave a dismissive “hmph” and paid her no more attention.

I listened to this exchange with a belly full of bewilderment, then circled the school once more, finding no sign of Yu Tianyin in any of the three classrooms.

Dusk fell quickly. The moment the dismissal bell rang, the students packed their schoolbags without laughing or playing around, each returning to their dormitories in turn. There they sat, nibbling on bread while reading academic texts that were completely beyond my comprehension — more disciplined than prisoners in a cell.

No one was watching over them, and yet they were still this compliant. Was there something invisible that made them afraid?

An unmanned gate. Classrooms without teachers. How does this school manage to exist? Did no relevant authorities come around to check? Even for a closed-campus school, didn’t the students’ families come to see how their children were living and learning?

The knot of questions in my mind swelled like a balloon being inflated.

Just when we were beginning to think Yu Tianyin might not be at the school after all, the girl appeared before us in the most fantastical manner imaginable — on the rooftop of the main teaching building, a figure radiating a faint, shifting iridescence stepped outside the railing, spread both arms wide, and with a gentle leap, floated down light as a bird, or like a weightless cloud, alighting on the ground.

Who else could that figure be but Yu Tianyin? That fine face and the aura that set her apart from ordinary people glittered even in the darkness of night.

Close on her heels and jumping down after her was a boy about her age, dressed in the same school uniform, his black hair tousled by the wind, glinting dark red beneath the lamplight.

One fleeing, one in pursuit — the boy radiated a killing intent.

Such entertainment — naturally, one had to watch.

Yu Tianyin ran at full speed, ducking straight into the laboratory on the second basement floor.

By the time Jia Yi and I chased our way in, the two of them were already in the middle of a chaotic brawl. In the well-equipped laboratory, the fluorescent lights revealed both of their faces with perfect clarity.

The boy was extraordinarily handsome — if only he weren’t gripping a fire axe in his hand and swinging it at Yu Tianyin without any regard for her life. As for Yu Tianyin, she was no pushover either; her reactions were quick, her evasions sharp, and the weapon in her hand was a large cooking ladle she had evidently grabbed from somewhere at hand, using it from time to time to deflect the axe’s strikes.

My ears were filled with the clang and ring of metal on metal, sparks flying in the contest between the ladle and the axe.

By all appearances, the boy was intent on taking Yu Tianyin’s life, yet Yu Tianyin herself was only resisting and defending — there was no sense that she wished to fight to the death with him.

4

After a prolonged battle with no victor in sight, the two of them — one clutching an axe, leaning against the wide workbench to catch his breath; the other clutching a ladle, adjusting her breathing some two meters away near a small furnace — took a momentary rest.

“Give back the data!” Situ You glared at her ferociously. “Vile little thief!”

“I am not vile, nor am I a thief. I came only to bear witness to your failure.” Yu Tianyin was utterly unruffled, glancing around the room as she spoke. “I have no wish to fight you, nor any desire to take your life. As long as you’re willing to halt your experiment and hand over the people you’ve hidden away, everything can still be set right.”

“Failure?” Situ You reacted as though he had heard a joke, and could not help laughing. “Failure is a word found only in the dictionary of fools. Even if you’ve stolen Borsi’s data and formulas, all you’ve done is delay our laboratory by a few days at most. Your ‘effort’ is utterly meaningless.”

Yu Tianyin shook her head and murmured, as if to herself: “I see — this time you’ve already lost. But making this little idiot see reason would be harder than ascending to heaven. I’ll just have to do things my way.”

She didn’t seem to be speaking to Situ You — was there a third person between them?

The words had barely left her mouth before the boy seized on the instant she was distracted, swiftly snatching up a beaker from the workbench and flinging its contents at Yu Tianyin’s face.

I have never been able to stand men who really mean business against women, especially the kind who resort to underhanded tricks.

“You get into a fight — fine. But disfigure someone? Isn’t that a bit cruel? Aren’t you classmates?”

In the lamplight, Jia Yi and I materialized. I had already “shifted” Yu Tianyin to safety with my superior speed; not a drop of the beaker’s liquid had touched her. As for Jia Yi, he simply went over and confiscated Situ You’s weapon, locking his arm behind him and pinning him face-down on the workbench.

At our sudden appearance, Yu Tianyin paused for a moment but showed no great surprise. Situ You, on the other hand, was genuinely startled by our seemingly ghostlike arrival.

“Here — this belongs to you.” I tossed the student ID into her hands.

Yu Tianyin looked at it and smiled: “Fate is truly unpredictable. I didn’t expect you two to find your way here.” She looked Jia Yi and me over, then added: “You’re not human, are you.”

“That’s beside the point. What matters is — what is going on here?” I countered.

Yu Tianyin said nothing, walking up to Situ You: “Hand over your ‘test subjects.’ Otherwise I’ll stop holding back.”

“You’ll kill me?” The boy pinned to the table forced out a laugh.

“If necessary,” Yu Tianyin said coldly.

The boy gritted his teeth: “On the bookshelf — second book on the third shelf — there’s a key. They’re locked in the white metal cabinet across the way.”

Yu Tianyin immediately ran to the bookshelf packed with various original-language science texts and reached for the second book on the third shelf. It was at this moment that my accumulated instincts as an old demon suddenly surged to life, and I cried out loudly: “Don’t touch it!”

How maddening — I called out a half-second too late.

It was not a book at all, but a hidden switch. The moment Yu Tianyin pulled the “book” outward, a blindingly intense red light shot down from the overhead fixtures — which had appeared perfectly ordinary — bathing the entire laboratory in crimson.

My body — especially the skin exposed to the air — was suddenly seized by a faint, burning sting. The red light sustained itself for one second, then ceased. The laboratory’s normal lighting was restored, casting everything in pale white. The workbench was still the workbench, the tables still tables, the chairs still chairs — and yet—

Every single one of us had been shrunk to the size of a grain of rice.

This scene was truly the kind to break the hearts of all who witnessed it. It took me approximately twenty minutes to accept this reality.

Curiosity — I think I hate you now.

5

“I’ve dragged you both into this. I’m terribly sorry.” Yu Tianyin walked over to me. “Go ahead and eat — the dried fruit is quite good. I never would have guessed you were pregnant, but that makes this even more appropriate for you.”

“I want meat!” I snatched open the packaging in outrage and stuffed the sweet-and-sour dried fruit into my mouth. The flavor was genuinely quite nice, and the harshness in my expression softened almost immediately.

The most direct consequence of being shrunk to grain-of-rice size was that the insects and mice that occasionally crept out from the corners of the laboratory — every single one of them — had become colossal monsters requiring desperate effort to fend off. Those existences once considered small and weak, their very lives manipulated at will by human hands, had suddenly swapped places with us entirely. Yesterday I was the proprietress, one hundred and sixty-eight centimeters tall, capable of slapping a whole swarm of cockroaches dead with a single shoe. Today I had become the snack being frantically pursued by cockroaches. In the midst of battling these not-actually-monsters monsters, I came to believe even more firmly that in this world, nothing is absolute — including the power of the strong and the weak.

I was growing a little tired. Perhaps from not having eaten enough? Perhaps from the greater vulnerability that came with being pregnant? Or perhaps the red light that had ambushed us had not only contained the power to shrink our bodies but also simultaneously reduced our physical stamina and even our spiritual energy. If not for that, I would not have been so exhausted after flying so short a distance. Most likely, I would not be capable of flying again for some time. In other words, the countless cracks running between the floor tiles — each one now an impassable chasm — had become obstacles I was utterly unable to surmount at this moment. To put it even more plainly: if they left me behind here… how would the epitaph read? “The great proprietress, starved to death upon a single marble floor tile, unable to cross the gaps between tiles that were less than a centimeter wide.”

“Not feeling well?” Jia Yi studied my slightly ashen face. “Got smaller in body, got smaller in nerve too?”

“Wait until you’ve been pregnant once yourself, and then you won’t ask such stupid questions.” I couldn’t even be bothered to glare at him, and instinctively pressed a hand to my stomach. To say I wasn’t worried would be a lie — even as a demon, I was concerned about whether this unforeseen disaster might leave any lasting effects on the life inside me. Heaven alone knew whether that red light had contained any radiation or side effects.

I also had another question. If the red light just now could shrink us to this size, why were the insects and mice already in the laboratory still their original dimensions? Could it be that this thing only targeted humans? But I am a demon! Was it possible that having spent so much time in the human world, even my demon DNA had synced up with human beings? I truly felt like crying…

I looked over at Yu Tianyin, who was also tossing dried fruit into her mouth. The girl seemed to be eating with genuine satisfaction — as if her earlier brawl with Situ You had been nothing but a game, and their current predicament nothing but a bad dream. What exceptional composure.

“The faster we find that person, the greater our chances of being restored.” Jia Yi surveyed the surroundings.

“Oh?” Yu Tianyin, still chewing on dried fruit, casually pulled off her cap and tossed it to the ground, muttering to herself, “Not wearing this anymore — it’s too hot.”

Her expression, eyes, aura, even her voice — everything shifted subtly from moments before. Whether it was the sharp intelligence she had displayed when I first encountered her, or the steady calm she had shown during her fight with the boy, the impression she had always given me was that of a slightly haughty little celestial being. But now, her eyes held nothing but the pure guilelessness of a child, wrapped nonetheless in a deep, world-weary, great-wisdom-that-appears-foolish quality. Most strikingly of all, her voice — which had been crystal clear and melodious as birdsong — had abruptly changed into the muffled, unhurried voice of a man.

Before Jia Yi and I had time to ask anything, this girl startled us once more — from atop her perfectly ordinary head, with a soft “biu,” two fuzzy donkey ears popped out.

Yu Tianyin touched the ears that had just appeared. Her own voice came out of her mouth, scolding: “What are you coming out for? Go eat your dried fruit!”

“Everyone was busy thinking up a plan, and I was just eating by myself — it felt awkward,” the male voice chimed in.

One body, two voices. Jia Yi and I looked at each other.

“My friend,” Yu Tianyin looked at Jia Yi and continued in the male voice, “might you share your plan? This is a small mistake on our part. We hadn’t anticipated that Situ You would have this move.”

I studied this “dual-voiced being” and answered on Jia Yi’s behalf as calmly as I could: “That person was clearly willing to stake everything, unconcerned with shrinking himself along with us — which can only mean he has a way to restore everyone to normal size. Find him as quickly as possible, and we have a chance of getting out of this. Isn’t that obvious enough?”

“I understand — but the dumb donkey doesn’t,” Yu Tianyin replied in her own voice. She looked at my poor complexion. “But you, in this condition — ‘as quickly as possible’ isn’t really an option, is it?”

Before she had even said it, I already felt my body growing heavier. A moment ago I could still run a little and fly a little — by now I suspected I could not even run anymore.

Jia Yi, without a word, pulled a memo pad from his bag, tore off a sheet, and in a few deft folds shaped it into a paper boat. He set it on the ground, closed his eyes, pressed his hands together in a seal, and quietly murmured a few lines of incantation. A small whirlwind rose up around the paper boat; it began to spin, growing larger and larger, until it reached a size that could hold all three of us, and then it stopped.

“Get in.” He came over and extended his hand toward me.

I took hold of his warm, broad palm and used the leverage to stand, then climbed into the paper boat.

In the instant I grasped his palm, I thought for the first time that there were moments when this hired hand was not entirely insufferable.

Carried by the incantation he channeled, the paper boat rose smoothly from the ground and sailed swiftly forward.

One had to admire this fellow’s command of the Daoist arts. To animate paper into a vessel and maneuver it with such ease — without decades upon decades of cultivation, it would be very difficult to achieve. And yet he appeared so young.

Wave upon wave of cool air struck my face, mixed with the strange odors of the laboratory — not at all pleasant. Jia Yi shifted himself slightly, positioning himself so that I was completely shielded behind his back. Feeling marginally more comfortable, I lifted my eyes to the upright and broad silhouette before me, and without warning, a scene from many years ago surfaced in my mind.

Back then, I had still been very “young” — and just like now, I had sheltered behind a tall figure, riding the wind. The one who had blocked the wind and rain for me then could transform a single leaf into a small boat, his technique much the same as Jia Yi’s: Zi Miao, the Water God, the man who had carried me down from Fulong Mountain — I had conjured thoughts of him without any reason at all.

Yet Jia Yi and Zi Miao could not possibly have any connection.

I steadied myself and put an end to the association that even I found absurd.

“You’re so capable!” the male-voiced Yu Tianyin exclaimed in astonishment.

“You’ve never seen the wider world,” the female-voiced Yu Tianyin said instinctively. “The people I used to know — each and every one of them had techniques a hundred times more impressive than this.”

“Yu Tianyin,” I called out her name with gravity. These double-voiced, donkey-eared girl was the foremost question I needed to resolve.

“Actually, that’s not my name,” the female-voiced one said, shrugging at me.

“Our real name is Tianyin Ninety-Eight,” the male-voiced one added, by way of clarification. “She is called Tianyin. I am called Ninety-Eight.”

Ninety-Eight?!

I felt a start within me, and even Jia Yi turned his head to study her very carefully for a few moments.

“You — what exactly are you?” I suppressed an inexplicable surge of feeling and asked steadily.

She tilted her head, thought for a moment, and sighed: “I’m afraid even if I tell you, you won’t believe me.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I used to be a god in the heavens.”

6

Even now, she would sometimes wake from that nightmare with a start.

A blizzard vast enough to swallow the entire world buried forests, villages, humans, and livestock alike beneath a dead, white silence. When the wind grew even slightly stronger, it could snap off those rooftops or arms that jutted out above the snow — as brittle as glass.

On one hillside where the snow lay a little thinner, a family of four — father and mother clutching their infant twins — huddled tightly on the ground, the ice encasing their bodies fusing them into a single mass that would never again be parted.

She often felt as though she still stood at the highest point, gazing down over everything in the stillness after the storm had eased. Her rainbow-colored robes drifting in the cold wind were the only color in the world, tracing the boundary between life and death with particular clarity.

This dream usually ended when one of the infants in the swaddling clothes suddenly opened eyes filled with unwilling resignation.

She released her clenched fist, and in the last darkness before dawn, she opened her eyes. Her palm was drenched in cold sweat. Outside the farmhouse, Old Liu’s rooster crowed on cue; from the kitchen, the steamy, fragrant smell of flatbread already drifted through.

It would not be long before a knock came at the door. Old Liu’s wife, whose voice was every bit as loud as that rooster: “Tianyin! Breakfast!”

“Oh! Food!” At that moment, the other voice inside her body would come alive. Whenever this one emerged, her head — perfectly ordinary a moment before — would sprout two foolish-looking donkey ears.

How to put it? She and “he” shared one body. Their spirits were entangled together — for how many years, she had long since stopped counting. When she had not yet emerged from that “shell,” the sole theme of her existence had been a profound, unending sleep. She would dream from time to time: sometimes that blizzard that had buried everything; sometimes a magnificent palace gleaming with gold and jade, floating among the clouds.

In these dreamscapes, she still wore her robes of rainbow silk, trailing sleeves billowing, feet treading upon auspicious clouds, clutching a scroll of divine decrees as she descended gracefully from the blue sky above, her cascade of hair sweeping behind her, jade rings jingling faintly at her slender waist. Awaiting her were the crowds of humans in the mortal world, filled with expectation for the gods. Their reverence and trust surpassed all imagination.

She could not remember her own name, but she remembered her title: Tianyin — she who conveyed the divine decrees of the great gods of the celestial realm down to the mortal world.

It was not a particularly technical position. She needed only to dress herself in dazzling splendor, carry the decrees of the various divine lords, and descend before the humans in all her lofty glory, reading aloud in her celestially melodious voice — word for word, without embellishment — the decrees the gods had bestowed upon them. The content of the decrees ranged widely and strangely. When the Celestial Emperor was in a good mood, he might have her go tell those struggling through famine which direction to travel to find fertile land. The War God might have her tell a certain tribe that their enemies would launch a surprise attack tomorrow and they should prepare. The King of Punishment might have her declare, in a trial unable to determine its perpetrator, the name of the true culprit with absolute certainty. Sometimes, the magnificent and dignified Celestial Empress, pleased with herself over a lovely new hairstyle, would send Tianyin to a certain tribe that devoutly served her, distributing some heavenly fruits as a show of grace. In truth, those second-rate heavenly fruits could neither nourish people properly nor kill them, but those humans would often come to blows — bruised and bloodied — over the chance to seize them.

In short, the people met the descent of the divine Tianyin with an irreversible reverence. She represented the gods, high and unreachable; her words were divine decrees that could not be questioned or defied.

But in the celestial realm, her standing was not so fine. In the eyes of the gods, she was nothing but a “messenger.” The divine lords seated high in their halls could dispatch her without any hesitation. She often barely made it back to the celestial realm before being sent down to the mortal world again. She was kept so busy she did not even have time to drink water. In any case, the gods, who prided themselves on their wisdom, had far too many ways to “manage” the world they had placed beneath their feet.

The Celestial Emperor’s decrees would only go to those who served him faithfully. Those who did not believe in him — even if corpses lay across every field, even if millions were dying of starvation — he refused to guide them toward any hope of survival. As for the War God, he had grown increasingly obsessed with his own chess game. Right or wrong no longer mattered to him; what mattered was that the outcome of every battle in the world should be decided by him. Such was the nature of these divine decrees.

On several occasions, she had tried to offer suggestions to the divine lords — but the response was always the same: “What I say is truth. What would a little Tianyin know?”

What did she know? She had memorized the contents of every book in the celestial realm’s Hall of Ten Thousand Books — books that ordinarily almost no one ever read, and which contained far too many secrets of the universe. She had long been able to assess the fertility of land simply by looking at it. She had learned the methods for making the four seasons and conjuring wind, snow, thunder, and lightning simply by reading about them once. The sword she had secretly forged was sharper than any the War God himself had crafted.

Yet everything was only done in secret. Her intelligence and her power were confined within the boundaries of her title.

Only Di Yin treated her a little better. That creature covered from head to toe in ears, who looked something like a bear — Di Yin would ascend to the celestial realm only once every year to report to the gods all the sounds he had heard in the mortal world: good ones, and not-so-good ones.

She and Di Yin could meet once a year. In all the celestial realm, they were the only two who could converse as equals.

She knew Di Yin’s wisdom was on par with any of the divine lords. In this, they were very similar. Only Di Yin was always a little self-deprecating. He who ate earth for sustenance had never been permitted to attend a single banquet in the celestial realm. They found him a little unclean.

The last time they met, Di Yin had said: “The mortal world grows more chaotic. The celestial realm, too. Everything is changing.”

She said nothing, watching him pass through the celestial gate and disappear from view.

When this universe had drawn distinctions between gods and humans, between the celestial realm and the mortal world, it did not seem to be running along the trajectory it should have taken. Di Yin was right — the scent of “chaos” was growing heavier and heavier.

That day, dragging her exhausted body through a mortal world engulfed in warfare and choking dust, she suddenly thought: it should not be this way. Those gods who had placed no one in their eyes — what had they gone and done?

Her feet stepped into a field of corpses in rivers of blood, and within that carnage were children who had died with their eyes still open. When had war and destitution become the defining themes of the mortal world?

Blood and yellow sand entwined in the howling wind and stung her eyes.

The scenes before her, the memories of the past, the fury and indignation that had been forcibly suppressed — they suddenly broke free of their chains and, wild-beast-like, charged at her parched and withered heart.

All she remembered was that time paused for a little while, the sky darkened for a little while, her body seemed to die for a little while, and then it lived again.

The celestial realm had indeed fallen into chaos. The Celestial Emperor spent his days hiding in his bedchamber, refusing to see anyone. His wife, too, had lost her obsession with grooming and dressing herself, leading her retinue around the mortal world in pursuit of some unknown objective. It was only said that wherever she went, quite a number of beautiful-faced women had died.

She refused to do any more work for any celestial god, and pointed a finger at the War God’s nose, saying with contempt: “Your wisdom does not amount to even one ten-thousandth of mine.”

The furious War God naturally could not stomach such a judgment. They fought, and both suffered for it. The formidable War God had failed to get the better of a mere little Tianyin.

“And so it turns out you are nothing more than this.” She pressed a hand to her wound, while the beast within her chest roared with particular pride — and grew ever larger.

She no longer bent to others’ will and served as a messenger. Now, she was a god in the truest sense — she would tell the humans which direction to go; she would judge right and wrong and who deserved to die. Her word was absolute truth. Because she trusted in her own wisdom, and was utterly certain that no one in this world was more intelligent than she.

She came increasingly to relish the submission and faith of the humans, until, later, whenever someone expressed the slightest doubt toward her, the first thought that surged through her mind was to kill this person.

What she said was right. It could not be questioned. Any doubt was a capital offense.

Until that innocent tribe — because of a few words she had spoken — buried every last one of its people forever under ice and snow.

She had enjoyed the highest of honors within that tribe. It was she who had, in the beginning, guided this impoverished tribe to this land. Now their lives were lush with water and grass, prosperous with cattle and horses, free of want. Every person here held her in genuine veneration. And she had come to regard this tribe at the foot of the mountain as a palace in the mortal world — a place that stood as testament to her greatness and wisdom.

So that blind old shaman really deserved to die for it — saying that he could understand the language of animals, and that there would soon be a great blizzard, and that everyone had to leave at once.

What a joke. A place she had chosen — how could any such problem arise? Could a blind old man possibly be more capable than a god?

She ordered the shaman’s head cut off and quelled what had been a small disturbance. Then she contentedly went elsewhere, to arbitrate yet another battle.

Several days later, when she returned to the mountainside, her “palace” had become a permanent nightmare.

That could not be. How could the result be this? She was a god who had never once erred. This was unforgivable…

After three days in the snow, the beast in her heart began to rage furiously. She became a true beast herself, rampaging to every corner of the world, seizing any person she encountered, and demanding: “Answer me — am I not the most powerful god in existence?”

Everyone who trembled with fear and shook their heads, or who said they did not know — she tore them in two.

From some point onward, every person who saw her began to cry out in terror: “Monster!” Those who had once revered her scattered in all directions, fleeing in panic.

She continued her questions and her slaughter, and could no longer bear to look at her own reflection. She kept her distance from anything that might mirror her form. Her head, too, ached more and more — as if stones were being forced inside it, leaving no room for anything else.

Until that moonlit night. She, blood-soaked hands and all, stood panting alone amidst a field of ruins, when a warm and steady hand gently pressed down upon her shoulder.

“Come with me. You need a sleep, and a friend.”

She turned — her eyes held only a blur; a strange silhouette dissolved into the moonlight, rippling into a cool and clear color.

And that feeling — cool yet warm — wrapped itself around her in an instant. Her heart became strangely calm: no anger, no bloodshed… so heavy, so comforting a sleep.

No space, no time. She stilled in a color that was both nothing and something — a faint green, a faint red, like the first peach blossom to open in springtime.

A strange stirring suddenly frightened away her drowsiness. She slowly opened her eyes. A white donkey — a tuft of red hair on its head — appeared in her field of vision and, bumbling along, crashed headlong into her.

This was the first meeting between her and Ninety-Eight.

7

It was a long time before she understood that she had been sealed away — and sealed into a piece of jade-green stone inhabited by a dim-witted donkey, at that.

Being sealed did not feel quite as terrible as she had imagined. She had witnessed some demons sealed by the gods in the past, and every one of them had suffered a fate worse than death. Yet the one who had sealed her did not seem to have done it to cause her suffering.

The world inside the stone was sometimes very large, and sometimes very small. When she was in good spirits, this boundless expanse of nothing could conjure vague and shifting scenery — mountains and rivers, or pavilions and terraces; sometimes a meadow thick with blossoms. When she was not in good spirits, everything would vanish and only snow would fall, endlessly.

This donkey was the only living companion she had in this sealed world.

At first, she had no inclination whatsoever to converse with a donkey. But this donkey was evidently a chatterbox, who told her everything about his own origins and life in Peach Blossom Spring all at once.

This donkey never had any moments of distress. Even when she met him with a cold, dismissive eye, he could amuse himself perfectly well. He could cultivate a grove of peach trees in this boundless sealed world — watering and tending them every day, waiting for them to bloom and bear fruit — and then bring the strange berries the peach trees produced for her to eat. He also told her that the berries that had not yet “grown to fullness” were the best-tasting.

Gradually, she was won over by this simple, industrious donkey and became willing to chat with him, and to eat the berries he grew. Whether these peach trees and fruits were real or illusory, the taste was genuinely wonderful. Each berry tasted slightly different.

“Why is it like this?” She finally spoke to Ninety-Eight of her own accord.

“At first I couldn’t figure it out either. But then Teacher told me: a fully-ripened berry, because it is already ‘full,’ can no longer take in anything new — which also means it can never change any further.” Ninety-Eight chewed on a berry. “It is precisely those not-yet-fully-grown, half-ripened berries that have enough space to absorb more sunlight and moonlight, spring wind and morning dew — so naturally their flavor is more vivid and enchanting.”

She carefully licked the lingering fruit juice from the corner of her lips — a faint sweetness, a mellow fragrance, full of the taste of sunlight.

So great a difference between a “full” and a “not-full” berry.

She suddenly understood, a little, why her earlier life had gone so terribly wrong.

“Ah, but there’s one thing I’m still quite worried about.” For the first time, an expression of concern crossed Ninety-Eight’s donkey face. “All these years, I’ve had no one I could tell.”

“Am I not someone you can tell? Go on!”

“But you’re a celestial god!” Ninety-Eight brayed with laughter.

“I have no right to be a god.” She said plainly, then fixed him with a glare. “Speak!”

“It’s about a treasure hidden in Peach Blossom Spring, really.” Ninety-Eight sniffled. “The last time Teacher came to the threshold to see me, he said the reason Yong Cui was expelled from Peach Blossom Spring was that he had secretly eaten three ‘Wisdom Fruits’ from the archive.”

“Wisdom Fruits? The fruits said to contain all the wisdom of the universe?”

Ninety-Eight shook his head. “In truth, those were not Wisdom Fruits at all. They were Foolishness Fruits.”

She was taken aback. “What is a Foolishness Fruit? You’ve confused me.”

“Fruits that make a person foolish,” said Ninety-Eight, flicking his tail with a sigh.

“Did he become foolish afterward?”

“Full, and naturally foolish.” Ninety-Eight blinked. “Teacher said Yong Cui will pay a three-lifetime price for this in the mortal world.”

“Three lifetimes?”

“Whoever has eaten a Foolishness Fruit will be reborn three times in the mortal world. In each lifetime, their life is destined to end in catastrophic failure because of being ‘too full’ — no matter how brilliant or dazzling they may once have been. Moreover, the power of the Foolishness Fruit grows stronger with each reincarnation. By the third lifetime, it will have become a kind of contagion hidden within the bearer’s body — something akin to a demon’s curse — capable of even spreading its influence to those nearby who share the same affliction.” So said Ninety-Eight.

“You mean — people who are also ‘very full’?”

“Yes. That could become very troublesome. They might, much as you once did, lose all reason and goodness, rely on a ‘wisdom’ they believe superior to all others, hold no one in their eyes, and commit terrible acts.” Ninety-Eight drew a long breath. “It’s a pity I couldn’t leave — otherwise I really should have helped Yong Cui extract the Foolishness Fruit. I don’t even know what time it is on the outside now, or how Yong Cui is faring.”

She thought for a moment and asked him: “If you could leave, how would you help that Yong Cui?”

“With the Wisdom Fruit, of course,” Ninety-Eight blurted.

“Is there truly such a thing as a Wisdom Fruit?” She was skeptical.

Ninety-Eight smiled: “There’s plenty of them everywhere. What you’ve been eating is one.”

“I don’t feel any smarter,” she said, giving him a look.

“The fact that you’ve come to like those not-yet-fully-grown berries — that, in itself, is the greatest wisdom.” Ninety-Eight brayed with laughter again.

In any case, that conversation ended in an atmosphere of warmth and goodwill. She also promised Ninety-Eight that if they were ever able to leave this seal, she would help him find that unfortunate soul who had been reincarnated three times.

8

“Shouldn’t we say goodbye to Old Liu and his wife?” Tianyin sat by the window and put on her cap.

“Can’t we eat first?” Ninety-Eight pouted. “I’m starving!”

“All right. We’ll eat first, then go.” She pressed a hand to her rumbling stomach and conceded.

Neither she nor Ninety-Eight had anticipated a scene like this.

A few days ago, the two of them had been contentedly sitting inside the seal eating berries when they suddenly heard the sound of cracking and shattering all around them. The sky and ground of their world seemed about to collapse.

And then it truly did collapse. Countless streaks of light flew out from all around them; the mountains, rivers, meadows, peach trees — everything they had built inside this space — were shattered into fragments. Even they themselves seemed to melt, hurled upward by some force with tremendous power.

When she came to, Tianyin found herself lying in the bed of a farmhouse, covered in a somewhat grimy cotton quilt. Before her, the farmer Old Liu and his wife watched her with cautious concern.

According to Old Liu and his wife, they had found Tianyin — naked, unconscious — collapsed on a field embankment while plowing. It being bitterly cold, they had feared she would freeze to death and so had brought her home.

Tianyin had never imagined she would see the light of day again, but the fact was that without any warning whatsoever, the seal had disappeared. She had returned, in her original form, to a mortal world that had passed she knew not how many thousands or tens of thousands of years.

Ninety-Eight’s spirit, meanwhile, had taken up residence inside her body. The consequence of one body holding two souls was that Tianyin had to be constantly vigilant about the pair of donkey ears that might pop out at any moment. The one most pleased by any of this was, of course, Ninety-Eight. He was filled with freshness and curiosity about this tangible, real mortal world. During their period of recuperation at Old Liu’s home, he never once treated the couple as ignorant peasants — he not only learned everything Old Liu knew about farming and cultivating vegetables, but also humbly sought out Old Liu’s wife to teach him how to make flatbread, so charming the old couple that they said again and again they had never met such a gracious and clever girl.

At first, Tianyin had still harbored some resistance. A former celestial god, keeping company with a pair of farmers who couldn’t even read — this seemed somehow inappropriate. Once, she asked Ninety-Eight, who had commandeered her body to make flatbread: “Is learning any of this useful?”

“There’s something to be learned anywhere. Besides, I still haven’t ‘grown to fullness’ yet.” Ninety-Eight drooled as he stared at the flatbread sizzling in the pan.

Until one day, she watched Old Liu and his wife’s thriving vegetable garden grow even more lush and green after a light rain, full of life and vitality. She watched Old Liu use the vegetable money to buy his wife a new padded cotton jacket, which made her beam with joy. She watched the village children happily chewing on the flatbread Ninety-Eight had cooked. And she suddenly felt that every person in this world had a purpose for existing — and that this purpose carried no difference in worth, whether one was an illiterate farmer or an emperor clothed in silk and jade.

From that day on, she too learned alongside Ninety-Eight to water and fertilize the vegetable plots, finding contentment in it.

Even so, neither of them had forgotten the matter of the Foolishness Fruit.

Ninety-Eight said that as long as he was well-fed, he could sniff out the scent of the Foolishness Fruit and of Yong Cui — no matter where Yong Cui had been reincarnated to, no matter what he had become.

Today, the reason they were bidding farewell to Old Liu and his wife was that Ninety-Eight said he now knew Yong Cui’s whereabouts.

9

This was not an easy journey.

When they arrived at the place called Changping, all that awaited them was the reality of Zhao’s crushing defeat and the burial alive of hundreds of thousands of surrendered soldiers by the Qin army.

Their leader — that man called Zhao Kuo — was left as nothing but a corpse riddled with arrows, his eyes still open in death.

“Are you certain it is him?” Tianyin asked.

Even though she was no longer a celestial god and had been sealed away for many years, she still retained a portion of her divine power — concealing herself and Ninety-Eight as they slipped into the battlefield undetected was not difficult. What she could not be certain of was whether the first-life Yong Cui Ninety-Eight had spoken of was truly this bloodied man before them.

“I would never mistake Yong Cui’s scent.” He cradled the man’s stiff right hand, looking at the vivid red birthmark on the back of it, and said: “Teacher said — one mark per life. When all three lives are done, everything returns to void.”

Tianyin said nothing. This man, legendary for his armchair generalship and his contempt for all others, had not loosened his grip on his proud sword even in the moment of death.

Ninety-Eight reached out and tapped him three times on the head.

A white-flushed-with-red berry, the size of a quail’s egg, leapt out from Zhao Kuo’s mouth and rolled to one side.

Ninety-Eight grabbed a large stone, aimed it squarely at the berry, and slammed it down hard. With a soft thud, the flesh split apart into four or five pieces, and the dark fruit juice that sprayed outward — darker than anything Ninety-Eight had ever seen — turned to a mound of ashes within moments and scattered on the wind.

“Best not to let anyone accidentally eat it again,” said Ninety-Eight, blinking.

In the nameless wilderness, the dusk-lit wild grass swayed in the wind. Ninety-Eight piled the last handful of earth onto a new and nameless grave.

Tianyin sensed that the dumb donkey’s heart held a trace of sorrow.

“He wasn’t really a bad person, was he?” Ninety-Eight looked at this lone grave and answered himself. “He shouldn’t have been.”

“Let’s go.” Tianyin turned away.

The sun fell like blood; crows swept past. On the small road stretching away toward the horizon, neither Tianyin nor Ninety-Eight spoke much. All along the way, what they heard was blame and even curses directed at Zhao Kuo. Ninety-Eight listened in silence, walking faster and faster.

Some things can only be left far behind.

But Tianyin knew this donkey did not want such events to repeat themselves.

Yet he could only “want.”

The hands of time turned back more than a thousand years. The world entered a wholly new configuration, but Tianyin and Ninety-Eight remained exactly as they had always been. Ninety-Eight delighted in learning from any person in the world, always saying he had not yet “grown to fullness” — and the people in this world who commanded his admiration were far too many. Cooks, watchmakers, painters, lawyers — Tianyin and Ninety-Eight had, between them, worked through nearly every occupation the world had to offer. Their brilliance and their humility made everything go smoothly.

That year, they even found a way to blend into the French army, and carefully wrote a letter that was placed on the French Emperor’s desk. The letter’s content was simple — they only hoped this man, who sat on high and prided himself on his supremacy, would, in the battles ahead, pause for a moment and try listening to the opinions of those he considered “far beneath him.”

The letter was treated as a joke, however, and thrown into the wastepaper bin.

On a rain-cleared morning, this man gazed at the scenery beyond his window and told his subordinates with certainty: “Just wait — the odds of victory this time are at the very least ninety percent.”

Alas, the total annihilation at Waterloo sent “the only man in all of French history” forever to the desolate island of Saint Helena.

Six years later, when Ninety-Eight used the same method to crush the second Foolishness Fruit beside another cold corpse, he said to Tianyin: “Next time — the last time — do you think we can change something?”

Extracting a Foolishness Fruit required one of only two things: death, or awakening.

But Tianyin felt that awakening was far more difficult than death. Otherwise, why were there still so many people in the world who had never touched a Foolishness Fruit yet remained foolish nonetheless?

Not everyone was as fortunate as she had been, to encounter a gentle seal and a donkey who loved to eat berries that had not yet “grown to fullness.”

10

“The third life — it’s Situ You?” I furrowed my brow at the conclusion of Tianyin’s account.

Either death, or awakening…

Tianyin nodded. “When we found the third-life Yong Cui — Situ You — he had already become the most genius high school student at Peach Blossom High School. The power of the Foolishness Fruit inside him was not only being continuously magnified by his own arrogance; it had also spread to quite a few of his classmates. The students admitted to Peach Blossom High School were each and every one naturally gifted. Having been exceptional in every way from early childhood, many of them carried their heads just a little too high and placed no one around them in their eyes. This made them exceedingly easy targets for the already-demonized Foolishness Fruit to manipulate — their personalities became warped, they stopped caring even for family and friends, and they answered only to Situ You’s every command.”

I thought for a moment and said: “Situ You turned this school into his own idealized ‘Peach Blossom Spring’?”

“Exactly.” Tianyin shook her head with mild helplessness. “By the time I arrived as a transfer student, this school had already become a prison. Situ You, sinking ever deeper into the Foolishness Fruit’s curse, had been quietly assembling a team of seven or eight students he deemed most useful for about half a year, forming a group to research and produce something called Borsi.”

“Borsi?”

“His favorite fairy tale — the fairy who transforms foolish people into grains of rice and locks them in a box forever, never allowing them to come out and ruin the world. The fairy’s name is Borsi.” Tianyin paused. “In other words — a biochemical agent capable of instantaneously reducing the human body in size. When loaded into a specially designed launcher to release its power, it becomes that red light that just struck us…”

“He installed the launchers in the overhead lights?” I couldn’t help asking. “How many more launchers are there in this school? He rallied all these accomplices to do these things — the school itself had no idea?”

“Initially it was done in secret. Situ You used the resources of the school’s laboratory and, one month ago, produced the first vial of Borsi.” Her expression grew grave. “This person actually used the school’s teachers as test subjects. He said that these teachers had nothing left to teach him anyway, so they might as well be used to test Borsi’s effects. The school had only about a dozen teachers in total, and every single one of them fell victim. Not only the teachers — he also privately instituted a weekly exam, and the last three scorers in each class would likewise serve as test subjects. Most alarming of all was that he did this openly, in front of every student. Using this as a threat, he forbade everyone from leaving the school for the following month; if any family asked, they were to say the school was in closed-campus intensive training. Otherwise, they would all be used as test subjects.”

“Why make everyone continue to pretend that nothing is wrong and keep studying as normal?” I asked. “Does he have other plans?”

“He hopes to continue ‘recruiting’ members from this school, which has the most exceptional students — using his methods. He needs more people who worship him to help him accomplish a far grander goal.” Tianyin drew a deep breath. “His team’s most pressing research topic right now is how to dissolve Borsi in water without losing its potency.”

My heart lurched. “He wants to put this thing into the water supply?”

“Using a launcher to catalyze Borsi limits its range considerably. Using the water supply would multiply Borsi’s potential reach by tens of millions.” Tianyin was essentially certain. “I arrived at Peach Blossom High School as a transfer student a year ago and spent a long time investigating him. I also found ways to catch Situ You’s attention using my own intelligence and skill so that he would bring me into the team. After learning of his water supply plan, I got ahead of them and stole the Borsi formula and all the data before they could succeed, temporarily halting their experiment — and used this as leverage to demand he release the teachers and students and restore them to normal size.”

“If he were the sort to capitulate that easily, he wouldn’t be Situ You.” My mood grew heavy.

Three lives ended, everything returns to void. To extract the Foolishness Fruit, either Situ You would have to pull back from the brink and awaken from the Foolishness Fruit’s evil influence, or he would have to do as he had in his previous two lives — not break free of the curse until the very moment his life ended. In both of those earlier lives, arrogant though he had been, he was still within the bounds of normality; it made sense that Tianyin and the others had not taken it upon themselves to end his life outright. But now, in the third life, the power of the Foolishness Fruit had warped and demonized to such a degree that Situ You could no longer be called a normal person. And with his Borsi already primed and ready to be unleashed — if not stopped, this terrifying “genius” would absolutely never abandon his insane goal. No wonder Ninety-Eight had been silent all this while.

“Find the person first, then deal with it.” Jia Yi, with practiced ease, steered the paper boat around a table, sailing toward the laboratory’s main entrance. “Genius as he may be, right now he’s nothing but a grain of rice. And we are four grains.”

Before his words had faded, a strange noise came from above. Jia Yi’s expression shifted; he made a sharp turn and steered the paper boat quickly beneath a table, coming to a halt.

Someone was there.

With every step the person took, the floor trembled.

Beyond that, I also seemed to hear something faint in my ears — very slight, very rhythmic tapping. The source of the sound was in the drawer above our heads.

11

The buzz-cut boy wearing thick-lensed glasses smiled as he watched Situ You trapped inside the glass test tube. His other hand pinched a thin straw, drawing up a small amount of water from a cup.

“I know you installed launchers in the laboratory’s overhead lights without telling any of us. Once our whole team solved the problem of Borsi not dissolving in water, you were going to do to us exactly what you did to the teachers and the low-scoring students — turn us all into test subjects.” He smirked, gesturing at every corner of the laboratory. “I was so diligent about tidying up the lab right in front of you only so I could hide the surveillance cameras I designed in every corner of this place. Everything you’ve done behind your team members’ backs has been in plain sight of my eyes. You are not the only genius in the world.”

“And with all those cameras installed, you still couldn’t find what you were looking for?” Situ You was far from panicking — his tone held more contempt than anything. “That slap really wasn’t wasted on you, Ah Tai.”

Ah Tai’s face instantly flushed red. In a rage-fueled humiliation, he shouted: “Hand over the Borsi antidote!”

Situ You only smiled, paying him no mind whatsoever. “I shared the Borsi production method with all of you without reservation. Is that still not enough?”

“One person who controls the antidote can crush everyone who knows how to make Borsi.” Ah Tai raged. “I’ve searched everywhere I could think of — where exactly have you hidden everything related to the antidote?! Tell me!”

He only smiled and said nothing.

A drop of water fell into the test tube and submerged more than half of Situ You’s body.

He stopped smiling, raised his head, and looked at this “ally” he had never taken seriously: “Keep going. Fool.”

Ah Tai, pushed to desperation, revealed his killing intent: “Even without the antidote, if only I know how to make Borsi, I can make this entire world bow at my feet.”

Situ You’s expression shifted slightly.

Another water droplet fell heavily into the test tube from high above, enough to bring a catastrophic flood down upon Situ You.

At the very instant between life and death, a smile fast as lightning flashed from thin air, slicing diagonally toward the test tube in Ah Tai’s hand.

With a crack, the lower half of the test tube broke away and fell. Situ You, soaking wet, tumbled out of it, plummeting toward the floor. Before he could be killed by the fall, Tianyin leapt up and caught him around the waist, landing safely on the ground.

Landing behind her was Jia Yi, sword in hand.

“This way!” Serving as the commanding coordinator, I directed them to jump through the gap between a set of filing cabinets.

We had heard every word of Ah Tai and Situ You’s exchange with perfect clarity.

Saving him was non-negotiable — if Situ You drowned, weren’t we going to spend the rest of our lives as grains of rice?!

The filing cabinet was my find — the best available cover closest to us.

Inside the cabinet, there was darkness all around, the floor lined with various papers.

Situ You coughed: “You’ve saved me — that doesn’t mean I’ll give you the antidote.”

Smack!

A sharp, resounding slap. The hand behind it was not light.

“That’s on behalf of Teacher. Even though he never hit anyone.” Ninety-Eight’s voice came out, slow and unhurried.

“Who are you…” Situ You was taken aback. “What Teacher?”

“A teacher from a very long time ago.” Ninety-Eight paused for a long moment before continuing: “Would turning every person in the world into a grain of rice — everyone except yourself — be the only thing that could give you the satisfaction of standing apart from the crowd, looking down on all creation?”

“Talented people stepping on the untalented — there’s nothing wrong with that.”

If it weren’t for the fact that pregnant women should avoid getting worked up, I would have slapped him too.

“Where does the line between talented and untalented lie?” I asked him calmly. “Anyone who knows less than you is a fool? The last person to score in an exam deserves to be removed from this world? People who do ordinary work, whose lives leave no great mark on history, have no right to exist? Does everyone have to be a ‘genius’ like you — making some nonsensical biochemical weapon before they’re even out of their teens — to deserve to hold their heads high?”

“That is simply how it is,” said Situ You, his mouth harder than stainless steel.

I felt not a flicker of anger. I spread open my palm, conjured a small flame through a light technique, and waited to see what would unfold.

A shattered glass box appeared in a corner. A group of people who were the same size as us, and furious, came surging out from beside it, surrounding Situ You — who was now exposed in the light — and it looked as though an angry fist from every single one of them was about to land on him all at once.

But in the end, every fist stopped in midair.

A bespectacled, slightly balding middle-aged man looked at Situ You, who still held his head high without even a trace of fear at their arrival, and put down his fist with helpless resignation. After a long moment, he muttered to himself: “Let it go.”

“Just like that? Principal, it was him who did this to us! If these few people hadn’t happened to pass by just now, who knows how long we’d have been locked up!” A robust man who had grabbed Situ You by the collar said furiously. “This child has clearly gone off the deep end!”

“Mr. Li, let go of him.” The balding man waved a hand. “What good would it do to beat him to death? He is still our student, after all.”

Hearing this, the remaining men and women lowered their hands with complicated expressions.

These were the “test subjects” Situ You had shrunk and imprisoned.

While we were hiding under the table, the muffled sounds of distress we had heard were coming from them. These men and women had been locked in a glass box, casually shoved into a drawer. Inside the box was only one shriveled apple, and for the past several days, they had survived by gnawing on it. Had Mr. Li not been strong enough to keep stubbornly tapping his shoe against the glass in a desperate call for help, who knows how long these people would have had to endure before anyone found them.

“Everything you know — I know it all too. What gives you the right to be my teachers?” Situ You smiled with contempt, sweeping a dismissive gaze across his teachers and seniors.

Awakening truly was far more difficult than death.

Ninety-Eight slowly clenched his fist.

At that moment, a sudden violent trembling — worse than a magnitude-ten earthquake — shook every single one of us off our feet.

From outside came a frenzied voice: “Get out here! You have ten seconds to get out here! I know there are still little people in here — I saw them all on the monitors! Every single one of you, get out! Otherwise I’ll open the gas canisters in the lab!”

I had almost forgotten — there was still a lunatic outside, one indirectly affected by the Foolishness Fruit. If he really set off the various gas canisters stockpiled in the laboratory, we might have no way out at all. At our current size, even the tiniest spark would be a raging inferno.

Even at a critical moment like this, I remembered to pat Situ You on the shoulder: “We’re all the dumb fools you’d never deign to acknowledge — our only hope is for you, the genius, to go out there and handle your friend!”

Situ You frowned and said nothing.

“Unless someone can be restored to their original size immediately, going out there in this form would be suicide the moment he spots us — one foot could crush any one of us,” Jia Yi said. “And even if we use attack techniques, their effective power has been shrunk by countless multiples. Enough for rats and cockroaches, maybe, but against a full-sized person? Impossible.”

I could hear the commotion outside growing louder. This Ah Tai was surely out there right now, magnifying glass in hand, searching frantically for us.

“Where is the antidote?” I grabbed Situ You by the shoulder.

Situ You still refused to say.

I finally understood — a person corrupted by a Foolishness Fruit truly does become the most foolish person in the world.

After letting him go, I turned and suddenly asked Jia Yi: “Estimate — how many times would we need to amplify our attack technique to neutralize that boy outside? No need to kill him, just knock him out.”

“Ten times — about right,” Jia Yi said.

I turned to ask the group: “Is there a physics teacher among you?”

A small-statured man stepped forward and adjusted his glasses: “What is it?”

“Are you familiar with the lab?”

“Well enough.”

“Where is the nearest magnifying glass to this filing cabinet?”

“On any of the tables — you’d find one.”

“Good. Let’s gamble, then.”

12

By the time Ah Tai noticed an unusual flash of light crossing one of the tables, it was already too late.

The gleaming light that issued from Jia Yi’s sword tip, passing through the magnifying glass that had been propped upright, struck his body. He felt only a small sting pierce his abdomen, and uncontrollable numbness and pain instantly flooded his body and consciousness.

He stumbled back a few steps and slowly sank to the floor.

Behind the magnifying glass, we finally let out a breath.

This was only an ordinary magnifying glass, but propping it up so that Jia Yi’s sword-light could pass through it had been no easy feat.

The elderly principal, ignoring his aging arms and legs, put his life into holding up the magnifying glass handle; the teachers and students beside him, every one of them gritting their teeth, pressed together tightly, leaning on each other, using their bodies as supports. Each and every “tiny person” threw their very lives into making the magnifying glass stand upright.

Among those fighting for their lives, however, was not Situ You. That person had been standing far away from us the entire time, watching with folded arms.

In his eyes — genius as he was — were we, this motley crew: unable to make biochemical weapons, failed at mathematics, the size of grains of rice, fighting desperately to prop up a magnifying glass, doing everything possible to stay alive — were we still as foolish as ever?

Just as all of us let out a relieved breath and were making our way out from behind the magnifying glass, Ah Tai — collapsed on the floor — made one last effort before losing consciousness entirely: he groped around on the ground and found something glinting, hurling it with all the force he could muster at the table where we were standing.

A razor-sharp paper cutter.

Even without its blade touching anyone, something this enormous, falling at this speed — landing on any one of us, anywhere at all, would mean instant death.

Jia Yi and I, one on each side, shoved the stunned teachers and students out of the way all at once.

The spinning blade brought a gust of wind in its wake, cutting past our bodies, and fell toward the direction where Situ You was standing.

With a loud crack, the entire tabletop shuddered.

We turned — and the small blade that Ah Tai had flung had landed precisely in the spot where Situ You was standing. By any genius’s standards, what we should have seen was him rescuing himself at the very last instant, leaping to safety, then crossing his arms and giving us a cold, brief smile. That would have been appropriate.

But we did not see that scene. The blade lay quietly at the other end of the table.

My physics is not good, but even I knew that at that speed and with that momentum, the blade could not possibly remain on the table — something must have stopped its advance.

Besides the blade, I also did not see Tianyin and Ninety-Eight.

I hurried to the front of the blade and looked — Tianyin had used her own body to press hard against the sweeping blade’s edge. Small as she was, she had forced that enormous object to stop just in front of Situ You. Its razor tip was only a hair’s breadth from his head.

Situ You stood frozen there as well, staring blankly at Tianyin’s back.

“Tianyin… Ninety-Eight?” I steadied myself and stepped forward, calling out softly.

Neither answered. Tianyin’s body held its position, pressed tight against the blade’s edge.

Everyone fell quiet. Jia Yi furrowed his brow.

After several long minutes, Tianyin seemed to find her bearings again. She slowly retreated a few steps and turned around, her face wearing an embarrassed smile: “I… I had thought that gods didn’t get injured…”

A deep and terrible wound ran across her chest.

Bright red blood poured steadily from the wound. She looked down at it, then her legs gave way and she knelt to the floor.

I rushed over and took hold of her, trying to stanch the bleeding — only to find that the blood would not stop no matter what I did.

“Jia Yi!” I cried to him for help.

Jia Yi bent down to examine her injury, then shook his head. “This level of damage — there’s nothing to be done. She lost her divine power long ago. She’s little different from a human.”

Tianyin’s donkey ears shifted; Ninety-Eight’s voice came through: “I’m sorry, Tianyin. I forgot that this body is shared between the two of us. There was no time to ask for your consent…”

“Dumb donkey. We stopped having any distinction between ‘yours’ and ‘mine’ long ago.” Tianyin smiled, then turned to look at me with effort, her smile filled with peace: “The one who sealed me — that person’s purpose was probably exactly this. To have this donkey who never ‘grows to fullness’ be my eternal companion — me, the former god who once believed she was filled to the brim with everything…”

Situ You stared blankly at Tianyin, his lips trembling faintly. “You… I had no need of anyone to save me.”

Ninety-Eight turned his face and looked at Situ You: “I am not just anyone. We… we are brothers who grew from the same tree!”

“Brothers…” Situ You murmured the word.

A foolish smile spread across Ninety-Eight’s face: “It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember. But you must remember this — don’t ever treat the people around you as insignificant grains of rice again… Look, we grains of rice… we can also… also make a ‘giant’ like Ah Tai fall.”

Grains of rice can also make a giant fall.

Situ You looked at him, then at the exhausted teachers before him, then at Ah Tai collapsed unconscious in the distance. The breath he had been holding through sheer force of will shattered in an instant.

His breathing grew increasingly rapid. His hands pressed hard against his chest. Then he crumpled to the floor, his body curling in on itself in pain, gasping desperately for air like an asthma sufferer.

Either death, or awakening.

About ten seconds later, a white-flushed-with-black fruit was heard to fly out of Situ You’s mouth in a dry retch.

“Quick…” Ninety-Eight, growing ever more faint, pointed at that fruit.

Jia Yi stepped over, raised his foot high, and without hesitation, stamped it to pieces.

“Dumb donkey, you won.” Tianyin’s voice was growing softer and softer. She turned her head toward me with great effort, smiling with contentment. “We debated before — whether to kill Situ You, or let him live. I didn’t believe this person would ever awaken. But this donkey believed. He said — the Foolishness Fruit may be fearsome, but Wisdom Fruits are everywhere. It all depends on whether you’re willing to eat one…”

I smiled. “I understand.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been back to Peach Blossom Spring. I once guarded a threshold there. The ones in Peach Blossom Spring are all donkeys — but they’re not foolish.” Ninety-Eight let out a long, long breath. His donkey ears slowly drooped. “There’s a peach tree there. Every year, the very first batch of berries it produces have never quite grown to fullness… they’re the best-tasting…”

13

Jia Yi’s paper boat carried everyone out of the ruined laboratory.

The destination: the school’s infirmary.

Situ You, having expelled the Foolishness Fruit, became far more approachable than before. He told us that the Borsi antidote was calcium tablets. That’s right — the most ordinary kind of calcium tablets.

What a blood-boiling answer.

Out of curiosity, I also asked him why Borsi only shrunk us and everything we happened to be carrying. He said he had only designed the shrinking effect to target human DNA, and hadn’t had time to figure out anything else yet.

This person must have gotten some step wrong — to have shrunk even a demon along with everything else. Thinking of this, I still felt a powerful urge to punch him.

Even so, he told me he was abandoning this research.

“After spending a little while as a grain of rice myself, I’ve completely lost interest in this experiment.” Those were his exact words.

Now, the most troublesome matter of all was the calcium tablets. One enormous pill sitting in front of me — it was truly maddening.

Fortunately, Situ You said that three mouthfuls’ worth was sufficient.

And so the most lively scene of that evening was a crowd of tiny people huddled in the infirmary, surrounding two calcium tablets shaken out of the bottle, each taking a bite in turn…

If that donkey who loved to eat most of all had been here, it would surely have been even livelier.

Epilogue

Never in all my life have I felt that growing taller could be such a beautiful thing.

As dawn barely began to light the sky, Jia Yi and I walked out of Peach Blossom High School.

Before we left, Jia Yi also did two more things —

First: he had Situ You hand over all the Borsi data and formulas — and destroyed them.

Second: he put every teacher and student in the entire school into a sleep that would last for twenty-four hours. By the time they woke up, all memories connected to Borsi, to us, and to Tianyin would be gone.

“Those children had grown too full for too long. Clearing some space for them makes it easier for them to take in more things later.” Having said this, Jia Yi pointed at my head and shook his own. “But yours is far too empty. Read more books from now on. Strive to be a woman of culture!”

I think there must be far more than just those three Foolishness Fruits in this world. Surely there are other Foolishness Fruits that were eaten by other naturally arrogant unfortunates. Like Jia Yi, for instance. Like Ao Chi…

All right — I’m not angry. Not even a little. I pressed my hand to my stomach and said to the small one inside: “Be good. Mama’s taking you to eat. Do you want a drumstick rice bowl or a grilled meat rice bowl?”

“Proprietress, I’m a little weak. Where’s the nearest drumstick rice bowl?”

“Get lost!”

The engine Tianyin had fixed ran stronger than at any time before.

The secondhand car raced along, leaving the first exhaust trail of the clear morning drifting behind it through Peach Blossom City…

Before leaving the city, I made a stop at the post office and sent off a parcel.

Inside the parcel was a small, carefully sealed bottle of Fu Sheng Tea, and a letter. The recipient was Situ You.

The letter’s contents were brief — just one line:

Once upon a time there was a Peach Blossom Spring; in Peach Blossom Spring there grew a tree; from the tree grew two donkeys; the donkeys loved best to eat berries. Remember — a berry that has not yet grown to fullness is always the most delicious.

Back in the car, I heard Jia Yi sigh and shake his head: “You’re not a tea-selling proprietress — you’re a weeping philanthropist giving everything away for free!” Then he tossed a newspaper at me. “Gasoline prices went up again.”

“New entry added to Bu Ting’s employee handbook! Every employee must guarantee the sale of ten cans of tea within one month, or wages and bonuses will not be calculated,” I said calmly, tossing the newspaper back. “Those who are dissatisfied may lodge a complaint — or quit.”

“Would you really be willing to let me go?” Jia Yi tucked himself into his seat, slouching against it.

The things he says… if Ao Chi heard that, what a scene it would cause!

I turned my head, about to warn him to watch what he said — but by then, the sound of his snoring had already filled the car from end to end.

That young and handsome face below the window, in the not-quite-bright, not-quite-dim light, showed a plain and undisguised exhaustion.

Come to think of it, last night it was he who had kept helping along the way, letting me — pregnant as I am — feel marginally less burdened. A Daoist who is sharp-tongued and mocking toward me and yet will quietly step in front of me to block wind and rain — utterly incomprehensible. This eccentric hired hand who walked into Bu Ting’s life in the third arc: was he a trap that fate had set for me, or a reward?

All along the road I kept seeing advertisements connected to Peach Blossom City, and the words “Peach Blossom Spring” kept turning over and over in my mind.

I am sorry — I too wished for a perfectly happy ending. I wished that Tianyin, a former celestial god, and Ninety-Eight, who came from Peach Blossom Spring, would not be defeated by a single wound. But facts are facts, and neither Jia Yi nor I could make them open their eyes again.

What I can say for certain is that the expressions on Tianyin’s and Ninety-Eight’s faces as they faded from the world held no regret — only smiles.

A pair of beings who truly had the ability to look down upon others, and yet who for hundreds of years genuinely respected every person around them who was doing their best to live — who never once allowed themselves to “grow to fullness” — turned out to find more joy and contentment than most.

So this is what the Wisdom Fruit and the Foolishness Fruit really come down to — the principle of fullness and not-fullness.

I pulled the car to the side of the road and reached into my pocket for that newly arrived piece of jade-green stone, irregularly shaped. When it had fallen from Tianyin as she faded away, I had cupped it in my hands, and the warmth of Tianyin and Ninety-Eight was still unmistakably there inside it.

Jia Yi said this piece of stone was called “Peach Blossom Threshold.” If you held it close to your eye and looked toward the light, you could see the scenery of Peach Blossom Spring — beautiful vistas, peach blossoms everywhere.

I held it up, peered toward the light — and smiled. It was exactly as he said: peach blossoms in full bloom, a spring breeze on the face, and what seemed to be a handful of gracious, joyful donkeys running around inside.

Even so, sentimentality is sentimentality — and Tianyin’s story had given me new questions to turn over.

I had always assumed that what was sealed inside those green amber stones was some creature that had committed great wrongs. The first two had both been so, yet Tianyin had once been a celestial god. The Di Yin she had mentioned — covered from head to toe in ears, looking something like a bear — kept making me think of Thousand Mechanisms. If Thousand Mechanisms, too, had once been a celestial god, the whole matter became very strange indeed. Sealing a god — that is no trivial thing. And then there was the question of the green amber as a second layer of sealing: why had some of them not shattered, while others had cracked open, resulting in the sealed beings manifesting in such different forms?

These questions tumbled and spun through my mind without stopping, and the question of whether the tea would sell itself had, by contrast, become far less pressing.

Just as I was lost in thought, there came a thunderous “thud” — as though something heavy had landed on the roof of the car.

Objects falling from height was what I resented most — but no, that wasn’t right. We had already left Peach Blossom City, and the road all around was open countryside. Where would any tall buildings have come from?

I was about to pull over when, outside the car window, half a figure suddenly dropped down, dangling upside down —

Ao Chi — gone for several months, his face worn with the marks of wind and rain — hung upside down from the window. He pointed to one side, and through his teeth, with barely restrained ferocity, forced out: “You! Pull over. Now.”

Oh no — the creditor had come to collect the debt.