Chapter 51: Casual Conversation

The current time is two days after the Amber馆 banquet.

At this moment, Lin Nian was inside the library. Beneath the massive Baroque dome, students in school uniforms walked silently between the aisles, clutching books. On every maple-wood desk sat a white porcelain vase, filled with fresh camellias replaced by the library staff every morning at eight o'arclock.

Lin Nian gave a light cough, but the person sitting opposite him ignored it, merely staring straight at him.

The person sitting across the table was Lin Xian. Under her gaze, Lin Nian began to feel a creeping sense of unease.

"Hmm..." Lin Xian stared intently at the dazed Lin Nian before her, sizing him up from top to bottom as if she were inspecting a fresh cut of pork hanging from an iron hook by the roadside. Her gaze was as sharp as a butcher's boning knife, scraping against a steel rod as she figured out where to make the first cut.

Lin Nian vaguely remembered the last time his older sister had used this exact gaze on him: it was when she was tidying up his room and discovered some indescribable items hidden beneath his pillow.

"You should repent," Lin Xian let out a long sigh.

Here it came—she was even recycling her lines!

Lin Nian felt entirely uncomfortable all over, yet he forced himself to remain calm. "Repent for what?"

"I know all about it," Lin Xian said.

Lin Nian instantly grew vigilant, wondering if he had really put on weight. Could she have found out that these past few days, unable to resist, he had succumbed to Finger's instigation and secretly swiped his student ID a few times to buy expensive late-night snacks? Had the paparazzi at Cassell College sunk so low as to dig through the garbage bags he threw out from his dorm?

"Take a look at this," Lin Xian said, picking up a laptop from the chair beside her and placing it on the table.

Seeing that it was a laptop rather than a garbage bag being picked up, Lin Nian breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed his tendency to degenerate into bourgeois temptations had not yet been exposed; otherwise, Lin Xian, born from a background of proletarian fighters, would have pulled out a knife and forced him to commit ritual suicide—or make him help Finger commit it.

"Look at what?" Lin Nian leaned forward to peer at the screen, whereupon he beheld a picture as beautiful as a painting.

In the photo, beneath the dazzling crystal chandeliers of the Amber馆, Caesar and Lin Nian were shaking hands firmly. The former looked dashing and debonair, his gaze overflowing with an aura of supreme dominance, while the latter's gaze was full of tender affection, as if he had been completely conquered by this emperor-like man.

Tender affection, my foot! Lin Nian was utterly dumbfounded.

"The whole college is gossiping that you're going to join the Student Union now," Lin Xian shook her head as she stared at Lin Nian on the screen. "So that was the reason you kept turning down that girl back at Shilan... Actually, I don't object if you swing that way..."

Lin Nian almost lunged forward to cover his older sister's mouth. "Back then, I was thinking about other things, so I zoned out!"

"What were you thinking about with such a deep and affectionate look?"

"I was thinking about some friends back home, Lu Mingfei and Chu..."

"Lu Mingfei? That's even worse than the first option. This Caesar Gaddus has rather decent pectoral muscles." Lin Xian looked at Lin Nian with surprise.

"How do you even know his pectorals are decent?" Lin Nian was momentarily stunned.

"I saw photos of him winter-swimming during winter break while browsing the forum," Lin Xian shrugged. "Judging from the photos, it looks like you were completely mesmerized by his massive chest muscles as well."

For a split second, Lin Nian wanted to drag whoever wrote this article out and hack them into a million pieces. Why on earth would there be paparazzi at a Student Union banquet? Were the ushers checking invitations at the door just for show?

No, wait. Lin Nian suddenly remembered that he did indeed bump into a guy on the dance floor who claimed to be a reporter, and at the time, he hadn't given the guy a friendly look and had simply walked away.

That finally explained it.

Damn it, you'd rather offend the leadership than a reporter; his reputation had truly been completely ruined this time.

"Alright, alright, just joking," Lin Xian smiled as she closed the laptop. "Did you enjoy the banquet?"

"Didn't get enough to eat," Lin Nian spoke the truth. "After heading back, I even bummed two slices of pizza from Senior Finger."

"The video of you dancing with a beautiful girl in your school uniform has been spreading like wildfire on the forum. Everyone says you're the single spot of green amidst a vast sea of flowers." Lin Xian lowered her head and resumed flipping through her book.

Lin Nian rolled his eyes. Wearing a school uniform, how could it not be green? He had also seen that video on the forum. In the dance floor, a crowd of black-and-white dancers bloomed and blossomed like flowers, instantly gathering and folding back into unopened buds, yet the guy wearing the green school uniform stood out the most.

"Alright, alright, no more jokes." Lin Xian finally gave up teasing her younger brother. "Don't you have a class at ten o'clock? What are you doing in the library looking for me right now?"

Lin Nian patted his head, only then remembering that he had come for a serious matter. He gathered his thoughts and asked tentatively, "Sis, do you know about the Practical Warfare course?"

"Practical Warfare? Absolutely not." Lin Xian closed her book.

"What?" Lin Nian was stunned.

Lin Xian looked at Lin Nian without a word. The silence was unsettling, but a moment later, she burst out laughing. Lin Nian was completely baffled by his suddenly laughing older sister.

After laughing for a while, Lin Xian gradually composed herself, a trace of a smile still lingering on her face as she looked at Lin Nian. "Mandy has already talked to me about it—about the Practical Warfare course."

"Senior Sister Mandy talked to you?" Lin Nian was somewhat surprised.

"When I went to a cafe with her earlier, she mentioned some issues related to this. We get along quite well; we've been hanging out together during our free time these past few days, grabbing drinks, going shopping, and so on." Lin Xian reopened the book on the table.

"Then what do you think?" Lin Nian asked apprehensively.

"What do I mean, what do I think?" Lin Xian asked, turning a page.

Lin Nian fell silent for a moment. "I heard it can be dangerous."

"Are you afraid? If you're afraid, you don't have to go," Lin Xian said, looking at Lin Nian.

Lin Nian shook his head in astonishment and gave a bitter smile. "I thought you'd worry about me and tell me not to go..."

"I was quite worried at first," Lin Xian nodded, lowering her gaze back to her book. "But Mandy told me everyone in this academy goes through the same thing, and she's no exception. I heard that during her freshman practical course, she sat in the reconnaissance post playing poker with her teammates all night."

"She really played poker all night?" Lin Nian felt the awe he had just cultivated toward the Practical Warfare course quietly dissipate.

"The school isn't really going to make you freshmen go out and slay dragons, is it? The world is quite peaceful these days," Lin Xian said. "Besides, the students in this academy are all weird. You only look normal when you're among them. If this is the only way to let you live in a normal environment where people don't look at you like you're an oddity, then whatever they do, you should do it too. You're cut from the same cloth as them."

"To be honest, I'm quite surprised you can think like that." Lin Nian breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back in his chair.

"We are already sitting right here," Lin Xian gazed at the grand and magnificent library. "If life has fork roads, the moment we boarded the plane, we made our choice. Naturally, our subsequent life paths are vastly different from before."

"Yeah..." Lin Nian fell silent. He desperately wanted to respond to Lin Xian's sentiment with some profound and badass words, but after holding it in for a moment, he couldn't squeeze anything out. He could only scratch the back of his head and sit there in silence.

"Let's talk about something else. What is your 10 o'clock class? To be honest, I've been in the library these past few days and haven't paid much attention to your schedule. Mandy mentioned that Cassell College's courses are quite complicated, kind of like the educational institutions set up by Protestant denominations in 'seminaries,' where the course content forms an independent system of its own."

"Those courses are indeed bizarre." Mentioning this, Lin Nian's expression became subtle as well. "Yesterday I had a class called 'Magitech Theory and Practice.' The professor took apart a classmate's diving watch piece by piece and made us put it back together..."

"Did you succeed?" Lin Xian asked with curiosity.

"No... It was my first time taking this course and I had zero foundation. The other classmates were equally clueless since none of our families happen to be clockmakers. We pooled our wisdom and spent the entire class putting the diving watch together like building a Gundam, only to find out after finishing hastily that there were still a few spare parts left over." Lin Nian massaged his temples.

"The owner of the diving watch must have been in utter despair," Lin Xian couldn't help saying.

"No, he didn't care at all, because the owner of the watch was Caesar," Lin Nian complained. "He told the professor the internal mechanism of the diving watch was too difficult, and next time he could bring a few relatively simpler watches for everyone to take apart and play with."

"Little bro, actually, liking men isn't a bad thing." Lin Xian's eyes suddenly lit up.

"Pfft, you're the one who likes men." Lin Nian's face immediately darkened.

"If I don't like men, do I like women?" Lin Xian rolled her eyes at him.

Lin Nian sighed and said, "My 10 o'clock class is Melee Weapons. The location is at a dojo near the Valhalla."

"Melee weapons? I remember you were pretty good with a feather duster," Lin Xian evaluated objectively.

"That's because I've studied kendo," Lin Nian rubbed his temples. "This course shouldn't be difficult for me; testing physical coordination and neural reflexes is my strong suit."

"Just don't slack off on your academic studies," Lin Xian raised a hand, curled her index finger, and flicked Lin Nian on the forehead. "Go to class, stop bothering your sister here."

"Are we having lunch together?" Lin Nian packed up his things and stood up.

"I have a date with Mandy. She said she's taking me to sit at Starbucks at noon."

"There's a Starbucks in this school?"

"There's a Burger King too. Haven't you explored the campus at all?" Lin Xian rolled her eyes gracefully.

"Damn Finger, he told me there was nowhere else to eat except the cafeteria!" Lin Nian muttered in annoyance as he turned and left. "I'm off."

"Bye," Lin Xian kept her head down, reading without looking up.

It wasn't until Lin Nian had walked far away that Lin Xian raised her head, looking at her younger brother's jogging back. She let out a faint, lingering sigh and murmured to herself, "Was it really necessary to go... to the Practical Warfare course..."