Lin Xinghe felt that the magic broom was actually not very practical. The handle was so hard that it dug into her inner thighs. Also, she was wearing a skirt, so even though she was wearing leggings underneath, she still felt a little uncomfortable.
However, the broom was really fast.
High in the sky, she admired the view of the school. Seeing it on the ground was completely different from seeing it in the air. The campus was really massive, and it was enveloped by water stretching to the horizon. The whole school was like an island rising from the middle of the water.
“You……”
Seeing Lin Xinghe in one piece, Lu Qin couldn’t help but ask, “You didn’t go back to the dormitory last night?”
Lin Xinghe answered, “I did go back.”
Lu Qin replied decisively: “There’s only one way to go back to the dormitory, Li…” She changed her mind and said, “Where did you sleep? I was worried that you couldn’t find your way yesterday, so I went back to look for you, but I didn’t see you.”
“Oh… it’s like that,” Lin Xinghe tipped her head to the side. “It’s my bad luck, I tripped and fell into the area behind the fence. It took me a while to climb up, and when I did, I was already at the entrance of the dormitory.”
She spoke earnestly, as if it were true.
When Lu Qin heard this, she was so mad that she laughed.
The school set up fences on both sides of the road because the area behind was extremely dangerous. As soon as the sky went dark, the green plants would become aggressive. Last time, two classmates from the Xianxia Department were fighting in the middle of the night, and one fell behind the fence. When they went to look for the body, there weren’t even bones. Lin Xinghe didn’t even blink when she lied, did she think Lu Qin was a three-year-old child?
Lin Xinghe then asked, “Class President, you don’t differentiate ‘n’ and ‘l’, are you from the south?*”
Lu Qin never expected that Lin Xinghe would mock her Mandarin right after lying straight to her face. Seeing her innocent countenance, Lu Qin suddenly felt that she had been worried over nothing. After all, those who gained admittance to this school were all the vilest of the villains… The female villains of the modern department were all masters of obfuscation and seduction who strung up men by the dozen. This person looked like a white lotus flower, but who knew what wolf hid under her sheep skin?**
Lu Qin was so angry that she didn’t even want to control her facial expressions; she hardened her face and said, “Get out of the way.”
Lin Xinghe still wanted to say something, but Lu Qin had already walked away, three steps at a time. Still, she didn’t take it to heart. Carrying her little magic broom, she followed the signs and found Class 1 of the Modern Department.
There were thirty people per class. The classroom was no different from those of her university days, and everything was modern.
Sitting in the first row, Lu Qin saw her enter and straightened her face.
Her seat number was included in the freshman handbook.
Lin Xinghe quickly found her seat. She was sitting in the second-to-last row from the window. Her tablemate was a girl with a high ponytail who Lin Xinghe couldn’t see clearly, as she was lying on the table and sleeping.
Lin Xinghe observed the students around her.
Most of the people seemed to be exhausted, either slumping on the table and napping like her tablemate or yawning again and again. Only a few classmates looked radiant, such as the female classmate sitting in the last row. She was holding a small mirror to touch up her makeup, and her eyeliner outlined a pair of sultry eyes that were impossible to look away from.
At exactly ten o’clock, the homeroom teacher came in.
The head teacher was a young man, tall and taciturn. He held a tablet in his hand. As soon as he entered the classroom, he yawned lazily before asking, “Where did we get to in yesterday’s class?” After waiting for a response and receiving none, he yawned again and said, “Oh, I remember, today is the time to read the ‘Heart Sutra.’ You people should listen to the Buddhist scriptures more to cleanse the mind instead of thinking about violence all day..”
As if he had remembered something, he continued, “By the way, there is a new student here today, named…” The teacher flipped through the roster, yawned again, and said, “Lin Xinghe.”
The head teacher looked at Lin Xinghe with a bit of pity in his indifferent expression, and said, “Treasure your time at school. The student in your seat before you died within three months. No matter how vicious your thoughts are, or how many sins you commit, when you come to our school, you have to cultivate your emotions, have benevolent thoughts, study hard for exams, and understand the true meaning of life…”
“Yesterday we were at , ‘No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind; no form, sound, smell, taste, touch or dharmas; no eye consciousness so on unto mind consciousness; no ignorance and extinction of ignorance; even unto no aging and death and no extinction of aging and death,’*** the meaning of this passage is…”
The tone of the class teacher’s lectures was boring, and he droned on and on, making the already sleepy environment even more sleepy.
Because it was her first day of class, Lin Xinghe listened very carefully.
“You don’t have to listen so carefully, and you actually don’t have to listen at all. Most of the midterm and final exams are rote memorization. As long as you memorize all of the texts, you can get points. Are you a new classmate? My name is Gu Taoyao.”
Lin Xinghe’s deskmate’s voice was surprisingly pleasant, like the clear tinkling of spring water. She turned her head and saw Gu Taoyao looking at her. She then said: “Every new villain who comes in feels that she is very powerful, modern villains like us, at most, they want to make money, kill people, and give the protagonists a hard time.
“Don’t mess with the fantasy department. Before they went through reform, those big guys could wipe out half of the world with just one snap.
“Don’t play with the students in the ancient era department. The villains there are thinking about usurping power every day, and they band together to stir things up to make one of themselves the principal.
“Oh yes, Xie Wuan, the Xianxia department’s playboy, is a super pervert. Don’t have any emotional attachments to him.”
TL Notes:
*Southern Chinese accents/dialects often use the same sounds for “n” and “l” in pinyin. For example, pumpkin, or “nangua”, would sound the same as blue melon, or “langua”. However, most Middle and Northern Chinese accents/dialects do differentiate the two, and n and l are not used interchangeably within standard Mandarin pinyin.
**Direct translation of Lu Qin’s assumptions about Lin Xinghe: female villains are all “masters of tea and flowers” and Lin Xinghe looks like a white lotus flower, or something pure ,… but maybe last night she was a monster pretending to be a pig in order to attract a wolf and eat it, more violent than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
***This is a translation from the “Heart Sutra”, a Buddhist text translated into English by the Fo Guang Shan International Translation Center.