Jiangbei, Again

Xi Chen didn't know how long he spent drifting aimlessly within the void. The conversation with the mysterious entity shrouded in darkness, as well as the ordinary but mystical wooden bowl proclaimed to be an object from heaven… everything seemed to be rather fleeting and veiled in a thin layer of mist.

If asked to recall the specific details of the events that had transpired in the void, Xi Chen could regurgitate the information without a single problem in his memory. The issue was that while his brain recalled the information with great clarity, it failed to associate any of the events with his presence.

It was as though he had gleaned the information from a textbook; knowledge was present, but there wasn't an emotional connection.

But all dreamlike states had to settle down and return back to reality, just as all creation returned to their origins at the end of time. When his soul somehow agreed that it was the natural period of time to "wake up," Xi Chen's eyes sprung open.

An unfamiliar but familiar blue sky graced his vision, and the soft chattering and murmuring of nearby creatures drifted into his ears. As Xi Chen blinked in confusion, a gentle brush of wind tousled clusters of black hair before his eyes.

His hair wasn't supposed to be this long… at least not to the length that it could shadow his vision…

"Where am I?"

Xi Chen groaned, feeling an intense discomfort scratching through his spine and lower back. Feeling increasingly annoyed at the hard surface pressed against his body with metallic bulges digging into his muscles at rather inconvenient zones, he quickly sat up with a scowl present on his countenance.

When his bleary eyes registered the change in his surroundings, the scowl of discomfort morphed into astonishment.

"Jiangbei University's west wing garden?"

Xi Chen whispered with disbelief evident in his eyes. With one hand scratching at his hair in confusion, the youth scanned his surroundings in great detail, not even sparing his own body.

The rose pattern of shrubbery and thistles that was charismatic of the esoteric minds that occupied Jiangbei University's west wing, as well as the occasional tulip swaying in tune to the wind amongst a sea of weeds – all consisted a scene that Xi Chen was extremely familiar and fond with. The uncomfortable but masochist-inducing wooden bench that he liked to sleep on each afternoon, as well as the backdrop of the massive building that was the west wing's dormitory…

He really returned to the world? And as a student of Jiangbei University once more at that?

"My body's also returned to that of a student… I'd say my third year?"

Right, for his limbs had returned to their scrawny state and had remained that way until he had graduated from graduate school, not to mention he didn't enjoy short hairstyles until his fourth year of undergraduate school…

Thinking of the frailty of his physique and the spectacular figure he had once cut in his previous life, Xi Chen's lips broke into a wry smile. The next moment, however, the faint curvature of the lips were eradicated from existence, and the pair of eyebrows furrowed in thought.

"A bowl… that bowl from before?"

With just a simple thought – one that wasn't even complete or coherent, the illusory figure of a wooden meditation bowl manifested within Xi Chen's perception. With his eyes closed, he could envision the bowl's exact parameters to the highest level of detail possible with his mind.

Nestled deeply within the center of the bowl, clattering around with as much force as two infinitesimal particles could produce, were two grains of sand. When Xi Chen narrowed his thoughts to focus upon the two miscellaneous objects lying in the bowl, the etching of the characters "Saint" and "Devil" clearly shone in his mind.

A grain of sand etched with sainthood, and the other with the devil's brand. By the rules dictated on the bottom of the bowl, Xi Chen swiftly connected the events that had generated the two infinitesimal particles.

"Return to the world I knew before I got caught up in these events, as well as the matter of the marriage contract," Xi Chen murmured with narrowed eyes.

"Speaking of that… where is it?"

Just as he spoke, Xi Chen shifted is body slightly to the left – and brushed against a rather hard object. As he was sitting upon a narrow wooden bench without much space to maneuver much less store objects, a clattering sound echoed throughout the solitary garden.

When he saw the binder splayed open on the ground with its contents with a hundred-page contract, a marriage certificate, as well as a red booklet, Xi Chen's lower lip began to twitch uncontrollably. Eventually, once he had calmed his emotions, he took a deep breath and collected the items from the ground after brushing the dust off.

"Well… the clauses are the same, which means that I will have to tweak it a bit… but no matter!"

There were many ways he could take his revenge, and the cornerstone lay within his hands…

Xi Chen smirked to nobody in particular as he lazily stretched his body. Feeling the short burst of lingering exhaustion and glory of youth rush throughout every pore and cell, he was about to explore the campus when –

Dang! Dang! Dang!

The campus gong roared three times in short succession, the reverberations echoing throughout the entire square kilometer-wide region in a matter of seconds. Even in a secluded garden situated behind that of the west wing's dormitory, Xi Chen could feel the sheer power and strength of the vibrations wreaking havoc on his mind.

Three chimes… and the bell only rang on weekdays when there were classes to be held…

Did he just skip class!?

Xi Chen balked as he swiftly deduced the current situation in his agile and experienced mind. Without further ado, he grabbed the outer jacket resting draped over the wooden bench, pinned the binder against his chest with a free arm, and rushed out of the garden and towards the dormitory.

In a matter of forty-five seconds, the usually reticent and unathletic third-year university undergraduate student Xi Chen had managed to dash two hundred meters, climb up three flights of stairs, and stand before his dorm suite in full pride and glory… except…

…except, what was the dorm room's password again?

"3254… no, that's my apartment suite password after I graduated, 49182 – that's the password to my mother's home, 33… 33 something…"

Xi Chen's mind howled in agony as he failed time and time again to remember the four numbers that were required to enter the dorm suite. He could easily remember the first two, but for the next…

In the period of time that Xi Chen wracked as his head with a grim smile, two swift minutes had passed –

"Oh, to hell with it!"

A curse in perfect English echoed throughout the hallway of the west wing dormitory, and Xi Chen conjured the wooden meditation bowl in his mind. Mired within a mixture of desperation and angst, he focused his mind in record-breaking time, and thought fervently in his heart.

I want to know every password this locking mechanism has been configured for!

It seemed childish and certainly unreasonable, but Xi Chen thought he had fulfilled all of the conditions required by the wooden bowl. The image of the locking mechanism, a clearly defined desire – those should have covered all of the necessary criteria, no?

Clack!

It was a soft sound, but the sharp report of a foreign grain of sand clattering onto the bottomless pit that was the bowl of heaven instantly reverberated throughout Xi Chen's heart. Before he could release a sigh of relief, a string of numbers surfaced in his mind, accompanied by subtle descriptions to each…

When he filtered through the long spiral of information and arrived to the combination that began with two three's, Xi Chen's eyes immediately regained their focus. His fingers acting with swift movements, he punched out the four numbers, turned the doorknob, and rushed inside.

Seeing that nobody was within the room, his mood was uplifted to an immeasurable degree.

Seeing that garbage was littered all throughout the floor of the common room, and an odious odor drifted from within three of the four bedrooms, however, his mood was subjected to another round of bitter torture.

These bastards, they did it again in the span of a single weekend…

Xi Chen cursed in his mind as he strode across the common room and into his bedroom, his mind cluttered with three indistinct figures and their hideous laughter. Ignoring the familiar sights of his university dorm room and the peculiar arrangement of his textbooks, Xi Chen stopped before his bed.

Squatting on his knees and tapping in an unrecognizable rhythm on a random floorboard underneath the uncomfortable and disgraceful bed for a few seconds, Xi Chen eventually reached underneath and extracted a loose floorboard. Then, without checking the contents, he "carefully" dumped the binder containing the marriage contract, certificate, and booklet into the opened space and resealed the secret compartment –

"Oh? Isn't this Brother Chen – you're here already? Man, where were you the entire day? The professors were pretty annoyed when they realized that you weren't present at any of the lectures on the first day of the semester!"