Chapter 3: Hidden Worries

In his previous life, as a top-tier Occultist, Su Chunfeng clearly understood the strangeness of Esoteric Techniques and the vast, boundless, and nearly unfathomable nature of the heavenly and natural laws.

So, he didn’t have time to consider how to explain things later to Li Jichun and Guo Fa, nor did he have time to think about what punishment he might face for frightening Yao Xinbo, deceiving his Homeroom Teacher, and leaving the classroom without permission during class time. Right now, all he wanted was to hurry home and see his family!

As he jogged along the Basketball Court towards the dormitory area, he suddenly noticed from the corner of his eye that someone was walking slowly on the steps in front of the row of offices north of the Basketball Court.

A very familiar figure!

Su Chunfeng slowed his pace and turned his head to look.

He saw a middle-aged teacher, over fifty years old, not very tall and slightly chubby, walking along the steps in front of the offices. With a gait that ordinary people wouldn’t notice as anything unusual, he walked onto a rather conspicuous cement open-air platform in front of the principal’s office.

The platform wasn’t big, just over half a meter high, seven meters long, and four meters wide, connecting levelly with the steps.

The old teacher wore simple dark gray Lenin-style clothing and old-fashioned black-rimmed glasses. He held a textbook, looking as if he were on his way to class. But when he reached the edge of the platform, he stopped. He raised his head slightly, his expression calm, and looked southward from the wide path between the laboratory and the library toward the row of classrooms—from his position, he could just see the classroom of Class 14 for the second year of junior high.

Although Su Chunfeng just glanced over casually, he clearly saw that the old teacher’s walking steps earlier were “Heavenly Pivot Steps.”

After stopping, the old teacher raised both hands slightly above his abdomen. His left hand held the textbook, covering his right hand which was forming a finger seal. His stance was odd: his right foot was slightly forward, toes pointed inward at a thirty-degree angle; his left foot was behind, toes pointed inward at forty-five degrees; the distance between his feet was thirty to forty centimeters, with the heel of the front foot parallel to the toes of the back foot—a very strange posture, but the old teacher stood there looking quite casual and ordinary.

“Did he sense something?” Su Chunfeng’s heart tightened.

When the old teacher seemed to glance over at him casually, Su Chunfeng immediately turned and walked away swiftly—he could feel the old teacher’s seemingly muddled eyes staring at his back.

The old teacher was called Wang Qimin.

In his previous life, he had been Su Chunfeng’s master!

In Su Chunfeng’s first year of the third year of junior high, he once fell ill with a fever. Wang Qimin, who had been paying attention to him for a long time, took him into his office under the pretext of treating his illness. There, he performed mysterious and wondrous Esoteric Techniques, enticing and luring this student with exceptional talent for cultivation into the world of Esoteric Techniques. Su Chunfeng became the inheritor of the most mysterious Esoteric Arts in the Jianghu of Esoteric Arts. Within just fourteen years, his cultivation surpassed his master Wang Qimin’s, leaping into the “Awakening Spirit Realm.”

Now, Su Chunfeng was in his second year of junior high. After the summer vacation, he would enter the third year.

That meant he had already been under Wang Qimin’s observation for a long time. In a few more months, Wang Qimin would find an opportunity to entice and lure him, taking him as a disciple.

When that time came, what should he do?

Thinking about this, Su Chunfeng jogged into the dormitory courtyard. Relying on his unerased memories, he found his own bicycle in a corner of the wall blocked by a pile of bikes—a shabby bicycle so old that everything except the parts essential for riding had fallen off.

He roughly and wildly kicked aside the bicycles blocking his path, pushed his old bike out, and rode away quickly.

Wang Qimin’s actions just now made him even more nervous.

Because he knew Wang Qimin too well: this old fellow, with his extremely high Esoteric Technique cultivation, had kept a low profile for over twenty years. He never performed Art Casting within the school, not even minor techniques. Moreover, he always entered the classroom right as the bell rang for class. But today, he had just left the office long after the bell had sounded…

This indicated that Wang Qimin must have noticed the abnormal changes in the Qi Field within the school.

Su Chunfeng wasn’t worried about the earlier Art Casting on Yao Xinbo. That minor technique caused only a slight fluctuation in the Qi Field and wouldn’t leave any traces. Even Yao Xinbo himself wouldn’t be able to clearly explain what exactly happened to him afterward.

What worried Su Chunfeng was that the moment of his rebirth most likely caused intense fluctuations in the heaven-earth Qi Field. And Wang Qimin must have detected the anomaly, which was why he performed Art Casting within the school to observe.

Furthermore, before his rebirth, when Su Chunfeng suffered from Demonic Possession, it was Wang Qimin who set up formations and performed Art Casting to help him expel the Inner Demon and protect him during his cultivation.

So, what exactly happened at the moment of death before his rebirth?

What did Wang Qimin do?

Could there be some inevitable connection between his previous life and his current one?

Having experienced his previous life, Su Chunfeng knew that in the early and mid-1990s, with the tide of reform and opening up driving the rapid development of the national economy, domestic social order was stable, and people’s living standards gradually improved. The Jianghu sects and extraordinary individuals, who had almost vanished for nearly a century due to historical turbulence and social circumstances, gradually began to show signs of revival. They developed rapidly, and after entering the new century, they experienced an explosive boom.

So now was a special period.

The Jianghu was just emerging, winds were rising, clouds were gathering…

The more Su Chunfeng thought about it, the more he worried about his family’s safety. From the perspective of Esoteric Techniques, whether intentionally done or accidentally resulting in a heaven-defying major event like rebirth, it was bound to cause a great reaction from heaven and earth. The Backlash would be extremely dangerous and perilous.

Now that he was fine, would it affect his family?

On the other hand, if people in the Jianghu of Esoteric Arts learned about this rebirth event, it would surely shock the world!

And he himself would, from this moment on, become a key figure of interest to many powerful individuals, inevitably getting drawn into the mysterious and dangerous Jianghu of Esoteric Arts.

…

Su Chunfeng’s home was in Hetang Village, Guanmiao Township, over ten li away from Dongwangzhuang Township Middle School.

However, he hadn’t been sent to Dongwangzhuang Township Middle School by his family paying or pulling strings. He had been admitted to that key middle school based on his excellent academic results. Moreover, given his family’s financial situation, it was impossible to spend several hundred yuan to send him to a better middle school.

It was late spring.

The sun was bright, and the warm breeze was gentle.

In the fields, wheat seedlings were sprouting ears, the green expanse stretching to the sky. Along the way, villages were lush with green trees, sheltering red bricks and gray tiles. Although the village streets and lanes were mostly bumpy and uneven, they connected in all directions and linked to the paths outside the villages. Occasionally, roosters crowed and dogs barked; swallows darted back and forth in front of houses, adding to the peaceful, comfortable atmosphere of the rural, secluded area.

Bumping along on his old bicycle all the way back to Hetang Village, Su Chunfeng had no mind to admire or reminisce about the village scenery from over a decade ago in his memory. He rode straight along the dirt path beside the small canal east of the village toward the southeast part of the village.

His home was on a narrow street.

The bumpy street was less than two meters wide, with tough little weeds growing at the base of the walls on both sides.

The yards of seven or eight households were planted with various messy trees—elm trees, date trees, paulownia trees, poplar trees, and so on. Their lush branches and leaves stretched beyond the old, mottled low walls, casting patches of quite elegant and serene shade in the street and the small yards.

The house at the corner of the street leading to the main road was Su Chunfeng’s home—a two-meter-high gray brick wall, three red brick steps in front of the gate, a low gatehouse built with gray bricks and red tiles; the gate was 1.6 meters wide and two meters high. On the door frame, there were faded, unwashed couplets; the paint on the brownish-red wooden door was peeling, and it stood open. Under the erosion of time, all the style and colors appeared dull and old.

Clang! Clatter!

Su Chunfeng leaned his bicycle against the wall by his front door and stepped onto the steps. Suddenly feeling both anxious and nostalgic, he paused briefly before stepping over the threshold into the yard.

The small yard had a level ground paved with red bricks. A wire stretched east-west across the yard had several cleanly washed clothes hanging on it. Under the west wall, a grapevine stretched out its green tendrils, climbing densely over a wire trellis. Along with four elm trees in the yard, each as thick as a bowl, with lush branches and leaves, they cast patches of deep shade that almost covered the entire yard.

Three main rooms faced north. Light green beaded curtains with flower patterns hung on the doors. The windows, painted brown, had clean glass, and several black-topped cloth shoes with white soles were drying on the windowsills.

Looking at all this, Su Chunfeng felt extremely excited. His voice trembled slightly as he called out, “Dad, Mom…”

Soon, his mother Chen Xiulan’s somewhat surprised voice came from inside: “Xiaofeng, why are you back?”

Su Chunfeng paused at the doorway, then let out a soft sigh. The surging excitement in his heart quickly smoothed over—his mother’s reply made him feel much more at ease. Smiling, he stepped into the room.

On the east side of the living room, his mother, wearing simple clothes and with shoulder-length hair, was sitting at the table sewing clothes. She looked up at him with gentle, loving eyes—at this time, his mother was only thirty-seven; years hadn’t left too many marks on her graceful and delicate face. She grew up during the special period of the 1960s and 70s in the Republic. Her originally scholarly family declined, and due to poverty and social circumstances, she couldn’t attend school. But good family upbringing gave her a gentle, dignified personality, while still retaining the diligence and simplicity typical of a farming woman.

Su Chunfeng felt a pang of sadness in his heart and almost couldn’t hold back his tears.

His mother had a hard life.

In his previous life, he had owed his parents too much…

Although he felt pain and regret in his heart, Su Chunfeng’s expression remained normal. Scratching his head like a child who had done something wrong, he explained with an awkward smile: “I forgot two books at home. Coincidentally, there was a physical education class this morning, so I asked for leave to come back and get them.”—On the way back, he had already remembered that today was Tuesday. As a boarding student coming home early on a Tuesday morning, of course he needed a good reason.

Chen Xiulan understood and smiled. “Then go find them quickly.”

“Okay.” Su Chunfeng walked toward the west room bedroom, asking casually as if without much thought: “Did Dad go to work?”

“What work? The construction team’s jobs are irregular, sometimes yes, sometimes no.” Chen Xiulan gently bit off the thread. As she re-threaded the needle, she said without looking up: “He went to the fields to spray pesticide.”

“Is there blight in the wheat field?”

“They say there are insects. Every household in the team is busy spraying pesticide…”

Su Chunfeng wasn’t in a hurry to look for his books. Instead, he stood at the doorway, idly chatting with his mother. At the same time, he silently recited a Spell Incantation in his mind, forming hand seals behind his back. He concentrated on performing Art Casting, carefully sensing and observing the Qi Field in his home, paying special attention to the aura around his mother that ordinary people couldn’t see.

But he immediately felt dizzy and lightheaded, almost fainting.