Chapter 2: Chapter 2 : This World is Really Something Else

This World is Really Something Else

Watching Qin Ling run on water toward him at over thirty meters a second, Chu Tianxing hadn't figured out how to react when his hand habitually took out his phone and started filming her.

Unfortunately, he hadn't even been recording for two seconds before Qin Ling had already flown across the lake and rushed up to him. Without a word, she thrust out a palm and it landed squarely in his chest.

A gentle and harmless yet irresistible force lifted Chu Tianxing’s feet off the ground, sending him flying backward effortlessly. He sailed several meters through the air before landing. After touching down, he staggered back a few more steps before finally regaining his balance.

Before Chu Tianxing could express his shock, Qin Ling closed the distance in a single step.

Her fair face was flushed crimson as she glared at him with wide eyes and roared, “Chu Tianxing, what is wrong with you? Aren’t you a man? So what if you messed up your college entrance exams a little? Is that any reason to throw your life away? It might be a quick end for you, but what about your mom and dad? What about me… what about all the people who care about you?”

“…”

The corner of Chu Tianxing’s eye twitched.

He exasperately said, “Who said I was going to jump? I was just standing by the shore, enjoying the scenery, and you came flying out of nowhere and pushed me…”

“You really weren’t going to jump?”

“Of course not.” Having said that, Chu Tianxing fixed his gaze on Qin Ling. “By the way, what was that just now? How did you just run across the water’s surface? Is that the lightness skill from the legends?”

“…”

Qin Ling blinked in surprise. “Chu Tianxing, you’re acting a little strange today! It’s just water-gliding. Any martial artists of the Inner Force Realm who had opened their Twelve Principal Meridians and have internal energy flowing in their bodies could do this. What’s so surprising about it?”

“Internal energy flowing through the Twelve Principal Meridians? Inner Force Realm martial artist? A basic skill?”

Having gone through multiple shocks many times already, Chu Tianxing was now able to control most of his emotions. His face didn’t betray too much incredulity, but in his heart, he was reeling.

Regression or transmigration? Which one did I fall into?

If I regressed, then what’s with the old lady practicing with her sword or the kid walking on water? And what the hell is this Inner Force Realm martial artists that Qin Ling talked about?

And if it’s transmigration, let’s set aside the fact that I have the same name and body. How come there is a Qin Ling here too?

So I’ve slipped into a parallel timeline. A world that branched off from my own at some point in the past.

Before he could reach a conclusion, Qin Ling grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the lakeshore. “Whatever the case, you need to stay far away from the lake’s edge.”

“I already told you, I wasn’t going to jump…”

“But you don’t know how to swim. What if you fell in?”

“Who says I can’t swim?”

“Oh, please! When we went to the swimming pool two days ago, you only dared to hang out in the shallow section and wouldn't leave the kiddie pool…”

“…So where are you dragging me now?”

“Didn’t you promise to come with me to register for the Martial Arts Tournament? Obviously, we’re going to register now!”

A thousand questions burned in Chu Tianxing’s mind about this tournament and what it meant to be an “Inner Force Realm martial artist.”

But he held his tongue after recalling the people he had watched today and what Qin Ling casually dismissed as a “basic skill.” What Chu Tianxing desperately wanted to ask was probably just plain common sense in this world.

It would raise too many red flags if someone started asking about things everyone should know.

Leaning on the cautious side, Chu Tianxing buried his questions deep in his heart and resolved to wait until after he had accompanied Qin Ling to register before going back to look things up online.

The registration site for the “Martial Arts Tournament” was a large building that Chu Tianxing had never seen before in his memories of his hometown.

The plaque of the building read, “Canghe City Martial Arts Association.”

The whole building was apparently theirs.

Qin Ling navigated the building as if she owned the place and led Chu Tiangxing to a reception desk on the second floor. After a brief word with the clerk, she was handed a form and immediately began to write.

While Chu Tianxing was watching Qin Ling fill the form, a boastful male voice suddenly came from behind. “Well, if it isn’t our talented scholar Chu? What’s this? Has the ever-so-fair Great Talent Chu come to sign up for the Martial Arts Tournament today?”

Chu Tianxing’s brow furrowed slightly. He turned to see a middle-aged man, nearly two meters tall with the back of a tiger and the waist of a bear, swaggering over with four youths.

After studying the brutish-faced middle-aged man for a few moments, Chu Tianxing was certain he didn’t know him. One of the four surrounding him, however, rang a distant bell in his mind. Chu Tianxing had a vague impression that he was a high school classmate. But that guy was a delinquent and had never run in the same circles as a good student like Chu Tianxing.

More importantly, the kid was a nobody who’d always known better than to mess with someone from Chu Tianxing’s prominent family.

After giving the punk a dismissive look, Chu Tianxing turned to the big man. “Who are you, uncle? Do I know you?”

“Uncle?”

The middle-aged man froze for a second, then his face darkened.

He glared at Chu Tianxing and said through gritted teeth, “Chu Tianxing, are you fucking tired of living? You dare mock me for looking old?”

As he spoke, he reached out to grab him.

His large palm brought over a vicious gust of wind as it shot toward Chu Tianxing’s collar. His hand speed didn’t look particularly fast, yet its sheer presence made Chu Tianxing’s breath catch in his throat. It was as if a tiger’s claw were lunging straight for him.

Just as the “uncle’s” hand was about to seize him, a slender hand suddenly intercepted. With fingers held together like a sword, it tapped lightly on the man’s palm. With a dull thud, the middle-aged man grunted and yanked his hand back as if electrocuted. He glared at Qin Ling who had intervened.

“Qin Ling, why are you still protecting this kid?”

The one who had repelled the “uncle’s” claw with a single finger was Qin Ling.

Her pretty face was taut and expressionless as she stared at the “uncle” and said coldly, “Xiao Hu, who I look after is none of your business. You had better take your lackeys and get lost before I really lose my temper.”

The man named Xiao Hu ground his teeth. “Qin Ling, this Chu Tianxing kid is a waste of space who neither has accomplishment in literature nor martial arts, and his family has no money or power. He’s nothing but a good-for-nothing piece of trash. What do you even see in him?”

The familiar-looking punk from his entourage piped up

“Exactly. The guy’s a born failure. Can’t fight, can’t even study. He completely bombed his college entrance exams and didn’t even make the cutoff score for first-tier universities. All he does is scribble down some garbage he calls poetry, so everyone calls him ‘Great Talent Chu’ to mock him. Why do you waste your time on him?”

“But our Brother Hu is different. Just yesterday, Brother Hu opened the last principal meridian. He’s now a young expert who has cleared all Twelve Principal Meridians. Plus, his uncle is with the Embroidered Uniform Guard. He has prospects, he has family background, you…”

“Shut up!” Qin Ling snapped, staring daggers at the delinquent lackey. “Li Xiaofei, say one more thing and believe it or not, I will mop the floor with you every single time I see you from now on.”

“You!” The delinquent flinched and craned his head back, but blustered with false bravado, “Qin Ling, think you can just assault people whenever you want? Aren’t you afraid the Embroidered Uniform Guard will arrest you? Brother Hu’s uncle is—”

Qin Ling curled her lip in disdain. “What’s so great about the Embroidered Uniform Guard? My Senior Brother is in the Eastern Depot.”

She then fixed her icy gaze on Xiao Hu. “Last chance, Xiao Hu. If you mess with Tianxing again, don’t blame me for getting rough. Tianxing, let’s go!”

With that, she grabbed the hand of Chu Tianxing who was practically catatonic from the mention of Embroidered Uniform Guard and Eastern Depot, and stormed out.

Xiao Hu watched Qin Ling’s graceful departing figure and roared with resentment, “Qin Ling, you can’t protect that kid forever!”

Then he yelled at Chu Tianxing, “Chu Tianxing, are you going to spend your life cowering behind a girl’s skirt? If you’re a man, sign up for the Martial Arts Tournament, and we’ll settle things in the ring!”

Li Xiaofei snickered. “Don’t waste your breath, Brother Hu. Forget internal energy; he can’t even succeed at the external training of muscles and bones. How could he possibly have the guts to face you in a man-to-man duel? He’s doomed to be a waste of space who hides behind a woman his entire life.”

Hearing this, Chu Tianxing’s feet paused slightly.

But Qin Ling pulled him forward forcefully, “Ignore them. They only have skills with their mouths.

Chu Tianxing frowned, glanced back at Xiao Hu and his group but didn’t say anything more and allowed Qin Ling to lead him out of the building.

After the two had left, Li Xiaofei spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “Brother Hu, that kid Chu Tianxing’s Divine Turtle-Retreating Skill is truly masterful. He can’t be provoked at all!”

Xiao Hu’s middle-aged face was dark. He snorted coldly, “It doesn’t matter. “The longer he acts like a turtle, the sooner Qin Ling will get sick of him.”

Once they were clear of the building, Chu Tianxing finally voiced the question that bugged him. “So, that Xiao Hu guy… exactly how old is he this year?”

Qin Ling gave him a strange look. “He’s the same age as me, half a year younger than you. He’s in our class, you know. I get that you hate him because he’s always trying to get a rise out of you, but isn’t pretending you don’t know his age a bit much?”

“What? He’s our age?”

Chu Tianxing was utterly floored.

Qin Ling was half a year younger than him, making her seventeen this year. That meant the hulk of a man with the face of a forty-year-old bouncer was also a seventeen-year-old kid.

And he was his classmate?

But in Chu Tianxing’s memories of his high school classmates, there was no such person as Xiao Hu at all.

“This world is really something else…”

Stunned as he was, that was all he could think of.

But what astonished him even more were the words Embroidered Uniform Guard and Eastern Depot.

Xiao Hu’s uncle was from the Embroidered Uniform Guard. Qin Ling’s Senior Brother was… a eunuch from the Eastern Depot?

What the actual fuck is this world?

The urge to just go home and Google everything until it made sense was overwhelming.

But then again, didn’t Xiao Hu say earlier that his family “has no money or power”?

Now that was odd.

Although Chu Tianxing was a flop of a writer for ten years, who couldn't afford rent on royalties alone, his family was actually rich.

His old man, Chu Yunhe, was a living legend.

After graduating from university, Chu Yunhe stayed on as a lecturer, but quit after a year just to pursue business.

With only three hundred yuan to his name, he headed south and started dabbling in small electronics. Within three years, he had achieved the then-exceptionally-rare status of a “ten-thousand-yuan household.”

(TL Note: Basically, a household with an average income of 10,000 yuan per month. This was considered to be very rich in the era it was first coined.)

He then struggled and worked hard for another five years and managed to increase his assets thirtyfold.

Although assets of three hundred thousand yuan might not be much in the twenty-first century, it was enough to be considered a local tycoon in that era.

But Chu Yunhe’s legendary life did not stop there.

After amassing his three hundred thousand, he failed in a bold and risky investment, losing everything and being left with less than ten thousand yuan to his name. But Chu Yunhe did not let this setback crush him; full of fighting spirit, he prepared to stage a comeback.

And that’s when he inherited half a billion US dollars from an uncle who’d bolted for America decades ago. From that moment on, his fortunes soared to the heavens, and he became utterly unstoppable.

Because he had spent so many years struggling, Chu Yunhe married quite late. It was only after he inherited his fortune and became a billionaire that he finally married, which meant that Chu Tianxing was born a second-generation heir to an immense fortune.

Of course, that was all in the past of another world.

But in this world…

Did the timeline shift screw up my family’s history too?

Filled with this doubt, Chu Tianxing followed Qin Ling back to his home. The reason he had to follow her was that he had already realized this world was likely not the same as his own, and his home in this world was probably not the mansion from his high school days.

The reality was just as he expected.

In this reality, Chu Tianxing’s home was a tiny, sixty-square-meter, two-bedroom walk-up in a run-down building.