Ze Tian Ji

Chapter 158 – The Solitary Star Heaven's Curse1

Translated by: Hypersheep325

Edited by: Michyrr

The Education Palace was the Pope's Green Leaf World. This world should also have had its own day and night, yet there was no night in the Grand Examination. The examinees could only rely on their own senses to guess at what time it was in the real world. They had no idea that it was already late night in the outside world, but exhaustion and drowsiness still arrived as scheduled.

Before the fifth round of matches commenced, the tiebreaker matches were held. Besides Tianhai Shengxue and those few examinees that were too severely injured to continue fighting, the remaining examinees from thirty-three to sixty-four had to put forth one final effort to decide their ultimate rankings in the Grand Examination. However, before these tiebreaker matches, there was a rest period.




The Li Palace priests distributed food, water, and pills amongst the examinees. With Luoluo's arrangements, the Orthodox Academy naturally had a more sumptuous treatment. The four people sat at the forest's edge, engaging in whispered discussion about the matches to come as they ate. There was nothing much to say about Tang Thirty-Six's or Xuanyuan Po's tiebreaker matches, so they were primarily a.n.a.lyzing Chen Changsheng's potential opponents.

Gou Hanshi's performance had been calm and smooth, giving him a formidable aura of invincibility. Excluding him, the wolf youth Zhexiu was undoubtedly the most dangerous opponent. Although he had engaged in consecutive fierce battles with Guan Feibai and Qi Jian which taxed his resources and inflicted upon him significant injuries, he was still not someone to be looked down on.

If Chen Changsheng wanted to take first rank of the first banner in the Grand Examination, these two people were the two loftiest peaks that he needed to overcome.

After thinking of this, Tang Thirty-Six suddenly lost interest in the matter, as he thought it utterly impossible for Chen Changsheng to defeat both of these people.

He looked towards the stream bank and suddenly said, "Don't you think that the four people from Mount Li and we four are very similar?"

The four people from the Mount Li Sword Sect were eating and chatting by the stream, their mood seemingly quite decent.

Far away from the rest of the crowd, Zhexiu was also eating.

He ate quietly and slowly, his mood very serious, as if the ordinary food provided by the Li Palace was the tastiest delicacy in the world.

Tang Thirty-Six looked over and teased, "I thought that this wolf cub didn't know how to eat food."

Puzzled, Xuanyuan Po said, "How could he not know how to eat food?"

Tang Thirty-Six replied, "I thought that he only ate ice, gnawed on jerky, or drank blood."

Chen Changsheng noted, "That's a monster you're describing."

Tang Thirty-Six very seriously answered, "And none of you think that he's a monster?"

Xuanyuan Po pondered this question, then shook his head. "I think he's okay."

Tang Thirty-Six couldn't be bothered with him. He turned his head and asked, "Chen Changsheng, you probably can't beat him, right?"

Chen Changsheng thought this over, then answered, "Perhaps."

Tang Thirty-Six gazed at the distant Zhexiu and suddenly said, "I suddenly have an urge."

Chen Changsheng curiously asked, "What sort of urge?"

Tang Thirty-Six replied, "An urge to be friends with this wolf cub."

Chen Changsheng stared at him for a very long time before finally confirming that Tang Thirty-Six was serious. Somewhat shocked, he considered this prospect for a while, then said, "Does he look like someone who needs friends to you?"

Right before the Grand Examination began, a ma.s.sive crowd had gathered outside the Li Palace, but Zhexiu alone looked at the rising sun. Upon entering the Hall of Shining Words, he immediately left the literary test's examination grounds and walked alone through the sea of trees, charged across the green river, and stood in the pavilion on the mountain. With his back to all the examinees, his appearance was so lonely that it seemed like he was even bereft of a mother. Would this sort of person need friends?

"Do none of you feel that he's very lonely?" Tang Thirty-Six asked the rest of them.

He described him as lonely, not solitary or lonesome, just a forlorn 'lonely', making it seem all the lonelier1. 

Chen Changsheng was somewhat startled, then replied, "Anyone can see it, so I don't believe that he needs friends."

Tang Thirty-Six wagged his finger. "I hold a completely different view. I think that what a lonely person like him needs the most is friends."

Xuanyuan Po curiously asked, "You want to be friends with Zhexiu?"

"Is that not okay?" Tang Thirty-Six asked back.

Chen Changsheng's gaze fell on the outer edge of the crowd, at the wolf youth who was silently eating with his head lowered. After a few moments of silence, he said, "I thought you didn't like his sort of person."

Tang Thirty-Six followed his gaze to Zhexiu, then replied, "Yes, feigning loneliness and pretending to be in despair is something I often did…and all of you know that I hated it when I acted that way, so I naturally wouldn't like his sort of person."

Chen Changsheng drew back his gaze and asked him, "But you still insist on being friends with him?"

Tang Thirty-Six answered, "If he became our friend, would he still have the nerve to fight too fiercely against you or Princess Luoluo?"

Xuanyuan Po couldn't help but sigh, "The elders of the tribe were correct. Humans…are truly all bad people."

"It's not all humans," Chen Changsheng corrected. "Just one human called Tang Tang."

Tang Thirty-Six was too lazy to argue with him. He stood up, patted the gra.s.s off his body, and declared, "There's never anything wrong with trying, and it's not like he can kill me in front of so many people."

Luoluo had not spoken this entire time, but now she softly said, "Teacher is not wrong. Lonely people don't necessarily need friends. At least…Wofu Zhexiu is not that sort of person."

Chen Changsheng glanced at her, but said nothing.

Tang Thirty-Six took half of a roasted chicken that hadn't been eaten much and messily wrapped it in two sheets of oil paper, then walked towards the edge of the crowd.

The conversation between the people of the Orthodox Academy had not attracted anyone's notice, but Tang Thirty-Six's sudden departure from the forest's edge and, based on his direction, his most likely destination being Wofu Zhexiu instantly attracted everyone's gazes. The examinees were all shocked, mystified as to what he intended, and the girls of the Thirteen Divisions of Radiant Green and Holy Maiden Peak revealed expressions of concern.

To these girls, no matter how harshly Tang Thirty-Six spoke, how arrogant his actions were, he was always a n.o.ble young master who floated above the mundane world. And Zhexiu, no matter how quiet, how much he had achieved for the humans and demi-humans, was always a cold-blooded monster with hands drenched in blood. Upon seeing Tang Thirty-Six walk towards Zhexiu, they couldn't help but be concerned.

This world obsessed with external appearances was truly not very fair.

The four people of the Mount Li Sword Sect eating and chatting by the stream were also rather startled. Guan Feibai looked at the expression on Tang Thirty-Six's face and asked in surprise, "Just what crazy thing is this guy going to do next?"

In the Ivy Festival, Tang Thirty-Six had cursed Mount Li too fiercely, leaving no good impressions on Guan Feibai. Qi Jian gazed at the wolf youth sitting apart from the crowd. His nostrils flared and his breathing became rough, apparently out of anger. Gou Hanshi was somewhat confused, thinking to himself, just what happened between Junior Brother and Zhexiu that's made him so angry?

The stone plaza in front of the Hall of Washing Away Dust was vast, with both a forest and a gurgling stream, but the place where Zhexiu sat had nothing at all, only a smooth stone.

Tang Thirty-Six walked up to this stone, saw Zhexiu's strange posture as he kneeled, or squatted, on the ground, and suddenly felt a little hesitation.

Zhexiu ignored him and silently continued to eat.

Tang Thirty-Six silently looked at him, and after some time, suddenly said, "If someone else were to notice the particulars of how you ate, they would definitely think you to be very terrifying."

Zhexiu drank some fruit juice provided by the Li Palace, then raised his head to look at Tang Thirty-Six.

Tang Thirty-Six was the first person since the start of the Grand Examination to voluntarily start a conversation with him.

Tang Thirty-Six looked at him and continued, "You eat very slowly and without any sort of style, more like a young lady in her chambers. You chew very seriously, chewing on rice twelve times, but chewing on beef thirty times…this isn't interesting, only proof you're too self-disciplined. In other words, you treat yourself very harshly."

Zhexiu quietly looked at him, his eyes bearing no emotion, but he also did not lower his head back down to continue eating and thus bring an end to this one-sided conversation.

"Perhaps it's because food is too scarce on the snowy plains, or perhaps it's because there's a lack of doctors or medicine, and certainly no female priests of the Thirteen Divisions of Radiant Green, to casually treat your wounds, making your life very hard. You cherish all the food that you can get, but you never eat or drink too much so as to avoid any problems with your body. In an awful place like that, perhaps even an ordinary stomachache can make living worse than death."

Tang Thirty-Six continued, "But I don't feel a person like you is very frightening, because I've met a person a lot like you. That guy pays attention to every detail in his life, so I often think that people like the two of you, people who are afraid of death, should really get to know each other."

He was naturally referring to Chen Changsheng.

Zhexiu followed Tang Thirty-Six's finger to the forest's edge. After a few moments of silence, he lowered his head and continued, no longer paying him any attention.

Tang Thirty-Six placed the wrapped food in front of Zhexiu and opened it, asking, "Do you need friends?"

In the oil paper was half a roast chicken, and the one chicken leg had already been given to Luoluo by Chen Changsheng, leaving it somewhat incomplete. Moreover, it had been sitting around for a while and had gone rather cold. The oil had congealed on the surface of the skin, so it didn't look very good. The crucial problem was that roast chicken was truly not a very healthy food.

Yet for some reason, when Zhexiu saw the roast chicken, he unexpectedly spoke.

Ever since the start of the Grand Examination, he had only spoken two sentences, and the vast majority of the examinees had not heard them, so few knew just what his voice sounded like. It was only now that Tang Thirty-Six discovered that Zhexiu's voice was not hoa.r.s.e or grating, and was not similar at all to the legendary wolf howl.

Zhexiu's voice was very clear and cold, and he spoke very slowly, the s.p.a.ce between each word rather long. He was like a child that had just learned to speak or a mute that had suddenly regained the power of speech.

He impa.s.sively said to Tang Thirty-Six in the slowest of voices, "My life offended the solitary star Heaven's Curse, dooming me to be lonely for my entire life, so I have no friends."

Countless stars twinkled in the sky above, and perhaps there was a star far apart from the sea of stars in a very inconspicuous corner, lonely to the extreme.

Perhaps this star truly was called Heaven's Curse.

Perhaps the Fated Star that Zhexiu lit truly was the solitary star Heaven's Curse.

But regardless of whether this was real or not, his cold tone expressed loud and clear that he did not need friends, that he wanted to repel everyone to one thousand li away from him.

A normal person might have retreated in the face of these difficulties.

But Tang Tang was not a normal person. He was a chatterer.

After he got to know Chen Changsheng, especially after he formally entered the Orthodox Academy, this hidden trait of his was fully unleashed.

"To have no friends does not mean that one does not need friends. What do you think of me?"

He said sincerely to Zhexiu.

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1. '天煞孤星' refers to a specific star, but it is also used to refer to a very unlucky person who also spreads misfortune to others.↩
2. In Chinese, Tang Thirty-Six uses the word '孤' which is one character, in contrast to 孤单 and 孤独, which also mean 'lonely', but consist of two characters.↩