Qiming Chapter 58

Chapter 58

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After his medical check-up, Xu Chengyue went straight to school. The semester had just started, and he had two classes in the afternoon, both basic mathematics courses that he could teach just by following the textbook. As he passed the lawn in front of the library, he saw Lu Yong reading in the sunlight with his daughter Ran Ran. Lu Yiran's hair had finally changed back to black, and she wore her blue and white school uniform, looking reluctant.

Professor Lu, however, was quite pleased as he explained the problems to her, a rare smile on his face.

He had lunch at the staff canteen. Even though he wasn't hungry since he had a late breakfast, he had developed a habit since childhood of eating at mealtimes. So, he forced himself to eat something. He sat alone on the faux-leather sofa in the lounge, filled his thermos cup with hot water, and closed his eyes, planning to rest for an hour or two.

However, he couldn't rest well with his eyes closed, his mind was in turmoil.

In the morning, his mind was somewhat disturbed because of Gu Yunfeng, but now it wasn't.

Two hours ago, he had taken his physical examination slip to get a brain CT scan and suddenly noticed that the place for the CT scan this time was different from before. This was clearly a more open environment, whereas the previous places he had been guided to for scans were unusually private.

He had a bad feeling as he walked into the CT room. He had just finished an MRI, which left his head buzzing. Halfway through the scan, the doctor stopped and looked at him with an indescribable expression, then called another young doctor over, pointing at the image on the computer screen.

Although separated by a glass, Xu Chengyue still heard the two whispering.

– Is there something in his head? The density here is significantly higher than in other areas.

The doctor's sympathetic look made his heart clench, and he almost couldn't breathe standing there.

"Have you had surgery before?" The young doctor, leaning over the table, carefully examined the images, his gaze fixed on a certain area, presumably where the thing was.

"I had a craniotomy last year."

"Oh... no wonder." The two doctors nodded in sudden realisation, discussing whether something was implanted in his head during the surgery, with their conversation spanning from The Matrix all the way to artificial intelligence. After their discussion, they looked at him with curiosity and asked what exactly was implanted.

"I don't know..." Xu Chengyue replied truthfully. How could he know?

After zoning out on the sofa for an hour, he finally opened his eyes and headed straight to the classroom.

Previously, when he took his medical report under his name for check-ups, he had never encountered such situations. The entire process was handled by just one or two doctors, who always remained expressionless and said as little as possible. He never even looked at the final medical report, always letting Ying Xizi study it and then report back to him.

At that time, he was used to it and never thought anything was amiss. Today's sudden change in attitude made him realise that all the treatments he received at Ruihe Hospital under the name Xu Chengyue might not have been real, perhaps all of it is untrue and there is something being concealed.

Tracing back to the beginning, it all started when he fell and had surgery here...

That extremely successful surgery, which pulled him back from the brink of death, was it really true? Was that accidental fall really as he remembered it?

If they were all true, was anything hidden from him?

The self-driving car that crashed into him on the road, the GPS tracker in his watch, everything made Xu Chengyue feel horrified. When the class bell rang, he found himself already standing at the podium.

Looking around, the classroom was nearly full, it seemed no one had skipped class. Seeing the students made him feel a bit better, at least these vibrant young people allowed him to feel the reality of the world.

If they were real, then so was he.

—————

He turned on the projector, didn't use the textbook, and began lecturing on measure theory in real functions, following the course materials. For most students, this was a dull and difficult course to understand, no matter how engagingly it was taught, it wasn't easy to understand.

Moreover, his lecture wasn't engaging, he almost recited the content verbatim from his memory, solved a few problems, and assigned homework. Based on his past experience, before each class, he would collect the homework assigned the previous week. Typically, about half of the students had copied the answers, a quarter had scribbled something, and the remaining quarter had diligently done the work themselves. Homework contributed to twenty percent of the final grade, so most students submitted it, and he generally gave full marks regardless of its accuracy.

He remembered he wasn't so lucky during his time. His mentor was Lu Yong, who was outwardly gentle but very strict in reality. At least in Lu Yong's classes, he had to strive for perfection without making any mistakes. Many years had passed since then, and those memories had become blurry. He had become an associate professor, but mentally, he still regarded Lu Yong as his mentor, someone he respected and considered infallible.

Perhaps because the summer vacation had just ended, the students weren't very enthusiastic. After class, only one girl with a ponytail came over, holding her homework, seemingly to ask a question.

Although it was the first class of the new semester, he remembered most of the students' names, including this girl named Ji Yun. She belonged to that rare quarter, doing her homework diligently and always sitting in the first three rows in class.

"Professor Xu, where did I go wrong on this problem?" she asked, pointing to a problem in the homework and then showing Xu Chengyue her solution.

"Proving the uniform convergence of a positive linear operator? Use the three theorems on page ninety-seven and the basic definition on page ninety-five." He paused for a moment, then said to her, "Understand the basic definition, and then apply these three theorems. How to apply them is something you need to figure out yourself."

"Professor Xu, I've noticed you never prepare for your lectures." She rolled up her notebook, looking at him with wide eyes. "Did you memorise everything?"

"Not really." Xu Chengyue was slightly taken aback. He didn't quite understand what Ji Yun meant. To him, preparing for a lecture had nothing to do with memory.

"We've noticed that the content of your lectures matches the book exactly, but you don't have the book with you and the slides are very brief, how do you remember everything so clearly?"

"Maybe... I've read it too many times." He blurted out. But the next second, he realised he had only read the book two or three times.

"That's impossible, Professor Xu, you haven't been teaching for very long. Are you naturally able to remember everything?"

"Of course not." He smiled but didn't continue the conversation. At that moment, he realised something, over the past year, his memory had indeed improved to an extraordinary level. Although he didn't remember many unimportant things, he retained useful and important information, like every frame and every person in surveillance footage, vividly in his mind.

It was as if he had a database recording all his memories, accepting everything as it came.

He didn't quite remember what the girl said afterwards or what he replied. When he came to his senses, he found himself sitting in the empty classroom. The lights were still on, the projector was off, and the noise from outside the window contrasted sharply with the extreme silence within.

Class had already ended.

Suddenly, he felt overwhelmingly distressed, dejected, and fearful. All these uneasy emotions surged within him, bringing a sense of emptiness and hunger. This anxiety made him crave food, long for conversation, and want to do things he normally wouldn't.

So, he immediately called Gu Yunfeng. He desperately wanted to hear the dialling tone, to hear Gu Yunfeng's voice right away, to see him, and to embrace him.

To confirm the reality of the world he saw.

Within five seconds, he heard the gentle voice on the other end.

"You're done with class?"

"Mhmm." He sat on the classroom chair, the room empty but still lowering his voice. "Let's go out for dinner tonight, just the two of us."

"Sure. What do you want to eat? What time?" There was a burst of background noise on the other end, indicating he was still at the hospital.

"Right now, it's already five. You decide what to eat, something popular."

"Popular? How about barbecue?"

He didn't hesitate and agreed, asking Gu Yunfeng to find a place and send him the address.

Previously, he would have shaken his head and rejected junk food. But when Gu Yunfeng mentioned barbecue, those things he had once crudely categorised as good or bad gave him a sense of familiarity that he had never experienced before.

—————

Gu Yunfeng found a barbecue restaurant on an old street near the hospital. The place was quite large, with an outdoor garden decorated with a string of colourful lights. In the evening, it was filled with smoke and fire. Initially, he considered a bar, but Xu Chengyue wanted food, not drinks, so barbecue it was.

He sat on a wooden chair by the street, and from afar, he saw Xu Chengyue walking leisurely through the smoky air, not a trace of vulgarity on him. He wore a dark blue shirt, his expression indifferent and his whole being looking very cool, making him especially conspicuous in this bustling street.

"What do you want to eat? I just ordered everything from the menu except seafood." He watched as Xu Chengyue pulled out the chair beside him and asked the owner for a few bottles of beer, lining them up neatly in front of him.

"Drinking?" Just as he said that, he remembered something and quickly corrected himself, "Ying Xizi previously said you can't drink... I forgot"

"She also said I must go to bed by ten o'clock," he replied with a self-deprecating smile. Ever since he moved in with Gu Yunfeng, all his previous habits had changed.

As it turned out, living a less regular life was also living quite well.

"It's okay, I'll drink a little." Xu Chengyue picked up a bottle, pulled the tab, and poured it into a glass in front of him. There were people racing on the road next to them, one car after another roaring past, triggering car alarms one after another. A woman was yelling at a man, and a child was crying loudly.

It was noisy and chaotic, but he liked it.

The owner brought over a large plate of skewers, beef, lamb, lamb kidneys, along with eggplant and leeks. They were neatly arranged in three rows of five columns on the iron tray. The first row was all meat, the second row all vegetables, and the third row, a few solitary sauries.

"Boss, bring a bowl of crayfish," Gu Yunfeng said, using his chopsticks to poke at the saury and squeezing lemon juice all over them. Perhaps feeling the fish looked too lonely, he rearranged them so two were head-to-head.

What a boring quirk... Watching Gu Yunfeng fuss over the fish, he thought it was pointless. They were just going to be eaten anyway.

But, it looked cute when he did it.

Mhmm, cute.

Watching him concentrate on rearranging the fish, Xu Chengyue's mouth curled up involuntarily.

"Aren't you drinking?" he pointed to the barley tea in Gu Yunfeng's glass.

"I have to drive, I ordered it for you."

"Oh." He hummed a response with a hint of disappointment, quietly finishing the remaining half glass.

After thinking for a moment, he still felt dissatisfied, so he reached over, took Gu Yunfeng's glass, and poured the tea into the nearby flower bed, then quickly opened a bottle of alcohol, holding it vertically to pour a small half-glass.

"I can't drink alone." He smiled, meeting Gu Yunfeng's shocked expression. "We'll call a driver after we finish."

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: August 5, 2024 by Angel

Edited: October 23, 2024 by Angel