Chapter 119: Hand in Hand

After turning another page, Zhang Ning suddenly caught sight of someone standing very close to him from the corner of his eye. He was so startled that he nearly leapt into the air. The book slipped from his hands and fell all alone to the floor.

Once he recovered, Zhang Ning was overcome with despair. Good heavens! This was a book written by his Master, and he had actually dropped it on the floor right in front of him?

Do not be angry. Please do not be angry, Master!

Chu Hanyu had no intention of blaming him. He bent down, picked up the book, and casually flipped through it. When he saw the sparse notes, he paused.

“Cannot understand it?”

Zhang Ning froze, then nodded in even greater despair.

He could tell even that? ... It was over. He was going to be despised by his Master!

But Zhang Ning had guessed wrong again. Chu Hanyu still did not rebuke him. Instead, he asked calmly, “What types of objects can be placed at the five formation cores of this array?”

Zhang Ning took a closer look and saw that Chu Hanyu was referring to a Five-Element Formation on the first page of The Fundamentals of Formations.

I know this one!

Feeling somewhat pleased with himself, Zhang Ning answered Chu Hanyu’s question.

Yet his Master remained impassive, showing no intention of praising him. He merely nodded and said, “Then you also know about the generation, overcoming, control, restoration, overacting, and insulting cycles of the five elements?”

Zhang Ning was immediately stumped.

This Five-Element Formation was actually an extremely simple array. As its name suggested, it used objects bearing five different attributes to suppress the five formation cores. Once formed, the array could produce countless different effects.

Although a master could add just a few strokes and produce effects entirely different from those of an ordinary practitioner—perhaps even worlds apart—it was still one of the most commonly used formations among cultivators and could certainly be considered basic.

Yet even for such a basic formation, Zhang Ning had needed to listen to part of the afternoon’s lesson before he could answer Chu Hanyu’s first question. That instructor had not dared show off his meager knowledge of formations in front of Chu Hanyu’s personal disciple, so he had only explained some of the fundamentals. That was how Zhang Ning had learned what kinds of objects usually corresponded to the five elemental attributes in the Azure Realm.

Chu Hanyu’s second question, however, concerned something even more basic—something so basic that the instructor himself had been too embarrassed to bring it up merely to fill time. It instantly exposed the truth behind Zhang Ning’s belief that he understood the rudiments of formations: in reality, all he had built was a castle in the air.

Zhang Ning refused to give up. After thinking hard for a while, he answered with a miserable expression, “I don’t know...”

Seeing him like that, Chu Hanyu actually gave a soft laugh.

“All right. It seems I really do have to start from the beginning.”

An hour later, Zhang Ning was reciting from a detailed introductory text with the same solemn determination he had once brought to preparing for the national college entrance examination. The book was thick enough to knock him unconscious with his current small frame. Beside him, Chu Hanyu lounged on a soft couch, propping up his head and listening to Zhang Ning’s recitation with his eyes closed, looking every inch the great master.

For a moment, Zhang Ning’s heart filled with complicated emotions. He had never imagined that even in another world, he would have to repeat the experience of being called upon by a teacher to recite from memory. Truly... one never knew what life had in store.

Even so, Zhang Ning did not find the task particularly tiring. It was only beginning to grow dark, after all, and compared with his former life of studying until midnight every day, this was nothing.

Just as he was thinking this, Chu Hanyu spoke from across the room without opening his eyes.

“Why have you slowed down?”

Zhang Ning’s face reddened, but he still told the truth. “There are some characters I still cannot recognize.”

At that, Chu Hanyu stared directly at him. He even blinked a few times, as though he could not quite process what he had heard. For a time, he seemed utterly unable to understand how such a thing could be possible.

Seeing this, Zhang Ning lowered his voice even further.

“Master... it is not that I have been lazy. There have simply been too many miscellaneous matters since I entered the sect. Besides...” Zhang Ning misunderstood Chu Hanyu’s reaction and began explaining himself of his own accord. “I have met all of my senior brothers, and I spent the most time with the Third Senior Brother. I do not know why, but he seems to think that you took me as your disciple quite some time ago.”

As he spoke, Zhang Ning secretly raised his eyes to peek at Chu Hanyu’s expression, then hurriedly lowered his head again.

“He never asked in detail, and I certainly was not about to confess it myself. After all... it would have been rather embarrassing if my senior brothers found out that I still could not recognize all the written characters. Everyone speaks Chinese here, and I have subordinates I can rely on, so I managed not to give myself away.”

As he spoke, Zhang Ning could not help despising himself. His senior brothers more or less knew that he had come from Water-Blue Star and was unfamiliar with some matters in the Azure Realm, but none of them had imagined that he was, in fact, completely ignorant of everything around him. Nor had they realized that he had been abducted by Chu Hanyu less than a day after arriving in the Azure Realm. Everyone seemed to have invented an entirely different story in their heads.

As far as Zhang Ning knew, quite a few people in the Great Freedom Heavenly Demon Sect believed that he was a disciple secretly cultivated by the Myriad Phenomena Demon Venerable from childhood. Some even indulged in conspiracy theories, claiming that Chu Hanyu had personally raised Zhang Ning as a whetstone because his other disciples were all grown. As for whom the blade was meant to be sharpened against, that was a matter of personal interpretation.

With everyone secretly regarding him as such an extraordinary figure, Zhang Ning had been too embarrassed to admit that he was still practically half-illiterate. But the consequence of concealing the truth for so long was that, in the end, he had made a spectacular fool of himself.

It was over, was it not? He had exposed this problem in front of the very Master before whom he most wanted to perform well! Zhang Ning even felt a faint urge to simply faint and escape reality.

Because of his shame, Zhang Ning kept his head lowered the entire time and therefore failed to notice the dramatic change in Chu Hanyu’s eyes.

He felt only endless torment, finally understanding why people had coined the phrase “a day feels like a year.” After suffering through what seemed an eternity, he finally heard Chu Hanyu’s familiar, calm, low voice.

“Which characters do you not recognize?”

Half an hour later, Zhang Ning sat happily on Chu Hanyu’s lap, watching as Chu Hanyu wrote the characters out by hand one after another. He bit down hard on his lower lip, afraid that he might laugh aloud.

The only people who had ever taught Zhang Ning to read by guiding his hand were his own parents. He had never imagined that he would have the good fortune to experience it once more.

It was as though Heaven had returned to Zhang Ning everything it had once taken from him—and returned it a hundred, a thousand times over. He would never have dared dream of such a scene.

To Zhang Ning, it meant something far beyond words.

Unfortunately, happiness was always brief. Before long, he heard Chu Hanyu say, “That is enough for today. Go to sleep.”

And with that, the day’s lesson came to an end.

Zhang Ning screamed inwardly, Do not stop me! I can still study! I do not want to sleep!

Had the students of Water-Blue Star known what Zhang Ning was thinking at that moment, eight out of ten would have beaten him to a pulp.

Of course, regardless of what he thought inside, Zhang Ning still bowed respectfully and withdrew. Yet before returning to his room to sleep, he could not resist turning back. Summoning nearly half the courage he had ever possessed, he said softly, “Master, this is the day I have received the most since coming to the Azure Realm!”