AVRL 35

Qingshan Temple was an ancient temple with nearly a hundred years of history. In the past, before Qingfeng Mountain had been developed, it had been almost half-abandoned. The vermilion roofs and turquoise tiles one could see now had all been repaired and rebuilt by later generations on the original foundation.

The small courtyard where the grandmaster now lived had also been built later. Its internal layout still retained the architectural style of an ancient temple. The basic side rooms had no so-called single rooms, and the beds were not wooden plank beds either, but rather a continuous heated platform similar to the northern Chinese kang.

Ever since the grandmaster had entered the temple for quiet cultivation, the side room next to the tea room had belonged to Meng Chi and Yang Zile. Every year they would come here to stay for a period of time—sometimes to go to the countryside to collect tea, sometimes purely to visit the grandmaster.

Meng Chi had entered the school and learned the craft under Yang Zhengfeng, but the grandmaster had also given him no small amount of guidance. The grandmaster’s temperament belonged to the type that grew more lively the older he got. Even when teaching, he always wore a smiling face and would occasionally crack a few jokes—completely the opposite of Yang Zhengfeng’s stern and rigid style. Therefore Meng Chi found it easier to relax in front of him, and could occasionally be mischievous or cause a little trouble like a child, respecting and loving him without fear.

Before coming, Meng Chi had called the grandmaster, so the bedding had already been washed and sunned. When they entered the temple and put down their luggage, Meng Chi had conscientiously laid out his own bedding. Now that there was an extra Yu Tingzhi, Meng Chi gave his own bedding to him and took out Yang Zile’s bedding from the cabinet to lay out for himself.

“Are you sure it’s really okay that you don’t go down the mountain? Don’t you have class tomorrow?” Meng Chi asked while keeping busy.

“Tomorrow is a rest day; the students are all on holiday.” Yu Tingzhi didn’t just stand there idly either. He took out a quilt cover and began stuffing the cotton quilt into it, then casually asked, “Do you really want me to leave?”

“It’s not that I mean that. I’m just afraid you might not be used to staying in the temple.” Meng Chi glanced at him, found his movements too slow, so he took the quilt cover from his hands and slipped it on in just a few moves.

“I won’t. Since you can stay, then I can too,” Yu Tingzhi said.

Meng Chi laughed once and said nothing more.

In modern society, technology was advanced. Even up on the mountain, air conditioning, water heaters, mosquito repellent and the like were all available. Moreover, Qingshan Temple had no rules forbidding meat or fish, so the conditions weren’t bad—otherwise so many people wouldn’t come here to cultivate. Meng Chi’s words were just said casually.

After dinner, Meng Chi and Yu Tingzhi kept the grandmaster company watching the evening news before returning to the room to sleep.

Yu Tingzhi had no luggage, so Meng Chi took out some of his own change of clothes for him. Fortunately, Meng Chi’s travel habit was to always keep disposable underwear on hand, which made things quite convenient.

While Meng Chi went to wash up, Yu Tingzhi received a call from his maternal grandfather asking when he would come back, and not to miss Old Madam Song’s seventieth birthday. Yu Tingzhi roughly calculated the time and said he would return in a few days and wouldn’t miss it.

After chatting a bit more about family matters, his grandfather told Yu Tingzhi to call Yu Shu and ask whether she would come back. Yu Tingzhi agreed, reminded his grandfather to rest early, and hung up. After pondering for a moment, he flipped open his contacts and dialed an international call.

When Meng Chi finished washing up and came back, he happened to see him holding his phone, sitting on the edge of the bed, gazing distractedly at the lights outside the window. Faintly one could hear the soft “duh” tone. Meng Chi didn’t speak. Only after the call automatically hung up because it wasn’t answered did he ask, “It’s so late—who are you calling?”

Yu Tingzhi: “My mom. Next week Grandma Song is celebrating her birthday. I’m asking if she’s coming back.”

Meng Chi nodded, then asked again, “Song Min’s grandmother?”

“Yes,” Yu Tingzhi said. “My maternal grandmother passed away early. My mom and Grandma Song are very close.”

Meng Chi had heard Song Min mention it and had guessed that the Yu and Song families’ relationship should be quite good. Now hearing Yu Tingzhi put it this way, it seemed the relationship was more than ordinarily good—they could almost be counted as half relatives.

After one unsuccessful call, Yu Tingzhi didn’t try a second time. Meng Chi then found the hair dryer and dried his own hair.

When he finished drying, he turned around and saw Yu Tingzhi sitting on the bed with his arms crossed, head tilted as he looked at the strangely shaped graffiti on the white wall.

Meng Chi’s pajamas were a rice-white pure cotton long-sleeved T-shirt paired with matching loose long pants. Yu Tingzhi was taller than him, so the pant legs were a bit short. Sitting like this, a section of fair calf and a sharply defined ankle were exposed.

Just like those hands with distinct knuckles, the top of Yu Tingzhi’s foot also had clear bone lines—actually quite nice-looking.

Perhaps because he had never seen him wear this kind of home clothes before, at this moment Yu Tingzhi’s temperament was gentle and warm, becoming soft and approachable. The warm orange light falling on him actually gave off a few traces of cozy warmth.

Meng Chi turned off the hair dryer and withdrew his gaze. Just as he walked to the bedside, Yu Tingzhi turned his head and asked, “Did you draw this?”

“How did you know?” Meng Chi blurted out, glancing at the extremely abstract graffiti on the wall and feeling somehow a bit embarrassed.

Yu Tingzhi smiled and stretched out a finger to point below the largest color block: “You signed it.”

Meng Chi leaned closer for a look. Under that bird-that-wasn’t-a-bird, chicken-that-wasn’t-a-chicken graffiti, there really were the two characters “Meng Chi” written crookedly. Although the characters were also written like a dog’s scratch, one look told that they weren’t written by the already adult Meng Chi of those days—probably a masterpiece by little Yang Zile.

“These characters weren’t written by me.”

“It’s drawn quite interestingly,” Yu Tingzhi said, looking at that masterpiece with appreciation.

“Thank you very much,” Meng Chi climbed onto the bed, burrowed into his own quilt, without the slightest pleasure at being praised. “If I hadn’t seen you paint before, I might have taken it seriously.”

He and Yu Tingzhi shared one bed platform, yet each covered himself with a separate quilt in different “nests,” separated by about half a meter in the middle. Meng Chi didn’t hurry to lie down; instead he sat leaning against the wall replying to WeChat messages.

“When did you draw this?” Yu Tingzhi asked.

Meng Chi tapped on his phone while thinking: “About five or six years ago. Yang Zile had just turned ten then, I think. He was especially annoying, wouldn’t sleep properly at night, so I drew this thing to scare him and make him behave.”

“This could scare him?” Yu Tingzhi asked, puzzled.

Meng Chi turned his head to glance at Yu Tingzhi, pondered for two seconds, then suddenly turned off the bedside reading lamp.

Just as Yu Tingzhi was feeling puzzled, he turned on his phone’s flashlight. Immediately a black shadow resembling a bird was projected onto the wall, occupying a full half of it.

“Isn’t this pretty scary?” Meng Chi rested both hands in front of the phone, thumbs crossed to form a little bird shape, imitating the flapping of a bird’s wings.

“Yang Zile is a smart kid. Doing it like this normally wouldn’t scare him. I had to wait until he was half-asleep and suddenly do this, then play a couple of monster roars on my phone, and tell him that if he didn’t go to bed early the next night, this monster would come alive and eat him.”

In the darkness Meng Chi’s face became blurred; only a point of light was reflected in his pupils. Yu Tingzhi watched and imagined in his mind the way Meng Chi, driven to distraction by a child, had cooked up mischievous ideas to tease someone—and found him even more adorable.

“Mm, scary,” he nodded and said.

His tone was flat, sounding somewhat perfunctory. Meng Chi suddenly felt that what he was doing was rather silly, so he withdrew his hands, turned on the light while clicking his tongue: “Thanks for your hard work cooperating with my little performance.”

Yu Tingzhi laughed: “Should I have made a couple of sounds to make the acting more vivid?”

“Don’t you dare. This room isn’t soundproof. Be careful the grandmaster jumps over and beats you,” Meng Chi said, continuing to chat business with a client.

Yu Tingzhi had never been a gossip. If the other party didn’t bring it up, he wouldn’t take the initiative to learn about someone else’s past. But now, just seeing a little something related to Meng Chi’s past made him want to know the full picture—want to know how those pasts he had never seen had shaped Meng Chi into the person he was today.

Yu Tingzhi’s gaze was very light, yet in a silent night with only a single man and a single man, it also felt very heavy. It was hard for Meng Chi not to notice, and hard not to care. Even when a client was haggling over the price with him, he couldn’t be bothered to insist and casually agreed before exiting WeChat and lying down into the quilt.

“It’s getting late. Let’s sleep.”

Yu Tingzhi nodded and lay down as well.

The light went out. The two wished each other good night and both closed their eyes.

All was silent except for the whooshing sound of the air conditioner’s warm air, accompanied by the pattering of rain outside the window. This light white noise was actually very helpful for sleep. Meng Chi had gotten up early to begin with, and before long sleepiness began to brew.

Just then the phone suddenly vibrated once. His OCD kicked in. Meng Chi turned on his side, fumbled for the phone, and lifted his eyelids.

It was a message from Chen Yan—a photo, plus a few inexplicable questions.

【Confess and be treated leniently; resist and be treated severely】

【Speak—what’s going on with this?】

Meng Chi opened the photo and discovered that the people in it were none other than himself and Yu Tingzhi. It was from that day by Xitang Lake, when he and Yu Tingzhi had been walking side by side.

The timing of the candid shot was exactly the instant the two of them had looked at each other and smiled. The surrounding scenery was blurred; only their smiles were clear, somehow adding a few degrees of ambiguity.

Meng Chi: 【Where did you get this photo?】

Chen Yan: 【Saw it on Moments】

Meng Chi immediately understood—most likely some student had casually taken a photo that day and posted it on Moments.

【Is where the photo came from the point? Shouldn’t the point be what exactly is going on between you and Teacher Yu】

Meng Chi clicked his tongue inwardly and replied: 【Nothing going on. Just ran into each other by chance】

【I believe your ghost】

【Last time I already felt you two had something going on】

【Still hiding it from me now? Are we still brothers or not?】

Meng Chi: “…”

Before he had even finished typing a line, Chen Yan sent another voice message. Meng Chi tapped to convert it to text. From the clumsy converted text he could tell that Chen Yan was saying that during the hotpot meal that day, Meng Chi’s state had been off.

【When I said Song Min wasn’t coming, your eyebrows didn’t even twitch. The tone when you said you’d been rejected—that was completely calm and unruffled, not the least bit like someone who’d been dumped. On the contrary, saying you and Teacher Yu weren’t familiar—anyone could hear that was a lie.】

Meng Chi had just finished reading when another white message bubble popped up below. Chen Yan delivered a firm conclusion.

===Chapter 32===

【You two slept together】

Meng Chi: “…”

Fine. No need to say anything more. That sharp-eyed Chen Yan had already filled in the entire picture in his head.

【No wonder he told you to eat less spicy food. You really became the bottom for him】

【Awesome】

【So Teacher Yu likes your type, huh. No wonder】

【Wild bottom pairs with cold top】

【Works too】

One white bubble after another kept popping up, filling the entire screen. Meng Chi’s head ached—what the hell was all this?

He immediately typed a reply: 【Stop!】

Chen Yan replied with a little “shut up” emoji, but didn’t quiet down for even half a minute before starting again.

【If you slept together then you slept together. What’s there to hide? Being the bottom isn’t shameful. As long as it feels good, that’s all that matters】

Meng Chi hadn’t told Chen Yan that he didn’t actually feel that being the bottom was shameful. He just felt that the whole thing had been an accident, and he wouldn’t develop any friends-with-benefits kind of relationship with Yu Tingzhi. The two of them would have even less opportunity to interact in the future, so there was completely no need to bring it up.

Now that Chen Yan had exposed it, he didn’t feel embarrassed either. He just felt that this kid Chen Yan was a bit too sharp—just from Yu Tingzhi’s one sentence “eat less spicy” he had almost guessed the whole picture of the matter.

Meng Chi: 【I never said being the bottom was shameful】

Chen Yan replied with a little dog laughing slyly emoji.

【Come on, tell me—how did it feel sleeping with a walking wet dream?】

Meng Chi couldn’t be bothered to deal with him and replied with a 【get lost】 emoji.

【Fine】

【Don’t say it then, whatever】

【This emperor is going to bed. Wild bottom, withdraw】

Meng Chi rolled his eyes, found a middle-finger emoji and sent it back.

He turned off the phone and closed his eyes again. But after Chen Yan’s interruption, the bit of sleepiness that had just been brewing had completely vanished.

The presence of the wind and rain seemed to weaken. All Meng Chi could hear in his ears was Yu Tingzhi’s steady breathing.

In the darkness one could only see an outline of Yu Tingzhi. He was lying flat; the quilt over his chest rose and fell slightly with his breathing. From the looks of it he seemed already fast asleep.

Meng Chi watched quietly, and Chen Yan’s last question popped into his mind again.

Honestly speaking, that night’s sex—Meng Chi remembered it vividly; he couldn’t forget it even if he wanted to. Not only because of whether it felt good or not, but also because of the person Yu Tingzhi was.

Someone completely different from everyone Meng Chi had ever met.

He was like an art album. On the cover were painted lofty mountains and flowing waters, poetic and picturesque scenes. Meng Chi looked at it and felt he was elegant and transcendent. Then, carrying an appreciative eye for art, he opened it—only to discover that inside were wild, unrestrained erotic verses and sensual songs.

This sense of impact made Meng Chi feel a slight disillusionment at the same time that it also gave rise to an unexpected sense of wonder.

Yu Tingzhi often said shocking things, and the few dirty jokes he cracked hadn’t made Meng Chi feel disgusted; instead they had even stirred his heart and mind.

Just like that phrase “die for love.”

Meng Chi admitted that in that instant, those two words had left his heart swaying and his spirit shaken.

He didn’t know how to describe this kind of Yu Tingzhi. He only felt that this version of him was becoming more vivid—as if a banished immortal had been stained with worldly dust and become an ordinary person.

An ordinary person who possessed the seven emotions and six desires, who could indulge in sensual pleasures.

Memory stirred the desire in Meng Chi’s heart. His body began to grow hot and restless. Meng Chi lifted the quilt and silently recited “This is a Buddhist holy ground; purify the heart and reduce desires,” trying to calm himself down.

It was completely useless. In the end he had no choice but to shift his body, reach out, and open the window a small crack. Cool night air slipped in and helped him cool down.

After purifying his heart, Meng Chi fell asleep leaning against the window like that. Yet the next morning, he woke up in Yu Tingzhi’s arms.