"Hey, do you want to try out this new…" Tang Jun said as he opened up the door to Tang Ze's bedroom, controller in hand, only to see something that shocked him.
Well, it wasn't too shocking anymore. Tang Ze was sitting at his desk, studying.
The reason that Tang Jun had come into his room in the first place was to ask if Tang Ze wanted to go a few rounds on a new fighting game, though he now felt guilty about potentially disturbing his brother's study time.
Tang Jun had turned a new leaf and was making maximal use of the year he had gotten to prepare for the entrance tests.
For one, he now got up early in the morning. That said, 'early in the morning' by modern day standards meant about half past six or seven in the morning - it was nothing compared to the torture of waking up at the very crack of dawn or sometimes even earlier back in the Rising Phoenix sect.
Secondly, he was far more focused on his work now. He was able to approach his studies with a level of perseverance he had not been able to before.
These changes in his mannerisms had brought him praise both from his teachers and his parents - who now saw him in a new light. They assumed the change was due to his near-death experience, rather than journeying through another world.
When he got up early in the morning, and sometimes later on in the day when he was free, he would try meditating and seeing if he could still cultivate.
He was back down to the Zeroth Realm after having gone back in time - this was either because his body had been reset when he had gone back in time or it was just not possible to cultivate on Earth.
The Qi on Earth though was extremely weak - there was a reason that children in the other world advanced to the first minor realm of Qi Condensation automatically while he had not despite being an adult.
He had made frustratingly little progress on that front, though. Even back in that world, he had broken through the bottleneck of the Zeroth Realm with the help of the Komainu. Not to mention that he had lagged behind everyone's cultivation in the sect, he had been reliant on pills to advance, and while that was a short-term solution, it meant that he had used it as a crutch and had never really forced himself to focus on meditating and cultivating without them.
On top of which part of his attention had been split at the time into making costumes, which had given him more of an immediate reward, and had been more of his focus during those days.
As such, despite having spent a year in a Xianxia world, when it came to trying to cultivate on Earth, he was not much better than an average person. He had taken his time with his cultivation teachers for granted, he now had multiple questions in his mind that he wanted to clarify from them but alas, he couldn't.
Was it even possible to break through the Zeroth Realm on Earth? Or was the Qi here just that weak?
As he recalled these failures, his expression twisted, and Tang Jun mistook this for Tang Ze being angry at having been disturbed while he was studying.
The idea, in the Tang household, that Tang Ze would be studying when Tang Jun wasn't was a laughable concept just a few months ago. However, now Tang Ze greatly outpaced Tang Jun when it came to his dedication towards studying - given that Tang Ze was in his final year and Tang Jun wasn't, this was actually to be expected, but it hadn't been like that earlier.
Right now, Tang Jun had decided to take a break, which is why he had come into Tang Ze's room to ask him if he was up for playing a few rounds of PvP, though evidently, Tang Ze was not free like Tang Jun had been expecting.
In the old days, Tang Ze would've absolutely been willing to join in, even if he was studying, but Tang Jun still hadn't gotten used to the times.
"Oh, you want to play?" Tang Ze asked, noticing the controller in Tang Jun's hand. "Sure, I can go for a few rounds."
"No, if you're busy then…"
"Nah, I could use a break."
What was the most important thing in life? He had managed to save Tang Jun, so why should he spend all his time locked up in his room like a NEET instead of spending what time he could with Tang Jun? Sure, the studying was important, but not all important.
As time went on, Tang Ze thought of his days in the Rising Phoenix sect with less and less frequency. He had long since stopped using cultivator terminology in front of his family, so he no longer sounded crazy, though some of the habits hadn't completely died out. Just last week he had told his mother one Friday that he was going out to give the Komainu a walk before he corrected himself and said that he was just going on a walk.
By the time the entrance exams were just around the corner, his time in that other world felt more and more like a dream.
There were times he even began doubting whether or not any of it had happened in the first place.
Was it possible that he had saved his brother's life, and then he dreamed up everything else while he had been near-death? It wasn't like he had any specific things or memories left from that world. His knowledge of martial arts was still superficial at best, he had relied on his impressive physical abilities to gain an advantage back then.
Now, he didn't have his talent or cultivation level to remind himself of that world. He had thought it was thanks to his training that he had managed to avoid dying during that knife fight, but what if it had just been luck? What if he had imagined everything?
'No, I don't believe that. I can't believe that,' - Tang Ze thought, immediately rejecting this idea. Even if there was not a shred of proof, he somehow knew that his experiences in that other world were real. To deny that would be to deny a part of himself.
The time for the entrance exam came and went, and as expected, Tang Ze performed very well. He had bagged himself a place in one of the top colleges nearby, thereby once again significantly altering the trajectory of his life.
His parents had been quite happy with his performance and inwardly even felt sorry for doubting him - they hadn't expected for there to be such a sea change in his behavior.
When they asked him what he wanted as a reward, Tang Ze was going to say that he didn't need anything - but something did pop up in his mind. "Can I have some money?"
"To buy a few new costumes, right?" his father asked, sighing. "Or to go to a convention?"
Tang Ze frowned and shook his head. "New costumes? Uh, no, I'm not going back to making costumes or cosplaying anymore." He had long since given up on that hobby of his, and had thought that his family had recognized that.
His parents frowned - they had noticed that he was no longer going to places or dressing up any more, but they had thought that this was simply because he was focused on studying and would go back to his old ways later.
Funnily enough, his brother was also a bit disappointed by Tang Ze's words. "Your costumes were cool. Why'd you stop?"
"You used to think they were lame," Tang Ze pointed out.
"No - well, maybe, but it's not like I wanted you to give up on them," Tang Jun seemed to have difficulty putting what he felt into words. "Okay - I was wrong, they weren't lame, is that what you wanted to hear?"
"It isn't like that," Tang Ze said, shaking his head. "It nearly got me killed, remember?"
Tang Ze's father frowned. "That's a big leap of logic to make."
He had watched Tang Ze working very hard, basically spending all his time studying, sleeping, or eating. What little breaks he took were spent in meditating or exercising.
While he approved of that, and had always wanted Tang Ze to work harder, he also felt that Tang Ze's behavior might have swung too far in the opposite direction. And if he ended up abandoning one of the few hobbies he had, how would he relieve the stresses of working life? Life was stressful, and everyone needed a way to relieve some of it from time to time.
His parents also didn't want Tang Ze to continue living in the shadow of that incident - it was quite worrying to both of them that he had seemingly given up on something he really enjoyed because of it.
"Tang Ze, what happened was just a one-off event," his mother reminded him. "You don't need to be so scared of everything and worrying about it happening again."
"Yes, your mother's right," his father added. "You can't go around life being frightened all the time."
"It's… not just that," Tang Ze said, not knowing that his family had been so invested in this hobby of his. "I just… don't think it's interesting anymore."
He just… couldn't see the point of cosplaying anymore after all that had happened. It just seemed so childish.
He had tried wearing costumes, but hadn't gotten any powers whatsoever from them.
So, what was the point?
If he could not longer swim faster than a torpedo while dressed as Deepcurrent, why do so? After being in a world where cosplaying could give him actual powers, he just couldn't find himself getting interested in it now.
It just seemed… lame now.
"I wanted the money for a different reason," Tang Ze said.
His parents agreed to give him some pocket money, and he got a part-time job so that he could amass as much money as possible. If he had been able to conveniently find a fatty named Wang who would agree to be his creditor, he would've borrowed some money from them as well.
Why was he trying to amass so much money?
Most of the memories were a bit hazy on what happened back on Earth in the future. He had been rather depressed at the time and didn't pay much attention to world events, but there was something he did remember.
There was going to be a certain cryptocurrency released in the future, which would skyrocket in price within a few weeks before tanking and becoming essentially worthless.
He had not known that he would've been able to go back in time, otherwise he might've paid more attention to things like winning lottery numbers or stocks that would shoot up in price. But as it had been, he had been rather reclusive during those times as he had not been in a right state of mind, and so didn't really recall that much information that might be useful in some way. He had heard of the cryptocurrency only because one of his acquaintances back in his old college had been talking about it.
The real reason he was staking so much hope on this gamble was not because he wanted to make a lot of money - that was a part of it.
No, the real reason was that he wanted to prove to himself that his memories were not a lie. If this gamble paid off, it meant that he had indeed gone back in time several years.
And that would also mean that yes, he had been transported to that Xianxia world! That it had not been some kind of weird hallucination, and that those memories with everyone in the Rising Phoenix sect were not fake.
His entire savings was put on the line here, and he had even borrowed against this amount to be able to stake triple of what his savings were. He could've leveraged more, but that was the limit to his personal risk tolerance, and also the limit to which he felt he could repay it if things did not go as planned.
As such, after he bought the coin in question he could only wait with bated breath for what was going to happen.