"What are you talking about? What's wrong?" Tang Jun asked him. "Are you okay?"
His younger brother expressed mild concern at what must have appeared to be quite a sudden and drastic change in Tang Ze's behavior.
After all, they had been walking down the street just moments before, but then Tang Ze had suddenly stopped in his tracks, looking like he had some kind of premonition before he looked like he was lost and for some reason didn't know where he was.
Tang Jun had nearly walked on ahead before noticing that his brother had stopped for whatever reason.
Tang Ze was looking at Tang Jun like he was an alien.
"Are… you real?" Tang Ze asked, before pinching Tang Jun's cheek.
"Ouch! Yes, of course! What's gotten into you?"
Tang Ze looked down at himself. He was wearing a different set of clothes, and all around him, he saw people from Earth. From Earth, not from back in that Xianxia world.
What was going on?
Didn't that voice tell him that he was going to get a chance to go back and change things?
He looked around him, and saw the familiar sight of skyscrapers around him.
He was definitely back on Earth.
So when the voice had asked him if he would like to get a chance to change things... it hadn't been talking about fixing things back in that Xianxia world like Tang Ze had assumed?
"Seriously, are you alright?" Tang Jun asked. Their grandfather had had dementia for a few years before he passed away, and would occasionally behave somewhat like this - forgetting where he was in the middle of conversations. However, Tang Ze was a few decades too young to be suffering from bouts of dementia.
However, Tang Ze could care less about Tang Jun's questions in that instant. He remembered this scene quite vividly, and knew that he had to act.
Tang Ze saw the crowd part in front of him, just like he had in many of his dreams. He had replayed this moment a thousand times in his mind, though this time, with the benefit of foresight, was determined to act.
Unfortunately, he did not have any of his powers from the Xianxia world. He couldn't feel an ounce of the hint of his cosplay talent within himself, and had lost whatever passive benefits he had gained at the time. Not to mention, he had also lost whatever progress he had made when it came to his cultivation. He had been at the fourth minor realm of Qi Condensation when he had died back in that Xianxia world, but he couldn't even feel his dantian right now - it was like before the Komainu had helped him progress beyond the Zeroth Realm.
So, there was only one thing for Tang Ze to do.
He pushed Tang Jun down, knocking him to the pavement with all his strength, as he took a step forward to meet the assailant.
Unlike the knife-wielding maniac, Tang Ze was expecting it as he collided with the man, struggling desperately to grab onto his blade.
A struggle that he lost as unfortunately, he didn't have his powers. Putting his cosplay talents aside, the approximately forty-six percent boost from just his cultivation would've been of immense help in this situation - though sadly, he had neither.
He was just Tang Ze - but that was more than enough to buy his brother a few seconds as the man flailed, finally succeeding in stabbing Tang Ze in the stomach.
Tang Ze gripped onto the man's hand preventing him from striking any further blows, and the man let go of the knife.
The crowd was then finally brave enough to pin him down.
"Brother!" Tang Jun cried out, running over towards Tang Ze.
"Relax, bro," Tang Ze said. He was in pain - but was glad that he had finally corrected this mistake from the past. How many times had he wished that he could've taken that knife which had taken Tang Jun's life instead? "It's going to be fine…"
He said that even as his own blood pooled around him. Now that the adrenaline rush had worn off, the pain from the stab wound seemed to triple.
He frowned, despite the situation. Why couldn't that deity or whatever that had sent him here sent him back to this morning, instead of to this very instant? He would've just found some excuse to not go outside in the first place and then he wouldn't be dying again.
He had sacrificed himself back then in that world, been brought back to life, only to sacrifice himself again.
That thing certainly seemed to have a twisted sense of humor.
There was one thing he wanted to clear up before he died again though. "Tang Jun... listen carefully. Even if I pass away... I want you to... remember to... please live your life to the fullest."
The one thing he wanted to avoid was Tang Jun killing himself in the same way that he had - Tang Ze didn't think that was likely to happen, but he wanted to make sure that Tang Jun knew that his last wish was for his younger brother to live a happy and fulfilling life.
That was all that Tang Ze remembered before he passed out from hemorrhaging too much blood.
When he woke up, he didn't find himself back in the same void.
He was in a hospital.
Lying in a hospital bed, staring at the ceiling.
'I... survived...?' he thought to himself. There was a tube down his throat to help him breathe, which was incredibly annoying and unpleasant to have. He could vaguely feel multiple lines that had been put into his body, and a catheter placed to drain his urine.
"Oh dear..." someone, likely a nurse, said, seeing that he was awake. "We need to sedate him more!"
He would learn two days later, they took him off of the ventilator as he lay there in the bed, his stomach riddled with stitches.
He still felt groggy from the sedation, but his parents and his brother were here now.
They were making a huge fuss over him, though he couldn't even register half of what they said in the strange haze his mind was in.
The gist of it though was that he had managed to stop the assailant from hitting any of his vital organs. "It was amazing!" Tang Jun would say to him later. "It was like he was some kind of kung-fu master!"
'Ah,' Tang Ze understood. 'Martial arts instructor - it looks like your lessons saved my life.' He may not have had any of his powers or talent from back in that world, but he did stil have the memory of all of the training he had undergone. At the time, Tang Ze had often complained both internally and externally about the martial arts instructor's strict training regimens. It turned out that all that practice had paid off though as he had subconsciously been able to keep the knife from hitting a vital point during the fight earlier - something that the old Tang Ze wouldn't have been able to do. Still, that was the extent to which about a year of training could get you. If he had trained for longer back in that world, he might've been able to avoid getting stabbed entirely.
In the coming days, as his mind became clearer, he found himself asking his brother at one point, "Did Zhang Long or the others come around to visit me while I was out?"
"Who's Zhang Long?" Tang Jun asked him in response. "And what 'others?'"
Tang Ze realized that the sedation must've not have worn off fully because he had uttered those words without really thinking abou them.
He was so used to having the support of his squad that his mind, naturally, thought - 'of course they're coming to see how I'm doing, I'm in the hospital and nearly died.'
He had momentarily forgotten that they were not here.
Still, he thought it wouldn't be out of character for those three to suddenly burst into the hospital, talking about how they had managed to find a portal to this lower realm and were there to take him back to the sect.
Of course, nothing of the sort happened.
"Uh, nothing, a friend of mine who I thought might come to visit me, it's whatever," Tang Ze told his brother.
He eventually made a full recovery, though naturally the changes that he had made to the timeline made it so that things played out quite differently than they had before.
While his family still had undergone quite a bit of stress, it was nothing compared to dealing with the loss of Tang Jun. The others were actually quite surprised at how nonchalant that Tang Ze was after everything that had happened.
If anything, somehow, they found that Tang Ze was happier than he had been before the knife attack, which was no doubt quite baffling.
Tang Ze, for his part, was simply happy to have his family back, and the fact that he didn't need to die in order to save his brother.
As it was, there were other changes in Tang Ze's behavior which his family noticed after the knife attack.
The biggest one was regarding the college entrance exam. In the original timeline, Tang Ze had given the entrance exam after only recently having dealt with the death of his sibling, and due to the same had done terribly; barely scraping by and getting into a bottom-of-the-barrel school.
There was very little that he could do to try to change that in the short amount of time there was before the entrance tests.
Granted, given what had happened to him, the relevant authorities did allow him the option of taking it a few weeks later.
However, Tang Ze chose to decline this offer and asked to take the exam the next year with the next batch of students.
There was some opposition to this from his parents, who said that he would be wasting a year doing nothing, and that he could still get a reasonable performance with a few more week's time.
To this, Tang Ze said, "I want to make sure that my foundation is good before I end up ascending to a higher realm." When met with the confused gazes of his parents when he said this, he elaborated. "What I meant to say is that the reputation of which college I go to is going to affect where I end up later on, and I can't redo that. So, even if I have to spend a year, I think I would want to take that time to improve my odds."
He explained his earlier words as just being a side effect of reading too many web novels.
His parents begrudgingly agreed to his request, mainly because of what he had just gone through. They didn't have very high hopes for what he could accomplish, however, as they still thought of him as the mediocre student that he had been in the past.
They figured that he would end up squandering most of the time that he got from staying back a year, and would end up performing about the same as he would have otherwise. That was why they had suggested that the best course of action for him was to take the exam a few weeks later rather than delaying it by a year.
His teachers also felt the same, but after having barely survived a knife attack, Tang Ze was able to play the sympathy card and get everyone to play along with what he wanted.
A year was adequate time for him to hit the books and really improve his performance during next year's college entrance test.
That was why he didn't stress over the fact that he was repeating a year, even though most people in his situation would have. Living in that world had given him quite a bit of insight when it came to looking at the bigger picture - yes, he would not live for centuries in this world, but what was a year compared to decades of a career? Didn't Xian Yue spend several lifetimes chasing after her goal - what was a year by comparison if it would help him achieve what he wanted?
As it was, studying was far more pleasant now that the environment was much nicer than it had been in the old timeline.
His father no longer came home very late, and his mother hadn't developed an alcohol addiction.
And most importantly of all, Tang Jun was still there in their lives.
Tang Jun really was the keystone that kept the family together - Tang Ze realized.
Come to think of it actually, Tang Ze no longer fretted over things in this world. After having been in that other world and dealing with things like the Asura Emperor, any worries he had on Earth were miniscule by comparison. Thing that would've normally bothered him before could not move his heart in the slightest. The winds that would normally cause the lake of his mind to become turbulent could no longer affect the tranquility of its surface which was now as smooth and untouched as glass. What was there to worry or fret about? His family did not understand how his mood was always so upbeat even after having narrowly survived a stabbing, but if they knew what he had gone through in order to save his brother, they would be able to comprehend it immediately.
As a matter of fact, 'the bigger picture' didn't just apply to centuries or millennia of living as a cultivator. He had seen a part of the Wheel of Samsara before his eyes, and even now, he felt chills whenever he thought of the moment.
After viewing a part of the grand design, everything seemed miniscule and not worth worrying over for even a breath's time.