Corpse Recovery Diver
Chapter 91 - 17_6

Chapter 91: Chapter 17_6

"Alii likes the Li family kid she plays with, who has started to learn martial arts with Ali. I do want to see if he can persist, and if he has a good brain and is willing to endure hardship...

Goodness, I’m really curious how his mother gave birth to such a child."

Liu Yumei was getting ready to sleep, she had to let down her hair first, and when she reached for the copper mirror on the dressing table, she found nothing. On closer inspection, where was the copper mirror on this table?

But it was impossible for a thief to enter this room, and no one would touch her things, unless...

Liu Yumei walked towards the bedroom and saw her granddaughter fast asleep, hugging a small wooden box.

"This girl, Alii, she wouldn’t have taken my copper mirror as a reciprocal gift, would she?"

...

In the following two days, Li Zhiyuan’s life was very regular; reading books, practicing horse stance.

The first day of practicing the horse stance was very painful, and his legs were still sore when he woke up in the morning. By the second day, he felt much more normal, and by the third day, he didn’t even feel the pain or fatigue anymore.

He only felt that when he did the horse stance, he would imagine himself as a tree rooted in the ground, swaying slightly and dynamically with the rhythm of his breathing and heartbeat as Uncle Qin taught, and even the brain that felt groggy after reading all day became much clearer.

However, for these three nights, Uncle Qin taught him nothing else but the horse stance.

Li Zhiyuan was not in a hurry because he was making faster breakthroughs in reading.

For him, rote memorization and arithmetic accumulation were not difficult. After three full days and nights of reading under the bedroom lamp post-horse stance, he had already read up to the seventh volume of "Yin Yang Face Reading".

Besides that, he also managed to read three volumes of "Life Chart Calculation Theory" on the side, barely mastering the basic algorithm for deducing fate charts.

However, he was also aware that this was taking advantage of his strong learning ability for an initial advantage.

Going further would require time and effort to overcome each challenge bit by bit.

Especially the eighth volume of "Yin Yang Face Reading," he hadn’t started yet, but he already knew the difficulty inside, and paradoxically, this eighth volume was the most important one!

Nonetheless, even without great success, having learned these things made him feel a bit itchy inside, eager to test their practical effects.

On the second-floor terrace, Li Sanjiang was lying in a wicker chair, smoking and drinking tea, leisurely listening to the "Za Mei Case" playing on the radio.

Li Zhiyuan approached and asked, "Grandmaster, when is your birthday?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I want to remember it in advance, to celebrate your birthday."

"Heh, coincidentally, you just missed it before you returned home. If you want to celebrate it, you’ll have to wait until next year."

"Then tell me first, so I can note it down."

"Alright, alright."

Li Sanjiang then mentioned his birthday, and the boy asked in detail, even the specific time, which he didn’t mind and told him everything.

Then, Li Sanjiang noticed that his great-grandson was occasionally looking at him intently and then writing and drawing in a notebook.

"Little Yuanhou, what are you writing?"

"Calculating."

"Math problems?"

"Mm, something like that."

"Let Grandmaster have a look." Li Sanjiang reached out to take the notebook, only to find it filled not with numbers but with a series of dense or sparse horizontal and vertical bars.

"What is this?"

"Calculation steps."

"Is this what teachers teach these days?"

"Mm, it’s faster to calculate this way."

"Oh, then you keep calculating, keep studying."

"Mm." As Li Zhiyuan continued to observe Grandmaster’s facial features, he carried on with his calculations.

"Little Yuanhou, I’m going to Jiwei Port tomorrow; I won’t be back in the evening. Yuanhou said he’s taking you to check the river?"

"Mm, I’ve already discussed it with Grandpa."

"Alright then, go out and get some air. Your grandpa misses you. I’m telling you, back then, what your grandpa cared about most was your mother. Now, what he cares about most is you. Your grandpa is quite biased toward you."

Finally, Li Zhiyuan finished his calculations, his brow furrowed, exuding an air of dejection.

"Hey, Little Yuanhou, what’s the matter with you?"

"Grandmaster, I’ve miscalculated."

"Just acknowledge the mistake and recalculate, what’s the big deal?"

Li Zhiyuan nodded.

According to the Grandmaster’s physiognomy and the Life Chart Calculation Theory, the conclusion on the Grandmaster’s fate chart was:

[Predetermined to die young, plagued by illness, short lifespan, depleted wealth, averse to water in one’s destiny, forbidden to take crooked paths.]

Looking at his own calculation results, and then at the Grandmaster lying there listening to the opera.

If it were just one or two errors or vaguenesses, that would be fine. After all, he hadn’t completed his entire studies, so a little discrepancy was normal.

But, how could one get everything absolutely wrong?

No, it wasn’t simply a miscalculation, it was the exact opposite!

A strong sense of defeat rose from the bottom of his heart, an experience he had hardly encountered in his past studies and life.

Previously, he had felt a little complacent about learning quickly. Now, that feeling was gone.

"Grandmaster, I’m going to sleep."

"Sure, go ahead, get some sleep early. Your father will come to pick you up tomorrow morning."

"Grandmaster, you should sleep early too."

Watching Li Zhiyuan’s lonely figure walk away, Li Sanjiang scratched his chin in surprise, wondering:

Is the kid taking it too hard just for getting one question wrong?

...

Returning to the bedroom, he sat down at the desk.

Li Zhiyuan looked at the two sets of books in front of him, suddenly feeling an urge to throw away his pen and shove all the books onto the floor.

He didn’t want to study anymore and developed an aversion to learning.

Resting his face in his left hand, he picked up the copper mirror on the desk with his right hand, toying with it.

That night, he found out that his little Go game box was gone, and in its place was an ancient-looking copper mirror.

He knew it must have been Alii who took his present and gave him one in return.

In the mirror, he saw his own dejected face.

The more he looked, the more he felt that this was the normal expression for someone his age.

This time, when faced with such an inexplicable mood, he didn’t panic or fear, nor did he have to repeatedly hypnotize himself to affirm his identity.

Unexpectedly, getting a problem wrong could have this effect.

Li Zhiyuan’s feelings of defeat slowly subsided. He took the mirror with his left hand, continued to look at his own face in the mirror, then picked up the pen with his right hand and started calculating.

"Let me calculate for myself."

There’s a saying, "Physicians do not heal themselves."

But even more taboo by countless times is... "One should not calculate their own fate."

However, Li Zhiyuan learned face-reading and fortune-telling from the two sets of books he moved out of the basement without any teacher’s guidance, and evidently, the author of the books did not consider that someone who could understand and learn from the book would not know such basic principles. Just like on the first page of an advanced math textbook, you wouldn’t find a multiplication table.

As he kept calculating,

Li Zhiyuan felt his head getting heavy and dizzy.

It was probably fatigue, yes, sleep after finishing the calculations.

He continued working,

Feeling a runny nose, maybe he caught a cold?

He reached up to touch, and looking down,

Thankfully, no cold.

It wasn’t snot,

It was blood.

"Thud!"

Li Zhiyuan’s face hit the desk directly, and he passed out unconscious.