There was a particular memory that occasionally drifted to the surface of Zhang Xero's consciousness – not from a cosmic cataclysm he averted, but from a Tuesday afternoon in what humans called his "childhood." He couldn't have been more than a year old, barely able to toddle, yet already perfecting the art of the poker face. The scene was the family living room, cluttered with the usual domestic chaos: a pile of discarded spirit-stone toys, a half-eaten bag of mystical potato chips on the coffee table, and the faint, unsettling aroma of his father's experimental cultivation brew.
"Alright, my little champion!" his father, Zhang Wei, boomed, his voice overflowing with the kind of boisterous pride that only a father attempting to bond with his silently judging infant could manage. Zhang Wei was a mid-tier cultivator, prone to extravagant gestures, especially when it came to his only son. He held out a gleaming, miniature flying sword. It pulsed with a dull golden light, obviously freshly polished, probably cost a fortune.
"Look what Daddy got you! A real high-grade spirit sword! For when you're older, of course, but it'll look great in your room, won't it?" Zhang Xero's mother, Lin Mei, a woman whose calm demeanor suggested she'd seen it all (which, raising an Almighty King, she probably had), leaned against the doorframe, a faint, knowing smirk playing on her lips. "Dear, are you sure that's wise? He tried to 'purify' the cat into a void last week."
"Nonsense!" Zhang Wei scoffed, waving a dismissive hand. "He's just exploring his spiritual roots! Besides, this is the 'Invincible Spirit Severing Blade'! Best damn craftsmanship in the city!" He knelt, beaming, holding the sword out to the utterly expressionless infant Zhang Xero. "What do you think, son? Pretty cool, huh?" Xero's crystal silver eyes, already bearing the weight of countless forgotten epochs, drifted from his father's excited face to the golden blade. It was… loud. Obnoxiously shiny. And structurally unsound, in a fundamental, universal sense. To Xero, it looked less like an "Invincible Spirit Severing Blade" and more like a glorified, overpriced butter knife. Frankly, it was ugly. And aggressively boring. Without a word, without even a flicker of interest, Xero's tiny, pudgy hand reached out. His fingers, still dimpled with baby fat, wrapped around the golden hilt. There was no struggle, no dramatic surge of energy. Just a soft thwip—a sound no one else in the room quite registered—as his wrist rotated ever so slightly. The "Invincible Spirit Severing Blade" didn't break. It didn't shatter. It simply bifurcated, cleanly and perfectly, into two dull, useless halves of what suddenly appeared to be cheap, imitation plastic. One half landed with a pathetic clink on the polished floorboards, the other still clutched in Xero's hand.
The golden glow vanished as if it had never been. Zhang Wei stared, his jaw hanging open, the life draining from his face. "My… my damn sword! What the hell?!" He scrambled to pick up one of the halves, rubbing it frantically as if it might magically re-fuse. Lin Mei's smirk widened, though her emerald eyes held a flicker of weary resignation. "Told you so, dear. He probably thought it was tacky. And perhaps structurally unsound."
Kongji, the ancient sword spirit bound to Xero's essence, offered an internal, dry remark. "He found its very existence an insult to aesthetics, Master. One does not offer the Almighty King… cheap trinkets." Little Zhang Xero, oblivious to the existential crisis he'd just inflicted upon a perfectly good (if gaudy) spirit sword, simply dropped the remaining half onto the floor. His gaze drifted to a dust bunny lazily drifting across the wooden floor. Now that was marginally more interesting than the defunct weapon. He resumed his silent observation of its slow, aimless journey, already bored.
Zhang Wei sighed dramatically, clutching the two halves of his broken pride. "Bloody hell. My retirement fund just snapped in half." Lin Mei merely patted his shoulder. "Maybe try a plushie next time, dear. Less prone to cosmic disassembly."
...
Sixteen. Zhang Xero considered the number with a detached sense of mild irritation. Sixteen years of... well, whatever this high school life was supposed to be. It had arrived faster than he'd bothered to imagine, threatening to disrupt the perfectly curated monotony of his existence. To manage this precarious existence as someone who could, without trying, cause significant inconvenience, while still appearing to be just another awkward teenager, required a level of strategic apathy few could ever hope to master. A low profile was paramount. His spiritual cultivation realm, for reasons utterly unfathomable even to him, kept advancing at an alarmingly rapid pace. It was less a breakthrough and more an inexplicable surge that caused a very inconvenient aura leakage.
Who needed the headache of explaining why the school's pet rabbit suddenly gained an unexpected level of spiritual sentience? So, with a sigh that didn't quite reach his lips, he'd already stuck a custom-made Spirit Sealing Talisman to his right arm before he even bothered to consider breakfast. It dampened the output, keeping him firmly in the "barely remarkable" tier.
He chose No. 90 High School in Wenyuan Qu district, Qinghai city, with the meticulous precision of someone selecting the dullest shade of grey for a new wall. No key city high schools for him. Those places reeked of ambition and spiritual energy. They'd have special trees that vibrated with cultivation Qi, and enormous spirit-gathering arrays thrumming under the very foundations, designed to make students unnervingly "attentive and refreshed." Utterly useless, of course, to someone like him. He wouldn't feel their feeble energies, and there was always the risk of accidentally disrupting their systems just by existing too normally.
No, he adamantly didn't want to be the accidental cause of another school's sudden, catastrophic power outage. This comparatively crude, unremarkable environment was perfect. It felt satisfactory in its blandness. Here, at least, his true capabilities could remain delightfully, profoundly hidden. Today was the meet-and-greet for new students, swiftly followed by the much-dreaded placement test. Apparently, the school authorities needed to "grade" each student before officially letting them contaminate the hallowed halls. Advanced, elite, normal, remedial. Categories designed, he assumed, to give human teenagers a premature sense of self-importance or inadequacy. How quaint. He ambled towards the main hall, his plain white shirt and jeans blending seamlessly into the sea of equally unremarkable attire. In front of a large, glowing liquid crystal display screen, he paused. Following the flashing directions, he located his interview class.
Given his personal brand of calculated anonymity, the conspicuous elite class was a non-starter; too much exposure. And the remedial class, while tempting for its sheer lack of expectation, felt a little… degrading. Even for him, there were standards. Advanced or normal it was. The utter predictability of it all was almost soothing. "Excuse me, do you know the way to Year One, Class Three?"
The voice, sweet and bright as a perfectly tuned bell, came from directly behind him. Zhang Xero didn't flinch. He'd registered her presence the moment she'd stepped onto the school grounds—a singularly vibrant, almost sparkling aura amidst the nervous hum of the other students. He just hadn't, in his long experience, ever expected such a person to actually talk to him. His internal probability calculations were clearly off today. He didn't turn. A brief, almost imperceptible glance from the corner of his eye was sufficient. She was, he noted with a detached sense of acknowledgement, pretty good-looking. Elegant, with long hair and fair skin, she wore a tight-fitting white T-shirt, jeans, and casual shoes.
"Are you also here to enroll today?" she continued, undeterred by his profound silence. She spoke as if they were old acquaintances, not complete strangers on the cusp of an intensely boring interview. Zhang Xero offered no response. His poker face, a masterpiece forged over countless mundane encounters, remained resolutely unblemished.
Conversational pleasantries were for beings with an actual interest in human interaction. He quickly, and effortlessly, ran a miniscule flicker of his spiritual sense over her. Yes, definitely elite student material. Meaning, unequivocally, she wouldn't be his classmate. More hassle, then.
"Classmate, are you perhaps… lost? Or just very quiet?" she chirped, a hint of playful confusion in her tone. "You seem… deep in thought! May I know your name?" His name was Zhang Xero. And it was irrelevant. So was her question. And the dread of being spoken to before 8:00 AM.
His mind, currently preoccupied with the disturbing implications of his rapidly advancing cultivation, had no bandwidth for such trivialities as answering a polite inquiry.
He briefly wondered if he could simply phase through the floor into the interview room, but then, that would cause trouble. "Well, since you're heading in this direction anyway," she continued, undeterred by his profound silence, "are you sure you're not for Year One? It's right nearby!" As if fate, or perhaps the universe's incredibly dry sense of humor, was determined to inject a modicum of chaos into his carefully constructed ordinariness, Zhang Xero's interview was going to be conducted in the very same room that the girl had just mentioned: Year One, Class Three.
How truly, utterly inconvenient. Still without uttering a single, precious word, Zhang Xero merely raised his right hand, index finger extended. He pointed. Directly at the classroom door. Then, dropping his hand back into his pocket, he casually strolled away, his pace unhurried, his expression unchanging, leaving the remarkably persistent, yet still smiling, Aoi Misaki blinking in his silent wake. Another day. Another step towards utterly bland, magnificent normalcy. He mentally added "acquire better social interaction-repellent talismans" to his mental to-do list. Right after "preventing Tuesday."