Chapter 62

At just after four in the afternoon, the bus neatly entered the gate of a military camp in the northeastern part of Yinjiang District.

Li Luo returned the guitar, now readjusted, to Lin Yuan, and when he sat back down, Yan Zhusheng was staring at him with an odd expression.

"Cough… what?" Li Luo felt uneasy under her gaze, wondering if he'd gone too far.

"Unless you've practiced since childhood, it's nearly impossible for an ordinary person to accurately identify pitch," Yan Zhusheng said seriously, "especially without a reference tone."

Yet Li Luo, in just over twenty minutes, went from someone who couldn't tell pitch at all to achieving absolute pitch.

This deeply startled Yan Zhusheng; she had never seen or even heard of such a thing happening before.

"... Maybe I just have a good memory," Li Luo didn't fully grasp the value of absolute pitch.

He had simply dedicated a room in his Memory Palace solely to memorizing those pitches.

When he needed to identify which note Yan Zhusheng played, he simply compared it to the stored pitches inside his Memory Palace and found the matching one.

It was like downloading a library of reference tones directly into his mind—cheating secretly to achieve pseudo-absolute pitch.

But he was still clumsy with it, able to identify only isolated notes.

If Yan Zhusheng played a sequence of notes, Li Luo would fumble for a while, needing time to sort them out.

That required more practice.

"OK, we've arrived," Kong Junxiang stood up, clapped his hands to get everyone's attention, "when you get off the bus, follow Instructor Zhang to the dormitory building to drop off your luggage."

Instructor Zhang got off the bus and led the students of Class Eight toward the dormitory.

The camp had arranged two buildings—one for boys, one for girls.

Li Luo entered their dorm room: eight people per room, bunk beds.

Zhu Yufei followed him in, followed by Lin Yuan, Zhang Guohuang, Wei Chun, Fang Chen, and others.

Shao Heqi didn't come in—he wandered over to the neighboring dorm and had no intention of sharing a room with Li Luo.

After settling their luggage, everyone gathered on the corridor to admire the view.

During this time, Instructor Zhang came by once to personally demonstrate how to fold a quilt into a tofu block.

Li Luo invited the instructor to use his quilt for the demo; after Instructor Zhang finished and left, Li Luo immediately moved the tofu-block quilt into the corner, took out a thin blanket from his suitcase, and used it as his sleeping cover.

"What does this mean, squad leader?"

"Can't you figure it out?" Li Luo raised an eyebrow. "You have to fold that tofu block every morning after waking up—it gets inspected. So why not let the instructor fold it for me?"

"I sleep with the blanket, and in the morning I just shove it into my suitcase—no need to fold tofu blocks."

Hearing this, the others all exclaimed in disbelief—Class Monitor was truly a genius.

At half past five in the evening, the assembly whistle blew below.

Everyone hurried downstairs, lined up, and under the guidance of their respective instructors, marched in a large group toward the mess hall.

Along the way, the instructors explained the training grounds—where they could go and where they couldn't.

After the unified dinner, tonight would be free time; formal training would begin tomorrow morning.

Since the training grounds had a basketball court, Li Luo borrowed a basketball from Instructor Zhang and took the boys from his class to play.

…

"Xixi, Xie Shuchen and the others said they're going to play basketball over there," Qiao Xinyan ran back into the dorm and said to Ying Chanxi, who was reading on her bed, "should we go check it out?"

"No," Ying Chanxi shook her head. "The entrance exam starts after training ends—I need to review."

"Your grades still need reviewing? How are we supposed to survive?" Qiao Xinyan stared blankly, then rolled her eyes and added, "Class Eight's Li Luo and the others are playing too—you sure you won't go?"

"Li Luo is there too?" Ying Chanxi raised an eyebrow, quietly set down her book, stood up, and walked out into the corridor, gazing toward the distant outdoor basketball court.

But everyone was dressed in identical training uniforms—green everywhere—impossible to tell who was who.

"Ah, who cares if he's there or not—we'll find him if we go out," Qiao Xinyan grabbed Ying Chanxi's hand and pulled her downstairs.

Ying Chanxi had no choice but to accompany her downstairs and head toward the basketball court.

The sky had darkened; bright incandescent lights had turned on around the court.

As Ying Chanxi and Qiao Xinyan walked up, they saw the boys from Class One gathered under one hoop, playing.

But Ying Chanxi didn't look long—her gaze swept past them and landed on another hoop farther away, where she spotted Li Luo.

Though Ying Chanxi paid no attention to the boys in her own class, her arrival instantly energized the boys from Class One.

Whether they made the shot or not didn't matter—their movements had to be stylish, their poses must be cool.

For this reason, Liu Shaowen and Xie Shuchen even went head-to-head on the court—clearly a casual game, yet they played with fierce intensity.

But Ying Chanxi's gaze never lingered on them at all.

"I'm going to the convenience store," Ying Chanxi said to Qiao Xinyan after confirming Li Luo was there.

Qiao Xinyan followed behind, grinning. "Xixi, should you buy an extra bottle of water? When you see a guy playing well, hand him one—he'll be completely smitten."

"I'm not that childish," Ying Chanxi glanced at Qiao Xinyan, shook her head, then picked up two chilled bottles of water from the store's fridge.

"Then why two bottles?" Qiao Xinyan asked, puzzled.

"For… for Li Luo."

"... You're too nice to your cousin."

After paying, Ying Chanxi hurried toward the basketball court, each hand holding a bottle of water—immediately drawing the attention of many boys.

Many had already been watching her; seeing her with two bottles, they all grew excited.

Especially Xie Shuchen and Liu Shaowen—seeing this, they played even more fiercely, like rutting bulls locked in combat in an arena.

Yet under all those stares, Ying Chanxi walked straight toward Class Eight's court.

What she didn't expect was that before she even reached them, another girl appeared beside Li Luo's court and waved at him.

Li Luo walked over, puzzled, and saw the girl with long, loose hair smiling as she offered him a drink.

The surrounding boys erupted in teasing shouts.

After handing him the drink, the girl blushed slightly and ran off.

"Class monitor's impressive, huh." Zhu Yufei leaned over with a grin. "Already got a girl bringing you a drink."

"What were you guys just talking about?" Lin Yuan asked curiously as well.

"She said she really liked the song I sang." Li Luo wore a strange expression, looking down at the drink in his hand.

"Damn, then why didn't she bring me one? I sang yesterday too." Lin Yuan grumbled indignantly.

"You really think it's because of the singing?" Zhu Yufei chuckled twice, then asked, "So who was that girl?"

"She didn't say, but it was probably Gao Yuqin from Class Seven." Li Luo said casually. "Class monitor of the class next door, I think — saw her at a meeting before."

"Oh, so you've got quite a good memory."

"Well, of course…" Li Luo replied instinctively, then suddenly realized the voice sounded a little familiar. He turned his head and found Ying Chanxi standing right behind him, looking at him with a smiling face.

【Side Character Diary】: The main characters are based on the character cards on the book's details page.