After thinking for a moment, he paused his chess game and finally found a photo in his computer files—a young girl accompanying her mother, her expression calm, eyes like autumn water, possessing a beauty that was hard to describe or capture.

Chapter Three: Internal Breath (Part One)

Two months is neither long nor short, but it felt like it passed in the blink of an eye.

During these two months, Sean Foster gained a much deeper, more intuitive understanding of this world, and also discovered many things he hadn’t noticed before—for example, there was a library behind the residential complex.

In this world, almost all books have already been digitized and uploaded to the internet. Paper books have faded from mainstream reading, and now very few young people go to libraries.

But the library itself was still quite clean. Several rows of wooden benches were arranged neatly, spotless in the sunlight, clearly wiped down often, yet no one sat there. Seeing this, Sean Foster often felt a faint, inexplicable sadness in his heart.

As soon as he entered, the librarian noticed him and greeted him: “Little Sean, you’re here!”

He was almost the only patron of this library—at least among the youth, he was the only one.

“Mm, hello, Uncle Scott.” He greeted the librarian.

The librarian, Uncle Scott, was already sixty years old, but by Earth standards, looked only about fifty. He spoke with calm composure: “Little Sean, you’ve been doing well lately, haven’t you?”

“Not bad.” Sean Foster smiled slightly but didn’t say much. Lately, he had been diligently cultivating, and his energy and spirit were indeed different.

“I heard you’ve been practicing qi cultivation a lot recently. You can take a look at this book.” Uncle Scott took a small booklet from the drawer, smiling at Sean Foster: “When I was young, I learned a lot from this book. Little Sean, take it!”

Sensing the jade ruyi hidden in his body stir, Sean Foster was startled. He took the booklet with both hands and said, “Thank you, Uncle Scott.”

Uncle Scott nodded and left, not disturbing him further.

Sean Foster flipped through the booklet and saw underlined passages and some brief notes. The booklet wasn’t long, about twenty pages. Flipping to the back, he saw the words: “Second printing by Huayi Comprehensive Press, 50,000 copies.”

After skimming through it, he put it in his bag, then took out another book to read. He was already halfway through this one—it was a collection of Tang dynasty essays.

A Tang man, Andrew Scott, in his youth, had an agreement with the girl next door. At seventeen, he went to the capital for the imperial exam. Before he left, the girl gave him a steamed pot as a parting gift, with a steamed chicken inside. After he became a successful candidate, the girl’s family farmed for a living and was very poor, so they didn’t dare mention marriage again.

A high official tried to persuade him to marry his young daughter, but he laughed and said, “My heart was promised that day; how could I betray my true feelings for wealth and rank now?”

He returned home to marry the girl. After marriage, the couple loved and respected each other, but the good times didn’t last. A few years later, his wife unfortunately passed away at only nineteen, leaving behind two sons and a daughter. Andrew Scott was deeply grieved, unhappy for more than ten years, and never took another wife.

His elder brother said, “Grief comes from love, love comes from desire. Why should a true man worry about not having a wife? Why are you so sorrowful?”

Andrew Scott replied, “I do not know how desire leads to love, nor how love leads to grief. I only know my wife is gone, and so my life is filled with sorrow! Among millions, my wife was the only one for me!”

“I do not know how desire leads to love, nor how love leads to grief. I only know my wife is gone, and so my life is filled with sorrow! Among millions, my wife was the only one for me!” The essay was very short, only a few hundred words, but this line, Sean Foster read it several times, unable to compose himself for a long while. Unconsciously, he found the feeling in his heart hard to put into words.

Such deep affection is truly rare.

As for Andrew Scott, he eventually became a third-rank official, governor of a province, but that was no longer of any importance.

After reading it a few more times and feeling satisfied, he put the book back, got up, and left. By then, it was already close to noon.

The sunlight at the end of August was no longer too hot. Walking down the corridor, the sunlight dappled the area nearby as he went downstairs.

“Little Sean, Sean Foster!” a voice called from afar.

Sean Foster straightened up and looked into the distance. An electric car stopped across the street like a gust of wind in just ten seconds, and a young man on board was waving.

Sean Foster looked at him in surprise, a face both unfamiliar and familiar surfacing in his mind.

“Charles Thompson, what are you doing here?”

Charles Thompson said, “Hey, hey! Did you forget we have to go to school early this afternoon for a big clean-up? We’re in the same dorm, you know!”

“Oh, I really did forget.” Sean Foster realized.

Charles Thompson was fifteen, a classmate and friend of Sean Foster, and also his dormmate.

In this era, the invention of new batteries allowed cars to charge in two hours and travel 150 li. Petroleum, which consumed huge amounts of energy and caused pollution, had basically withdrawn from the stage of human energy. Vehicles based on electric batteries kept evolving.

This world had also gone through an industrial revolution and environmental pollution, but in the past hundred years, humanity’s energy sources had moved away from biochemical fuels, with solar energy becoming mainstream. In just a hundred years, the pollution of forests and rivers had been continuously purified. Although not yet completely restored, it was estimated that in another two hundred years, the world could return to Level Three standards (Note: this is a standard in this world, to be explained later).