"My fate has been altered by someone?"

Xu Jingshan rubbed his bald head vigorously, not appearing surprised, but rather as if a weight had been lifted from his heart, letting out a long sigh of relief.

"Indeed it is so."

Zhao Wuya's eyesight wasn't very sharp, so he didn't notice his expression, and instead genuinely thought Xu Jingshan was surprised,

not caring whether Xu Jingshan understood or not, he handed over the Compass in his hand and explained solemnly,

"Look at the divination signs on your inner disc, showing fortune in books and misfortune in books; to put it bluntly, reading can change your future, but your future will also break because of reading.

As they say, success is in it, and failure is in it too. Reading has altered your fate twice; the first correction was small, the second one significant."

Xu Jingshan gazed at the densely carved symbols on the Compass, unable to understand them, finding it even more incomprehensible than the wild cursive scripts by the great calligraphers.

So he could only listen to Zhao Wuya's translation.

"Success is in books, failure is in books; this divination is more accurate than even the masters of Dun Jia."

"You seem to have been prepared for this divination?" Zhou Xuan noticed the signs early on and finally asked.

Xu Jingshan reminisced carefully about his past experiences and said, "The divination resonates with my past stories. You may not know, but I've been a bookworm since I was a kid..."

As he said this, Zhou Xuan and Zhao Wuya found it hard to fully believe,

especially given Xu Jingshan's appearance: a big bald head, wearing a suit without a shirt underneath, looking every bit like a bandit chief, how could he be connected to a scholar?

When he claimed to be an Enchanting Demon, the two already found it hard to hold back, but wealthy women's tastes are hard to define, so they gritted their teeth and accepted it.

But when Xu Jingshan claimed to be a bookworm, Zhou Xuan and Zhao Wuya burst out laughing 'kuku'.

"Why are you laughing?"

Zhou Xuan: "My family's donkey is pregnant, it just makes me happy to think about it."

"What are you laughing at then? Is your family's donkey pregnant too?" Xu Jingshan turned to ask Zhao Wuya.

Zhao Wuya kept laughing 'kuku': "Their donkey... kuku... got pregnant because of my family's donkey..."

"..." Xu Jingshan.

"Boss Xu, go on... go on..." Zhou Xuan urged Xu Jingshan to continue.

Only then did Xu Jingshan continue, "I was good at studying when I was a kid, but my family conditions weren't very good; my parents were tenant farmers, the land belonged to a certain Master at the town, whose surname was Zheng, and I called him Master Zheng,

Master Zheng had two sons, but neither was promising, one was gluttonous and into gambling, while the other spent his days indulging in brothel.

Coincidentally, he saw me and thought I was overly smart and clever, often borrowing books from his collection, so he thought I was a bookish child,

Those with natural talent in incense can enter various great hall, having a bright future, similarly, those with a talent for reading can enter various government offices, and Bones Elder Association's subordinates like Hui Feng Medical College, which also promises a bright future.

With no hope in his sons, Master Zheng wanted to cultivate me so that if I accomplished something in the future, it could also benefit his inept sons.'

Up until here Xu Jingshan raised his head to the sky and said: "Master Zheng took me in, I acknowledged him as a godfather, from then on my parents had their own ridge, a gift from godfather, and I was brought to Zheng Mansion, where I remained oblivious to world affairs, focusing solely on reading books of the sages,

This was my destiny, a fate succeeded by books."

"Fate failed by books, how do you explain that?"

Zhao Wuya asked again.

"At the age of seventeen, in a few months, I could have taken exams, with my grades at the time, entering the government for a job would have been more than sufficient, but I hoped to pass into Hui Feng Medical College."

Hui Feng Medical College is the most important establishment under the Bone Elder Association, many students there became doctors at Shande Hospital, while some entered the Taiping Gentleman consortium,

be it named doctors from Bone Elder or wealthy individuals from Taiping, on a small town, they dominated the scene. Master Zheng's plan of treating talents as rare goods was about to bear fruit.

"In the end, on the night I arrived in Mingjiang Prefecture to prepare for exams, I encountered an old man with an otherworldly demeanor.

He entered my room and asked me... young man, can you read a mountain of gold and silver, a gentle rich wife from the books?"

Zhao Wuya listened with great interest, asking: "How did you answer?"

"I said, I could read them. The old man then asked me, can you read about serving the country and people, having the world in mind from the books?

This topic was way too grand, I read just for a better future, hadn't thought much about it, so I said... I never considered such principles."

Xu Jingshan said: "As soon as I finished speaking, the old man sighed, saying that I originally descended with a literary star on me, destined to care for sages' hearts, studying the books of the sages, eventually becoming a Great Saint of the human world..."

'Kuku kuku'

'You guys are too much...'

'I just remembered our donkey.'

'I thought about the same.'

Zhou Xuan and Zhao Wuya, pinched their cheeks and finally stopped laughing... The prospect of a literary saint ending up as a bald-headed vendor in exotic delicacies was difficult to bear with.

"The old man said, saying I was originally a literary... when Xu Jingshan re-mentioned 'literary saint', deliberately pausing, seeing Zhou Xuan and Zhao Wuya no longer laughing before continuing,

"I had the fate of a literary saint, but that Master Zheng, secretly calculated my fate, brought me into the mansion, letting me study worldly books, to benefit the descendants of Zheng Family,

according to the elder, this was an alteration of fate, a Great Saint of the human literary world, ultimately reduced to a mere wealthy merchant and a mundane doctor, what a pity, what a lament.'

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