Chapter 5: 5

After Shao Zhan said this, the sounds of discussion in the class died down.

The classroom became dead silent. 

When the Class Seven students knew they were being split up into different classes, they immediately created a class group chat, and it didn’t even have teachers in it for the time being. The original purpose of the group chat was to cry with comrades over their devilish second year high school life and also to encourage each other to have the strength to live on.

Other than the teachers and the school tyrant not being in the group chat, the study god was also not in it. The fact that the study god was not in the group chat was completely out of respect towards an idol; no one was shameless enough to add him as a friend. Also Shao Zhan had taken a day off, and the classmates in Shao Zhan’s class in their first year said he didn’t read their class group chats.

 

 

No one thought that this would create an opportunity for them to gossip.

In this eerie silence, someone took the lead to send a message in the class group chat. 

[Student A]: Waow.

 

[Student B]: That, what’s going on between the two of them? Doesn’t look quite right?

[Student C]: I have some news but I can’t guarantee it’s true. I heard school tyrant climbed over the wall and was caught by study god.

[Student A]: Brilliant. Where did you get this news?

 

[Student C]: The person in charge of the dorms is the second uncle of the cousin of one of my classmates. I heard it from him. Although the relation is a little far, it should still be pretty reliable.

[Student D]: Then don’t school tyrant and study god have beef with each other? He’s study god, how come school tyrant even dares to make a move against him. Yong Shi, do you know? @Li Mingyong

[Li Mingyong]: …I don’t know.

 

[Student D]: I shouldn’t turn around. Yong Shi report, what’s school tyrant’s reaction right now? 

[Li Mingyong]: …I also don’t dare to look.

[Student D]: Be courageous! Are you a man or not!

Li Mingyong replied over ten seconds later: Reaction…looks…somewhat dangerous.

The few shards of candy Xu Sheng had just bitten apart melted in his mouth. The taste was sickeningly sweet and rushed up to his head, immediately stunning him. 

After he got over his startlement his first thought was: Are, you, fucking, crazy?

Only Shao Zhan acted like nothing had happened, and threw the plastic stick into the trash can behind him. He pulled his seat out and sat down in the walkway that was barely big enough across from Xu Sheng.

“Why is it so quiet today?” The math teacher came in with a triangular ruler. She had thought that the class would be in absolute chaos because she was late by a few minutes. “Your behaviour is pretty good. I’ll praise you guys to your Lao Meng.”

The math teacher was pretty young, not yet 30. She had short hair and was exceptionally vigorous. She set down the triangular ruler and took out chalk from the chalk box. After breaking it with one hand, she said, “Let’s do the second lesson today. You’ve all previewed it right? Did you guys solve the leftover questions?” 

Everyone flipped through their books, and for a while, there were only sounds of books being flipped.

Xu Sheng used all of his logical reasoning and intelligence to avoid rushing over immediately to ask Shao Zhan if he was crazy or not.

 

He had originally planned on catching up on sleep during class, but he wasn’t sleepy anymore. He flipped open his book and unprecedentedly followed along with the teacher in her explanations of the first two math problems.

Whether or not he actually understood was a different issue. 

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

Xu Sheng revived himself with much difficulty. Halfway through the class, the message Zhang Feng sent over completely burned out the last bit of his common sense.

Itjcu Mfcu: P tfjgv raevs ubv rabif sbeg ibiilqbq ab fja?

We Vtfcu: …

Zhang Feng, in the mood of someone eating melons: Is it true? 

Once this kind of rumour spread, its entire flavour would change. It could change from Xiao Ming’s grandfather living to a hundred to Xiao Ming not having a grandfather.

We Vtfcu: Cgf sbe uesr ybgfv?

We Vtfcu: Lf vlvc’a rafji ws mjcvs.

We Vtfcu: Lf 

We Vtfcu vlvc’a ufa ab olclrt asqlcu tlr ‘tf’r pera mgjhs’ yfobgf rbwfbcf xcbmxfv jujlcra atf fvuf bo tlr ajyif.

“Phone,” Shao Zhan said. “Put it away.”

Shao Zhan didn’t even turn his head around as he said this. He merely reached over and knocked his pen against his desk twice while listening to the lesson. The passageway between desks in the classroom was not big enough for people to go by, but an arm could pass through.

Xu Sheng was first startled, then started laughing. 

He licked his back molars and directly threw his phone under his desk with a clatter.

He felt like if he had to endure any longer he really would go insane.

When Xu Sheng was really angry, his face would customarily reveal the traces of a smile instead, similar to that time he had menaced people outside the internet café. At first glance, he seemed like he was rather calm. “What’s with you?”

Li Mingyong dragged his chair and scooted over to the side. 

Shao Zhan underlined a few main points of the math problem on his page. He actually didn’t want to bother with dealing with this candy-eating, game-playing person to his side. But since he had been forcefully hinted at by the homeroom teacher in the office, he forced out a bit of patience and said, “No chatting during class.”

Xu Sheng, “What the crap does my chatting have to do with you?”

 

“If you don’t understand the words ‘no chatting’ then I’ll change my method.” Shao Zhan spit out two words. “Shut up.”

“…” 

The person at the table in front of him also began dragging his chair away.

Xu Sheng refused to back down. He leaned back against his chair and said, “I’ll only say this once. Don’t try to manage me.”

The temperature dropped and the atmosphere became increasingly tense.

“I’ll also only say this once. You can chat if you want to.” Shao Zhan finally raised his head and loosened his hands. The pen fell down. He changed the topic and said coldly, “After you chat turn in your 3500 words.” 

“…” Xu Sheng had nothing left to say.

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“Are you still going to chat?” Shao Zhan asked.

“If you’re not going to chat then turn your head back around and listen to the lesson.”

This was the first time Xu Sheng, who had gone on a reckless and tyrannical path at Lin Jiang Sixth High, had been battered bruised and bloody. 

He had never really met a person who wasn’t afraid of him, and who even had the attitude of ‘I don’t care whether you concede, you must submit to me.’

As the rumours grew wilder, the rumour that the study god and school tyrant had clashed with each other went from Class Seven, down the hallway, and all the way to Class One. In the end, not only was the entire second year shocked, the entire high school was in a feverish state.

Shao Zhao was ‘famous’ in a different way compared to Xu Sheng.

Ever since the time he had gotten the top score in the entire school’s high school entrance examination, on the first day that he had entered the school, never mind the whole year, nearly the entire school knew that a study god had come to Linjiang Sixth. This study god was very handsome too, just that he was a little bit estranged. 

He was the number one student. Never mind if it was a major exam or a quiz, he had never dropped down from the top spot. The first examination hall often had guests. The school’s entrance was plastered with more and more posters, all of them awards.

Anyway, it was really difficult to connect these two people together.

Playing on the phone, passing notes, sleeping, eating, reading manhua; all of these were matters in the past for Xu Sheng. Somehow or other he had memorised quite a lot of the school rules, to the point that when Zhang Feng sent a message asking if he wanted to go to the internet cafe at night, he nearly replied with the sentence: Students are prohibited from leaving the school after dismissal.

When Xu Sheng replied, the school bell had already rung for dismissal. He unplugged the portable charger and said as he stood up: Let’s go. 

The last class had been adjusted from the previous one and was the same as yesterday, Biology again.

The Biology teacher was on the podium arranging the assignments, and checking the homework with the class representative. The teacher glanced to the side, and just happened to see Xu Sheng walking out.

 

Yesterday, she had told Xu Sheng off. New hatred mixed with the old. It was the first time she had seen such an unruly student, and she decided to deal with it properly. She said seriously, “Xu Sheng, come here for a while.”

The Biology teacher walked down the first few rows of tables in her high heels and took him to the end of the corridor where no one really walked by. “You didn’t hand in your assignment again?” 

Xu Sheng found a nearby railing and leaned against it. He made a sound of acknowledgement. “I don’t know how to do it.”

There was a crowd coming out from a nearby class. The biology teacher was so angry that she said, “If you don’t know how to do it, then listen properly in class! You think just saying ‘I don’t know’ is fine?”

The words went in one ear and out the other. After hearing these words so many times, they didn’t hurt and they didn’t itch him.

He could even spare some attention to look at the murals hanging on the wall of the corridor. The grey-brown frame contained a portrait of someone, below it was an inspirational quote. 

He was called back by the Biology teacher’s ‘what on earth are you planning to do in the future’.

The Biology teacher spoke sharply. Her voice rose in pitch, stabbing like needles. “What is the difference between you and those people who only eat and wait to die–– You have no ideas in your brain, nothing that you like, you don’t even know what you want to do in the future and just slack your days away.”

The crowd of students who had been dismissed had more or less dispersed. The corridor was empty, with no one around.

The Xu Sheng who had always been eloquent and unbeaten in battles against his teachers didn’t reply, which was rare. 

– Boss, where are you?

– I’ve already played three games, didn’t we agree to meet at the old place?

– Are you coming or not.

Zhang Feng waited painfully in the internet cafe; in the end, he sent a final message: If you still don’t come, my mom is going to nag me to go home and eat! 

After Xu Sheng regained his senses and realised where he was, he had already gotten off the bus.

He stood near the bus stop for a while before replying to Zhang Feng: Something came up, I’m not coming.

In front of him was a familiar alley with very old-fashioned buildings. Even though the walls were repainted every year, there were still old, heavy cracks that couldn’t be covered. The branches and leaves of the sycamore trees on either side of the road crowded together. The lively cicadas, along with the branches and leaves, shrouded the entire street.

Xu Sheng followed the road for a while. The sky gradually became darker. He paused in his steps. Ahead was a small, abandoned warehouse. He didn’t know what kind of goods this warehouse used to store in the past. The iron door had long since rusted. 

Xu Sheng stuck his hand down the collar of his shirt, following the inconspicuous thin black cord to pull out a copper-yellow key. His usual style already had a swagger—it was no big deal for him to wear a black cord around his neck, and no one noticed it either.

He knew that the door was difficult to open. Xu Sheng used one hand to pull tightly on the doorknob before inserting the key in. He took out the key, and when he pushed the door it let out an ear-piercing screech.

 

This warehouse was no larger than 20 square metres. There were a lot of empty paint buckets scattered haphazardly over the floor. The long beams of the warehouse split the area up into long columns. The only thing that didn’t fit in with the warehouse was the easel in the middle of it.

There was no painting stool, only a half-metre high old cargo box in front of it for sitting. 

There were piles of drawing paper on either side.

There were several diagrammatic paintings about drawing techniques on the wall that had been torn off from textbooks, and a few pages of sketches were scattered around the sides of the cargo box. The page on the very top was a drawing of Giuliano de Medici, the lines of the sculpture clean and sharp, the light and dark elements extremely powerful.

Xu Sheng also didn’t know what he came here to do. He closed the warehouse door, took three steps in, and sat on the cargo box for a while, with that little bit of light coming in through the ceiling windows, shining down on him.

He had one foot resting on the bottom of the easel as he stared at the blank easel in front of him. 

He placed a blunt 4B pencil in the slot.

Once what little there was left of the light coming in through the window dwindled into nothing, Xu Sheng suddenly kicked the ground and stood up from that old cargo box. He stuffed the key back down his collar.

There was a long waiting time between buses, with one bus taking half an hour. After Xu Sheng’s trip out, he just managed to make it back in time for the school’s closing.

If it was in the past, then this would be nothing, he could just climb over the wall, but he now felt a paranoia towards the wall. 

And he didn’t know why, but his right eye had started twitching.

Xu Sheng vaguely had a bad feeling. When he climbed up the wall in two or three steps, his legs bent as he squatted on top the wall, he saw a familiar school uniform and found that God indeed might be playing with him.

“Are you free with nothing to do,” Xu Sheng said this and paused for a second, then took in a deep breath and said, “…So you’re camping here especially for me?”

Although Shao Zhan had temporarily taken over the position in the Disciplinary Committee under Meng Guowei’s repeated pleadings, he wasn’t bored to that extent. It was pure coincidence. “I’m not that free.” 

He wasn’t free, but he had just so happened to climb the wall right in front of him, so he couldn’t leave it be either.

Shao Zhan said again, “Come down.”

If he went down, that would mean a 3500-word disciplinary review.

Xu Sheng was planning to negotiate with him, but he hadn’t totally stopped himself from when he had been preparing to jump down earlier, so he lost his balance— 

Shao Zhan had just walked to the foot of the wall when his vision went white. The clothes on Xu Sheng’s body had been blown upwards by the wind, and he looked like a white bird from a distance. However, this bird couldn’t escape the forces of gravity, and he slammed downwards with shocking speed.

Boom!

 

All of a sudden, the sky and winds surged. There was a clap of thunder from somewhere, and the entire night sky began flickering with lightning.

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