Chapter 115: Words Written on the Chinese Language Exam Paper

During the first two periods of class in the morning, the teacher lectured at the front, and Jiang Nian used his hand to pry open his eyelids.

Deep Blue, should I just start it now?

Never mind, I’ll save my love for the afternoon.

It was all his fault for scrolling through several TikToks of female university students, or possibly cosplaying female university students, yesterday, which resulted in his dreams being all shaky and trembling—it was truly absurd.

No, can you send me the link for those jeans?

Pat, pat, he slapped his own face; he couldn’t scroll anymore tonight.

It’s really meaningless; TikTok, like life, gets more depraved the more you scroll.

“Alright, now we’ll start dictation.” Xi Bao’s little bee horn emitted an electronic sound, a crackling noise that was too hypnotic. “Take out your notebooks. This time we’ll dictate ten words and six fixed phrases.”

Jiang Nian mechanically took out his dictation notebook, only hearing Xi Bao make a ‘c’ sound. He was in a daze, wrote down “coser,” and slowly closed his eyes.

He suddenly woke up with a start, realizing they were still doing dictation, and couldn’t help but be startled.

“Which one is it? Which one is it?!” Jiang Nian asked in a fluster.

Li Hua, busy with his cheat sheet, turned his head.

“The third one. Which one did you write? ‘Coser’? You rascal.”

Jiang Nian took a deep breath. Absurd, he’d been asleep for half a minute and even had a dream. After waking up with a jolt, his heart was pounding, and his mind was exceptionally clear.

He didn’t have time to bother with Li Hua and quickly wrote down the fourth word. Then he turned his head to look at Zhang Ningzhi’s dictation and filled in the first three words as well.

After dictation, he passed his notebook forward, and only then did Jiang Nian let out a sigh of relief.

“I’m so sleepy.”

The class had just finished dictation, and the room was a bit noisy.

During this period, it was permissible to speak loudly and without being reprimanded.

“Why did you fall asleep just now?” Li Hua patted him and asked curiously, “Aren’t you usually quite energetic lately? You don’t sleep in class.”

“I…” Jiang Nian certainly couldn’t say he was indulging in female beauty last night.

That would be too stupid; he’d be attacked by a scoundrel like Li Hua.

Let’s try another one.

“I played a four-character game.”

“Love and Deep Space?” Li Hua snapped his fingers.

“Your composition is a bit complex, Hua,” Jiang Nian said, speechless. “I want to know, when you play this kind of game, do you role-play as the male lead or the female lead?”

“Of course, I role-play as the male lead. A tall, rich, and handsome guy like me naturally slips right into the role.” Li Hua was spouting nonsense again; even passing dogs would shake their heads at it.

Zhang Ningzhi, listening nearby, seemed preoccupied.

During the long break, they ran laps, and the autumn air was slightly cool.

The hallway was chaotic, filled with the stirring sound of the ‘Athlete’s March.’ Jiang Nian walked downstairs wearing his school uniform jacket, half-unzipped. It had to be said that school uniforms were indeed durable.

Because the middle schools in the small county were not strictly managed, they only issued summer and autumn school uniforms. At fifty or sixty yuan, they weren’t expensive, and the quality entirely depended on the thickness of the leaders’ ancestral records.

At seventeen or eighteen years old, anything one wore wouldn’t look too bad.

Running laps in a jacket in this weather would definitely be hot, but not wearing one would be a bit cold. Only a few brave souls disregarded others’ gazes and went downstairs in short sleeves.

In the third-floor hallway, he keenly spotted Song Xiyun and went over to ask her.

“Not running laps? Where’s Xu Qianqian?”

“We asked for leave, so we don’t have to run,” Song Xiyun said, sounding somewhat guilty for some reason.

Jiang Nian wasn’t a local from Olympiad Class 4!

Just someone from another class!

“Oh, oh, your teacher is really quite carefree. People in your class get their period three times a month, and he doesn’t even care, but you guys get it once a week?”

“After all, our homeroom teacher is a man,” Song Xiyun whispered.

“Do you have some misunderstanding about men? I’ll post you on Tieba.” Jiang Nian glanced into the classroom; Xu Qianqian looked up from her seat.

Their eyes met, they instinctively looked away, and then both gave each other the middle finger.

Downstairs.

Towards the end of running laps, most of the boys had taken off their jackets completely.

Jiang Nian even took off his jacket as soon as he started running. Girls, for various reasons, or perhaps because they weren’t too hot, mostly remained tightly bundled.

The third and fourth periods were originally math class, but the math teacher had something to do. He temporarily swapped with Old Liu, and suddenly two math classes became two Chinese classes.

The whole class instantly erupted. Who could understand the feeling of two English classes plus two Chinese classes?

It meant the entire morning was self-study, perfect for catching up on homework.

“What? These two periods are Chinese class?”

“Then let’s have a good rest.”

The most magical thing about this subject was that the score you got was basically not up to you.

The most taboo phrase was: ‘I study hard, and my grades will definitely drop next time.’ It was always incomprehensible why some people scored seventy points, and why some scored one hundred and thirty.

Old Liu was quite unconventional; he knew Chinese class connected the third and fourth periods at noon.

If he taught in the usual way, hardly anyone would listen. Some might not even look up until school was dismissed.

He simply had the whole class participate in teaching, taking turns by study group.

“The test papers distributed yesterday, the classical Chinese translation, one section per group, distributed evenly. Don’t rush, each group will come up to the stage to present.”

As his words fell, the whole class instantly stirred.

“No way?”

“Kill me, I didn’t even preview.”

Old Liu listened to the wails of the class, his expression as calm as water. He even took a small sip from his thermos, and with just one sentence, he achieved a complete reversal.

“Hurry up and finish translating the classical Chinese; next period, we’ll watch ‘Aerial China.'”

The class fell silent for a moment, then erupted in a cheer of “Oh!”

“Hooray!”

“Aerial China! Aerial!”

“Shh, don’t shout!” Old Liu almost looked like a little yellow bean emoji. “It’s only the third period now. Do you want me to be taken away by the grade leader, right?”

The class chuckled, then frantically began translating the classical Chinese. Some took out their Chinese booklets and started comparing words and phrases to translate, while others discussed animatedly.

Li Hua scratched his ears and cheeks in frustration. “The sixth paragraph, the sixth paragraph is so long, how do I translate it!”

He turned his head and saw Jiang Nian pulling out his phone.

“…You rascal.”

A quick snap and search, and their troubles were instantly solved.

“Awesome!” Li Hua gave a thumbs up.

After eagerly getting the allocated phrase translations from Jiang Nian, he immediately calmed down. Looking at the noisy groups around him, he shook his head.

Jiang Nian had just finished making important annotations when he saw Zhang Ningzhi still flipping through her classical Chinese dictionary.

To be honest, he thought that thing was a bit useless. It was as thick as a brick, rarely used normally, and it was better to just take a picture with a phone and be done with it.

“Can’t find it?”

“Mm,” Zhang Ningzhi whispered.

“Oh, the translation for this word is…” Jiang Nian secretly peeked at his phone again, then recited the answer, even taking a moment to glance at the second half of the sentence.

Following that, one group after another went up to the stage to translate. When it was the sixth group’s turn, Zhang Ningzhi stood at the far left of the podium, right next to Jiang Nian.

She looked down at the paper, nervously.

In contrast, Jiang Nian was much more relaxed, because the people below the stage were even more relaxed. Except for the seventh group, which was about to take its turn, and a few groups after that, hardly anyone was listening.

But this was also good; if Old Liu wasn’t there, and it was just the Chinese class representative organizing, they could even just read anything.

Like ‘Eight hundred elite soldiers rush to the northern slope.’

The translation activity lasted from the third period until the first ten minutes of the fourth period, after which the entire class’s attention was focused on Old Liu. If he were to back out at this point—

Couldn’t bear to think about it, couldn’t bear to think about it.

Old Liu evidently had no intention of letting them down and turned to say,

“Class representative, come up and turn on the multimedia.”

“Oh!!!”

The whole class instantly erupted, and then Old Liu quieted them down the next second. He rambled on, but it all boiled down to one meaning:

Keep a low profile.

Watch quietly; there’s no need to call the grade leader over.

This was probably when the whole class was most united. Someone was in charge of drawing the curtains. Someone was in charge of keeping watch at the door, and several people ran to the multimedia podium.

Zeng You in the front row silently opened his phone, skillfully adjusting it to the lowest brightness.

“Folklore of Public Opinion! Activate!”

The light in the classroom was dim. Jiang Nian leaned back in his chair, ready to enjoy “Aerial China.” Something he wouldn’t normally even glance at became a delicacy when shown during Chinese class.

Ah, not watching it means you’re not Chinese.

Anyway, since there’s no class, watching ‘Animal World’ would be fine.

Zhang Ningzhi seemed a bit distracted. She glanced at the video projected on the screen, then her peripheral vision caught Jiang Nian, and she appeared preoccupied.

She lowered her eyes and finally wrote a passage on the Chinese test paper from earlier. After hesitating for a moment, she poked Jiang Nian’s arm with her finger, signaling him to look.

Friendship book recommendation: “This Celebrity Only Wants More Money.”

An mercenary in the entertainment industry, clearly priced and fair to all, from the three major film festivals and the Oscars, down to Baby Bus, he does as much as he’s paid!