Chapter 81 Little Dragon Pool

Under the night sky, Jiang Nian finished setting off fireworks and looked around.

In the countryside, two or three families usually lived close together, separated by distance from others. People went to bed early at this time in autumn, and he had already seen lights on in several homes.

As the lights came on, his health bar also lit up.

He quickly went downstairs to eat some of the food he had brought, boiled water for a bath, and then hurried to bed.

The next day was overcast.

Jiang Nian was awakened by his phone ringing. The dimly lit room was filled with a faint smell of mildew. He reached out to grab his phone, fumbling several times.

Finally, he found it and squinted at the bright light emanating from the screen.

It was Xu Qianqian calling.

“Hello?” he said, his voice heavy with sleep, not intending to get up.

Xu Qianqian’s voice was as usual, “Open the yard gate, I’ve brought some warmth.”

“Does it have to be now?” Jiang Nian was terribly sleepy and didn’t really want to get up. “Look at the time, it’s so rare not to have classes, can’t you—”

“I’m exhausted, if you don’t open the door, I’ll feed it to the dogs.”

“Alright, alright, you win.” Jiang Nian gave in.

He lived in the front room on the second floor. He yanked open the window and indeed saw the girl outside the yard gate. It was late autumn, and the path outside the stone-walled yard gate was overgrown with green grass.

Without time to wash up, he went downstairs to open the door, and then the stainless steel yard gate.

Southern autumn rains were continuous, and even wooden doors were painted with special anti-corrosion paint. But if a house was left uninhabited for a long time, no amount of paint helped; it would still rapidly age.

“What did you bring?” Jiang Nian glanced at her.

Xu Qianqian was carrying two stainless steel lunchboxes, the kind of round and square ones commonly seen in rural primary schools. They had two clasps to prevent them from opening.

“Your breakfast, I got it from Uncle Er’s pigsty,” Xu Qianqian snorted, carrying them inside. “When did you arrive yesterday?”

“Around eight in the evening, I guess.” Jiang Nian followed behind her.

The first floor had long been uninhabited, with a kitchen, a guest room, and two storage rooms. Xu Qianqian was no stranger to the Jiang family’s old house and went upstairs to the second floor with practiced ease.

The light was dim on the overcast day, and she paused at the stairwell.

“Aren’t you going to wipe the table?”

“Wipe what? I’m only staying for two days.” Jiang Nian yawned as he went to wash up, tossing out, “If you can’t stand it, you can wipe it for me.”

“Go to hell.”

When Jiang Nian came out, the table was clean.

The two sat down to eat breakfast: pork vermicelli with a fried egg, sprinkled with a bit of chopped green onion. It was clearly Xu Qianqian’s handiwork; Old Xu couldn’t cook.

There was no delivery service in the countryside, so breakfast had to be bought by cycling five li to the town, outside Xiaolongtan Village.

There wasn’t much breakfast in town either, just steamed buns, soy milk, fried dough sticks, or fried fish buns. The town was small, with no market, only a small fair every two days.

Buying and selling groceries also happened every two days; that was always the rule.

“Your room smells musty, how do you sleep?” Xu Qianqian frowned.

“I just make do, you don’t expect me to clean, do you?” Jiang Nian didn’t care. “Can I come to your place for lunch? I’m easy to feed.”

Xu Qianqian was speechless and glanced at him.

“My dad asked me to come over and ask if you want to move in with us.”

Unlike the Jiang family’s old house, Xu Qianqian’s home had always been inhabited. Her grandparents were still healthy, with no illnesses or misfortunes, living in their old home.

“No, thanks, it’s too much trouble.” Jiang Nian politely declined.

“Come or don’t come, see how you sleep tonight,” Xu Qianqian grumbled, lowering her head to eat her vermicelli, occasionally looking at him, and suddenly wasn’t so angry anymore.

“Why do you keep staring at me? I don’t have enough to eat.” Jiang Nian reacted protectively to his food.

“Who’s trying to steal it from you?!”

At noon, Jiang Nian squatted at home and started the old motorcycle that had been in service for over ten years. Instantly, another wave of ecstasy washed over him, and he rubbed his hands in the yard like a monkey.

Xiaolongtan, now that he was in the village, how could he not go fishing at the reservoir!

He had been saving up his skill cards for two days.

Burning paper and offering incense couldn’t be done alone; he had to wait for Old Xu to have time. However, Xu Qianqian mentioned that Old Xu had gone to visit relatives and probably wouldn’t be back until the afternoon.

The morning was free, so fishing was the only option. No fishing rod, but there were bamboo poles, and fishing line and hooks could be bought at the store. He didn’t need bait for that kind of fishing.

Deep Blue! Let me see your limits!

He locked the door.

Before leaving, he invited Xu Qianqian, and as expected, she refused. But she said that if he really caught fish, she could make small fish soup for lunch, the kind with a few sprinkles of green onions.

The one word men couldn’t stand was “small”!

Big, big, big!

He had to catch the biggest one!

Jiang Nian pulled out a bamboo pole of moderate hardness and hung it on the old motorcycle. He shook his head while stomping on the kickstarter; the battery had long been defunct, and he always had to start it manually.

“When big, big fish fill your tiny pot, and you’re struggling to get rid of the fishy smell, you’ll regret saying that, Xu Qianqian.”

“Don’t bully a young man in poverty!”

Vroom, vroom, vroom!! The engine coughed and sputtered as if someone had violently kicked its heart a few times, finally sputtering to life.

Jiang Nian seized the opportunity, gently twisting the throttle. He used a three-shallow-one-deep technique, continuously increasing the throttle to prevent accidental stalling.

A puff of black smoke emerged from the exhaust pipe, and the old motorcycle finally started moving.

Zhang Ningzhi sat in the audience section of Class Three’s base camp, looking up at the sky.

It was the second day of the sports meet, and it was overcast.

The broadcast played “Sea of Flowers,” and the entire sports field echoed with 【The sky is gloomy, but love prefers you not to leave, distance cannot separate us. Missing turns into a sea, unable to enter from outside the window.】

Yao Beibei jogged over from a distance, holding her phone, and said mysteriously.

“Zhang Ningzhi, there’s a boy in a parallel class who’s so handsome!”

“Oh.” Zhang Ningzhi wasn’t enthusiastic.

“Aren’t you going to see him? He’s really super good-looking!” Yao Beibei was excited. “You don’t know, I asked him for his contact information, and his family is so poor they don’t even have a door.”

Zhang Ningzhi: “.”

“I told a cold joke, and you didn’t even react a little.” Yao Beibei pouted, resting her chin on her hand as she looked at the sports field. “There are so few people, where are the boys from our class?”

“They went to play ball,” Zhang Ningzhi said.

“Ah, no wonder no one is cheering for our class.” Yao Beibei let out an ‘eh.’ That’s how sports meets were; by the second day, hardly anyone cared anymore.

On the third day, it was even more of a mess; hardly anyone watched the closing ceremony.

“Our class has fewer events, and most of them are almost done,” Zhang Ningzhi explained. “The boys asked the class monitor if they could go play ball, and then—”

“The class monitor is that easy to talk to?” Yao Beibei was stunned for a moment.

Zhang Ningzhi didn’t know the class monitor well, so she didn’t know how to respond. She looked around, thinking they could probably just leave, and then turned her head and said.

“Beibei, shall we go to the classroom to do homework?”

“Huh?” Yao Beibei was a bit dumbfounded. “Beibei, it’s a sports meet, and you want me to do homework? Between going to school and being ambitious, I’d rather hang myself.”

“Come with me to see the junior boys, they’re much livelier than the boys in our class. They have sunny smiles and abs, and they haven’t evolved into science geeks yet!”

“No, I’ll go back to the classroom.”

Zhang Ningzhi didn’t know why, but she felt the sports meet was a bit meaningless.

“I still have homework to finish.”

Yao Beibei tilted her head, like, no way, sis.

After thinking for a moment, she suddenly waved behind Zhang Ningzhi.

“Hey, Jiang Nian!”

Zhang Ningzhi’s pupils instantly widened slightly, and her eyes suddenly brightened several degrees. Her whole body tensed, and her heart felt like a fizzy candy dissolving in water, bubbling with tiny Qi.

Almost instinctively, she turned her head, only to find nothing behind her.

“Oh, oh, oh, Beibei.” Yao Beibei pressed close to her face, showing Anya’s signature smile. “Your reaction is so strong, your eyes are all sparkly.”

Zhang Ningzhi pursed her lips, her face instantly turning red, shaking her head like a rattle-drum.

“No! It’s all because you called out randomly—”

“No? Really?” Yao Beibei grinned, pressing her face against hers. “Honestly, how did you feel when you heard the name just now? Did your heart beat faster?”

The blush on Zhang Ningzhi’s face spread down her neck at a visible speed.

“Don’t talk nonsense, I—”

Seeing that Zhang Ningzhi was about to get angry, Yao Beibei immediately raised her hands in surrender.

“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything. Alright, alright, isn’t it enough if I go upstairs with you to do homework? Don’t be angry. I was just teasing you to make you feel better.”

Yao Beibei said a lot of nice things, half-pushing, half-pulling her towards the classroom.

Zhang Ningzhi didn’t speak, turning her head away, continuing to feign anger. In reality, she felt a bit guilty; at the moment she turned back, there was indeed a feeling of building a rose bower.

As the two girls reached the fourth floor, they happened to encounter Ma Guojun and Li Hua returning from playing ball. The two, one fat and one thin, looked somewhat comically mismatched.

Since they were all part of the same small group, Zhang Ningzhi naturally greeted them. Yao Beibei, however, just let out a ‘hmph,’ which counted as a greeting.

Unexpectedly, Ma Guojun suddenly asked, “Hey, when is Jiang Nian coming back?”

Zhang Ningzhi’s heart instantly fluttered for two seconds. Why was he asking her? Although she did know the answer, such a thing… She had to try her best to remain calm.

She looked up, feigning a moment of hesitation, and said.

“I think it’s Acquired.”

“Damn!” Ma Guojun and Li Hua left, seemingly just asking casually.

Li Hua’s conversation was loud, audible from half a classroom away.

“I’m not lying to you, you really have to read this book, you’ll regret it for life if you don’t. What bad intentions could a good brother have? Just read it with confidence.”

“How come I heard others say it’s very ‘knife-like’?”

“It only ‘knifed’ a supporting character at the end, those people just like to blab all day. Give it a try, it’s an adventure story, whose focus is on a small supporting character when reading a book?”

“Alright. I read fast, so I should be able to finish it this afternoon.”

“Good, good, then I’m relieved.”

Half an hour later, Lin Dong, the math class representative, entered the classroom, walked to the multimedia equipment, and opened the cover. He took out his phone from inside and then hurried out again.

He seemed to have something urgent, his steps swift.

The classroom instantly quieted down, with only a dozen or so students working on their test papers at their desks.

Zhang Ningzhi changed her sweet and sour soda mood to a plain water mood, glanced at the time, ten past ten, took a deep breath, and began to write on her test paper.

At the same time, at Xiaolongtan Reservoir.

Jiang Nian pulled out his phone, carried his crude equipment, and climbed onto the river embankment. Before finding a spot, he took a photo of the reservoir and immediately sent it to the class group chat.

Before fishing, setting up a bait nest is common sense.