After Lu Jiuling and Tang Lei finished touring the Fan clan ancestral hall, they came out and checked the time. It was only three in the afternoon.
“Where else do you want to wander around?”
Although there were still a few minor sights worth checking in at, Lu Jiuling had already lost interest.
“Only the Fan Family Mansion is worth a look, but didn’t the homeroom teacher say not to go there yet? We’re supposed to do a night tour of the Fan Family Mansion together.”
Tang Lei looked at the guide on his phone. “There’s nothing else worth seeing. You want to go back to the inn?”
There were plenty of budget hotels and guesthouses in the ancient town. Tang Weimin had reserved one near the Fan Family Mansion and had already said in the class group chat that if anyone was tired, they could go rest at the guesthouse first.
“This ancient town can be covered in a single day. Why insist on making it a two-day, one-night trip?”
Lu Jiuling didn’t understand. Especially since the homeroom teacher wanted the whole class to tour the Fan Family Mansion together at night—did that hold some special meaning?
Generally speaking, class activities should be held during the day. Going out at night made accidents more likely.
And if something happened, the homeroom teacher would be the one held responsible.
“It’s not like you’re paying. Just follow along and have fun!”
Tang Lei had been getting up early and sleeping late, grinding through studies for three years until he was dead tired. Now that he had finally come out to travel and relax—and with Tang Weimin footing the bill—he wished they could play for a few more days.
Even if they finished visiting the scenic spots, he could still look at pretty girls in the streets and alleys.
“Back to the inn to rest?”
Lu Jiuling suggested.
“Fine!”
Tang Lei actually didn’t want to go back, but since his good friend had spoken, he was too embarrassed to refuse.
The two of them rushed to the guesthouse called “Hermit Among Flowers.” After checking in, they discovered that a third of the class had already arrived.
“No way. Are you all trying to grind us to death?”
Tang Lei was about to lose it. The moment he entered the six-person room, he saw three classmates studying.
“If I had any other way out, I’d be a dog if I so much as looked at another book!”
Li Dongxuan rolled his eyes.
The other two didn’t say a word at all. They were both fully focused on doing practice questions.
The sense of urgency in Tang Lei’s heart shot straight to his head with a whoosh. He hurriedly opened his bag, pulled out his notebook of wrong answers, and also began reviewing.
Lu Jiuling washed his hands, lay down on the bed, and started scrolling on his phone.
He wanted to see if there was any information about transcendents online.
“690, what’s up with you?”
Seeing that Lu Jiuling wasn’t studying, Li Dongxuan asked curiously, because this kid was usually one of those who buried himself in hard study too.
“Nothing!”
Lu Jiuling changed a few search terms, but found nothing. There were only some urban legends.
“690, something’s off with you!”
Li Dongxuan felt that Lu Jiuling had changed. The usual “Little Silent One” had actually dared to talk back to Zhang Shuai, and now, at the most crucial moment of senior year, he wasn’t studying anymore. “Did your billionaire biological father find you or something?”
“690, if you make it big, don’t forget your old classmates!”
Li Dongxuan teased.
“Get lost!”
Lu Jiuling laughed and cursed. He knew Li Dongxuan liked joking around, but the guy had no sense of measure and often made people genuinely angry.
Haha!
When everyone heard this, they couldn’t help laughing.
For ordinary students like them, if they wanted to change their lives, their only way out was getting into a good university—or fantasizing that they were the illegitimate child of some super-rich tycoon.
After a few jokes, the guest room quieted down again, leaving only the sound of pen tips scraping over test papers.
It wasn’t until a quarter to five that Xu Shuo spoke in the class group chat.
Class Monitor Xu: @Everyone, come to Zhuangyuan Lou for the group dinner. Hurry up. You must arrive before five. Don’t make everyone wait for you alone!
Jia Mingqiao: Received!
Wang Xingkun: Received!
……
“Wasn’t the meeting time five-thirty?”
Li Dongxuan was displeased. “Why go so early?”
Zhuangyuan Lou and the Hermit Among Flowers guesthouse were on the same street, less than fifty meters apart. It wouldn’t take five minutes to walk there.
Complaints were complaints, but everyone still packed up their things and headed to Zhuangyuan Lou Restaurant.
“Why are you still carrying a backpack? Isn’t it heavy?”
Seeing Lu Jiuling carrying his backpack, Li Dongxuan couldn’t understand.
“You just need to bring valuables like your wallet and phone!”
Tang Lei felt that this guesthouse should be pretty safe. Besides, they were a bunch of poor students without much money on them. Even thieves would be too lazy to pick the locks and steal.
Lu Jiuling smiled but didn’t say anything.
The faceless Buddha mask and the Buddha Intestine Sword were in his backpack. There was no way he could leave them in the guest room. If they were lost, he wouldn’t even have anywhere to cry.
……
The name Zhuangyuan Lou Restaurant had a very good implication for senior-year students like Lu Jiuling, who were about to take the college entrance examination.
There were forty-six students in the class, so one private room definitely wouldn’t be enough. Thus, Tang Weimin had reserved five banquet tables in the second-floor hall.
When Lu Jiuling and the others arrived, some classmates were already cracking sunflower seeds.
Tang Weimin had also arrived early and was sitting beside a dining table, playing on his phone.
“The homeroom teacher is dressed so formally!”
Tang Lei muttered.
Tang Weimin had still been wearing casual clothes in the morning, but now he had changed into a black suit. The leather shoes on his feet had been polished so brightly that even a fly landing on them would slip.
“It’s just a group dinner. Does he have to be this solemn?”
Li Dongxuan had thought everyone was just eating a meal together, but now that he saw the homeroom teacher attending in formal attire, his nerves instantly tightened.
He wasn’t going to hold some pledge rally, was he?
That would be way too awkward.
When Tang Weimin saw Lu Jiuling and the others, he immediately smiled and waved.
Everyone hurried over.
“How was it?”
Tang Weimin adjusted his glasses, his face full of scholarly air. “Did you have fun?”
“Fun!”
Li Dongxuan actually hadn’t toured the ancient town. After getting off the tour bus, he had gone straight to the guesthouse to study. But he couldn’t say that to Tang Weimin.
After all, the homeroom teacher was covering all the expenses. It would cost quite a bit.
Li Dongxuan was very grateful for that thoughtfulness.
“Jiuling, where did you go?”
The homeroom teacher asked with a smile.
“The City God Temple, the ancestral hall, the Confucian Temple—we walked around them all!”
For some reason, Lu Jiuling felt that the way the homeroom teacher looked at him was strange, too indulgent. “Thank you for spending so much on us!”
“Have fun these two days. Don’t feel pressured by the college entrance exam. Being happy is the most important thing!”
On the table in front of Tang Weimin were five stacks of red envelopes. From them, he found the envelopes with Lu Jiuling and the others’ names written on the covers and handed them out. “One for each of you. Inside are my hopes and blessings for you, as well as some evaluations!”
“The evaluations may be a little sharp, so don’t open them now. Wait until the activity is dismissed tomorrow and read them by yourselves when no one is around!”
“All right, go find seats. The meal will start soon!”
Tang Weimin waved his hand, indicating that Lu Jiuling and the others could leave.
Tang Lei pulled Lu Jiuling along and instinctively chose the table farthest from the homeroom teacher. Then he pinched the red envelope inch by inch, feeling what was inside.
“I wonder what the homeroom teacher’s evaluation of me is?”
Tang Lei felt uneasy.
“Did the homeroom teacher care about me a lot before?”
Lu Jiuling had only arrived half a month ago, and his memories of the past two years were somewhat blurry.
With his grades, there was a high chance he wouldn’t have received any special treatment.
“More or less?”
Tang Lei thought for a moment. “We’re all students who don’t like talking and just bury our heads in studying. We don’t need the homeroom teacher to worry about us at all, so naturally there’s not much caring or not caring involved!”
“So that means he didn’t care?”
Lu Jiuling recalled how the homeroom teacher had handed out the red envelopes just now. Tang Lei and the others’ envelopes had all been searched out, but his alone had been directly drawn from the very bottom of the stack on the left.
As if it had been placed there in advance.
Mm,
it could also be a coincidence. Maybe he was overthinking it!
“You definitely can’t compare with Jiang Shan and Xu Shuo. They’re first and second in the grade. The homeroom teacher’s bonus is all counting on those two.”
Tang Lei stuffed the red envelope into his pocket, grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds, and started cracking them.
The students arrived one after another. Tang Weimin gave each person a red envelope. For someone like Wang Xingkun, who was at the bottom of the class, he even gave a few extra words of encouragement.
At five-twenty, the whole class had arrived. The homeroom teacher asked the servers to bring out the dishes, and the meal officially began.
“Homeroom teacher, say a few words!”
Xu Shuo sat beside Tang Weimin and was the first to speak. “Everyone, applause!”
Clap clap clap!
The applause was very enthusiastic.
Whether out of feeling or reason, even if they didn’t consider Tang Weimin’s status as homeroom teacher, since he was treating them to this meal, they had to clap politely.
“Suck-up!”
Zhang Shuai muttered.
“What should be said, I have already said many times over these three years!”
Tang Weimin’s gaze swept over the whole class. “You may feel that studying is bitter and exhausting.”
“But when you enter society, you will discover that there are far too many places where you stumble and suffer losses. In comparison, studying at school is actually the simplest and fairest thing.”
“Do it well. Don’t let yourselves regret it!”
“Lastly, I wish all of you admission into the universities of your dreams!”
“Cheers!”
Tang Weimin raised his cup.
“Thank you for your kind words, homeroom teacher. Cheers!”
Xu Shuo’s voice was very loud. After speaking, he even called for Jiang Shan, Xu Shaowei, and the others to eat, as if he were the host.
After they had eaten for a few minutes, Xu Shuo began to toast Tang Weimin again, saying a long string of grateful words.
“If only I had Xu Shuo’s way of handling people and matters. I definitely wouldn’t suffer losses once I entered society!”
Tang Lei was envious. If he had to take the initiative to toast the homeroom teacher, he would feel too embarrassed.
“Xu Shuo has good grades and understands worldly dealings. In the future, he’ll definitely be the one who does best in our class!”
Ke Xinyi sighed.
“It’s just that his character isn’t good!”
Ning Qian curled her lip, a trace of disdain in her tone.
“Have you forgotten Zhang Shuai?”
Li Yinuo picked up a slice of smoked meat and dipped it in sauce. “Xu Shuo still has to struggle on his own. Zhang Shuai has his dad to lift him up. His starting point is already higher than other people’s finish line!”
The trio chattered away, envying Zhang Shuai for being born into such a good family.
Most of the students weren’t very scheming. They ate and drank, chatted about games, and by the time the meal was over, it was almost six-thirty.
“Everyone full?”
Tang Weimin asked with a smile. Seeing everyone nod, he stood up and picked up his briefcase. “Since you’re full, let’s begin today’s group activity—the night tour of the Fan Family Mansion!”
“Let’s go, let’s go. Don’t dawdle!”
Xu Shuo urged them on. Like a lead horse, he always seized every opportunity to manage his classmates and show his presence.
The Fan Family Mansion wasn’t far from Zhuangyuan Lou Restaurant. It took less than ten minutes to walk there.
The global economy had been in decline for many years, and life was hard for everyone. Even a thousand-year-old ancient town like this was no exception, which could be seen from its business hours.
The Fan Family Mansion did not close until ten at night, but in reality, after six o’clock, there were no longer many tourists.
Tang Weimin had already bought the tickets and handed them out to everyone at the main entrance.
“Go in and appreciate the scenery of this grand mansion. It’s said that a Provincial Administration Commissioner spent a full one and a half million taels of silver to build it!”
Tang Weimin watched the students walk into the Fan Family Mansion one by one. His heart could no longer stop itself from pounding.
My promotion ritual is finally about to begin!