See How Many People Are Ungrateful Wolves

After Teacher Ke was hired by County Second High School, her relationship with the teachers of the other Retake Classes was fairly ordinary.

Mainly because her status had yet to be made clear, everyone deliberately kept their distance under the principle that less trouble was better than more.

Moreover, Teacher Luo and the others held official positions, while Teacher Ke was a hired "temporary worker." The relationship between them was somewhat delicate.

But after Li Ye's exercise books were revealed, several teachers all set aside their pride and sought Teacher Ke's help.

Because Li Ye's exercise books contained practice problems for mathematics, physics, and chemistry, and every subject's questions struck the teachers as fresh and ingenious.

"Teacher Ke truly deserves to be a university student from the sixties. It isn't just that she's good at English—she's practically a master of everything!"

"Teacher Ke, please help these children! They're under too much pressure. Every extra set of questions you make gives them one more sliver of a chance to get in."

Teacher Ke said with calm grace, "I did give Li Ye several sets of questions. Since they seem to have been effective, I'll contribute my share of strength!"

Yet when Teacher Ke took Li Ye's exercise book, her expression abruptly turned grave before quickly returning to normal.

She had thought the questions Teacher Luo and the others mentioned were the ones she had given Li Ye, so that Li Ye and her daughter could "exchange ideas." But now that she looked, why did everything seem so wrong?

Still, Teacher Ke was, after all, a university student from twenty years ago. She quickly grasped the subtle brilliance of the questions in Li Ye's exercise book.

"These questions are not simple."

Teacher Ke immediately reached that conclusion.

How could the rich experience accumulated through forty years of exam-oriented education possibly be simple?

There seemed to be only a few questions, yet they covered more knowledge points and made it easier for students to master them. They were who knew how many levels above the tentative standards of the early eighties, when the college entrance examination had only just been restored.

Teacher Ke settled down and carefully pondered the essence of those question types before trying to create some questions herself.

But after writing several in succession, Teacher Ke could not help feeling discouraged.

She had intended to absorb the essence of Li Ye's exercise books, then combine it with her own experience and create a fresh new test paper in her own style.

But when she actually began writing questions, she found that she simply could not get around Li Ye's questions. At most, she could alter the numbers and change the outer skin; the core of the question was still Li Ye's.

Could it be that I had to "draw on" that child's work?

"Drawing on" sounded nice. Put unpleasantly, it was copying.

Just think about it: Li Ye had just given questions to your daughter, and then you changed some numbers, gave them a different face, and passed them out to students as your own achievement. Wouldn't people laugh at you?

Teacher Ke was, after all, a capable and cultured intellectual. Her skin was still rather thin.

By evening, Teacher Ke had a chat with her daughter. Wen Leyu, completely off guard, proudly showed off and pulled several exercise books from her schoolbag.

This time, Teacher Ke was completely at a loss, though she was also extremely curious about where Li Ye had obtained these novel test questions.

"Mom, what are you doing?"

Wen Leyu was exceptionally clever and quickly sensed that something was wrong, as though her own exclusive toy might be played with and defiled by someone else.

Teacher Ke said steadily, "The school asked me to prepare some test questions to help the students improve their grades. I wanted to look through these exercise books and learn from them."

Wen Leyu instinctively disliked the idea, but these were all Li Ye's things, so she could only say, "You'll have to discuss that with Li Ye. Some people in class talk nonsense all day long. Don't feed your kindness to ungrateful wolves."

Teacher Ke's eyes flickered as she asked, "Of course. But what nonsense have they been saying?"

Wen Leyu said angrily, "They said Li Ye secretly copied our questions from Huang Shiren, and they even said we were stingy."

As she listened to her daughter chatter away for half the day, Teacher Ke felt both delighted and worried.

It had been so long, yet the little girl had never spoken so much in one breath before!

But when she thought of the entanglement between Li Ye and Lu Jingyao, Teacher Ke felt somewhat helpless again.

Li Ye had worked so hard on English; he must have been doing it for Lu Jingyao. If something happened in the future...

If Li Ye had known what Teacher Ke was thinking at that moment, he would surely have cried out that he had been wronged.

But no one around him believed that Li Ye, whose roots of love ran deep, would give up Lu Jingyao.

After all, the latter's appearance better suited the aesthetics of this era.

The next day, Teacher Ke came to discuss the matter with Li Ye.

Teacher Ke believed these questions of Li Ye's were resources his family had painstakingly obtained through connections.

The college entrance examination was like thousands of troops and ten thousand horses squeezing across a single-log bridge. No one wanted the advantages meant for their own child to be shared with others, so she had to obtain Li Ye's consent, and it also had to be made clear that this was Li Ye's contribution.

"Li Ye, Teacher Luo showed me your exercise books yesterday, and you told him that I was the one who gave you those questions. Didn't that put me on the rack?

"Could you let everyone benefit from your questions? Of course, I'll make it clear that all the credit belongs to you."

Li Ye considered it briefly, then said, "All right! Let's put out part of them first and see, then decide."

Teacher Ke immediately caught something in his words and asked, "Put out part of them first and see? See what?"

Li Ye smiled. "See how many people are ungrateful wolves."

"..."

At noon, the County Second High School cafeteria had a long line for meals. Li Ye, so hungry that his chest was pressed to his back, stood near the rear and silently shuffled forward.

Someone had once said that eating great chunks of meat and drinking huge bowls of wine was for the young and strong, while refusing coarse food and insisting on fine delicacies was for the old and weak.

At that moment, Li Ye was precisely at the age of being strong enough to eat his father poor.

And the poor studied literature while the rich practiced martial arts. Unlike children who had sat obediently at desks studying since childhood, Li Ye had practiced boxing with his grandfather from a young age. His digestive system had long been trained to be extraordinarily robust, and his appetite was immense.

Especially during this period after transmigrating, Li Ye felt as though his body were a bottomless pit. No matter how much nutrition he poured into it, it could absorb it rapidly.

Meanwhile, qualities such as strength, agility, and endurance in this body were steadily improving in secret.

The price was that he got hungry easily—hungry before it was even time to eat.

When he was hungry enough for his chest to press against his back, Li Ye felt that he could eat even a whole cow if one were placed before him.

There were no cows in County Second High School's cafeteria, only three dishes served in large aluminum basins.

"One serving of cabbage, one serving of potatoes, and one serving of radish stew with meat."

After much difficulty, Li Ye reached the cafeteria window and ordered all three dishes.

The gazes of the surrounding students immediately gathered on him, almost all carrying the look of, "That damn landlord is so wasteful."

Seeing that it was Li Ye, the server said with a smile, "Cabbage is five cents, potatoes are six cents, and radish stir-fried with meat is twelve cents. Want steamed buns too?"

"Two steamed buns."

Li Ye pulled out a stack of meal tickets from his pocket and began counting. In those days, school meal tickets were exchanged with money and grain coupons. Many students lived by counting every ticket, and there truly were not many students like Li Ye who ate with their stomachs wide open.

But who was Li Ye?

Even orcs knew what they needed in order to "never be slaves"! Was a dignified transmigrator like him supposed to wrong his own stomach?

What a joke.

Li Ye carried his large enamel bowl, piled high to overflowing, through the crowd and received a collective wave of stunned looks, along with the sounds of people swallowing saliva.

What a truly material-starved era! One meat dish had them craving like this. If they had two roast chickens every meal... Mm, that was a little extravagant.

"Bro, what's been going on with you lately? Your appetite keeps growing without stopping!"

"Give me a break! You glutton, and you think your appetite is small?"

Li Dayong followed behind carrying two servings of potatoes. Despite having a bear-like body, his appetite could no longer keep up with Li Ye's.

Naturally, Li Ye would not tell him about the changes in his body and merely brushed him off casually.

County Second High School had no dedicated dining tables for students. The cafeteria only had several serving windows, so students either squatted outside to eat or returned to their classrooms.

Li Ye and Li Dayong were eating in the classroom when the study Committee Member Jin Shengli walked over.

With a stern face, he said, "Student Li Ye, I must talk to you."

Li Ye paused with his spoon in hand and said blandly, "About what?"

Jin Shengli swallowed and said, "I believe your deliberate actions against Student Xia Yue are extremely improper. Our class originally had a very united atmosphere, but look at it now—it's split into four and shattered into five."

In truth, Retake Class One was indeed not united enough now, but there was only friction between two groups.

After Li Ye brought out the practice questions, most of the students in Class One benefited. But Li Dayong had "strictly screened" them, shutting out the small group led by Xia Yue and Jin Shengli.

Xia Yue was extremely "unyielding," and her enmity with Li Ye had only grown deeper and deeper. But Jin Shengli could no longer sit still.

As the study Committee Member, he felt that he had the ability and responsibility to guide Li Ye, who had strayed down the wrong path, back onto the right road for the common progress of the class.

"Split into four and shattered into five?" Li Ye interrupted Jin Shengli with a smile. "Why can't I see anything split into four and shattered into five? And even if it is, what does it have to do with me?"

"How could it have nothing to do with you? We all gathered here from the four corners of the world to study.

"If anyone has learning resources, they should share them. That was how we did things before, but now you... are too selfish."

Li Ye smiled without speaking, but Li Dayong's booming voice burst out.

"Jin Shengli, can you stop spouting nonsense? The papers you got from First High School last time—did you let us copy them? Those notes Xia Yue got from Lu Jingyao—did she let us read them?"

"..."

Jin Shengli's face reddened, and he stammered without being able to say a word.

They had all already experienced one brutal college entrance examination and knew how dangerous that single-log bridge was. I could barely keep my own footing from being squeezed off—how could I truly achieve "resource sharing"?

But just as Jin Shengli did not know what to say, Li Ye said, "All right, I've already handed the questions over to the school. Everyone will soon have papers to work on."

Jin Shengli was overjoyed. "Really?"

Li Ye nodded. "Really!"

Jin Shengli nodded repeatedly. "Thank you, Li Ye. You really are a very good person."

"..."

After Jin Shengli left, Li Dayong said anxiously, "Bro, don't believe people like that. They're the truly selfish ones."

Li Ye smiled. "Do you know what it means when they say it is easy to go from thrift to luxury, but hard to go from luxury back to thrift?"

Li Dayong froze for a long while before raising a thumbs-up and imitating the fawning lackey from the movies. "Bro, brilliant. Truly brilliant."