Choosing a Page Boy Again

Choosing a Page Boy Again

After Zheng Fa and Wang Chen finished eating, they headed straight back to the classroom.

The classroom was quiet. More than half the seats were empty, as the day students had gone home to rest, while in less than half the remaining seats, people lay sprawled over their desks taking naps.

Wang Chen had originally planned to sleep for a while too. For third-year high school students who started morning self-study at seven, lack of sleep was already the norm.

What was more, they had just finished lunch, making everyone even sleepier.

He had barely laid his head down when he noticed that Zheng Fa, seated diagonally behind him, had actually taken out a book, his lips moving as he muttered to himself.

"Fuck..." Wang Chen cursed under his breath. "You're grinding again? Why don't you just memorize every textbook while you're at it?"

Having been classmates with Zheng Fa for so many years, he had long known about Zheng Fa's strange habit—memorizing textbooks.

Subjects like Chinese and English, which leaned more toward memorization, were one thing.

But Zheng Fa even memorized math and physics.

"Completely insane!" Thinking of it, Wang Chen could not help cursing again.

"I'm not memorizing a textbook."

"Now that's more human." Wang Chen settled down onto his desk. "Weren't you memorizing one before?"

"I finished."

How the hell was anyone supposed to sleep after hearing that?

Wang Chen straightened up, stretched out a trembling hand, and flipped over the book in Zheng Fa's hands:

300 Breakthrough Problems in Conic Sections...

"You really aren't human!"

Seeing his disbelieving expression, Zheng Fa felt a little embarrassed. "I had nothing better to do."

"Damn it!"

Zheng Fa watched Wang Chen pull out the test paper they had received that morning and begin furiously striving for self-improvement.

"Why aren't you sleeping?"

Wang Chen shot him a sidelong glare. "Why do you think?"

After memorizing for a while, Zheng Fa looked up again and found Wang Chen in front of him already asleep soundly on top of his test paper...

He smiled, then put away the book before him.

To Zheng Fa, memorizing textbooks was a clumsy method he had resorted to only because he had no other choice.

When he had arrived in this world several years ago, aside from an identity, his mind had been completely empty.

His store of knowledge would have qualified him as a genuine illiterate even in his previous world, let alone this modern one.

As a middle school student, in terms of ability, he perhaps would not even have earned a kindergarten diploma.

When he had first crossed over, he had scored single digits on several tests.

Fortunately, on one hand, both his teachers and classmates believed his plummeting grades were due to the major upheaval in his family.

On the other hand, middle school was compulsory education after all. As long as one wanted to study, one would not be expelled.

Naturally, Zheng Fa wanted to improve his grades and catch up.

But he considered himself no more than moderately talented, and he had fallen behind on far too much foundational knowledge. Ordinary methods simply could not make up for it.

Later, he gritted his teeth and began using a stupid method—rote memorization.

He started with elementary school textbooks. Whether he understood them or not, he memorized everything, word by word!

He would spend seven days in this world memorizing books, then use seven days in his original world slowly recalling them and trying to understand them in his mind.

The only advantage of this method was probably that it allowed him to use twice as much time as other people.

It suited his circumstances perfectly.

Later, after learning a little biology, he called this method the Ruminant Method.

At the beginning, its efficiency had not actually been very high.

His memory was not naturally extraordinary. At first, after seven days, he could retain less than a tenth of what he had memorized.

Later, he learned all sorts of miscellaneous techniques, like memory palaces and mnemonic methods, and gradually became more proficient with this way of studying.

Now, he did not dare claim he possessed photographic memory, but after reading a book two or three times, he could remember seventy or eighty percent of it.

Compared to the study techniques of true top students, this method was both foolish and exhausting.

Yet on the other hand, his foundation had become exceptionally solid.

His grades steadily improved. Getting into Qingshui High School after the middle school entrance exam might have been due to the legacy his parents left behind, but now he could consistently rank among the top twenty in his class.

After all, others had studied for five years, while Zheng Fa had genuinely memorized books for ten.

The hardship and effort behind it were not something outsiders could understand.

Seven days later, when Zheng Fa returned to the Xuanwei Realm, he carried not only a belly full of meat, but also a head full of knowledge.

Even when listening to Mother Zheng speak, his reactions were half a beat slow.

It was his little sister's loud cheer that snapped him back to himself.

"Madam really isn't letting Wang Gui go back to be a page boy?"

Zheng Fa was startled. This was no small matter.

Though it looked like nothing more than a page boy's position, to the tenant farmers on the estate, it still counted as a leap in social standing.

"Yes. I heard Steward Wang has been running around these past two days, asking people everywhere to put in a good word for him. But Madam has already said she'll choose another page boy and won't take one from his family." Mother Zheng spoke of the rumors circulating around the estate that day.

The estate was not large to begin with, and there had never been a shortage of people jealous of Steward Wang's former glory.

What was more, Wang Gui's return home at the Zhao Family was no minor matter either.

For the past two days, this had been the gossip all over the estate.

Zheng Fa thought more deeply than his mother and sister did.

In his eyes, Steward Wang was a highly ambitious man, and even a very clever one.

In just five short years, he had not only become the estate steward, but had also caught Madam's eye, even getting his son made into the young master's page boy.

That was no small feat.

It had not been impossible for his family to become trusted confidants of Madam and the young master in the future.

Losing the page boy's position now was a small matter. What Steward Wang's family truly feared was offending Madam.

"Madam must have seen that Wang Gui is a huge bad guy!"

Little sister Zheng Shan was undoubtedly the happiest of them all.

"Yes, Madam is a good person. When your father passed away, she even specially gave us ten taels of silver." When speaking of Madam, Mother Zheng's words also carried gratitude.

"Madam is a good person! A very, very good person!" Zheng Shan repeated, nodding her little head.

Seeing the faintly reverent expressions on their faces, Zheng Fa could not help recalling something a sage from another world had once said:

"...the age when one could securely be a slave, and the age when one struggled to become a slave yet could not."

Those words were truly precise—piercing to the heart, revolting, yet impossible to refute.

He nodded along with his sister, as though he too were stirred by Madam's "setting right what was chaotic."

After all, some things brought no benefit when spoken aloud and would only harm the people around him.

His little sister, however, began to daydream. "It would be great if Madam chose Big Brother to be a page boy!"

"Then let's see if Wang Gui would still dare bully us!"

"I heard Wang Gui say there's monthly pay too!"

"And you can learn martial arts from the guards!"

"Then Big Brother would be the most powerful person on the estate!"

As she spoke, little sister Zheng Shan's eyes lit up. "If Madam lets Big Brother become a page boy, she'll be the greatest good person under heaven!"

Mother Zheng, beside them, instead glanced at Zheng Fa and stroked her little sister's head. "If your brother doesn't become a page boy, does that mean he won't be impressive?"

Clinging to Zheng Fa's arm, his little sister obediently said, "Big Brother is already the most impressive, but he can become even more impressive!"

After his little sister fell asleep, Mother Zheng came to Zheng Fa's doorway.

"Your sister is still young and doesn't understand. Don't think too much about it..."

"Mother?" Zheng Fa looked at her.

"As for becoming a page boy, we don't hope for it. When Wang Gui came back, his whole body was limp, and he still can't get out of bed. If you were to... end up like that, your sister and I wouldn't know how to live."

"I understand."

Watching his mother leave, he lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

A page boy?

He had to admit that even if his mother disapproved, he was tempted.

Could he possibly not know the benefits his little sister could see?

With monthly pay, the family would no longer have to eat meat by the slice.

They would no longer have to endure cold looks on the estate.

There was even one of the things Zheng Fa most anticipated and was most curious about in this world—martial arts training, perhaps even cultivation.

Struggling to become a slave yet being unable to...

Early the next morning, Mother Zheng was scrubbing dirty clothes in front of the house when a familiar tenant farmer came running over. "Old Zheng's family! Old Zheng's family! Great news!"

"What good news?"

"Madam is choosing a page boy! This time, she said she wants someone older and steadier. Your A-Fa is just right!"