Li Lu, You've Graduated

Duan Peng's classmate returned to his seat. He immediately grew excited, patted Li Lu beside him, and said, "Let's go, let's go! It's our turn!"

"Go check it yourself. I can't be bothered." Li Lu remained seated, unmoving.

"The homeroom teacher is watching outside. You're not going to check?" Duan Peng urged him. "Hurry, hurry, hurry! What if you get it?"

Reluctantly, Li Lu lifted himself from his chair and followed Duan Peng to the podium.

There was no "what if" at all. Li Lu was perfectly clearheaded. Why would such a great opportunity be randomly awarded to ordinary people? The first batch of Teacher Bai's users would attract countless eyes and bring in tremendous added value. Only by selling the slots secretly at a high price and then privately selecting the candidates could the profits be maximized!

Even if the candidates weren't predetermined, there had to be something fishy about the lottery rules. Why did the registration questionnaire include an option asking whether the volunteer could pay the full price for Teacher Bai? Anyone could figure it out with their toes: only applicants who could pay in full would have a chance of being selected. Otherwise, if a bunch of poor people won slots for Teacher Bai, wouldn't Brain-like Chip Company have to subsidize the testing? What would be the point?

The fact that the selected volunteers' names weren't made public made it even more obvious. They weren't even pretending anymore. If it were really a fair lottery, why not simply publish the list? Why make everyone go through the trouble of checking for themselves?

Thoughts churned through Li Lu's mind. Watching Duan Peng nervously enter his information, he curled his lips into a faint, mocking smile. His roommate was simply too naive.

"Snap!"

Duan Peng hit Enter, and a prompt appeared on the screen.

Unfortunately, you were not selected in this round of the lottery!

Duan Peng was clearly extremely disappointed. He even moved the mouse as if he wanted to refresh the page, as though refreshing it would let him draw again. However, he stopped himself, regained his senses, and didn't actually refresh. He gave a self-deprecating smile and closed his results page.

Li Lu stepped forward and casually entered his information. Duan Peng didn't leave, but stood nearby to watch.

"Snap!"

The moment he hit Enter, a prompt popped up on the screen.

Li Lu instinctively moved to close it, but suddenly realized that something was off. Why was this prompt so much longer?

He took a closer look and froze.

Congratulations! You have been selected for a Teacher Bai trial slot. Please keep your phone available. A staff member will contact you within 48 hours to discuss the volunteer meeting schedule.

"Holy crap!" Duan Peng shouted in a loss of composure. "You got selected!"

All the students in the classroom raised their heads in unison and stared wide-eyed at the podium. Most of them hadn't processed what had happened yet, while some looked suspicious. Their first reaction was that Duan Peng might be pulling some stunt.

The top students in the front row immediately rushed to the podium to look at the screen. They all cried out in surprise, grabbed Li Lu, and shook him. "You got selected! You got selected! Li Lu, you're about to take off!"

Classroom discipline collapsed in an instant. This was such a huge event that the students simply couldn't remain calm. A crowd surged forward, jostling and squeezing around the computer screen to look at the selection notice. After reading it, they all grabbed Li Lu and shook him while congratulating him. The scene was incredibly lively!

Li Lu let his classmates grab him and shake him back and forth, his expression blank!

He got selected?! How had he really gotten selected?!

Weren't the volunteers supposed to be predetermined? How could the selection actually be random? When he signed up, he had clearly chosen that he couldn't afford to purchase Teacher Bai outright. How had he still been selected...

Countless question marks battered Li Lu's mind like a raging storm. He completely shut down, while hormones surged wildly through his body.

"Wait, why did you get selected?" Duan Peng came back to his senses, looking somewhat devastated. His face twisted with envy as he looked up at the ceiling. "The number-one anti-Song He fan actually got selected? Heaven is unfair! Why didn't you pick me? I'm the real Song He fan! Heaven above, distinguish loyalty from treachery!"

Quite a few students in the class also knew that Li Lu was a Song He hater. For a while, they were all somewhat devastated, and cries of "Heaven above, distinguish loyalty from treachery!" rose one after another.

The students surrounding the scene suddenly parted, and Ban Jianye walked over. He looked at the screen in shock and took several seconds to recover from his daze. He had never imagined that a one-in-a-million chance would truly land on a student from his class!

For a moment, Ban Jianye even wondered whether he, as a homeroom teacher, had some kind of mystical luck. First, he had produced a super genius like Song He, and now he had produced a lottery-jackpot-level lucky student like Li Lu.

"Take your phone and come with me." Ban Jianye patted Li Lu on the shoulder.

Li Lu blankly grabbed his phone from the podium and followed his homeroom teacher out. Hormones still raced through his body, his heartbeat growing faster and faster. Even walking felt strange and unsteady.

At that moment, his expression made him look as if a zombie had scooped out his brain. The instant he was selected, the worldview he had built over the past dozen years had been shattered into pieces. His mind was as white as if it had been blasted by a Hydrogen Bomb, and he followed his homeroom teacher downstairs like a walking corpse.

The offices for the various subjects were on the first floor, and the Math Office was the first one.

Ban Jianye pushed open the office door and brought Li Lu inside. "Call your family and explain the situation. I'll take you home later. Discuss it with your family, and wait for a call from Song He's secretary as well. Once you've discussed everything, come back to class. In any case, you can't expect much from your grades when it comes to the college entrance exam. Now that luck has arrived, you need to grasp it firmly."

Li Lu's head was buzzing. He picked up his phone and called his parents, not even realizing what he said. However, when he heard their extremely excited shouts from the other end, he knew he had probably managed to explain things.

Ban Jianye acted quickly as well. After sitting down, he began writing leave slips, producing a whole stack for Li Lu in one go. The scale of it almost looked like an expulsion. There were enough leave slips for him to stay home practically until the college entrance exam.

"Take these." Ban Jianye stuffed the leave slips into his hands.

Li Lu accepted them dazedly, stammered out his thanks to the teacher, and followed Ban Jianye out toward the parking lot.

It was the break during evening self-study, and quite a few students were wandering around. The teacher and student passed through the crowd, hearing almost every student discussing the same topic. Campus gossip had always traveled at superluminal speed.

"I heard someone from our school got selected for Teacher Bai! What kind of insane luck is that?"

"A senior, apparently. I heard he's even a Song He hater, but he got selected anyway. The other students in his class are so jealous their teeth are practically shattered!"

"Could it really be that coincidental? Maybe he's some distant relative of Song He's? Song He is from Jinghai too!"

"I heard the guy who got selected is surnamed Li. But just because he isn't surnamed Song doesn't prove they aren't related. I'll ask around later and see if I can find out anything else."

"I'm so jealous I could die! I want to get selected too! If I got selected, I wouldn't have to stay up late doing questions anymore. I could just lie down and enjoy life!"

"What's the difference between this and finding a hundred million yuan? What did that guy do in his past life?"

Li Lu felt dizzy and lightheaded. There was no joy in him, only panic. He was about to become famous throughout the school. Ever since entering high school, he had been an utterly insignificant nobody, a goalkeeper hidden in the back corner of the classroom. He had thought he would graduate from the college entrance exam in such a dull and unsuccessful way, and never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that he would suddenly become a campus celebrity!

As he staggered along in a daze, they reached the parking lot. Ban Jianye took out his car key and pressed it, and the headlights lit up in the darkness.

Ban Jianye's car was a luxury SUV worth over a million yuan. The campus rumor was that Chenghuang Company had given it to him for free. No one knew whether that was true, but given Ban Jianye's salary, he certainly wouldn't have been willing to buy such an expensive car.

Li Lu had never ridden in a million-yuan car before. As he reached for the door, he felt slightly nervous, secretly calculating how many air conditioners his father would have to install to pay for even minor damage to the car, and how many months his mother would have to work as a confinement nanny to earn enough.

He got in, sat down properly, and fastened his seat belt.

"Where do you live?" Ban Jianye asked.

"Jinghai Garden." Li Lu was somewhat stiff. "Sorry for the trouble, Teacher."

Ban Jianye drove out of the school and smiled. "Don't be so formal. It's only a twenty-minute drive. There are drinks in the door. Have one if you want."

Li Lu was slightly stunned. In all three years of high school, he had never seen his homeroom teacher treat him so kindly. Their relationship had always been like that between a cat and a mouse. His teacher's sudden warmth made him extremely uncomfortable.

"Don't be so tense." Ban Jianye's voice carried a hint of emotion, and he suddenly became quite talkative. "I'm strict with you at school because I want you to get into a good university and have a good future. Teachers and students have never been enemies. We're actually in the same trench. Ten years from now, at the class reunion, every teacher hopes to see their students looking radiant and happy, rather than living in a complete mess, drinking too much and crying with their heads in their hands. No teacher could bear to see that."

"Li Lu, your grades were still passable in your first year of high school, but they plummeted in your second year. All the teachers tried repeatedly to pull you back up, but we just couldn't." Ban Jianye recalled the past. "When your results from the first mock exam came out, I thought, 'It's over. Li Lu is going to have a hard life in the future.' I never imagined you'd be this lucky. You got selected for Teacher Bai. You basically won't have to worry for the rest of your life. From now on, you're completely liberated from the bitter sea of high school and entering adult life."

Li Lu listened in a daze. His nervousness gradually faded. After being selected, his homeroom teacher's attitude toward him had completely changed. There was no longer any teacher-student opposition; instead, it had become a subtle relationship that was both teacher-student and friend-like.

His three years of high school had ended ahead of schedule. He no longer needed to endure the torment of the college entrance exam. The course of his life had completely reversed.

The car windows were open, and the refreshing night breeze poured inside. The streets near the school were unexpectedly desolate at night, with almost no pedestrians or vehicles—only rows of neat, dim yellow streetlights.

"I'm sorry, Teacher. Thinking back now... I really muddled through these three years and let you down." Li Lu spoke as if possessed. "It seems that... at the beginning of my second year, I had only fallen a little behind. But catching up on that little bit was so difficult. I wanted to work hard and make up for it, but every time I couldn't help thinking, 'I'll study in the next class. I'll study tomorrow. I'll make a comeback during the vacation.' Before I knew it, I had fallen further and further behind. By the second half of my second year, I was desperate."

"Poor self-control and poor psychological resilience!" Ban Jianye criticized him, but his tone wasn't harsh. It was simply heavy with earnest concern.

"High school is a period of tempering. Many qualities have to be forged during these three years. Everyone struggles, battling their own distracting thoughts every day. All kinds of distracting thoughts and inner demons keep emerging. Eighty percent of whether a person succeeds or fails in life depends on whether they can defeat their inner demons in time."

"Some inner demons are small, like what you said—playing around during this class and studying during the next one. There are also all kinds of major inner demons, such as secretly liking a female classmate and losing the will to study, falling too far behind and being unable to face it, pretending to study while your hands write and your heart remains unmoved, copying an answer once and feeling as if you've studied hard, or the arrogance and inferiority brought about by your ranking rising and falling. There are far too many!"

"When a person overcomes an inner demon, that inner demon becomes a stepping stone for them to climb higher. But if they can't overcome it, they become a slave to it." Ban Jianye said, "That's what they mean by: 'He who defeats others is strong; he who defeats himself is mighty!'"

Li Lu's eyes suddenly reddened, and he choked up slightly. "Teacher, I heard those words when I was very young, but hearing them now feels completely different."

"You're seeing the highlights of your life flash before your eyes, aren't you? The three years of high school are vivid in your mind?" Ban Jianye said. "Li Lu, you've graduated!"

His phone suddenly rang. Li Lu pulled it from his pocket. It was a number from out of town!