Choosing Another Pageboy

After Zheng Fa and Wang Chen finished eating, they went 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. In the remaining seats, some students were 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, sleep deprivation was already the norm.

Let alone after lunch, when drowsiness hit even harder.

He had barely laid his head down when he noticed that Zheng Fa, seated diagonally behind him, had taken out a book. His lips moved as he muttered incantations under his breath.

"Fuck..." Wang Chen cursed quietly. "You're grinding again? Why don't you just memorize every textbook there is?"

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 toward memorization, were one thing.

But Zheng Fa even memorized mathematics and physics.

"Absolutely insane!" The thought made Wang Chen curse again.

"I'm not memorizing a textbook."

"Now that sounds human." Wang Chen lay down with peace of mind. "Weren't you memorizing one earlier?"

"I finished."

Who the fuck could still sleep after hearing that?

Wang Chen straightened up, trembling as he reached out and flipped over the book in Zheng Fa's hands:

Conic Sections Breakthrough 300 Problems...

"You really aren't human!"

Seeing the disbelief on his face, 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 start furiously working through it.

"Why aren't you sleeping anymore?"

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

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

He smiled and put away the book before him.

To Zheng Fa, memorizing textbooks was a clumsy method he had been forced into using.

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 in this Modern World.

As a middle school student, judging by his abilities, he might not even have earned a kindergarten diploma.

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

Fortunately, on one hand, both teachers and classmates believed his grades had fallen off a cliff because his family had suffered a major upheaval.

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

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

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

Later, he gritted his teeth and began using the clumsy method—rote memorization.

He started with Elementary School Textbooks. Whether he understood them or not, he memorized every single word!

He spent seven days in this world memorizing books, then used seven days in his original world to slowly recall them, trying to understand them in his mind.

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

It suited his circumstances perfectly.

After learning a little biology, he named this method the Ruminant Method.

At first, its efficiency was not actually very high.

His memory was not innately extraordinary. At the beginning, after seven days, he could remember less than a tenth of what he had studied.

Later, however, he learned a mess of techniques like the Memory Palace Method, and gradually became more skilled at this way of studying.

But Now, while he did not dare claim he had a photographic memory, he could remember eighty or ninety percent of a book after reading it two or three times.

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

But on the other hand, it gave him an exceptionally solid foundation.

His grades steadily improved. Perhaps he had entered Qingshui High School in the high school entrance exam thanks to his parents' legacy, but now he could consistently rank among the top twenty in his class.

After all, while others had gone to school for five years, Zheng Fa had truly memorized books for ten.

The hardship and effort behind it were things no outsider could understand.

Seven days later, when Zheng Fa returned to the Xuanwei Realm, he brought back 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 only his younger sister's loud cheer that brought him back to himself.

"Madam really isn't letting Wang Gui return as a pageboy?"

Zheng Fa froze. This was no small matter.

Though it looked like merely the position of a pageboy, for the tenant farmers on the estate, it counted as a leap in status.

"That's right. I heard Steward Wang has been pulling strings and asking people to put in good words for him these past two days, but Madam has already said she'll choose another pageboy. She doesn't want one from his family anymore." Mother Zheng spoke of the rumors circulating around the estate that day.

The estate was not large to begin with. Steward Wang had enjoyed plenty of glory in the past, and it was not as though no one had envied him.

What was more, Wang Gui returning home to the Zhao Family was no trivial matter either.

For the past two days, this had been the estate's favorite gossip.

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

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

In just five years, he had not only become the manager of the estate, but also caught Madam's eye. His son had even become the young master's pageboy.

That was no mean feat.

It was not impossible that, in the future, his family could become confidants of Madam and the young master.

Losing the pageboy position was a minor matter. What Steward Wang's family truly feared was offending Madam.

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

His younger sister, Zheng Shan, was undoubtedly the happiest of them all.

"Yes, Madam is a good person. When your father passed away, she even specifically gave us ten taels of silver." When Mother Zheng mentioned Madam, her 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 Former Sage from Another World had said:

"...the age of being secure as slaves, and the age of striving to become slaves yet failing to do so."

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 thrilled by Madam's "setting chaos right."

After all, some things, once spoken aloud, would not only bring no benefit but might also harm those around him.

His younger sister, however, began to daydream. "It would be wonderful if Madam chose Brother to be a pageboy!"

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

"I heard Wang Gui say that there's Moon Money every month!"

"And Brother could learn Martial Arts from the guards!"

"Then Brother would be the strongest person on the estate!"

As she spoke, Zheng Shan's eyes grew brighter and brighter. "If Madam lets Brother become a pageboy, then she'll be the greatest good person under heaven!"

Mother Zheng, beside them, glanced at Zheng Fa and stroked her younger daughter's head. "If Brother doesn't become a pageboy, does that mean he won't be impressive?"

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

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

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

"Mother?" Zheng Fa looked towards her.

"We don't dare hope for something like becoming a pageboy. 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 go on living."

"I understand."

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

A pageboy?

He had to admit that, even if his mother did not approve, he was moved.

Could he possibly fail to see the benefits that even his younger sister could see?

With Moon Money, the family would no longer have to eat meat by the slice.

They would no longer have to endure cold stares around the estate.

There was even one of the things Zheng Fa looked forward to and was most curious about in this world—practicing martial arts, perhaps even cultivating immortality.

Striving to become slaves yet failing to do so...

Early the next morning, Mother Zheng was scrubbing dirty clothes outside the door when a familiar farmhand came running over. "Old Zheng's family! Old Zheng's family! A tremendous piece of good news!"

"What good news?"

"Madam is choosing a pageboy! This time, she says she wants someone older and steadier. Your Fa is just right for it!"