Madison's phrase, "the student chair given by the Old Stonemason," was like a piercing, maddening melody.
It echoed wildly in Ian's mind.
It stirred up a huge storm.
What Old Stonemason?!
Which Old Stonemason who graduated from a technical school could have ever seen the Seat of Divine Oracle in Heaven?! Not only did he see it, but he dared to make a perfect replica, and even use it as a free gift with a "buy 10,000 get VIP status" offer?!
Ian felt his scalp was not just tingling, it was about to explode! He stared intently at Madison, trying to find even the slightest trace of a joke or prank on her perpetually sleepy face.
"You..." Ian's voice trembled slightly. He lowered his voice and almost gritted his teeth as he asked, "Didn't you notice anything wrong with this chair, or that Old Stonemason?!"
He was waiting for Madison to voice some plausible doubt.
For example, the Old Stonemason's eyes seemed to see through life and death, his shop was located in a dimensional rift, and his speech was full of philosophical nonsense, which made it easy for him to identify the Old Stonemason.
Something's not right?
Upon hearing this, Madison indeed stopped trying to push the door back against the wall. She tilted her head and began to think seriously, her brows furrowed as if she were solving a world-class problem.
Ian held his breath, awaiting her insightful opinion.
What are they saying?
"Have no idea."
"But it sounds like a young couple arguing."
"Yes, that's what my mom and dad looked at when they chose furniture."
The students around him didn't understand, but that didn't mean they held their breath like Ian. When it comes to gossip, it's not about whether you can understand the gossip yourself.
"Cough cough cough~"
Someone is coughing.
But it seems nobody cares.
A few seconds later, Madison slammed her fist in her hand, a look of sudden realization spreading across her face as if she had just discovered the key point. She declared with conviction and righteous indignation.
Now that you mention it, something does seem off!
She slapped her forehead, her tone tinged with resentment.
Something's not right.
Ian used gentle persuasion to try and lock onto his target.
"That Old Stonemason!" Madison said seriously, as if exposing a shocking fraud, "He makes things too fast! I said I wanted the most impressive design, and he turned around, went into the backyard, and carried it out in less than three minutes! How is that possible? Even carving a rubber stamp wouldn't be that fast!"
The more she spoke, the more convinced she became that she had discovered the truth, her voice rising eight octaves. "I strongly suspect he's engaging in false advertising! He's misleading consumers! He claims it's purely handmade carving, but I think it's just mass-produced goods from a factory assembly line! Maybe even some small workshop using inferior stone powder to mold them! He's deceiving consumers!"
What a sudden realization!
"..."
Ian, enraged, jumped up and slapped Madison on the head a few times.
He stared at Madison's smug expression, his mouth agape. All the words he was about to utter about Heaven, the Throne of God, Seraph were stuck in his throat because of the crowd of onlookers and the fact that his three-year term was not yet up.
He almost choked to death.
"Endure!"
Ian also knows the Dragon King Secret Technique. After a full five seconds of silence, Ian managed to force out an awkward smile that looked worse than crying, squeezing out a few words through gritted teeth.
" Little Punk Girl... your focus... is so damn detailed... you really are... a detail-obsessed weirdo..." Ian said, giving two thumbs up.
Madison completely missed the helplessness in Ian's words, instead taking it as a genuine compliment to her keen observation, and became even more smug.
If she had a tail, it would probably be practically sticking up to the sky.
"Of course!"
She proudly tossed her chin up.
"Trying to fool my intelligence? No way! I'll confront him after school! Purely handmade is one price, but factory-made stuff deserves at least half the price back!"
"I'll flip his stall if he's short a single penny!" Madison declared fiercely, already rubbing her hands together, planning her famous after-school "anti-counterfeiting" operation.
That was truly audacious.
As expected.
Ian's courage had never quite stood up to Madison. He thought he was unparalleled, but little did he know that Madison was truly a coward.
"No... are you carving ten thousand stone tablets to cover the entire America?" It wasn't just the chair that was the problem; Ian realized something else outrageous.
"One for each person, isn't it? You always say that we either don't make a move, or when we do, it has to be impressive enough that others will think we can't even afford to carve a stone tablet."
Madison stared wide-eyed at Ian, as if questioning Ian: "Why has Your Majesty betrayed your principles?" Just then, a heart-wrenching, violent coughing sound, as if the lungs were about to burst out, came from the podium.
"Cough cough cough! Cough cough! Cough cough cough--!!"
The physics teacher, an elderly gentleman with gray hair, was already leaning on the podium, his face red from coughing. He was getting on in years, and his voice wasn't very good to begin with. He had just tried to remind these two lively students to pay attention to classroom discipline by coughing, but after coughing more than thirty times, the two students were completely absorbed in their own world.
Even those who were just watching the drama unfold.
And then there's Emily, gritting her teeth.
Nobody paid any attention to him.
The old man had no choice but to suppress the discomfort in his throat, raise his already somewhat hoarse voice, and earnestly coax the old man into speaking in a pleading tone.
"Mr. Kent! Miss Montgomery! Could you... talk about that new trend, or... fighting counterfeits and protecting rights... perhaps... discuss it after class?"
"It's... it's class time now..." His voice was weak and helpless, with a hint of barely perceptible wariness. This teacher, who had already been taught a lesson many times in America, didn't dare to ask what was going on with the two people's discussion and the unusual student chair.
He was afraid it was some kind of minority group's spiritual beliefs, and he was afraid that if he asked, the students would complain that he was violating their right to choose, and then all sorts of random organizations would come knocking on his door.
Perhaps it was the teacher's pitiful tone that had an effect, or perhaps Madison had temporarily planned their after-school route; in any case, Ian and Madison finally quieted down for the time being.
"No, you've given me this hot potato, what am I supposed to do?" Ian looked at the " Seat of Holy Edict " student chair in front of him with a heavy expression.
He eventually plopped down on it.
Madison finally gave up struggling with the crooked door, dusted off his hands, and slowly sauntered back to his seat, beginning to consider whether to try and reason with the Old Stonemason first, using a hammer or a wrench.
Seeing that the world was finally quiet, the physics teacher let out a long, relieved sigh and quickly took a sip of warm water to moisten his almost parched throat. He adjusted his glasses, his gaze sweeping over Ian's uniquely styled stone chair, which was clearly not an ordinary object. His lips moved, but in the end, he swallowed all his questions back.
I dare not ask, I absolutely dare not ask.
These days, there are too many students with outlandish clothes, performance art, and bizarre beliefs. What if this stone chair is some kind of sacred object of a new niche culture, or related to some "stone chair gender identity" or "rock structure equality" movement? If he asks too many questions, all sorts of strange organizations might be blocking the school gate with signs tomorrow.
They launched a fierce attack, accusing him of discriminating against stone furniture and oppressing students' right to individual choice.
Ian's reputation as a whistleblower isn't just among the students; even though the physics teacher is old now, he still remembers why he had to memorize who the new principal was.
That's why.
It's better to avoid trouble; protecting your retirement pension is the most important thing.
The old man forcibly ignored the chair radiating invisible pressure, picked up the chalk, his fingers trembling, and drew his attention back to Lenz's Law on the blackboard.
"Uh... let's continue... When the magnetic flux through a closed loop changes, an induced electromotive force (EMF) is generated in the loop, and the direction of the induced EMF always attempts to oppose the change in the magnetic flux that caused it... This is the core of Lenz's Law: resisting change..."
His voice was still hoarse, but he tried his best to maintain order in the classroom.
Classroom discipline was barely maintained thanks to the physics teacher's hoarse insistence and the temporary silence of the two "troublemakers." However, the whispers below surged like a tide, impossible to quell.
Everyone's gaze, intentionally or unintentionally, drifted toward the extravagant stone chair beneath Ian's bottom, and onto Madison had just dismantled and reassembled the door with his bare hands.
The whispers, though hushed, were clear enough.
"Did they buy a castle together? Otherwise, why would they use something that looks so ostentatious?"
"I think so! The Madison are rich!"
"Tsk tsk, are they going to be this high-profile about living together now?"
These comments pierced Emily's ears like needles. She jerked her head up, her eyes bloodshot, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on; her voice, though suppressed, was sharp.
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible! How could Ian be the kind of guy who would just live with anyone? He's so... so unique!"
Emily tried to find a positive word, but it sounded more like an insult.
The surrounding classmates no longer looked at her with curiosity, but with pity. Someone muttered quietly, " Emily, forget it... the chair is already here..."
Emily bit her lower lip so hard it almost bled. As if she had made a decision, she suddenly widened her eyes and spoke with an unwavering determination.
"Even if they are having an affair, so what?!"
She took a deep breath, as if declaring a battle cry, "The seven-year itch! I can wait! When Ian gets tired of me, he'll still be mine! I can even... I can even help Ian raise their child! And I absolutely won't let that green tea bitch see the child once! I'll make that green tea bitch Madison furious!"
These shocking remarks silenced the whispers around them for a moment.
One of the boys couldn't help but whisper a reminder: "Um... Emily, I remember Ian saying before that he's emotionless and infertile..."
Upon hearing this, Emily was not discouraged at all. Instead, she smiled proudly, as if she had already seen through everything. She patted her flat stomach and spoke with an astonishing spirit of sacrifice.
"It's alright! Medical problems can be overcome! If Ian needs it, I can transplant my uterus into him! That way he can have children! I can do this for Ian, that violent woman who only knows how to move stones definitely can't!" What a groundbreaking statement!
It's obvious.
The girls who are attracted to Ian are certainly quite extraordinary.
The whole class. "!!!"
Everyone was speechless, stunned by this powerful logic and dedication. Their gazes toward Emily shifted from pity to fear.
This is a feeling that can't be described as just being a "simp."
In this bizarre, absurd, and suffocating atmosphere, the physics teacher, relying on his strong professional ethics and obsession with his retirement pension, painstakingly and haltingly completed the lesson on Lenz's Law. As for how much of the students absorbed, he was powerless to care; he could only console himself that he had done his duty.
They're students at public schools.
Even the class with the best grades.
The physics teacher didn't really believe they could amount to anything. Even if a few did, the parents of these students who would eventually join the elite class would certainly be elites themselves.
A child from a poor family who achieves greatness.
In America's public schools, you might not see more than a few in ten years.
"Ding ding ding~"
The school bell rang out like heavenly music.
The physics teacher practically fled the classroom, clutching his lesson plan. He needed to get back to his office immediately and use his limited physics knowledge to calculate the terrifying magnitude of Madison's maximum output, considering the stone chair she had lifted and easily put down with her bare hands, plus the strength she displayed in dismantling and reassembling the door.
This seriously challenges his understanding of classical physics!
Just after the physics teacher left, and everyone was about to relax a bit after class, Mrs. Ellie, around forty years old, walked in carrying a file folder. She was the class advisor temporarily managing the class affairs for Miss Misha, who was absent due to Hannibal's death. Mrs. Ellie wore a formulaic smile.
"Class, please be quiet. Ms. Misha has something come up, so I'll be filling in for her today. First, let's go over the results of our last midterm test."
She began reading out names according to student ID numbers and distributing report cards. Most students received their scores, some happy and some sad.
As always, Ian received a report card with precisely controlled scores, only slightly better than the second-best in the grade. He glanced at it casually and stuffed it into his drawer.
It was as if it were just a piece of waste paper. However, when Ms. Ellie finished reading the last name and was about to begin the next item, Madison frowned and raised his hand.
"Ms. Ellie, where is my report card?"
She frowned and stood up.
Ms. Ellie paused, flipped through the remaining documents, checked the list again, and said doubtfully, "Ms. Montgomery? The list shows you received them all? I don't have any here."
"Impossible!" Madison seemed a little unhappy, even a little aggrieved. "I didn't miss this exam! And I feel like I did much better than before!"
"I'm sure I'll improve a lot! Did you lose my report card?" She stared at Ms. Ellie, her eyes filled with distrust of the unfamiliar counselor.
Ms. Ellie adjusted her glasses and said confidently, "No, Miss Montgomery, I don't have a habit of losing things. All my report cards are here."
"Are you sure you took the last exam? Could you have remembered it wrong?" She didn't quite trust Madison, a girl whose appearance alone suggested she was a poor student.
Her years of teaching experience had taught her that girls like this generally wouldn't take exams.
"Of course I'm sure!" Madison's voice rose, tinged with increasingly obvious dissatisfaction. "That was the only exam I didn't miss this year! I remember it vividly!"
Ms. Ellie was somewhat puzzled by her certainty. She picked up the file folder containing the report cards and carefully searched it inside and out several times, even turning the folder upside down and shaking it.
"Strange... it really isn't there..." she muttered to herself, then said to Madison, "Wait a minute, I'll call Ms. Misha and see if she missed it."
With that, Ms. Ellie took her phone and walked out of the classroom. A few minutes later, she returned with a strange expression—a mixture of helplessness, amusement, and a hint of absurdity.
"Well, Ms. Ellie, have you found my report card yet?" Madison looked at Ms. Ellie eagerly, hoping to use this report card to make her proud when she got home.
Ms. Ellie looked at Madison, sighed, and said in a very complicated tone.
"I'm sorry, Miss Montgomery. I just asked Ms. Misha, and she immediately contacted all the examiners for all the subjects..." She paused, as if organizing her thoughts, "And the result is... none of the teachers graded your paper, so you don't have a report card."
"Why?!" Madison stood up abruptly, her voice filled with dissatisfaction and incomprehension. "Why didn't they correct mine? This is discrimination!"
The Little Punk Girl was furious.
Ms. Ellie rubbed her temples, her expression even more helpless. "Because... all the teachers said that none of the test papers they received had your real name written as Madison Montgomery."
"So everyone thought you didn't take the exam again." She took out her phone, looked at the message sent by Teacher Misha, and read out the name that made the whole class instantly dumbfounded.
"The teachers only received one exam paper signed '[Dark Night Vampire · Silent Phoenix · Tragic Tears of the Prince of Unrequited Love]'." Ms. Ellie, after reading the name, felt a bit embarrassed herself. She looked at Madison: "So... the teachers unanimously believe that this is either a student's prank or an irrelevant exam paper that somehow slipped in."
That makes sense.
Upon hearing this name, the entire class was stunned. The classroom fell into a deathly silence. Everyone looked at Madison with the eyes of someone looking at a god.
Madison, however, didn't see anything wrong with it at all.
Instead, she confidently put her hands on her hips and said, "Yes! That's my exam paper! After all, I'm going to be a big star in the future, so I value my privacy and used my Twitter nickname!"
Isn't this another form of profound truth?
Ms. Ellie was nearly choked by this compelling reason. Striving to maintain her professional demeanor, she patiently explained, "Ms. Montgomery, I respect your concern for privacy, but... there's really no need to use online nicknames in formal school exams. Teachers need to verify identities."
"If you keep doing this... it will be very troublesome for everyone." Ms. Ellie was glad that she hadn't been assigned to manage this class. Her gaze kept sweeping over several notorious troublemakers.
Upon hearing this, Madison seemed to realize it only then, paused for a moment, and then reluctantly rubbed his hair.
"Hateful."
The dejected Little Punk Girl wasn't the type to hold a grudge, so after a moment of annoyance, she chose to sit back down in her chair.
I'm still a little frustrated.
She sulked for a while, then leaned closer to Ian and whispered, "Hey, Ian, did I do something wrong? I shouldn't have worried that some teachers would collect my autographs and resell them for a high price?"
All right.
Sure enough, behind the protection of privacy lies a reason that is even more difficult to assess. Ian nodded thoughtfully, giving a very practical and poignant answer.
"Yes, it's stupid."
Just as Madison was about to sigh, Ian added, "Uh-oh, it's stupid to use your Twitter nickname on the exam paper because a lot of people know your Twitter nickname."
"It does not serve its purpose of protecting privacy."
Ian gave his opinion in a very serious manner.
"!!!!"
Madison was taken aback at first, then took out his phone, opened his Twitter account, and fell into deep thought as he looked at his more than three million followers.
"That's true, that makes sense, Ian, you're so smart." Madison highly praised Ian's "wisdom," to which Ian responded by raising his chin without any modesty.
The boy said in an aria-like tone, "Oh, my dear Little Punk Girl, you're just stating a universal axiom— Ian Kent equals smart."
"Your knowledge is indeed vast, so please elaborate, my ears are ready." Ian listened intently, but Madison clearly didn't detect the narcissism in his words.
Her eyes lit up as she remembered something else. "Speaking of wisdom! Ian, I happen to have a big project that requires wisdom! My dad bought an old villa in Japan a few days ago, and they say it contains a treasure from the Edo period! If you can use your clever brain to help me find it, we'll split the profits fifty-fifty!"
Ian blinked, a hint of oddness in his voice. "Sounds good. But does your father know that his villa and treasure are about to be split 50/50 between us?"
Madison said matter-of-factly, "He bought a villa, not a treasure. Treasure is unclaimed property; whoever finds it owns it. That's called the spirit of adventure!"
Upon hearing this, Ian's face lit up with a look of great satisfaction, and he even patted Madison on the shoulder.
"Very good, very good! It seems that after breathing in my wisdom for so long, you have indeed become much smarter." He also strongly agreed with Madison's logic.
Encouraged, Madison became even more excited. "So you agree? When are we going to Japan?"
Ian immediately leaned back tactically, cleverly changing the subject.
"Uh... we can discuss this grand expedition plan later. For now, let's delve deeper into the matter of that... exceptionally skilled ' Old Stonemason.'"
As he spoke, he deliberately wiggled his hips to experience the incredible comfort of the stone chair beneath him. Sitting in this chair for an entire class period was simply a pleasure. It looked like a cold, hard stone, but sitting on it had the soft texture of a sofa, and it even had a built-in constant temperature seat heating and intelligent ventilation system!
This technology tree is way more skewed than Batcave! It's ridiculously advanced!
" The Old Stonemason? What happened to him? He's really skilled, otherwise I wouldn't have asked him to make you a chair." Madison blinked blankly.
Where did you find the Old Stonemason?
Ian asked, still doubting that the Old Stonemason was God.
"He's our neighbor. He lives on the street next to mine. He stays up late every night, constantly banging and clanging, it's Deadman!"
Madison complained.
Ian: "... Neighbor?"
Madison nodded. "Yeah. I saved his wife from those bad guys a few days ago, so he said he could make anything I wanted."
"You saved his wife?!"
Ian's voice suddenly rose, his heart skipped a beat— the Goddess of Creation hadn't bothered him these past few days; could it really not be because she had a change of heart, but because God had taken her back and locked her up?!
"Yes."
Madison affirmed.
Ian quickly pressed, "What does his wife look like? Is she exceptionally... beautiful? Curvy and radiant?"
Madison tilted her head and thought for a moment, then pursed her lips. "No, she was just an ordinary middle-aged woman, of average build, wearing an apron, and carrying a few boxes of sirloin steaks. She looked like she was getting ready to go home and cook."
This answer left Ian somewhat bewildered.
"Then... do you know the name of the old lady you saved?"
Ian frowned, sensing something was amiss.
Madison thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't know the name, I didn't ask. These days I can't even remember my relatives, who would remember their neighbors' names?"
What she said makes a lot of sense.
This left Ian speechless.
Just as Ian was experiencing some brain overload.
Madison suddenly exclaimed "Ah!" again, adding, "But I passed by his yard yesterday and saw a business card in a cardboard box he threw in the Trash Can."
"What does it say on the business card? Is it... ' Jehovah '? Or 'Yahweh'? Or maybe 'I AM WHO I AM'?" Ian was really grasping at straws.
"No, if I met God, I would definitely know. I'm not stupid, I'm a super witch." Madison looked at Ian helplessly.
She paused.
He pronounced the name clearly and accurately.
" The Old Stonemason's name is Rick Sanchez, yes, I can't be mistaken, his business card also has a title printed on it like ' Interstellar General Craftsman, Dimensional Repairman '."