Lemon Branch

Two days passed in a flash, and it was the last day of September, the eve of the National Day holiday.

At ten o'clock, the Jiang couple sat on the sofa at home watching television. Li Hongmei watched a soap opera while old Jiang played with his phone, a rare state of quiet ease for the Jiang family.

With a click, Jiang Nian emerged from the bathroom after finishing his evening self-study. He walked forward while rubbing his hair, the damp droplets flying forward like rain.

This scene stirred a sudden surge of fury in Li Hongmei's heart. You reckless brat! Spare the rod and spoil the child!

"Wait!" Jiang Nian instinctively jumped back, putting distance between himself and his volatile old mother, and interrupted the casting of her spell. "Comrade Li Hongmei, you cannot hit me right now."

Li Hongmei sneered, "I'll give you three seconds to explain."

Old Jiang turned his head with great interest, putting down his phone. He rose from the sofa, living out the principle of a spectator, and prepared to watch the commotion from up close.

Oh well, you're done for, a beating isn't far away.

Just as the words fell, old Jiang stumbled, failing to stand steady for a moment as he lunged fiercely forward. With a loud smack, the glass kettle on the coffee table was knocked to the floor.

Boom! It shattered all over the floor!

Seeing this, wild joy flooded Jiang Nian's face, and he raised his hand to cast the Great Desolate Heaven-Sealing Finger.

"It's far now."

True enough, within seven steps there must be an antidote; courting death oneself at most earned a scolding and that was it, but why did old Jiang have to risk his life to save him?

Oh well, next month's cigarette money was up in the air.

Li Hongmei turned her head to glare at the frozen old Jiang, who wore an awkward expression. He coughed once, activated his reserve auxiliary energy, and nonchalantly diverted the disaster to someone else.

"That's right, Xiaonian's monthly exam results should be out this week, right?"

Sure enough, the old lady's attention was diverted once more, and she stared at Jiang Nian with a frown.

"Your dad and I have been busy these past few days, I almost forgot to ask you. What was your score on last week's monthly exam? If your grades dropped too much, don't blame me for not letting you play video games."

"Oh, see for yourself, old mom."

Jiang Nian took his phone out of his pocket, opened the photo gallery, and found the photo of his class score report. Unflustered, he handed it to Li Hongmei, signaling her to look at the top line.

"573? So high?" Li Hongmei exclaimed.

"What?" Old Jiang couldn't even bother cleaning up the glass kettle on the floor anymore. He walked closer and took a look. "It really is first place. Is it photoshopped?"

"Photoshopped my foot, I've even been promoted to a higher class. I'm in the Olympiad Class Three now." Jiang Nian took his phone back. "Next time there's a parent-teacher meeting, remember not to go to the wrong classroom."

He left his merits deep in hiding after completing the deed and slipping away.

"Hey, send the picture to me!" Li Hongmei snapped back to her senses, walked over to her son's bedroom door, and knocked thump, thump, thump. "Did you hear me, Nian!"

"Oh."

Swish, the photo had just been sent over, and Li Hongmei turned around and forwarded it to her colleagues' group chat.

"This little brat!" Li Hongmei muttered, then instantly transformed her face, holding her phone with a beaming smile. "I'll send it to those folks in the office to see."

In a small county unit, the group chat was full of aunts of all descriptions. They chattered about everyday household gossip while at work, and the chat after leaving work was filled with those typical middle-aged women's matters.

Not even the leaders dared to show their faces, for showing them meant instant death. It perfectly illustrated the principle that the leader's leader wasn't her leader, but rather her husband, making them tricky to offend in short.

Buzz!

In the Splendid Heavenly Mansion Residential Community, the loud-mouthed Zhang Chunlan pulled out her large-font phone and glanced at the group chat. She saw that Li Hongmei had sent a photo with a caption.

[(Grin)(Smile) Everyone help me check if this score report was photoshopped by my son.]

This sentence instantly amused Zhang Chunlan. Who photoshopped score reports anyway? Although she didn't know the specific meaning represented by the letter "p", she knew it meant faking something.

She tapped to open it. Hongmei's son seemed to be named Jiang Nian?

Not outside the top thirty, nor outside the twenty. Not even there. This kid had some nerve, didn't he? Daring to fake a middle-to-lower tier level all the way into the top ten? The top ten... huh?

How was he in first place!

Zhang Chunlan's eyes went wide as she looked at the first-place score. She instantly couldn't help laughing out loud. How dare Hongmei's boy do this? How on earth did he dare?

He directly changed it to first place; wasn't this blatantly... wait, let her take a closer look, lest she fall for the tricks of these old hags who were always showing off in all sorts of ways.

Take that shameless old hag in the office, for instance, who "accidentally" dropped her gold bracelet into the mirror frame just waiting for someone to ask if the gold bracelet had broken.

First place: Jiang Nian, 573 points. Second place: Zhou Yuting, merely 527.

Was this reasonable? A gap of nearly fifty points? Too fake! At first glance, it was a forged score report, and Hongmei's boy certainly had the guts to think and act accordingly.

Her own precious son was much more honest, having just been promoted to the better class yesterday.

Thinking of this, Zhang Chunlan couldn't help shouting into the room, "Old Yu, come over and look at something funny."

"In the middle of the night, what kind of nonsense is this?" A bald middle-aged man dragged his feet as he emerged from the room, holding a cadre's insulated mug in his hand.

"Hongmei's kid forged a score report, it's hilarious."

"Let me see." The bald middle-aged man adjusted his glasses and leaned down. The messages in the group chat were flashing continuously. "There are even the words 'class promotion' right after the score."

"That makes it even funnier. Didn't our Xiaojie get promoted to the Olympiad Class Three just yesterday?" Zhang Chunlan laughed happily and sent a voice message to the group: "Hongmei, has your son been promoted to a higher class?"

In the group, voice messages lasting three to four seconds, ten seconds, or twenty to thirty seconds flew everywhere. The middle-aged women staying at home during the unit's holiday had nothing to do, and one after another they were blasted out.

"Hongmei, you wrote your son's score way too high. Wasn't he always hovering around four hundred and something before?"

A young intern at the unit: "Auntie Li, your son's score doesn't look photoshopped; it looks like it was reprinted."

"Come to think of it, didn't Chunlan's son score over five hundred too? I heard he got promoted to the Olympiad Class. Let's ask her son and we'll know."

Behind her screen, Zhang Chunlan watched with glee and replied via voice message.

"How would I know? There are several Olympiad Classes."

The person involved, Li Hongmei, sent a short voice message. Anger couldn't be detected in her tone; on the contrary, she sounded rather calm, and even carried a trace of happiness.

"She says it's Olympiad Class Three."

Class Three?

Zhang Chunlan on the sofa turned back to look at her man, "Old Yu, the class Xiaojie was promoted to is Olympiad Class Three, right?"

With a click, the bedroom door happened to open, and a teenage boy walked out holding a bundle of clothes, preparing to go take a bath.

"Hey, Xiaojie, you came just in time," Zhang Chunlan asked nervously. "Is there anyone in your class named Jiang Nian?"

Hearing this, Yu Tongjie stopped in his tracks and frowned.

"There is, and his score is higher than mine."

"Higher than yours? Are you sure?" Zhang Chunlan blurted out in astonishment. "Is it possible that he cheated to get up there? Look at what his mom posted in the group chat."

Yu Tongjie took the phone, listened to the voice messages one by one from start to finish, and handed it back after he finished reading.

"It's not fake. I don't rule out that he cheated."

With that, Yu Tongjie ignored his mother's dazed expression and turned straight into the bathroom.

Putting down his clothes, he frowned and opened QQ. He selected [Lemon Branch] from the chat list and chose to add her, feeling it necessary to remind Zhang Ningzhi.