Chapter 44

Chapter 6: A classroom confrontation

The latest class rankings were out. Over the three days of exams, Su Can had seen the strength of City First Middle School. These exams were about as difficult as the high school entrance exam, if not harder. They had been set by several of No. 1 High School's top-ranked teachers, who studied this material every day. In Class Five alone, as many as thirty students had scored over 600.

Had the same papers been given at his former school, Third Middle School, having three or four students score over 600 would probably have been a good result.

Tang Wu's score put her firmly at the top of the class, leaving behind Wang Xuebing, whom the No. 1 High School crowd had considered the undisputed number one.

Amid the resulting uproar, everyone's feelings toward Tang Wu, who possessed both beauty and intelligence, became all the more complex, their views differing. Those who had held her in awe perhaps felt even more awed, while some boys began looking at her with burning eyes. Wang Xuebing was among them.

Chen Lingshan had fallen to twentieth place. When Tang Wu, sitting beside her, received her exam papers, she acted completely indifferent, as though she had no idea Tang Wu had come first.

Su Can had not given these exams his all. His score put him around the same place as Xue Yiyang, somewhere below fortieth or fiftieth, with just over five hundred points. Su Can knew that drawing too much attention was not a good thing, and his thoughts had recently been occupied with his parents' shop. Some mistakes and omissions were genuine, but more often he had deliberately forgone points on easy questions. This left some of the teachers marking his papers utterly baffled. A student who could solve harder problems yet left easier ones unanswered was truly difficult to comprehend.

"Damn! I thought you were something special. Turns out you paid your way in too!" Looking at the newly distributed score sheet, Xue Yiyang discovered that, by an extraordinary coincidence, he and Su Can ranked one right after the other. Combined with their seating arrangement, it really did make them something of a pair of brothers in misfortune.

So now, as Xue Yiyang looked at Su Can, his suspicions naturally vanished. He simply assumed Su Can had also pulled strings and gotten in through some channel.

When Xiao Rihua handed out the score sheets and exam papers, he initially felt thoroughly pleased. The more he looked at Tang Wu, the more he liked having her as a student. Although she had come from Third Middle School, her performance had completely overturned his impression of that school. He had never expected that even the murkiest mud could yield a pure lotus. It left him surprised and moved.

Su Can was another student he kept a close watch on, but the boy had defied his expectations. He had estimated that this boy, introduced by the director of studies who bore him a grudge, would finish dead last or at least among the bottom few. Who would have thought his grades would place him in the middle, neither high nor low? He had neither given Xiao Rihua a headache nor added another bottom-feeder to drag down the class average.

Yet Xiao Rihua did not let down his guard. If the boy's grades were not particularly bad, then there was a strong chance his conduct would be a problem. Otherwise, Xiao Rihua did not believe Director of Studies Tian Feng would have foisted someone on him so easily.

Rather than relaxing, Xiao Rihua found his nerves subtly tightening. He kept feeling as though something major was about to happen.

After that, high school settled into its regular schedule of classes. Su Can understood that high school was truly worlds apart from middle school. With middle school material, even if someone missed half a month of classes, they could practically understand it all by picking up the textbook and reading it through once. What was taught matched what was tested, and it was all fundamental.

With high school material, however, missing a single day could leave someone bewildered by the textbook the next day. From there, the gap between them and everyone else would only grow, and the dividing line would become increasingly clear.

Heaven had given Su Can a chance at rebirth, allowing him to use the wisdom and experience of his later life to build his middle school foundations in a short time. He could not let those foundations go to waste. Like a construction site, if the foundation never became a towering building, it would be meaningless. So after receiving his textbooks, Su Can began studying ahead. It took little of his time. With his comprehension and his foundations in each subject, he could preview much of the material in advance. Even when he chatted privately in class with the chatterbox Xue Yiyang, he could still grasp the lesson's key points.

Listening without distinguishing the essential from the secondary was always tiring, especially with one forty-minute lesson following another. Once he understood how to absorb knowledge selectively, Su Can found things quite easy, unlike the many students struggling with the increased difficulty of high school at this stage.

Xiao Rihua taught Chinese. Unfortunately, while he was analyzing a classical Chinese passage, he spotted the two close friends, Su Can and Xue Yiyang, whispering together. He immediately stopped teaching.

The entire class fell silent. Xiao Rihua was not tall, but his rather round face gave him a certain advantage. When his expression darkened like this, he could be quite intimidating. Following his gaze, everyone saw Su Can and Xue Yiyang. Some were already casting looks of disgust and contempt their way.

According to the latest class rankings, Su Can and Xue Yiyang were both below-average students. To the No. 1 High School students ranked above them, the two might be people they laughed and chatted with on the surface, but inwardly they held them in contempt.

After all, those who sought attention in class or deliberately antagonized teachers might give people something to laugh about, but it only proved that they were playing the fool, and very stupidly at that.

"Idiots!" Li Ai, sitting in one of the last two rows, said with a sneer. His voice was quiet, but in the silence it sounded especially grating.

Beside him, Zhang Xi and Sun Ziyi laughed, their mouths stretched into broad grins, audible chuckles rising from their throats.

Some students' eyelids twitched slightly. Under any other circumstances, Li Ai's words would have been unmistakably hostile and might even have sparked a fight.

Xue Yiyang clenched his fists out of sight, yet, for once, remained silent.

Su Can glanced at him without blaming him for his silence. He understood that Xue Yiyang knew what sort of people Li Ai and his group were. At City First Middle School, what one sometimes had to endure was the insurmountable disparity and bitterness of life there.

Xiao Rihua's expression shifted, but he pretended not to have heard and called on Su Can. "Stand up and tell us how to translate and interpret this line from Xunzi's 'Encouraging Learning,' which I was just analyzing: 'I once spent all day thinking, but it was not as good as a moment's learning; I once stood on tiptoe to look into the distance, but it was not as good as the broad view from high ground.'"

Wasn't Xiao Rihua deliberately making things difficult? He had only explained half of this line. Throwing out the question now, he also intended to take the opportunity to humiliate Su Can.

Chen Lingshan turned around and, along with those around her, watched with a smile, waiting for Su Can's impending embarrassment.

Tang Wu, who never turned to watch anyone else answer a question, actually turned seventy-five degrees to look at Su Can. Her delicate brows were slightly furrowed; she looked a little worried.

Su Can stood and spoke smoothly. "I once pondered all day, yet my thoughts lacked the depth of the knowledge gained in a moment of study; I once stood on tiptoe to gaze into the distance, yet could not see as widely as I could from higher ground."

He understood this line deeply. The wisdom of the ancients was astonishing. He was looking back at his former life from the heights of a later era, and so everything he saw, heard, and felt was far broader. If heaven had granted him a cheat, then the greatest cheat was not his foreknowledge, but the maturity and the mind and body that had endured hardship and learned to cherish things, with which he could face this entirely new beginning!

"Earth accumulates into mountains, and wind and rain arise there; water accumulates into deep pools, and dragons are born there; good deeds accumulate into virtue, and divine wisdom comes of itself, and the mind of a sage is attained. Thus, without accumulating half steps, one cannot reach a thousand li; without accumulating small streams, one cannot form rivers and seas.

"-And how would you interpret that!?" Whether it was because Xiao Rihua's eyes were bulging or because of the sting of losing face, the end of his question carried something of an ancient scholar's interrogative manner.

Everyone in class looked perplexed. This was from a later section of the classical text, which they had not yet studied and only half understood. Making Su Can explain it was far too harsh, and made Xiao Rihua seem lacking in grace.

"Earth and stones pile up into mountains, and wind and rain arise from them; flowing water gathers into deep pools, and dragons are born there; by accumulating good deeds to cultivate noble character, one gains highly developed wisdom and the spiritual attainment of a sage."

Before Xue Yiyang's frog-like, bulging eyes beside him, Su Can paused, then raised his head and continued, "Thus, without accumulating one step and half a step at a time, one cannot reach a thousand li away; without accumulating tiny trickles of water, there is no way to form rivers and seas!"

"A fine steed, in one leap, cannot cover ten paces?" Xiao Rihua's hands began trembling. The temper of his days as a sent-down youth flared, and he pressed the attack without a shred of grace.

"Even a fine horse cannot cover ten paces in a single leap!" Su Can answered.

"A poor horse travels for ten days; its achievement lies in not giving up!?"

"A slow, inferior horse pulling a cart for ten days can also achieve a thousand-li journey through persistence!"

At that, the exchange ended.

The air remained charged with the force of their storm-like, tense clash, its tremors still lingering.

Xiao Rihua's expression shifted. Realizing he had lost his composure, he waved his hand dispiritedly. "Mm, sit down. It looks as though you've read the textbook very carefully."

In fact, textbooks at the time only provided glosses for obscure characters, not precise explanations of every word and sentence. Teaching then was not as rigidly textbook-bound as it would become later. These were things the teacher had to explain. No matter how much one read the textbook, without the relevant reference materials, there was no way to obtain exact answers.

For a moment, the classroom was utterly silent.

Chen Lingshan turned back around in astonishment, unable to shake Li Ai's earlier "idiot," directed at Su Can, from her mind. She wondered, if someone like him was an idiot, then what were they?

Single-celled organisms?