Chapter 40: High School Freshmen Military Training
The sky was low and dark, and the biting wind howled outside the window. Inside the classroom, an unfamiliar proctor walked back and forth.
From time to time, he would remind the students to abide by the examination rules.
The scale of the mid-term exam was much stricter than the school’s monthly exams. Only half of the class remained in the classroom, with the desks spaced far apart, perfectly eliminating the risk of cheating.
Even the proctors were not from their own school. Teachers from nearby schools were swapped to proctor the exams.
The test papers for the entire city were uniformly created by the Education Bureau’s teaching and research group.
Zhou Wanfeng sat against the wall. She flipped through the Chinese test paper, estimating the difficulty. She took a look at the final composition topic in advance. Requirement: Write an essay based on the following topics and requirements.
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Conflict is often a problem of generation gap. Please write an essay on the topic of generation gap. The title is up to you, and the genre is not limited (except for poetry). It should be no less than 600 words, and plagiarism is not allowed.
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Topic: The person I admire——-
Requirement: The genre is not limited, and the number of words should be no less than 600.
It was a choice between two composition topics. Zhou Wanfeng decisively chose the second one. She had seen many such compositions and knew how to write them. She didn’t want to lose points on the composition. Whenever it was composition class, the old Chinese teacher, Li, particularly liked to read her compositions in his slow and leisurely tone. The old man also liked to nitpick. If she used a word inappropriately, his disgusted expression, even a sip of water would be accompanied by a “tsk, tsk.”
She had put in a lot of effort in her compositions. Yun Jingya had helped her a lot, guiding her step by step on how to write.
The difficulty of the Chinese exam was moderate. The more flexible questions, the ones that were easy to lose points on, were the few large reading comprehension questions at the end.
The two days of exams passed in a flash.
Zhou Wanfeng had no particular emotions before or after the exam. She just reviewed and studied as usual. Even if she knew she had gotten a question wrong after the exam, she would not fall into regret. She would just do what she had to do.
Yun Jingya looked at Zhou Wanfeng with admiration from the bottom of her heart. At the same age, she could not be so unconcerned. She would flip through her books to find the answers after she got back, and when she found out she had gotten a question wrong, she would lie on her desk in a dejected state.
“Wanfeng, I got a question wrong,” Yun Jingya said, moving her chair closer to Zhou Wanfeng, her face filled with frustration.
Zhou Wanfeng didn’t look at her. She was copying in her hand. “It’s normal. The person who made the questions doesn’t want everyone to get a perfect score.”
“How can you be so calm? Don’t you even estimate your score?” Yun Jingya was actually a little worried. This was a regional unified exam, and she and Zhou Wanfeng were doing the same test paper.
Their scores could be compared this time.
“I have a rough idea,” Zhou Wanfeng said truthfully. She was quite accurate in this regard. She then looked up at Yun Jingya, as if waiting for her to ask the next question.
Yun Jingya let out a breath and suddenly pointed at Zhou Wanfeng. “Don’t tell me how much you scored. I don’t want to know right now.” She was actually quite curious, but she couldn’t put any more pressure on herself.
Zhou Wanfeng sneered and continued to copy her homework with her head down.
After the mid-term exam, Shuangshu Model Middle School was very concerned about the results. The students’ scores in the regional unified exam represented the school’s face, and it was also a competition for the school’s ranking.
Zhou Wanfeng had always done what she said she would. She had gotten first place in the entire grade in the mid-term exam, with a total score of 711. Although she hadn’t pulled ahead of the second place by much, she had gotten the title of first in the entire grade.
When Sun Mulan found out about the ranking from the school, she was so excited that she jumped up and down, shouting Zhou Wanfeng’s name several times.
Yun Jingya’s total score was six points higher than Zhou Wanfeng’s. Some knowledge required daily accumulation. Zhou Wanfeng didn’t think much of it. She knew better than anyone how outstanding Yun Jingya was. With her intelligence and hard work, she deserved such a score.
After the mid-term exam, the school held a summary meeting. The average scores of the first-grade Class One and Class Two were better than expected. The average score of First Grade, Class Nine was still at the bottom, but there were two special existences in First Grade, Class Nine. There were only a few students in the entire city who had gotten a perfect score in math, and Jiang Yi from First Grade, Class Nine was one of them.
And another one, Zhou Wanfeng, was in this class.
Unbeknownst to them, because of Zhou Wanfeng’s first place in the entire grade, the homeroom teachers of First Grade, Class One and Class Two had become much stricter with their students in private. Yuan Hongying couldn’t say if she regretted it or not, but after the mid-term exam, she pushed the students in her class to study even harder. She kept a close eye on the top ten students in the class, and in private, she even had them set Zhou Wanfeng as their target.
The mid-term exam was nothing. There was still the final exam.
Zhou Wanfeng’s individual subject scores were not the best in the school. What she wanted was the total score. Both the high school and college entrance exams looked at the total score.
Jiang Yi had gotten a perfect score in math, but his other subjects were not good enough. Although Zhou Wanfeng had pushed him hard, and his total score had improved compared to the monthly exam, he was only in the middle of the school ranking this time.
But his math competition results were very impressive.
Junior high school life continued. Zhou Wanfeng still studied with Yun Jingya until midnight every night. Sometimes, when she was not in a good state, she would go back to the attic to sleep at eleven. If she really couldn’t study, she would never force herself.
In the mid-term exam, Yun Jingya’s total score was a few points higher than hers. It was rare for Yang Yijun to smile at her. Zhou Wanfeng couldn’t be bothered with such a person. She came out of the study. The wall lamps on the third floor were dim. She went back to the attic along the stairs.
Suddenly, she heard a soft sound. She stopped to listen, then turned to look at the bedroom at the other end.
She was sure the sound was coming from Yun Chengbin’s room. She walked over to take a look.
The bedroom door was ajar, and the faint sound of sniffling and sobbing could be heard.
Zhou Wanfeng was about to turn and leave when a series of sobs entered her ears. She frowned, took a deep breath, and walked over.
She pushed the door open. The bedroom was covered with a thick layer of soft carpet. When Zhou Wanfeng went in, she heard the sobbing and the sound of sniffling get louder.
The main light in the room was not on. A warm yellow table lamp was on by the bed. On the soft, large bed, there was a lump under the quilt. The sound was coming from the opening of the quilt. The floor by the bed was littered with used tissues.
Zhou Wanfeng walked over with a blank expression and lifted the quilt.
Yun Chengbin, in a striped autumn shirt and pants, was on his knees, his butt in the air. His eyes and nose were red from crying. When he looked up, snot was running down his nostrils. The bed was covered with test papers. The child was holding a pencil and an eraser in one hand, and a transparent triangle ruler in the other.
When the quilt was pulled away, and he saw the cold-faced and stern-eyed Zhou Wanfeng, Yun Chengbin started to hiccup.
Zhou Wanfeng let go of the quilt, ignored Yun Chengbin’s hiccups, and pulled a tissue from the bedside, throwing it at him. “Wipe your nose.” She then reached out and gathered the test papers from the child’s bed.
There were many red check marks and very few red crosses. The average score was above 95.
“What are you crying for? You did very well,” Zhou Wanfeng said, casually putting the test papers on the bed.
Yun Chengbin had stopped crying, but when he saw the scores on the test papers, he started to cry again. “Waaah, I didn’t get 100 in any of them.”
“Did anyone in your class get 100?”
“Waaah, hiccup, ah, woo, yes.”
“How many?”
“Two… two.”
“One person in our class got a perfect score in math, but I’m the first in the class, and I’m also the first in the entire grade. I don’t have a single perfect score, and I probably won’t in the future,” Zhou Wanfeng said, pulling the quilt over Yun Chengbin again. She said with a cold gaze, “You can continue to cry.”
Yun Chengbin pouted, on the verge of tears. He held his pencil and eraser and pointed at a question on the test paper with a wronged expression. “I don’t know how to do this one.”
Zhou Wanfeng glanced at it. There was a big red cross on the test paper. She said with a blank expression, “Go to the office and ask the teacher tomorrow. If he didn’t teach you, it’s his problem. You’ve paid the tuition. You can openly ask him.”
“Go to sleep,” Zhou Wanfeng said, turning to leave. After a few steps, she heard a soft sobbing sound again. She turned her head and frowned. “Do you want me to call your grandmother or your father up to teach you how to do the problem now?”
Yun Chengbin’s chubby hand suddenly covered his mouth, and he shook his head desperately.
Zhou Wanfeng left.
She went back to the attic and lay down. Just as she was about to close her eyes, she heard a soft knock on the door, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. A somewhat hoarse voice said cautiously, “Are… are you asleep?”
Zhou Wanfeng: …
From that day on, whenever there was an exam, there would be a knock on her door.
The child said that his grandmother had told him not to disturb his sister’s studies.
The sister that Yang Yijun was talking about could only be Yun Jingya.
Zhou Wanfeng entered the second year of junior high with the first place in the entire grade. With her previous heroic deeds, her reputation at Shuangshu Model Middle School was very high, both among the teachers and the students. The original second years, who were now in the third year, still remembered the scene of her barging into a third-grade classroom and dragging someone out to beat them up, as well as the group fight at the school gate. It was as if from then on, any other fights and troubles at the school were just minor scuffles compared to what Zhou Wanfeng had caused.
Every Friday after school, the social delinquents at the school gate basically stopped coming.
Du Yong’an, the director of the political and educational affairs office, was basically not afraid as long as Zhou Wanfeng was not involved in the trouble. In fact, after dealing with Zhou Wanfeng’s case, he had become more experienced in handling student fights.
Zhou Wanfeng was a very special existence at Shuangshu Model. All the teachers knew her. Some liked her, and some disliked her.
But her grades were solid. The key classes, Class One and Class Two, which focused on grades, no matter if it was a monthly exam or a mid-term or final exam, the total score was always about ten points off from hers. They just couldn’t surpass her.
As long as Zhou Wanfeng maintained her grades until the third year of junior high, no one could deny that she was the face of Shuangshu Model Middle School, its representative.
Occasionally, when Principal Wang Zongping held a meeting to discuss student performance, he would specifically ask about Zhou Wanfeng. She was a student who was on his radar.
The first-year students were still very immature. There were occasional minor scuffles, but they were not worth mentioning.
The future trends in the restaurant industry that Zhou Wanfeng had written, Yun Lang had told his dad and his older brother. Anyway, he had just recited what was written on the paper, line by line. After he had memorized it, he couldn’t help but ponder it. Especially after he had gone to the restaurant for a walk, he felt that he could understand the content he had memorized even better.
Yun Haisheng, Yun Lusheng, and Yun Jue had pressed him, asking him how he had thought of these things. Yun Lang had insisted that it was not Zhou Wanfeng who had told him to memorize it, but that he had just figured it out himself.
No one believed him at all. But it was because of Yun Lang’s words that the Yun family’s Yuxiang Pavilion had undergone a major reform. If they hadn’t reformed, they would have just lost money and closed down. The Yun family still knew how to do business. Yun Haisheng had split the Yun family’s old brand, Yuxiang Pavilion, into two: Yuyanfang, a high-end private restaurant, with only one location, and reservations were required. The other was a chain brand, Yuxiang Pavilion, which focused on innovative fusion cuisine and targeted the general public.
Yun Haisheng was in charge of the high-end private restaurant, Yuyanfang. The century-old family business could not be abandoned. Yun Lusheng and Yun Jue were in charge of Yuxiang Pavilion.
In just one year, the Yun family had seen results. Yun Haisheng and Yun Lusheng had asked Yun Lang more than once, but Yun Lang had kept his mouth shut. When pressed, he would jump up and say that he had asked his great-aunt to do a divination for him.
The Yun family’s great-aunt was old and a little muddle-headed. She was sometimes normal, and sometimes confused. She liked to read people’s bones and palms, and would say some things. If you asked her about it later, she wouldn’t remember at all.
Yun Lang felt that he had found a trump card. From now on, whenever anyone asked him, this would be his answer. His great-aunt had told him. You can go and ask her.
The Yun family’s business was doing well, and Yang Yijun was in a bad mood. She had been preparing to talk about the ownership issue when they were losing more money. Now that the business was booming, if she brought it up, Diao Yufeng would dare to come to her door and curse her.
In the second semester of the second year of junior high, Diao Yufeng came to the house and, in front of Yang Yijun, gave her a set of gold jewelry. The solid gold bracelet felt like it weighed more than a hundred grams, and the pendant was also a solid Buddha statue.
Fortunately, Yang Yijun didn’t like these tacky gold things. She just thought that Diao Yufeng had come to deliberately annoy her, and had brought something she didn’t want to wear herself to give to someone else.
A young girl, what was wrong with wearing something else? The styles were all old and ugly. Anyway, Yang Yijun disliked them very much. She wouldn’t even take them if they were given to her.
Diao Yufeng was overly enthusiastic towards Zhou Wanfeng.
Afterwards, Yun Lang came to find her. He clasped his hands together and was on the verge of kneeling in apology. In the end, he raised his hand and slapped himself hard. His face was red. “A friend brought some good wine from home. I just had a sip, and I didn’t expect it to be so strong. It knocked me out. But I swear, only my mom knows now. I made my mom swear a solemn oath. If she dares to tell anyone, I’ll be cursed to never find a wife in my life.”
Since it had already happened, Zhou Wanfeng couldn’t do anything about it. Fortunately, Diao Yufeng really hadn’t told anyone else. She was just particularly enthusiastic towards her whenever they met, and would occasionally use her to mock Yang Yijun a few times. She would also give her a big red envelope during the New Year.
The second year of junior high passed peacefully. Zhou Zhiru’s Changfeng Electrical Appliance Co., Ltd. was officially changed to Changfeng Electrical Appliance Co., Ltd., and was even selected as an outstanding enterprise by Yunhai City. Zhou Zhiru became even busier. Sometimes, he wouldn’t be seen for a whole week. He also often went abroad for inspections, and was determined to build an outstanding research and development team.
The third year of junior high arrived quietly. The upperclassmen who remembered Zhou Wanfeng’s deeds had all graduated. In the eyes of the students in the same grade, it seemed that they had also forgotten. Now, all they remembered was Zhou Wanfeng, who was always first in every exam.
Occasionally, when the people in Third Grade, Class Nine got too rowdy, they would see the cold-faced Zhou Wanfeng stand up, and her sharp gaze would instantly send a chill down everyone’s spine.
“No… no more fooling around, no more fooling around. I’m sorry, class president,” they would say, becoming well-behaved in a second.
In Third Grade, Class Nine, Zhou Wanfeng was no longer the class president. The class president was now Ding Gaoming. She wanted to focus on the high school entrance exam and didn’t want to be distracted by other things.
But the classmates were used to calling her that and would still subconsciously call her “class president.”
The people in Class Nine had forgotten, and the other classes were even more so. The things that had happened when she had first enrolled in the first year were like a mark on a tree bark, slowly fading with time, and being covered by other things.
All that was remembered was the studious, somewhat cold, but always first in every exam, Zhou Wanfeng.
The third year of junior high was tense and exciting.
When it was time to fill in the high school entrance exam choices, the school held a parent-teacher conference.
Although the grades of the students in Class Nine were not good, it was the third year, and almost all the parents who could come came.
The students stood against the wall, and the parents sat in their children’s seats, all listening attentively to the teacher.
Zhou Wanfeng had always sat in the middle of the third row. It was empty, not just hers, but a few other seats were also empty.
No one even knew that the school was going to hold a parent-teacher conference.
Zhou Wanfeng’s goal was clear. She didn’t need anyone to come to the parent-teacher conference.
As the first in the class, she was asked by Sun Mulan to stand on the podium and speak to the students in the class. Looking at the vibrant eyes, she said with a very serious expression, “…We are young and in our prime; with the spirit of a scholar, we point to the future… May you all live a life without regrets.”
Zhou Wanfeng’s high school entrance exam choice was filled in silently. Only Yang Yijun had asked her about it in a roundabout way. “Yunhai City No. 1 High School.”
A week after the high school entrance exam, the scores were out. Zhou Wanfeng returned to Shuangshu Model Middle School. The graduating class, the graduation ceremony, the private junior high had made it very ceremonial.
Zhou Wanfeng was selected as an outstanding graduate, an outstanding “three-good student” of the class, an advanced model of the class, and an advanced student representative of the school.
She didn’t remember many of the golden certificates. She just glanced down at the stage. The young and inexperienced homeroom teacher, Sun Mulan, who would get nervous when things happened, had now become calm and reserved. At this moment, her eyes were red, and she was clapping hard from below.
After the group graduation photo was taken, Zhou Wanfeng was pulled by her classmates for a photo. There were Zhu Junling, Ding Gaoming, and Chen Yisen.
There were photos of two people, and also of three or five people together.
With Tang Yuqing, with Zhang Xi, and with Chen Hao, Zhao Shenyu, Li Hui, and Huang Jiankang.
“Class president, I wish you to get first in the grade at No. 1 High School too.”
“Class president, good luck in high school.”
The people in Class Nine all knew that their fate with the class president, Zhou Wanfeng, had come to an end here.
Jiang Yi frowned, looking at the people who were taking photos with Zhou Wanfeng one by one. He didn’t feel much, since they would be in the same school in high school.
He had been specially admitted. He had been first in the Yunhai City math competition every year, and had also won a first prize in the national junior high school math competition. It just so happened that Yunhai City No. 1 High School had a special admission spot for competitions.
He was a little glad. It was a good thing he had listened to Zhou Wanfeng back then. Otherwise, he would definitely be regretting it now.
During the summer vacation after graduating from junior high, Yun Lan had taken Yun Chengbin and Yun Jingya abroad to play. Zhou Wanfeng had gone on a trip by herself with her backpack, climbing all the famous mountains. When she came back, she was a shade darker and thinner. She had found her hair to be a nuisance during her trip and had cut it short, which made her look even more heroic and valiant.
Yunhai City No. 1 High School started in mid-August. According to past practice, the new students of the first year would have a military training period from August 16th to September 3rd.