A hush fell over the examination room. The only sound was the scratch of pen nibs sliding across white test paper.
The walls were white, and the soft radiance from the light fixtures overhead pooled silently on the desks.
Outside, the rain fell harder and harder.
Da-da-da-da. The raindrops fell from high in the clouds, striking the stone slabs on the ground with a sound of diffused agitation, but it was hampered by the door and didn’t intrude into the examination room.
Knock knock knock.
There was a rap on the door, then it was pulled open halfway.
In an instant the noise outside became much clearer. The sound of rain rushed in.
The man at the door lifted his eyes.
The teenager’s short black hair was wet, and his school uniform shirt had been washed so many times the color was faded. He stood in the doorway of the classroom.
Half of his sleeves were soaked by rain, as were his trouser legs. His other hand held a transparent umbrella slightly tilted, and his long fingers squeezed the handle to fold it up. Cold rivulets of rain slid down the clear surface of the umbrella. The water coalesced into a small puddle on the dark ground.
With the curtain of rain as a background, when viewed from a distance it seemed like countless light sources were all focused on him.
“Sorry, teacher, I’m late.”
His voice was faint. Intermingled with the sound of the rain, its timbre was asa cold as jade.
“You’re not allowed to enter fifteen minutes after the start of the exam.”
—It had been more than thirty minutes now.
The invigilator inside the classroom frowned and glanced at the time on his watch. Then he walked over and pulled the door closed in front of the boy. As he spoke through the door, his voice had no mercy.
“Oh, yes. Students who are absent from the exam must go to the teaching director’s office to write a self-review.”
Many of the students in the classroom looked up one after another.
There were a lot of sightlines. Some were indifferent, some had worry written clearly on their faces, and some were gloating.
Zong Yan just stood by the door and pursed his lips. His eyes swept through the clear glass window. Then he silently turned his back, opened the umbrella, and walked into the rain again.
“Sh*t, look at him like that. What’s he trying to pull?”
Ye JingMing looked back at Xia KeYan behind him. He wasn’t surprised to find a faint expression of concern on her usually calm, unruffled face.
His fist tightened. He was so angry the pen almost flew from his hand.
“Ye Ge1, don’t get mad. Think about the physics final exam. Zero points in physics—the old devil will grill him to death.”
On the opposite side, another of his little followers immediately lowered his voice to say something, but the next second the invigilator swept over a warning look. The boy’s neck shrunk back and he dutifully shut up.
The examination room fell quiet again, as if what just happened was a perfectly ordinary incident.
But in the end it disturbed the mood of many students.
In Class 3 of year two, Zong Yan was an existence that didn’t quite fit in.
In fact, this applied to all of Qingyang High School.
At the beginning of the first year of high school, every grade of Qingyang School buzzed with rumors of an amazing freshman in the senior high department. He even overshadowed the student who placed number one in the high school entrance exam.
This freshman had no other characteristics. He was good-looking and said to have an outstanding family background.
The first item, good looks, was obvious to all. Just one day after entering school, the position of school grass updated in everyone’s minds. The strength of his physical hardware was apparent to everyone.
But the second item was never confirmed.
Qingyang High School had always been a prestigious school in Jiangzhou, with well-equipped facilities and a strong teaching staff. The educational credentials of the teachers started with Tsinghua, Peking, and Jiao Tong. The entrance requirements were extremely high, and its graduates dominated Jiangzhou year after year. In Jiangzhou, as long as a family had some connections or heritage, it was almost a requirement to send their children there.
There was a consensus that students in Qingyang High School either excelled in their studies or came from rich or influential families.
Unfortunately, Zong Yan’s academic performance was mediocre. Since the first option was ruled out, logically the second option held, and that meant either rich or powerful.
""
Zong Yan was also the sole exception to the secondary language classes on Friday afternoons, having received instructor approval not to attend. It was said that he’d mastered several languages.
Aside from a prominent or high-ranking family, who would go to such lengths to cultivate that kind of knowledge?
In addition, Zong Yan was mysterious in his daily life. He never joined any kind of club organized by the school, didn’t participate in extracurricular activities arranged by the class, and even found excuses to push off the spring and autumn trips every semester. Every morning he walked into class with the teacher when the bell rang. After school, he followed the teacher’s footsteps out. He absolutely never stopped anywhere else on campus.
Even so there were many girls in Qingyang High School who secretly had a crush on him.
When class was over, many girls took the long way around and walked past the door of Class 3 of senior two on purpose. They walked with their friends in their arms, dawdling and pacing back and forth, just to look at him through the window. Sometimes the teacher stayed after class to go over various problems. When the teacher left, he found the corridor outside was crowded with people, just like the runway of a fashion show.
There were a lot of people who loved Zong Yan secretly, but there were also a lot of people unhappy with him.
Ye JingMing was one of them.
Ye JingMing came from a good background and was the son of a local luxury goods trading company. His father built his business from scratch, caught up with the policies of the times, and built a prosperous company. He was a respected man in Jiangzhou who was courted by the locals.
In Class 3 of senior year two, Zong Yan’s academic performance might be mediocre, but Ye JingMing scraped the bottom. However, the eldest young master hadn’t come to school to study. It was said that his father had already made connections. He was just waiting for year three to transfer directly to the International Department of Qingyang High School to study the IELTS Foundation Program and be sent abroad for gilding. Not to mention, his father was a trustee of Qingyang High School and had donated money for a new building, so the teachers of all subjects turned a blind eye to him.
Originally, Zong Yan’s poverty level meant he didn’t exist in the same space-time continuum as Prince Ye. Unfortunately, for reasons that were completely unknown to Zong Yan, Ye JingMing liked to cause trouble for him both overtly and covertly.
Ye JingMing had been dissatisfied with Zong Yan’s existence for a long time. He was chairman of the Anti-Zong Yan Alliance of Qingyang High School.
Anyway, whenever Zong Yan was unlucky, this guy felt pretty content.
Given Zong Yan’s degree of self-absorption, he didn’t even recognize all the students in his class. It was only Ye JingMing who’d made a deep impression. Over time, Zong Yan managed to learn his name.
If a student missed part of the final exam, he would be invited to the director’s office for tea.
To make it to the exam, Zong Yan had fought the star vampire for three hundred rounds and finally cut his opponent to pieces with his knife. Still in the persona of the Child of the Wind, he flew without stopping all the way from Dujiakou in Pudong New Area to Qingyang school in Jiading District.
Generally, Zong Yan only used the Child of the Wind to soar up to the dome of the sky at night and breathe the free air, a way of escaping the pressures of life. This was his first time flying in the city during the day.
His Child of the Wind persona only lasted three and a half hours. If it dropped in mid-air, even the gods wouldn’t be able to save him.
If the rain weren’t falling so heavily today, like someone carrying a basin of water overturned it from the clouds, limiting visibility to a very blurry range, Zong Yan wouldn’t have dared to fly back.
If his superpowers were exposed, absolutely nothing good could come of it.
Not to mention that he was the only person with superpowers in the world.
This was engraved in Zong Yan’s mind when he first discovered his ability to remove cards from the void.
It was true that some insane things like star vampires had shown up later, but as long as they were driven back, everything would return to its original state.
Zong Yan was convinced of this.
He hadn’t missed the exam for no reason—he was saving the world.
""
Wasn’t that so much more vital and important than a final exam?!
Zong Yan thought his logic was iron-clad and justified, which should be equivalent to a perfect score. But as a matter of fact he was a bit laid back when it came to school, classified as an unruly problem child.
On a daily basis the old devil physics teacher would call him out by name to stay late, but Zong Yan would sneak away. Don’t even mention the teaching director.
He still had to go back and find the client who commissioned him to translate the black manuscript.
There was something wrong with that person.
Zong Yan had been used as a pawn. But since he’d started the matter, he was going to finish it.
Zong Yan’s thoughts were very calm. Without hesitation he turned away from the door of the teaching director’s office.
Anyway, once the final exams were finished, he only needed to come back to school in two days to get his summer homework. Then he could start his happy and fulfilling vacation.
In the morning two days later, sitting in the classroom while the head teacher harangued him, Zong Yan’s thoughts hadn’t changed
Zong Yan was very biased when it came to subjects. He did best in mathematics and English, especially the former. He was ranked first in that subject in his grade.
Generally speaking, it was logical that if you were good at math, you wouldn’t be terrible at science.
Maybe Zong Yan was born to be the counterexample. His physics was utter garbage.
The description “a dog’s breakfast” was personally awarded to him by the physics teacher. It was used as a metaphor for his perfect score of 110 in mathematics while routinely managing only 30 points in physics.
However, Zong Yan’s development was balanced in two aspects. When it came to science, he was trash at physics, and when it came to liberal arts, his history marks were about the same. He hovered around 30 points every time.
The situation was similar with literature.
But Zong Yan wanted to study theoretical science later and would probably take other science courses for his major. He might need to explore a wider range of pathways in the future.
The old devil of physics: I have you now.gif
The summer holidays were coming soon. As soon as the teacher’s lengthy diatribe ended, Zong Yan wouldn’t have to be terrorized by physics for the next two months.
Summer vacation held a great attraction for any student. So Zong Yan was mentally both in and out of the classroom, and the roar went into his left ear and out of the right. He walked obediently to the back of the classroom to stand for punishment, hanging his head low and drifting off drowsily.
Knock knock knock.
As the physics teacher spitefully detailed the inexorable path from a missed exam to a wasted life filled with remorse and squandered dreams, the door of the classroom was knocked on once again.
“Sorry to interrupt. We appreciate your cooperation.”
Police officers in black uniforms filed into the room, displaying a search warrant and police certificates to the teacher on the platform.
“Ah, oh, please.”
The physics teacher was stunned by the intrusion. He hurriedly took two steps back.
The whole class was dead silent, and everyone stared with wide eyes as this team of armed police entered the classroom.
They were all dressed in crisp uniforms, police badges, and long batons.
“My God, is that a real gun…” Ye JingMing muttered.
He stared at the black gun grip belted to a police officer’s waist and gulped nervously.
Obviously guns weren’t new to anyone, but it was the first time these greenhouse flowers had encountered real firearms. They couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.
The policeman at the head of the group had a photo in his hand. He looked around the classroom for a while. Then without hesitation he walked up to Zong Yan, who was standing at the far end of the classroom for punishment. The police officer looked serious.
“Hello, student. According to our investigation you have a connection with the murder case in the financial district two days ago. Please come with us.”
Zong Yan, who’d been about to doze off, immediately opened his eyes on full alert.
—
TL Notes:
school grass – 校草 – school idol (male), school beau, school hunk, campus beau. Female equivalent: school flower
Eldest young master – 大少爷 – dà shàoyé
Prince Ye – from 叶大公子 – Yè dà gōngzǐ
Transliterated names, titles, and places—new in this chapter:
You can find the master list of transliterated names and titles in Chapter 0 – TL Notes. New in this chapter:
Ye JingMing – 叶景明 – A male student in MC’s class
Xia KeYan – 夏可妍 – A female student in MC’s class
A hush fell over the examination room. The only sound was the scratch of pen nibs sliding across white test paper.
The walls were white, and the soft radiance from the light fixtures overhead pooled silently on the desks.
Outside, the rain fell harder and harder.
Da-da-da-da. The raindrops fell from high in the clouds, striking the stone slabs on the ground with a sound of diffused agitation, but it was hampered by the door and didn’t intrude into the examination room.
Knock knock knock.
There was a rap on the door, then it was pulled open halfway.
In an instant the noise outside became much clearer. The sound of rain rushed in.
The man at the door lifted his eyes.
The teenager’s short black hair was wet, and his school uniform shirt had been washed so many times the color was faded. He stood in the doorway of the classroom.
Half of his sleeves were soaked by rain, as were his trouser legs. His other hand held a transparent umbrella slightly tilted, and his long fingers squeezed the handle to fold it up. Cold rivulets of rain slid down the clear surface of the umbrella. The water coalesced into a small puddle on the dark ground.
With the curtain of rain as a background, when viewed from a distance it seemed like countless light sources were all focused on him.
“Sorry, teacher, I’m late.”
His voice was faint. Intermingled with the sound of the rain, its timbre was asa cold as jade.
“You’re not allowed to enter fifteen minutes after the start of the exam.”
—It had been more than thirty minutes now.
The invigilator inside the classroom frowned and glanced at the time on his watch. Then he walked over and pulled the door closed in front of the boy. As he spoke through the door, his voice had no mercy.
“Oh, yes. Students who are absent from the exam must go to the teaching director’s office to write a self-review.”
Many of the students in the classroom looked up one after another.
There were a lot of sightlines. Some were indifferent, some had worry written clearly on their faces, and some were gloating.
Zong Yan just stood by the door and pursed his lips. His eyes swept through the clear glass window. Then he silently turned his back, opened the umbrella, and walked into the rain again.
“Sh*t, look at him like that. What’s he trying to pull?”
Ye JingMing looked back at Xia KeYan behind him. He wasn’t surprised to find a faint expression of concern on her usually calm, unruffled face.
His fist tightened. He was so angry the pen almost flew from his hand.
“Ye Ge1, don’t get mad. Think about the physics final exam. Zero points in physics—the old devil will grill him to death.”
On the opposite side, another of his little followers immediately lowered his voice to say something, but the next second the invigilator swept over a warning look. The boy’s neck shrunk back and he dutifully shut up.
The examination room fell quiet again, as if what just happened was a perfectly ordinary incident.
But in the end it disturbed the mood of many students.
In Class 3 of year two, Zong Yan was an existence that didn’t quite fit in.
In fact, this applied to all of Qingyang High School.
At the beginning of the first year of high school, every grade of Qingyang School buzzed with rumors of an amazing freshman in the senior high department. He even overshadowed the student who placed number one in the high school entrance exam.
This freshman had no other characteristics. He was good-looking and said to have an outstanding family background.
The first item, good looks, was obvious to all. Just one day after entering school, the position of school grass updated in everyone’s minds. The strength of his physical hardware was apparent to everyone.
But the second item was never confirmed.
Qingyang High School had always been a prestigious school in Jiangzhou, with well-equipped facilities and a strong teaching staff. The educational credentials of the teachers started with Tsinghua, Peking, and Jiao Tong. The entrance requirements were extremely high, and its graduates dominated Jiangzhou year after year. In Jiangzhou, as long as a family had some connections or heritage, it was almost a requirement to send their children there.
There was a consensus that students in Qingyang High School either excelled in their studies or came from rich or influential families.
Unfortunately, Zong Yan’s academic performance was mediocre. Since the first option was ruled out, logically the second option held, and that meant either rich or powerful.
""
Zong Yan was also the sole exception to the secondary language classes on Friday afternoons, having received instructor approval not to attend. It was said that he’d mastered several languages.
Aside from a prominent or high-ranking family, who would go to such lengths to cultivate that kind of knowledge?
In addition, Zong Yan was mysterious in his daily life. He never joined any kind of club organized by the school, didn’t participate in extracurricular activities arranged by the class, and even found excuses to push off the spring and autumn trips every semester. Every morning he walked into class with the teacher when the bell rang. After school, he followed the teacher’s footsteps out. He absolutely never stopped anywhere else on campus.
Even so there were many girls in Qingyang High School who secretly had a crush on him.
When class was over, many girls took the long way around and walked past the door of Class 3 of senior two on purpose. They walked with their friends in their arms, dawdling and pacing back and forth, just to look at him through the window. Sometimes the teacher stayed after class to go over various problems. When the teacher left, he found the corridor outside was crowded with people, just like the runway of a fashion show.
There were a lot of people who loved Zong Yan secretly, but there were also a lot of people unhappy with him.
Ye JingMing was one of them.
Ye JingMing came from a good background and was the son of a local luxury goods trading company. His father built his business from scratch, caught up with the policies of the times, and built a prosperous company. He was a respected man in Jiangzhou who was courted by the locals.
In Class 3 of senior year two, Zong Yan’s academic performance might be mediocre, but Ye JingMing scraped the bottom. However, the eldest young master hadn’t come to school to study. It was said that his father had already made connections. He was just waiting for year three to transfer directly to the International Department of Qingyang High School to study the IELTS Foundation Program and be sent abroad for gilding. Not to mention, his father was a trustee of Qingyang High School and had donated money for a new building, so the teachers of all subjects turned a blind eye to him.
Originally, Zong Yan’s poverty level meant he didn’t exist in the same space-time continuum as Prince Ye. Unfortunately, for reasons that were completely unknown to Zong Yan, Ye JingMing liked to cause trouble for him both overtly and covertly.
Ye JingMing had been dissatisfied with Zong Yan’s existence for a long time. He was chairman of the Anti-Zong Yan Alliance of Qingyang High School.
Anyway, whenever Zong Yan was unlucky, this guy felt pretty content.
Given Zong Yan’s degree of self-absorption, he didn’t even recognize all the students in his class. It was only Ye JingMing who’d made a deep impression. Over time, Zong Yan managed to learn his name.
If a student missed part of the final exam, he would be invited to the director’s office for tea.
To make it to the exam, Zong Yan had fought the star vampire for three hundred rounds and finally cut his opponent to pieces with his knife. Still in the persona of the Child of the Wind, he flew without stopping all the way from Dujiakou in Pudong New Area to Qingyang school in Jiading District.
Generally, Zong Yan only used the Child of the Wind to soar up to the dome of the sky at night and breathe the free air, a way of escaping the pressures of life. This was his first time flying in the city during the day.
His Child of the Wind persona only lasted three and a half hours. If it dropped in mid-air, even the gods wouldn’t be able to save him.
If the rain weren’t falling so heavily today, like someone carrying a basin of water overturned it from the clouds, limiting visibility to a very blurry range, Zong Yan wouldn’t have dared to fly back.
If his superpowers were exposed, absolutely nothing good could come of it.
Not to mention that he was the only person with superpowers in the world.
This was engraved in Zong Yan’s mind when he first discovered his ability to remove cards from the void.
It was true that some insane things like star vampires had shown up later, but as long as they were driven back, everything would return to its original state.
Zong Yan was convinced of this.
He hadn’t missed the exam for no reason—he was saving the world.
""
Wasn’t that so much more vital and important than a final exam?!
Zong Yan thought his logic was iron-clad and justified, which should be equivalent to a perfect score. But as a matter of fact he was a bit laid back when it came to school, classified as an unruly problem child.
On a daily basis the old devil physics teacher would call him out by name to stay late, but Zong Yan would sneak away. Don’t even mention the teaching director.
He still had to go back and find the client who commissioned him to translate the black manuscript.
There was something wrong with that person.
Zong Yan had been used as a pawn. But since he’d started the matter, he was going to finish it.
Zong Yan’s thoughts were very calm. Without hesitation he turned away from the door of the teaching director’s office.
Anyway, once the final exams were finished, he only needed to come back to school in two days to get his summer homework. Then he could start his happy and fulfilling vacation.
In the morning two days later, sitting in the classroom while the head teacher harangued him, Zong Yan’s thoughts hadn’t changed
Zong Yan was very biased when it came to subjects. He did best in mathematics and English, especially the former. He was ranked first in that subject in his grade.
Generally speaking, it was logical that if you were good at math, you wouldn’t be terrible at science.
Maybe Zong Yan was born to be the counterexample. His physics was utter garbage.
The description “a dog’s breakfast” was personally awarded to him by the physics teacher. It was used as a metaphor for his perfect score of 110 in mathematics while routinely managing only 30 points in physics.
However, Zong Yan’s development was balanced in two aspects. When it came to science, he was trash at physics, and when it came to liberal arts, his history marks were about the same. He hovered around 30 points every time.
The situation was similar with literature.
But Zong Yan wanted to study theoretical science later and would probably take other science courses for his major. He might need to explore a wider range of pathways in the future.
The old devil of physics: I have you now.gif
The summer holidays were coming soon. As soon as the teacher’s lengthy diatribe ended, Zong Yan wouldn’t have to be terrorized by physics for the next two months.
Summer vacation held a great attraction for any student. So Zong Yan was mentally both in and out of the classroom, and the roar went into his left ear and out of the right. He walked obediently to the back of the classroom to stand for punishment, hanging his head low and drifting off drowsily.
Knock knock knock.
As the physics teacher spitefully detailed the inexorable path from a missed exam to a wasted life filled with remorse and squandered dreams, the door of the classroom was knocked on once again.
“Sorry to interrupt. We appreciate your cooperation.”
Police officers in black uniforms filed into the room, displaying a search warrant and police certificates to the teacher on the platform.
“Ah, oh, please.”
The physics teacher was stunned by the intrusion. He hurriedly took two steps back.
The whole class was dead silent, and everyone stared with wide eyes as this team of armed police entered the classroom.
They were all dressed in crisp uniforms, police badges, and long batons.
“My God, is that a real gun…” Ye JingMing muttered.
He stared at the black gun grip belted to a police officer’s waist and gulped nervously.
Obviously guns weren’t new to anyone, but it was the first time these greenhouse flowers had encountered real firearms. They couldn’t help but feel a little nervous.
The policeman at the head of the group had a photo in his hand. He looked around the classroom for a while. Then without hesitation he walked up to Zong Yan, who was standing at the far end of the classroom for punishment. The police officer looked serious.
“Hello, student. According to our investigation you have a connection with the murder case in the financial district two days ago. Please come with us.”
Zong Yan, who’d been about to doze off, immediately opened his eyes on full alert.
—
TL Notes:
school grass – 校草 – school idol (male), school beau, school hunk, campus beau. Female equivalent: school flower
Eldest young master – 大少爷 – dà shàoyé
Prince Ye – from 叶大公子 – Yè dà gōngzǐ
Transliterated names, titles, and places—new in this chapter:
You can find the master list of transliterated names and titles in Chapter 0 – TL Notes. New in this chapter:
Ye JingMing – 叶景明 – A male student in MC’s class
Xia KeYan – 夏可妍 – A female student in MC’s class
