Chapter 26: Since Ancient Times, Beautiful Women Bring Trouble

“Stand up!” the Class Monitor, Ren Zhiping, shouted loudly.

Whoosh!

The whole class stood up together: “Goo…d m…orning, teacher!”

The voices were loud!

Most of the girls respected every teacher very much. As for the boys, it was because the new English teacher standing on the platform was too pretty—young boys in their confused adolescence, of course, wanted to show off well in front of a young and beautiful female teacher.

Actually, Xiao Qian had already tentatively taught them for two classes before, but those weren’t official; each time, other teachers and school leaders sat in the back to observe.

This time, it was an official class.

Su Chunfeng thought nostalgically, “Exactly the same scene from my memory of the previous life.”

However, soon he didn’t think it was the same as his previous life—because, throughout the entire English class, Xiao Qian seemed to deliberately and often look at Su Chunfeng with sharp eyes for no reason. She asked about seven or eight questions in class, and unexpectedly had Su Chunfeng stand up to answer four of them.

Luckily, Su Chunfeng studied hard after being reborn and had good grades, so he answered fluently.

What surprised him was that when others stood up to answer a question, whether right or wrong, Xiao Qian would praise them or explain a bit. But whenever Su Chunfeng answered correctly and fluently, Xiao Qian only nodded seriously, signaled for him to sit down, and then continued teaching…

“What did I do to offend her?” Su Chunfeng wondered.

Thinking back to the scene in the homeroom teacher’s office when he faced off against Zuo Hongbin, when Xu Yunxia and Xiao Qian were right outside the office, Su Chunfeng couldn’t help but speculate privately: “Could it be that, in less than two weeks since she came to school, she was swept off her feet by Zuo Hongbin’s fiery passion and handsome looks? So because of my intense argument with Zuo Hongbin, she now holds a strong prejudice against me and has to target me?”

Life was unbearable!

As the saying goes, “No matter how strong he is, the gentle breeze brushes the mountain ridge; no matter how wild he is, the bright moon shines over the great river.”

Su Chunfeng didn’t feel much added pressure in his heart because of this conflict with Zuo Hongbin—physical education courses weren’t important these days anyway; it was just for the three events in the High School Entrance Examination.

Zuo Hongbin didn’t have the authority to disqualify him from the physical education part of the High School Entrance Examination.

Moreover, whether now or in Su Chunfeng’s memory of his past life, a self-important and arrogant person like Zuo Hongbin had few friends among the teachers of the junior third grade comprising Class 14 and Class 15. Especially since the Class 14 homeroom teacher, Li Jichun, greatly disliked this type of person, which was why he handled the conflict between student Su Chunfeng and teacher Zuo Hongbin righteously and sternly, even going so far as to threaten Zuo Hongbin by saying he would take it to the principal.

As for Xiao Qian…

Su Chunfeng didn’t bother paying attention either. She was just a little girl who had just graduated from university, and he didn’t want to pursue her anyway… As long as it didn‘t interfere with his class learning, that was fine.

The school was still a chaotic scene.

It was like a small martial world, where someone would only stand out to become the overlord after intense and prolonged conflicts, and only then would the martial world enjoy brief peace.

As fights and brawls in the school became more frequent, the situation quickly began to escalate—first, Wang Liqiu led a group of people to ambush Xu Zhijun on his way home after school one afternoon and beat him up badly. The next day, Xu Zhijun, bruised and swollen, snuck up on Wang Liqiu in class with a stool leg and cracked his head open, drawing blood… A few days later, a large-scale collective conflict broke out again between Class 14 and Class 15. Fights also became frequent among boys in junior second grade Classes 16 and 17, and junior first grade Classes 18 and 19.

Classmates teamed up together, villagers formed cliques, close friends backed each other out of loyalty, and even idle troublemakers from outside the school got involved…

The biggest brawl happened outside the boys’ dormitory area.

Over thirty boys from three grades in Gubao Village, along with students from Dongwangzhuang Village and some outside hooligans, erupted into a chaotic fight, causing multiple injuries of varying degrees…

Fortunately, there were no deaths or serious injuries.

But this alone was enough to cause great concern and tension among the school leaders—they realized that among this year’s junior first, second, and third graders, there were many who were aggressive and combative, and had already become familiar with and enthusiastic about group fights. So the school strengthened management in all aspects and promptly communicated with many parents to alleviate and ease the growing hatred among the students.

With the school’s strong intervention, the increasingly frequent fighting incidents gradually calmed down.

At the same time, after a period of conflict, many students also began to feel some fear and disgust toward fighting. Correspondingly, a small number of students were still storing up and suppressing the impulses stirred by youth and hormones. They glared at, provoked, and eyed each other menacingly, both inside the school and outside after school… To put it bluntly, these hot-blooded, almost-grown kids were just fighting over some worthless and relatively foolish so-called “face,” nothing more.

Some students got involved in fights because they were bound by so-called loyalty…

Luckily, there weren’t many boys from Hetang Village studying at Dongwangzhuang Township Middle School, and Li Zhichao was someone who dared to fight but was also shrewd and flexible. He got along extremely well with all the different school factions, even those aggressive students in the junior second and first grades.

So Su Chunfeng didn’t have to worry about issues of loyalty and wouldn’t get dragged into the chaotic fights either.

Amid this chaos, he maintained an extremely quiet and low profile, studying hard and improving every day, leaving an excellent impression on the teachers and students—he didn’t cause trouble, wasn’t overbearing or showy, and thus didn’t pose any threat or influence to those aggressive, combative students.

Naturally, few people bothered to provoke or pick fights with him.

Although these young kids didn’t need much reason—or any reason at all—to fight, they currently had no time or mind to bother with a classmate who kept such a low profile and was well-behaved.

Summer passed and autumn came, time flew by.

In the blink of an eye, the Mid-Autumn Festival passed, and the Midterm Exam arrived quickly.

In this Midterm Exam, Su Chunfeng’s grades made another leap forward: 621 points, fourth place in the class, ninth in the entire grade!

Wang Haifei also improved greatly with 588 points, ranking tenth in the class. And Zhang Lifei, driven by her two deskmates and feeling a competitive urge to outperform Wang Haifei in front of Su Chunfeng, studied hard after the summer break and improved her grades rapidly, scoring 579 points!

During the class meeting, after announcing the Midterm Exam results, the homeroom teacher Li Jichun conducted a major seat reassignment for the whole class.

This was normal.

After the seat adjustment, Su Chunfeng and Wang Haifei were still deskmates, and they sat as a pair.

Zhang Lifei was seated with Zhao Xinhong and Class Monitor Ren Zhiping. This new seat happened to be right in front of Wang Liqiu.

Su Chunfeng secretly wrote a note and passed it to Wang Haifei: “Great, just the two of us now.”

Wang Haifei blushed, pursed her lips, and smiled lightly.

Zhang Lifei saw this from afar and immediately felt angry. She was already reluctant about being separated from Su Chunfeng as deskmates in this reassignment, and now she had to sit right in front of the most annoying and feared boy in class, Wang Liqiu, so she was very unwilling. Now, seeing Wang Haifei and Su Chunfeng secretly passing notes and acting all lovey-dovey…

After class, Zhang Lifei stormed into Li Jichun’s office with a stern face, her eyes red and filled with grievance, but she went straight to the point: “Mr. Li, I don’t want to change deskmates!”

“Hmm?” Li Jichun was both amused and exasperated. No student had ever made such a request before. He smiled and asked, “Why not?”

“I just don’t want to sit there,” Zhang Lifei said with embarrassment and urgency. She couldn’t possibly tell the truth.

Li Jichun thought for a moment, guessing that this pretty and lovely girl, who had many admirers in class, now felt uneasy and worried sitting in front of the worst boy in class, Wang Liqiu. That was understandable. After a moment’s thought, he nodded and said, “Alright, you can still sit with Wang Haifei and Su Chunfeng.”

“Ah!” Zhang Lifei didn’t expect the homeroom teacher to agree so readily to her request. She immediately said happily, “Thank you, teacher! Thank you!”

“Go on,” Li Jichun said gently with a wave.

Zhang Lifei ran off quickly.

When she returned to class, gathered her books and bag, and sat back in her original seat, she couldn’t hide her triumphant mood. She said to the surprised Wang Haifei and Su Chunfeng, “I went to ask Mr. Li myself. We’ve been deskmates for over two years; suddenly sitting with someone else is just too uncomfortable, heehee.”

“Yeah, this is best,” Wang Haifei said with a smile, and, quite unusually, she puckered her lips at Su Chunfeng, showing a cute smile, as if to say, “Now you can’t be smug, can you?”

Rarely seeing Wang Haifei make such an expression, Su Chunfeng was so excited he almost couldn’t stop himself from leaning in to kiss her. Even his slight dissatisfaction with Zhang Lifei returning and affecting his and Wang Haifei’s small private deskmate space vanished instantly. He smiled and nodded to show he was happy too, then casually glanced over at the seat Zhang Lifei was supposed to move to… Then, he saw Wang Liqiu, sitting behind Ren Zhiping, staring fiercely at him with his slanted triangular eyes, his face full of menace.

“Damn it, life is unbearable,” Su Chunfeng avoided eye contact and sighed helplessly in his heart.

He remembered that in his previous life during junior third grade, Zhang Lifei was no longer his deskmate and sat with Ren Zhiping and Zhao Xinhong instead. Later, Wang Liqiu openly declared he would pursue Zhang Lifei and forcefully demanded that no boys in class talk to her, or else they’d be crossing him. During that time, several boys were indeed beaten up by Wang Liqiu after picking fights just for chatting and laughing with Zhang Lifei.

Now, Zhang Lifei was originally assigned to sit in front of Wang Liqiu. He would surely be happy about it, seeing it as an opportunity. But then Zhang Lifei flew back to continue sitting with Su Chunfeng. Wouldn’t Wang Liqiu be furious?

Indeed…

That evening after self-study ended, while Su Chunfeng was still studying, he heard someone knock on the window beside him.

He turned to look and saw Wang Liqiu standing outside with a grim expression, beckoning him with a finger and softly uttering two words: “Come out!”

Then, Wang Liqiu turned and walked toward the Playground.