Chapter 16: A Minor Injury

Just as Yi Ang had said, queues formed at windows A, B, C, and D. The line at window A was shorter, while windows B, C, and D were packed shoulder to shoulder.

The cafeteria cooks checked the badges on the students’ chests. Since it was the first day of the trial run, things were still a bit chaotic.

The cooks clattered their iron ladles against the trays. “This is window C! Go line up at window D!”

The window in the farthest corner was window F.

Dividing the windows also meant dividing the long dining tables, with everyone eating in their designated zones.

Yao Beibei had just been amused by Yi Ang’s “VVVIP” remark, but after seeing the food on tables A and B, her smile vanished. “Everyone’s food is different.”

The plates on table A were completely different from ordinary plates: there was meat, vegetables, a plate of sliced fruit, and even dessert!

Served in elegant tableware, pudding drizzled with caramel sauce came garnished with diced strawberries and mangoes.

The fruit and pudding for the students at table B were a step down: three kinds of fruit, and the pudding was just ordinary egg pudding.

Table C had two kinds of fruit and no pudding. At table D, the fruit was just a banana.

When they reached window F, Ding Ling spotted an old acquaintance, Master Wang.

Master Wang beamed cheerfully. “Come, come, come! We’ve got small portions here.”

Yao Beibei, who had just thought she wouldn’t be able to smile, now beamed. “Master Wang, why were you transferred to this window?” With his culinary skills, he surely belonged at window A.

Master Wang was as cheerful as ever. “Some new culinary team came in making Western food, so wasn’t I squeezed out?”

Cooking for only five people, he was determined to get creative and feed these kids well. What kind of rubbish rule kept children from even having a proper meal!

While everyone else had meal trays, the members of Class F each received a stainless steel bowl with a bit of eggplant and potatoes over white rice, along with a few scattered pieces of meat.

“We’re eating this? A rice bowl dish?” Zhang Tianyu was furious.

“Yeah, isn’t this it? Work hard on your studies!” Master Wang said, winking at them.

Table F sat in the farthest corner of the cafeteria. Yao Beibei sat beside Ding Ling. When she dug her spoon into the rice, she let out a delighted cry, “There’s meat!” The sweet-and-sour pork strips from window D and the braised pork chops from window C were all hidden underneath the rice.

Yao Beibei’s bowl had a normal portion, but Ding Ling’s bowl was mounded high with rice, packed underneath with meat dishes.

Just as the two were about to pick up their chopsticks, a commotion broke out ahead. Soon after, Zhang Tianyu and Yi Ang brought Zhou Ziyue back, one on each side, with Zhou Ziyue sandwiched between them like a trapped little chick.

“What happened?” Yao Beibei asked with her cheeks puffed out.

Zhang Tianyu looked down on Zhou Ziyue. He found the guy bizarrely passive-aggressive; he didn’t dare confront him or Yi Ang, only having the nerve to pick on Yao Beibei.

But Zhou Ziyue was still a member of Class F, after all, and couldn’t just be pushed around by others. If word got out, how humiliating would that be for him and Yi Ang?

“Nothing. He went to the wrong table.”

Zhou Ziyue had refused to accept being part of Class F and had secretly gone over to sit at the same table as a friend he’d met at summer camp. When that friend saw him coming to sit down, he had hurriedly warned in a low voice, “If they catch you sitting here, they’ll deduct points.”

Zhou Ziyue’s face had flushed bright red. “What are you so smug about? If it weren’t for my notes, how could you have gotten into C Class?”

His friend had scoffed, dropping any politeness. “Are you leaving or not? If you don’t go, I’m calling the teacher.”

Holding his rice bowl, Zhou Ziyue was just about to argue when Zhang Tianyu and Yi Ang spotted him from afar, walked over, dragged him back, and shot the other person a warning glare as they left.

Zhou Ziyue was brought back, but he didn’t thank them. Instead, he quickly sat down in the corner seat farthest from them.

His face darkened, eyes fixed intently in the direction of his friend. His lips fluttered slightly, muttering who-knew-what under his breath.

Zhang Tianyu and Yi Ang exchanged a glance. Yi Ang said, “Why does this guy feel so creepy?” He looked rather unsettling; sitting next to him made one’s whole skin crawl.

Ding Ling had just finished gnawing on a pork chop when she dug down and found another, and under that, yet another.

Had Master Wang practiced Qiankun arts^[1]? How on earth had he managed to cram three whole pork chops and a mound of sweet-and-sour pork strips into a bowl of this size?

As she ate, she suddenly looked up and glanced over toward Zhou Ziyue’s seat.

Yao Beibei scooted closer with her bowl. “Right? You think Zhou Ziyue is pretty weird too, don’t you?”

Though given Ding Ling’s current appearance, her finding anyone else weird was somewhat weird in itself.

Ding Ling withdrew her gaze and started gnawing on the next pork chop.

Zhou Ziyue was in the middle of cursing that person. Thread-like black qi drifted from his mouth as his fingers traced ceaselessly on the tabletop. But the faint black qi had barely emerged from his mouth before it was washed away by the righteous qi of so many young cultivators in the cafeteria.

He even knows things like this?

Just as Yao Beibei was about to say more, she saw Ding Ling’s expression tighten, and her movements came to a halt.

“What’s wrong? Does your arm hurt?” Even though Ding Ling had never once cried out in pain, that injury looked terribly painful.

Ding Ling set down her chopsticks, stood up, and headed out of the cafeteria.

With a mouthful of sweet-and-sour pork strip still in her cheek, Yao Beibei jumped to her feet and rushed out after seeing Ding Ling leave. Ding Ling and she were the only girls in Class F, and she certainly didn’t want to be left alone with those two fight-happy kings, Zhang Tianyu and Yi Ang.

“What’s going on?” Yao Beibei swallowed the meat in her mouth, practically jogging to keep up with Ding Ling’s pace.

“Someone messed with my plot.”

Taking advantage of the lunch break, Chen Li led a few people to Greenhouse No. 1.

The first two periods of the afternoon were still Spiritual Medicine class, and the upperclassman subject representative had already arrived early to organize the teaching materials.

Greenhouse No. 1 had classes nearly every period. Once the representative finished gathering the demonstration plants for Teacher Miao’s class, he left. People came in and out of the greenhouse from time to time, some collecting spiritual soil, others picking up seeds.

After waiting until the greenhouse was finally empty, Chen Li gestured for someone to block the surveillance camera and walked over to the plot marked with Ding Ling’s nameplate.

This palm-sized patch of soil was divided like a grid into six small squares, each planted with a different spiritual plant, four of which had already sprouted.

Chen Li lifted his leg and stomped on the healthiest green sprout, crushing it thoroughly beneath his foot with two extra twists.

Reaching down, he plucked the wooden stake planted in the plot, sneered, and snapped the thin wooden placard in two, tossing the broken pieces into the dirt.

Having done all this, he slipped into the crowd of students to leave. Just as he reached the tree-lined campus path, he spotted Ding Ling approaching in the distance.

Startled, Chen Li grabbed two Class D students at random. “Badge inspection.”

The two Class D students exchanged glances. They wanted to ask what gave him the right, but feared they might have missed a new announcement. Dutifully standing before Chen Li, they showed him the letter “D” on their chests.

The moment Ding Ling and Yao Beibei walked past, Chen Li shoved the two Class D students aside. “Off you go.”

How did she know something had happened to the plot? Was it just a coincidence?

Ding Ling walked up to the edge of the field and crouched down to examine the seedlings.

When Yao Beibei caught up a moment later, she was met with complete devastation. The spirit sprouts had been snapped off at their roots, and the wooden sign bearing the character “Ling” had been broken in half.

“Who did this? What a psycho!” Yao Beibei’s cheeks flushed red with rage. “Come on! Let’s go find Teacher Miao and check the campus surveillance footage!”

Ding Ling didn’t answer. She gathered the broken spirit sprouts and cradled them in her hands.

Two of them had been snapped clean at the root, beyond any hope of saving. Ding Ling replanted the rest back into the soil.

“Can they still be saved?”

“We’ll try.”

Hearing her say she would try, Yao Beibei’s eyes welled up again. She crouched down to help Ding Ling, picking up the splintered pieces of wood from the dirt in an attempt to piece them back together.

“Don’t bother. I’ll make another one.” Just as the words left Ding Ling’s mouth, her gaze landed on one of the wooden shards.

The person had pricked their hand on a splinter while snapping the wooden sign, leaving behind a faint trace of blood.

It was barely visible unless one looked closely; the culprit probably hadn’t even felt the pain at the time.

“Put it down. Don’t touch it.”

Yao Beibei obediently set it down and kept still. “Don’t be sad. Let’s go find Teacher Miao.”

“We’re not going to Teacher Miao.”

“Not going? Then how will we find out who did this?” Are we just supposed to take this lying down?

Ding Ling glanced at her, picked up the bloodstained piece of wood, and slipped it into her pocket.

Yao Beibei dragged Ding Ling to see Teacher Miao anyway, and Teacher Miao came to inspect the “crime scene.”

He had always been an easygoing teacher, as anyone could tell from the way he taught and how hard he tried to give extra points to the students of Class F, but this time, he was thoroughly furious.

“This is outrageous! Absolutely outrageous! Don’t worry, I will definitely find out who did this.”

Even when angry, Teacher Miao remained thoroughly gentle and polite. He immediately took them to the security room to review the footage, but the camera’s view had been obstructed for a period of time. Too many students had passed through from several different grades, and checking them one by one would take time.

Teacher Miao continued to comfort Ding Ling. “I will never tolerate this sort of behavior. Rest assured, I will get to the bottom of it.” The culprit was clearly targeting Ding Ling. Bullying someone whose spiritual root was ruined; how was that any different from bullying a disabled person?

To cheer Ding Ling up, Yao Beibei made a special trip to the campus store to buy strawberry milk.

A carton of strawberry milk cost three spirit stones. Wincing at the price, she swiped her card to buy just the one, deciding not to get any for herself.

When she returned to the classroom, Ding Ling wasn’t there; only Zhang Tianyu and Yi Ang were around. Zhang Tianyu raised an eyebrow at Yao Beibei. “Hey, want to buy some campus spirit stones?”

Yao Beibei held the milk in both hands. “How do you mean?”

“Someone’s selling. You want in?”

Zhang Tianyu had reached out to a few friends in Class D and quickly persuaded them to sell their spirit stones, even if each person only sold a small amount. Having so few spirit stones on their cards was simply too embarrassing to admit publicly.

As someone who was always in the know, Yao Beibei knew that Zhang Tianyu’s father was involved in shady dealings in North City. But she had never imagined that Zhang Tianyu would pull off spirit stone scalping right here at school!

That was what she thought, yet she couldn’t resist the temptation at all. “What’s the rate?”

Zhang Tianyu smiled. “One to one point three. I’ll give it to you at the exact rate I bought it for. We’re classmates, so I won’t mark it up.”

“Deal! Give me fifty spirit stones to start!” She wanted to eat potato chips and drink cola; she wanted snack freedom^[2]!

Having achieved snack freedom, Yao Beibei returned holding a bag of chips. Still not seeing Ding Ling, she asked Zhang Tianyu, “Where did Ding Ling go? And why isn’t Zhou Ziyue here either?”

Ding Ling pulled on a track jacket to cover her charcoal-black arms. With her right hand shoved into her pocket, she leisurely trailed behind Zhou Ziyue.

C Class had physical education for their first period of the afternoon. Zhou Ziyue hid in the bamboo grove at the corner of the sports field, looking up every now and then at the C Class students on the field.

He took a pen and a piece of paper from his pocket, scribbled something down, and whispered, “Break his leg.” Then he pinned the paper beneath a tree root.

Once Zhou Ziyue walked away, Ding Ling stepped forward, kicked aside the rock weighing down the paper, picked it up, and shook off the dust.

A circle was drawn on the paper with a name written at its center, which was likely the name of Zhou Ziyue’s friend.

Outside the circle were half-written, half-drawn strings of characters and symbols, winding round and round like tadpoles.

She had watched him draw it for quite a while in the classroom earlier, and it was indeed well done. It just lacked sufficient power; at most, it would make the target sneeze a few times rather than break any legs.

Ding Ling reached out, wiped away the name in the center of the circle, and added two strokes along the edge. If not for the fact that she could barely write with her left hand and couldn’t draw such a complex talisman diagram from scratch, she wouldn’t have needed to come here to scavenge his work.

After adding those two strokes, she took the bloodstained wooden shard from her pocket and gave it a light rub between her fingertips, burning it to ashes.

The ashes fell right into the center of the circle.

Inside the classroom, Chen Li sat chatting with Ye Yibai. Calling it a chat was generous; it was really just one-sided flattery. “Is Mr. Ye coming back this week?”

Ye Yibai hadn’t received any news. Whether his older brother returned or not was never something he would be specifically told.

With a cold face, he asked, “What about it?”

Just as Chen Li was about to speak, he suddenly gasped softly.

His index finger felt as though it had been pricked by a needle. Raising his hand to look closely, he saw a tiny wooden splinter lodged in his finger.

He casually pulled out the splinter. A minor injury like this would heal in no time.