Unfortunately, this noble act of helping others was abruptly interrupted by the sudden intrusion of a middle-aged man. Lin Huai squatted by the pit, looking at the snarling female ghost, and somewhat troubled (pleasantly) propped his chin on his hand.
“Look,” he said, “to help you, my pants have been dirtied by your grasp.”
The female ghost: ……#……@￥……@#……
“No need to thank me,” Lin Huai, far from human eyes, had no motive to pretend to be a good or obedient person. All the nasty aspects of his personality surged forth, “And thanks to you, if that middle-aged man tells others what I did, I’ll be in a lot of trouble… tsk.”
The female ghost: ￥%#@￥%@#！！！
“However, I still intend to see this good deed through to the end,” Lin Huai smiled at her. The smile, which should have been extremely handsome, seemed like the grin of a demon in her eyes, “I’m a bit extreme; I either see a good deed through to the end, or I don’t do it at all, so…”
He picked up a handful of soil.
“So I’ve decided to bury you back,” he said sincerely, “Blame it on your bad luck.”
Lin Huai buried the female ghost back into the soil and thoughtfully sealed her mouth to prevent the next innocent victim. After leveling the soil and jumping on it to compact it, he finally returned to the middle-aged man.
The middle-aged man seemed to still be in a deep sleep. Lin Huai inspected his dirtied clothes from digging and glanced at his watch.
“Eight ten… I must be late,” he thought.
The Game assigned them the identity of students, and according to the rules, he should rush to school immediately, but…
“If I’m late, I will definitely be punished,” he muttered to himself, “But if it’s a substitute teacher… even if late, I won’t be punished?”
He sat beside the middle-aged man, looked again at the man’s clean clothes, and made a decision.
Ten minutes later.
“The Game rules only say that players need to enter the school, but it doesn’t specify that players must enter as students,” Lin Huai thought, as he changed into the NPC’s suit, “If such behavior were to be forbidden, the Game would have already punished me.”
He looked up at the overcast sky; despite the rolling black clouds and flashes of lightning, no bolt struck him. Clearly, the Game had no intention of killing him.
As long as the punishment isn’t fatal, it’s allowed—this was a principle he always adhered to.
His fingers deftly tied the tie. The NPC’s suit jacket was a bit too large for him; it fit the NPC just right, but on him, it fluttered in the wind. He tucked the shirt into his waist, adding an inexplicable touch of casual charm.
Picking up the substitute teacher’s briefcase, Lin Huai squatted down again, blew a breath, and woke the sleeping substitute teacher.
The latter lay on the bench, still somewhat dazed: “Where am I? Who am I?”
To Lin Huai’s great delight, the substitute teacher, having suffered a blow to the head, had clearly forgotten his true identity, thus sparing Lin Huai the trouble of covering up the traces. Apparently, unlike the female ghost in the soil, both the substitute teacher and he were blessed with good fortune.
“You’re awake,” Lin Huai squatted beside him with a kind smile, as if he were just a passing young man, “Good that you’re awake, let’s go upstairs.”
“I…”
“You’re a new transfer student at Minghua High School,” Lin Huai twirled the student ID card originally issued to him by the Game, “Here, this is your student ID.”
The substitute teacher took the student ID, his mind still foggy but sensing something was off: “I… I’m a student at this school?”
“Yes,” Lin Huai stood up, lowered his head, and patted the grass off his legs, “Come on, I’ll take you to the dean’s office to report, being late isn’t good.”
“Oh, okay,” the former substitute teacher stood up and followed Lin Huai’s back again. Lin Huai looked at his bewildered appearance and praised his own luck.
But even if the substitute teacher remembered, dealing with him would be a matter of minutes. He thought with a smile.
The two walked one after the other to the dean’s office, and Lin Huai said, “I’ll leave you here, I need to report to my own class.”
The NPC asked him, “Are you also a student here?”
“No, I’m a substitute teacher here,” Lin Huai said without a hint of guilt.
Minghua High School had six classes, labeled A to F based on grades. Lin Huai was heading to the worst-performing class, F.
After delivering the former substitute teacher to the dean’s office, Lin Huai turned to report to Class 3F but bumped into the dean who had just escorted three other players to Class 3B.
“You, you!” Seeing Lin Huai, the dean pointed at him and shouted, “Are you the late student?”
Lin Huai stepped aside, revealing the substitute teacher next to him. He spread his hands and waved, looking very awkward: “No, I’m the new substitute teacher, and this is the new transfer student.”
“You are… the new substitute teacher for Class 3F?”
The dean looked at the two with a skeptical eye. To her, the person on the right, dressed in a suit, though a bit oversized, still exuded a sharp and dashing aura. The person on the left, wearing only a shirt, looked aged and weathered.
These two… no matter how you looked at it, the person on the left looked more like a substitute teacher!
Or was it that the person on the left just looked older due to long-term studying?
Facing the dean’s skeptical gaze, Lin Huai took out the employment letter from his bag. He said apologetically, “After arriving at the school, I couldn’t help but wander around a bit, so I’m a bit late. Here’s my employment letter.”
The dean looked at him suspiciously, took the letter, flipped through it, and then looked up to scrutinize the young man in front of her. To her, the young man was tall, slightly thin, but had a handsome, likable face that could easily make him a social media star without any filters. She couldn’t understand why someone with such a demeanor would come to Minghua High School as a substitute teacher.
She was well aware of the nature of this cram school. Minghua High School, under the banner of a small Hengshui, actually took the dregs and left the essence. They adopted a demonic training method as the sole teaching approach, with students’ grades as the only metric. All teachers, unaware of how to improve their teaching skills, only knew to force students to endlessly practice problems, and opened a school store to make money. All the teachers in the school were focused on making money, praising students who did well and paid up to the heavens, and trampling those who didn’t pay. Under such circumstances, the teaching staff they recruited, as long as they conformed to the school’s “teaching philosophy,” they were well aware of their so-called quality.
But now this person…
“The principal and vice-principal are away this week,” the dean casually stuffed his documents into a file, “You come with me to Class F, and as for you—”
Looking at the man in the shirt with a sloppy demeanor, the dean raised her eyebrows and scolded, “As for you, stand here, and I’ll deal with you when I come back!”
Lin Huai looked at the pitiful man; for this person whose identity he had usurped, he still had a sense of human compassion. He kindly said to the dean, “Dean, he’s just late, there’s no need to be so harsh on him.”
The dean raised her eyebrows, “You don’t understand, these scoundrels need to be taught a lesson, they only listen to you when you’re tough. At this age, if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile! You’re new to the school, you don’t know enough about our ways here, in a few days you won’t be saying such things.”
“But at his age, coming back to cram school is quite brave. We shouldn’t be so harsh on the brave,” Lin Huai tried to intercede.
The dean frowned and said nothing. After she left, Lin Huai gave the middle-aged man a “hang in there” look and then left the office.
The third-year classrooms were located in the third teaching building, spanning four floors from bottom to top, with the top floor being the locked rooftop. It, along with the second teaching building, the administration building, and the long corridor, formed a quadrangle, encircling the central garden.
As he passed the central garden, Lin Huai noticed the tiles beneath his feet were slightly red. He looked up, directly facing the rooftop of the third teaching building.
“Lin, what are you looking at?” the dean called him, “Hurry up.”
“Okay.”
Lin Huai obediently said, looking straight ahead, and followed the dean towards the staircase.
On the rooftop, a white figure that had been standing by the railing watching below, also disappeared into the rooftop.
The third and fourth floors of the third teaching building housed the six classes. Classes A to D were on the third floor, and classes E and F were on the fourth floor.
Upon reaching the fourth floor, they were greeted by several large class assignment sheets posted in the hallway. The dean pointed at the sheets and introduced to Lin Huai, “We rearrange classes based on rankings every month, and this Monday was just rearranged. These sheets show everyone’s class adjustments, whether they were promoted or demoted is explained. From left to right, it shows all adjustments from September to now.”
As she spoke, the dean’s phone rang. She answered the phone while saying to Lin Huai, “Class F is at the end of the fourth floor, you go ahead and start the class, I have something to attend to, I’ll leave first.”
Before she finished, she turned pale and went downstairs. Lin Huai, behind her, stared at her back, lost in thought for a moment.
He stood in front of the hallway, obsessively reading through this year’s sheets, especially observing the changes in the class he was about to join. When he saw the last sheet, he frowned slightly.
“Why is there a transcript from last December here? Shouldn’t this have been taken down long ago?”
But then he thought, perhaps this was the school’s way of publicly shaming, so he didn’t think further.
Class F was located at the end of the hallway, next to the staircase leading to the rooftop. Due to the resignation of the previous teacher, the time originally allocated for Chinese class had become a self-study period. Lin Huai thought for a moment, instead of going to the front door, he went to the back door, peeking inside like a homeroom teacher.
Inside the small classroom sat a sparse group of over twenty people. They looked gloomy, staring at their books, not a single one looked up.
Sitting in the last row was a delicate-looking boy, his head down, continuously scribbling in a notebook, his demeanor also quite cold.
Lin Huai observed him for a while, and from the notebook on the boy’s desk, he saw the boy’s real name.
Xu Chi.
If he remembered correctly, this person was originally in Class 3C, and last month he missed the exam, leading to a poor performance in this month’s exam, hence being sent to Class F.
Taking off his suit jacket and stuffing it into his briefcase, Lin Huai engaged in a very brief thought process.
‘I need to find a way to extract some information, hmm…’ he thought, but his mind flashed to the recent scam news he had seen.
