Chapter 221: Where Does Your Dad Usually Hide the Household Register?

Jiang Nian hesitated, asking curiously.

"Quick question—the bugs and vermin you mentioned, you mean?"

From the other side of the corridor, Ma Guojun leaned in with a round, plump face, laughing heartily.

"He's mocking you."

Li Hua turned his head to glance at Ma Guojun, the corner of his mouth twisting.

"Cut the crap, where'd this five-hundred-point wild dog come from? Get on your knees and kowtow! Be my slave, or no one in heaven or on earth will be able to save you!"

Jiang Nian grinned and blurted out a line.

"There's no slavery in New China."

The classmates around who were watching the show burst into laughter—they were exhausted from evening self-study, dog-tired.

People are no different from animals; in their spare time they love watching classmates put on little skits.

Sometimes the boys in class would chat about wildly imaginative topics, like things from TV dramas.

Can a wife who goes downstairs to throw out the trash really cheat within twenty minutes?

The boys threw themselves into it one by one, offering schemes and strategies.

For instance, leave the trash by the stairs and just sprint a hundred meters to the car.

As long as the back seat is big enough. Wouldn't that just be blazing sun melting snow—no matter what her education level, she'd melt.

Besides that, the boys' dorm nighttime chats would also touch on similar topics.

The year you trusted your roommate the most—apocalypse stuff, porn, porn, porn, political rants, everything got talked about. Once someone recorded it, let's just say the first three years of state-funded meals were guaranteed.

Fourth-period evening self-study.

Most of the time, school life is actually pretty dull, and the classroom is fairly quiet. As long as some homework suddenly drops, it can hard-cc the whole class for half an hour.

After school, he said goodbye to Zhang Lingzhi and left.

Going downstairs.

Jiang Nian had originally planned to find Xu Qianqian, but first ran into Zhou Haifei, who was running out of Competition Class 3 with her head lowered.

The latter froze for a moment, then stammered out a sentence.

"H-hello."

"Oh, are you heading back to the dorm?"

"Y-yes." Zhou Haifei hurried off.

After about twenty seconds, Xu Qianqian came out carrying her backpack and asked curiously.

"Who were you chatting with?"

"Oh, Zhou Haifei from your class." Jiang Nian walked along with the flow of people heading downstairs, speaking honestly. "At noon her meal card had no money, so I paid for her."

"Just four yuan, she took coins from the classroom and paid me back."

Hearing that, Xu Qianqian nodded oh-oh, tightened her backpack strap, and said.

"Zhou Haifei, huh, she—"

Halfway through, Xu Qianqian glanced at the people on either side of the stairwell. As if she'd spotted someone, she simply fell silent and walked down to the first floor with the crowd.

It wasn't until the two of them had left the Gao San building and were walking the road out of the school gate that she continued.

"You actually did a decent thing for once, I really admire Zhou Haifei."

"What do you mean?"

"Her family is a bit… you know, they won't let her study." Xu Qianqian wrestled with it for a moment, then said quietly. "They say once a Miss grows up, getting married is better."

"Holy shit, are they even human!" Jiang Nian got a bit angry.

That's just how Zhennan is—he wanted to say something outrageously treasonous, but swallowed it back. To put it bluntly, it's still a people problem; the local customs are bad.

Why are they bad? Poor!

Why are they poor? Bad local customs, bad geography… too many reasons. In short, you can only say they got the benefit of being in Guangdong—at least going south to work is convenient.

The general hasn't even led people south yet, but the cousins have been heading south for many years already.

Ding! Congratulations, you've been born.

Check the assets, huh?

byd how is it negative? -

38.8w, damn, the zeros are longer than my life!

Look down again—where's my baby clothes, how the hell is this an electronics factory dust-proof suit!

Are they even human, bro!

Fuck it, forget living, might as well jump.

Thinking of this, a slight bit of emotion inevitably crept into Jiang Nian's tone.

"In a poor place like Zhennan, the countryside is somewhat male-chauvinist."

"But no matter what, with grades that good, they've got to let the person finish school, right."

Actually, with this kind of thing, if the people don't speak up the officials won't investigate, and marrying off a daughter is an absolute killer move—straight onto the list of little tricks for getting rich.

"Anyway it's pretty outrageous. Last time when applying for the poverty subsidy, Zhou Haifei told the classroom her family was impoverished with no labor force." Xu Qianqian said.

"After that, seeing it clearly wasn't going to be approved, our new homeroom teacher—you know what kind of person she is. Zhou Haifei probably really needed that subsidy, so out of desperation she said a bit more."

"But I think she probably only said part of it; the other part might be hard to talk about."

"How did she handle the poverty subsidy? Would her parents agree?" Jiang Nian asked curiously. "All that stuff needs a guardian to prepare the materials, right, and find someone to stamp things and whatnot."

"They would, they'd definitely cooperate—her Gao San grades are so good, it's obviously easier to marry her off." Xu Qianqian said. "It shows Zhou Haifei has high IQ, greater hope of having smarter kids."

"Oh, meaning they won't let her go to college later?" he asked.

"Yeah, actually it mainly comes down to whether they'll pay tuition and living expenses or not." Xu Qianqian frowned. "But she can apply for a student loan, four years interest-free. It can fully cover tuition and fees, and if she has a scholarship she could even pay it all back right after graduation."

"So… after the college entrance exam she's still free, so it's not a big problem."

"Getting married needs a household registration book, and it's still being held by her parents." Jiang Nian reminded her, the two of them chatting idly as they wandered out of the school gate.

"After all that happened, and you're still thinking about marriage?" she said with a serious face, "If I were her, I'd go to college out of town first, get a job, and only think about other things once I'm settled."

"Besides, whether you'll even need a household registration book for marriage registration in the future is still hard to say."

Hearing this, Jiang Nian let out an "oh," then went along with her words and asked.

"Where does your dad usually hide the household registration book?"

"He hides it in—" Xu Qianqian said halfway, then suddenly came back to her senses, stared at him for a few seconds, "Why are you asking this, does it have anything to do with you?" Jiang Nian said, "Hard to say."

"You!"

The two of them horsed around all the way to the late-night snack stall, and soon forgot all about Zhou Haifei's situation.

After finishing the late-night snack, they hurried home.

It wasn't that they were cold-hearted, but in Zhennan there were just too many things like this. To put it bluntly, when a place is poor, that's just how it is; the local customs weren't formed overnight.

After getting home, Jiang Nian opened his phone and played a round of a game.

After gaining one star, he slowly and leisurely went to take a shower. After blow-drying his hair and coming out of the bathroom, he had already returned to his usual state of mind, ready to scroll through his phone in peace.

He tapped open Douyin, and saw a group of toy excavators digging at something.

One by one, ignoring the sandbox, they crowded around a female streamer in black stockings and a short skirt, extending their buckets to dig. Even though they kept being moved aside, they stubbornly kept coming back to dig.

Damn, staying true to their original intention.

Tipping gets you in line to play, and Jiang Nian had to admit, he was a little tempted. With both the excavators and the black-stockinged short skirt, there had to be some mastermind pulling the strings behind the scenes.

He saw that even getting a number in line required a long wait, and he didn't really feel like spending money either.

Suddenly, his phone buzzed.

The message from Lin Dong, only three words.

"You free?"

Jiang Nian saw that it wasn't especially late, and he wasn't that sleepy either, so he replied readily.

"Not free."

What a joke—if Lin Dong was looking for him, it had to be something good.

Then the opening line could be "Holy crap! Brother Nian! Let me tell you something awesome!", "Great news!", "Good news, good news!"

In any case, it couldn't possibly be "You free?"

Sending that means either it's trouble, or it's some shameless nonsense from someone bored out of his mind.

Lin Dong clearly hadn't expected him to refuse so cleanly; after a while he just sent a voice message. Tapping it open, the sound was a bit noisy, as if they were arguing about something.

After listening for a while, Jiang Nian finally understood what was going on.

The guys in Lin Dong's dorm were arguing about the topic of apocalypse farming, which later turned into—when the zombie outbreak happens, is it better for the spawn point to be in the city or the countryside?

They argued endlessly and wanted to find someone to be the judge.

Ding ding ding!!

Jiang Nian joined Lin Dong's dorm chat through voice messages, but refused to be the judge. He was also interested in this topic—a zombie outbreak was right up his alley.

Wu Jun Gu said, "City start has a higher drop rate, you can scavenge survival supplies from your neighbors."

Hearing this, the dorm instantly erupted in curses.

"That's the Chinese good neighbor for you, already eyeing the neighbors' food."

"The starving neighbor's wife, forced to come out and trade food with you, right?"

"Don't even say it, the episode everyone's been waiting for."

After the uproar, Ceng You put forward the opposite opinion.

"Of course a countryside start is more stable, scavenging supplies in the city isn't that simple. Every household has security grilles, and the dense population is all zombies."

"Generally speaking, every rural household has a toolbox. Not to mention anything else, making some weapons and protective gear is a piece of cake, and going to the neighbor's house to pick a lock is also easy as pie."

Lin Dong raised a different opinion, saying loudly.

"I can't agree, the countryside has inconvenient transportation, and collecting supplies is also more troublesome. One person's strength is tiny, and besides, you can't let your little brother suffer."

Hearing this, Jiang Nian couldn't help but speak up.

"I've noticed it, the more you guys chat about this topic the more lewd it gets. But then again, what's the deal with zombies? Can latex block the virus?"

The moment the Human Emperor spoke, the dorm instantly went quiet.

"Damn, first time seeing a living Ling Mo!"

"No way, Jiang Nian, are you also a loyal user of cling film?"

"What cling film, that's called the Isolation Sacred Artifact!"

Ceng You was also impressed, what the hell kind of twisted angle is that for a human to come up with? You say you take everything, meat or veg, and now you don't even count as a person anymore!

Amid the bickering, the night talk ended.

In the dorm that slowly quieted down, Wu Jun Gu coughed once, turned over, and went to sleep. Lin Dong got out of bed to pee, and after that only the white noise from outside the window remained in the dorm.

With a click, Ceng You unlocked his phone.

He tapped it open, turned the brightness to the lowest, and the faint light fell around the bridge of his nose. His restless heart also gradually settled, returning to a state of calm.

A fish-belly white glow rose in the east.

The next day.

Today was still the weekly test.

Morning self-study went on as usual; amid the class's recitation sounds, Li Hua suddenly let out an "ah."

"No way, today's Wednesday!"

"What's wrong?"

"PE class got canceled, holy shit!" Li Hua was completely dumbfounded, clutching his English vocabulary notebook with an expression of utter disbelief. "Will it be made up or what?"

At this, Jiang Nian shot him a glance.

"Dummy, you tell me."

Li Hua immediately let out a wail, his whole body instantly wilting in dejection.

(End of Chapter)