Chapter 73: Movie Date

Li Hua came back after using the bathroom, just sat down, glanced at the screen, and asked curiously.

"Soul Journey? What movie?"

Ceng You from the same group turned his head from the messy pile of books, briefly pulling himself out of the world of *The Lost Tomb*, banishing the images from his mind, and said helpfully.

"The class rep said it's some kind of healing movie."

"Healing?" Li Hua grinned, pulled out the Long 3 from his desk cubby, and bragged, "I've got this, that's enough for me. Why would I need to watch a movie?"

Ceng You froze in his seat, hard-controlled for three seconds, looking like he wanted to say something but held back.

Oh no, we're almost at the deadline.

Jiang Nian propped up his head, palm resting on the back of his neck, and tapped it lightly twice.

"Hua, get out of here now. I don't recommend you watch this healing movie right now—save it for tomorrow."

Ceng You nodded in agreement.

"Jiang Nian has a point, you—"

"Hold it—whoever spoils it, I'll pee on them!" Li Hua waved his hand. It wasn't a refusal, just no need for more words. "Spoiler dogs all go to the frying pan, OK?"

What a damn kid.

I toss you a rope to save yourself, and you loop it around your neck, huh?

Ceng You and Jiang Nian exchanged a glance, both seeing the shock in each other's eyes. At the same time, they tacitly looked away and chose to shut up, after all—

It's precisely because you've been rained on that you want to smash everyone's umbrella.

Drop dead!

When the movie started, Jiang Nian wasn't really interested in what was playing on the screen. Compared to healing movies, he preferred staring at the pretty girl on his left for two periods.

At eighteen, you can do pure love, and you can do pure hate.

Just can't sit through a healing movie.

Jiang Nian firmly believed that life is full of holes, and scumbags come in all shapes and sizes. Compared to letting go, carrying hatred every day seemed to get you back on your feet faster.

Your girlfriend cheats on you, and you say forget it. Someone bullies you, and you also say forget it. Everything's just damn forget it—you've gotta hate, hate, hate! Punch this rotten world to smithereens.

Just as he was zoning out.

Suddenly, his left arm was poked. Jiang Nian spent a second figuring out whether it was Baby Zhizhi or Li Hua.

Oh, the left side—time to be a fool of a ruler again.

Yay!

Any time the right arm gets poked, the Little Bee elbow strike is on a zero-frame startup!

"Hmm?" He turned to look, putting on an air of nonchalance.

"Want some jelly?" She handed over a pack of Squeeze Pop. The screen's light fell on her face, a little blurry, but her eyes were very bright in the dark. "Yes or no?"

"Oh oh, yes." Jiang Nian remembered the Squeeze Pop he'd looted from the bad woman's drawer that morning—one pack left, the rest had been split between Ma Guojun and Li Hua.

Whatever's left, forget it. Just pretend it's gone. Where does a bad woman have the scent of a young girl?

From outside the classroom came footsteps, and Qian Bao's three achoos!!

"Thanks. Have you seen this movie?" Jiang Nian took the Squeeze Pop jelly. He hadn't bought any snacks himself—he'd just covered drinks for all six people in the group.

All by stuffing a bit here and there from the left and right, and putting a few snacks on the desk to keep up appearances.

"Haven't seen it." She shook her head.

"What are you two chatting about? Hiding things, whispering back and forth." Li Hua handed over a few small packs of shrimp sticks. "Want these? Looted them from Yao Bei Bei."

"Eat. We're talking about you behind your back, crick-crick." Jiang Nian went for the kill right to his face, snatching all the shrimp sticks from Li Hua's hand. "What's wrong, baby? Jealous?"

"Eat my ass. I'm going to find Ma Guojun." Li Hua couldn't be bothered with the two of them, grabbed his iced black tea, and ran off.

The movie played for half a period, gradually getting into the good part.

Jiang Nian had nothing to do, so he looked up too. He went out to use the bathroom once in the middle. Walking back into the classroom, his vision went black; it took him two seconds to adjust before he made it to his seat.

Zhang Nianzhi tilted her head up, watching the movie intently. Noticing Jiang Nian was back, she deliberately turned to look at him, wanting to say something, so she asked dryly.

"Are there other classrooms outside playing movies?"

"Pretty much all of them. Coming back down the hallway, I saw several classes with their lights off." Jiang Nian tucked his feet under the seat and slipped back into his lazy posture.

"Got anything else to eat?" he asked.

Just loves eating Baby Zhizhi's stuff.

"There's popcorn." She handed over a small half-cup, a disposable paper cup filled with golden popcorn. "No idea where Beibei got it, she shared a cup with me."

Jiang Nian took it, pinched up a piece, and couldn't help exclaiming.

"It's still warm? Where the hell did Yao Bei Bei get this?"

"No idea. She told me not to pry into my lord's affairs." Zhang Nianzhi looked a little wronged, reached into the paper cup and pinched up a piece too. "It won't taste good once it's cold."

The two of them stayed like that, with Jiang Nian holding the paper cup between them in the middle.

The faint light was absorbed by the curtains, making their spot dim. The class's attention was on the screen, and the seats in the first two rows looked a bit lost in the shadows.

Old-style multimedia equipment, the speakers weren't great quality, occasionally crackling.

Jiang Nian held the paper cup, glancing at the movie now and then, and glancing at Baby Zhizhi on his left. The screen's light fell on her, giving her a kind of youthful, tender beauty.

Soft facial features, looking gentle and gentle, easy to bully.

The movie reached the halfway mark, right at the most exciting part.

Jiang Nian got drawn in too, the hand holding the paper cup dropping down. The classroom light flickered on and off with the screen, the dim light sweeping back and forth across the two of them.

Young faces, innocent and unknowing.

When he came back to himself, he turned his head and found Zhang Nianzhi still staring at the screen. Not blinking at all, utterly focused, even making tiny matching expressions on her face.

On some inexplicable impulse, he wanted to act like an idiot again.

Jiang Nian tapped Zhang Nianzhi's arm, and once she turned back in confusion, said.

"This seat doesn't seem any different from a movie theater date? VIP seating."

Zhang Ningzhi indeed reacted, her pupils dilating little by little, her mouth slightly open. Almost instantly she turned her head away, her face burning hot.

Jiang Nian laughed out loud, heartlessly and carelessly.

"Just kidding."

Before the words were finished, with a ding, the quest panel popped up.

【Quest: Complete one pleasant date with Zhang Ningzhi. Reward: Fishing Mastery (Skill) (Completed)】

The words he was about to say got stuck right in his throat.

This works too?

The end of Zhennan Street, Tianlong BBQ Stall.

The smoky fumes were blown skyward by the blower, and one table was filled with twelve people. The circle originally led by Liu Feipeng now had a different person in the seat of honor.

Yu Tongjie sat there playing with his phone, scrolling through the messages flooding the class group chat.

Because of the sports meet, the boarding students' phones had been returned that afternoon. At this moment the group chat was full of chat records, photos of the movie screening flying everywhere.

He suddenly felt a bit of regret. If only he hadn't asked for leave to come out, at least he could have watched the movie with Li Qingrong. The atmosphere of watching a movie in class—miss one time, lose one time.

Besides, this time the seats were close. Next time the seating might not have them just one row apart; maybe separated by a whole group.

How I regret my earlier decision!

If only he'd known, he wouldn't have come out to drink with this bunch of losers. That idiot Jiang Nian wouldn't raid the home base, would he?

He probably wouldn't, right?

Zhou Yuting, Liu Pengfei, and the others exchanged glances. The original intent of this gathering was just to get to know Young Master Yu. Drink some alcohol, brag a little, get familiar faces.

If Yu Tongjie were a bookworm, they wouldn't have chosen a BBQ stall. The problem was, people said Yu Tongjie could accept all this, and didn't排斥 KTV either.

Logically speaking, the atmosphere should have been quite cheerful.

How come from the very start he's been frowning, leaving the few of them completely baffled.

Zhou Yuting had no particular feelings about Yu Tongjie, but she wanted him to have feelings about her. To raid a boss you still need to level up first; she simply enjoyed that superior feeling of fishing.

The bigger the fish in the pond, the stronger the sense of superiority.

Of course, she was clever and wouldn't show these thoughts. Normally she wouldn't display any arrogance either, only bringing it out at specific moments to make an appearance.

Currently, the fish pond held two not-small fish: Le Zhi and Liu Pengfei. Last month a fish named Jiang Nian accidentally slipped out, and she got slapped a few times by his fish tail.

Even now, thinking of it still made her teeth itch with hatred.

That line—"Baby, I'm not angry, I'm moving up a class"—caused tremendous psychological damage to her young heart. Every night before falling asleep she had to grumble about it a few times.

Jiang Nian! He really should die!

Now she had mostly gotten over it. The end-of-October exam offered one last chance to move up a class. But basically nothing in, nothing out—the odds were slim.

It was already confirmed that the original Olympiad-class residents wouldn't be demoted; this was only a quality check for those moving up. This time it was the comprehensive score, meaning the average of the two exams.

Based on the usual performance of the students moving up, a performance-score mechanism would be added. A fully comprehensive evaluation, finally weeding out the unstable ones and replacing them with a few whose grades were stable.

She'd inquired clearly: in Class One there was a student moving up whose mentality had collapsed, basically destined to drop back down. Class Three, where Jiang Nian was, basically had no chance.

Tears soaked the blank test paper, swearing to get into the Olympiad class!

Zhou Yuting had been studying frantically for two weeks, with ample confidence to stand out. Even on the way here, she'd squeezed in time to memorize vocabulary and刷 problems on her phone.

Balance work and rest, balance work and rest.

Zhou Yuting exchanged a look with Liu Feipeng, and she pinched her voice to speak first.

"Young Master Yu, is the food not to your taste? Do you want—"

"No need." Yu Tongjie waved his hand, his brow still tightly furrowed. "Don't call me any kind of 'young master,' it sounds like some rich playboy. I'm just an ordinary person."

Privately, don't use titles—get it?

Zhou Yuting froze awkwardly. "Okay, Yu... bro."

Liu Feipeng coughed once, imitating an adult's composed and steady manner, and cheerfully picked up the thread of conversation.

"Here, I'll go first—one to congratulate bro on moving up to the Olympiad class. I'm late, so this little brother will罚 three cups himself. Brother Yu, don't take offense."

"Awesome! Bro Peng, awesome!"

"Three cups, huh. I'll also toast Brother Yu one cup, little me—"

"Mm, alright." Yu Tongjie scratched the back of his head, thinking to himself this guy's an idiot, how can he act even more pretentious than me. "It's fine, one cup is enough."

Staring at the steaming, smoky air, he grew increasingly irritated. Zhou Yuting is so pretty, why does she only hang out with a bunch of losers? Aren't there any normal people?

After a round of drinking, the atmosphere at the table finally broke the ice, and the few of them went on chatting, following the topic of moving up a class.

Le Zhi didn't say a word the whole time. He hadn't wanted to come, and he didn't want to get to know Yu Tongjie either. Sitting in the middle he showed no reaction, until he heard someone mention Jiang Nian's name.

To be continued.

PS: The character card has been completed.