Chapter 439: Dad is Here to Help You

A private barbecue restaurant in Xicheng District.

Chen Jiaoshou sat there looking helpless, occasionally picking up his Mobile Phone to check the guidance opinions from his wife, and incidentally checking the time.

The siblings sat opposite him, huddled together.

"Give us ten skewers of kidneys, twenty skewers of half-strength, half a catty of grilled eel, and two servings of spicy grilled pig brains to help Chen Jiaoshou nourish his brain." Chen Shu stared at the menu. "Also, ten skewers of plum blossom meat and ten skewers of pork belly, five skewers of scallion small intestines, and ten skewers of pig nasal cartilage."

"You've ordered everything, what am I supposed to order?"

"Just order whatever you want, don't worry about the money."

"I'm afraid I won't be able to finish it all..."

"If you can't finish it, I'll pack it up."

"Then I want a serving of eggplant, a serving of Wrapped Paste Tofu, and two skewers of tiger-skin chicken feet."

"Don't be so stingy! Why are you being polite with me? Let's also get some fish roe with houttuynia and a grilled fish." Chen Shu was very generous. "You're paying anyway."

"If you can't finish it, I'll shove it into your nose."

"I'll shove it into your eyes!"

"I'll shove it into your ears!"

The siblings were having a lively time, but Chen Jiaoshou beside them felt an increasing headache. Seeing the time getting later and later, he felt as if the Saint Ancestor Cube in the storage room of the Historical Relics Bureau was summoning him—summoning the first person in five thousand years to read it from the very beginning.

Yet these two troublemakers had him trapped.

"Chen Jiaoshou, what are you thinking about? Those books won't run away. Just finish your barbecue, go back and rest for the night, calm your heart, and read slowly; that's the only way to get more out of it." Chen Shu's voice.

"Read slowly, so you can get more out of it." Chen Banxia mimicked her younger brother's words, leaning down to stare at him with large, playful eyes.

"Hmm."

"Perfunctory."

"Perfunctory!"

"You need to balance work and rest, Chen Jiaoshou." Chen Shu picked up his cup and took a sip of tea.

"You need to balance work and rest, Chen Jiaoshou!" Chen Banxia also picked up her cup and took a sip of tea, finishing it all in one go by accident.

"Shut up, both of you."

"Chen Jiaoshou's attitude seems a bit problematic, doesn't it?" Chen Shu looked at Chen Banxia. "You're the older sister, you tell me, what should we do?"

"Shouldn't we put in a good word for him in front of Wei Lvshi?" Chen Banxia asked in return.

"..."

Chen Jiaoshou glanced at his Mobile Phone again.

Wei Lvshi had expressed that she did not want to see his health collapse, because according to the current laws of Dayi, if one spouse develops a major physical illness after marriage, the other cannot easily abandon them; therefore, it is equivalent to saying that both parties' physical health is also joint marital property, and Chen Jiaoshou's current approach was quite irresponsible.

Chen Jiaoshou remained silent, pretending not to see, waiting and waiting until the waiter finally started serving the food.

"My kidneys!"

Chen Shu grabbed a skewer of kidneys and started devouring it.

The kidneys at this place were grilled very tenderly and seasoned well, with a great texture, though Chen Shu still preferred them grilled a bit drier and tougher; he always felt this tender texture was too refined, lacking some of the rough, simple, and earthy flavors of life.

Chen Jiaoshou took a skewer of half-strength and ate it slowly and methodically, his every gesture revealing a sense of being forced.

He only heard Chen Banxia shouting from the side:

"The eel is so delicious!"

So, after finishing the half-strength, Chen Jiaoshou quietly took a skewer of eel; this was the shop's signature dish.

For someone of his age, barbecue was more like a snack for children, so he couldn't show too much fondness for it, as it would be undignified. However, the stuff was indeed delicious, so he could only pretend to be reluctant to eat a little when dragged here by his children.

He also ate a little of the pig brains and had two skewers of kidneys.

He didn't miss a single thing, sampling a bit of everything.

After eating, he pulled out a tissue to wipe his mouth, eyeing his son and daughter: "I don't know what's so good about eating this stuff every day."

The siblings looked at each other, their eyes darting around.

"Chen Jiaoshou, take a day off when you have time. Balance work and rest and take us around Yujing." Chen Shu said. "The jacarandas are about to bloom soon anyway."

"Yeah, Chen Jiaoshou, take us around Yujing."

"I'm not going."

"How about next week? Next week is the Blue Flower Festival."

"That works, I don't have classes on the weekend anyway."

"I'm busy."

"Then it's settled... I'll go with you to the Historical Relics Bureau in a couple of days. Professor Shi has been asking me to come over for a long time; that's fine, right?"

"That's fine."

"Look! He said it's fine!"

"Yes, yes, yes! I heard it!"

"I was talking about going to the Historical Relics Bureau..."

The siblings looked at each other again, exchanging information.

Over the next few days, Chen Shu followed Chen Jiaoshou to the Historical Relics Bureau to admire the artifacts left behind by his fellow countrymen—he had only taken a rough look before and had handed them over before he could study them in detail, but looking at them again now, he still gained a lot.

The jacarandas in Yujing were also slowly blooming.

A week later, the Blue Flower Festival.

Under a certain jacaranda tree.

Chen Shu stood on the left, handsome and dashing; Chen Banxia stood on the right, pure and youthful-looking; Chen Jiaoshou stood in the middle, his expression numb.

In front of them, a young girl held up her Mobile Phone, taking pictures earnestly.

Then it was under another jacaranda tree, then another, in front of Chang'an Gate, outside Chengping Gate, outside Zhengyang Men...

The locations changed one after another, and photos were taken one after another; what remained unchanged were the beaming siblings and the forced-to-work Chen Jiaoshou.

……

Mid-February.

Chen Shu carried his laptop to Ning Qing's side: "Secretary Ning, help me check for typos and formatting."

Ning Qing silently took it over to examine.

Chen Shu sat nearby with his legs crossed, looking leisurely: "When is your defense?"

"Early next month," Ning Qing answered while reading.

"Has it been set?"

"The sixth."

"That's three days after ours."

"Yes."

"Did you fix my formatting?"

"I don't need to fix anything," Ning Qing said, her eyes fixed on the screen, no expression on her face, "I don't make mistakes."

"Tsk tsk... a heartless thesis-writing machine."

"You used a half-width semicolon here."

Chen Shu leaned over to look, and it really was; this semicolon happened to be at the end of a line, making its size indistinguishable, and he had checked it several times without noticing it.

Ning Qing didn't say a word, silently changed it for him, and continued reading down.

Soon after, she found a few more errors for Chen Shu, all details that were not easy to spot—the word count was too high, so omissions were inevitable, and Chen Shu had already looked it over back and forth several times; since he had written it himself, there were some places where he couldn't see the problems even after checking multiple times.

There were no major errors.

"The sizes of your images and charts are all different, and the cropping isn't uniform either."

"That doesn't matter."

"It doesn't look good."

"There's no helping that; for some images, I have to make them fit exactly on the previous page so I don't leave a large blank space, so I have to adjust their size. I just took the screenshots casually using Feixin, never mind if they're uniform or not, as long as the content is fully displayed," Chen Shu said indifferently.

"You should have planned it out in advance."

"You can plan this out?"

"Of course."

"You're a freak!"

"……"

Ning Qing returned the laptop to him and gave him a cold stare.

She still remembered that last time he went out for barbecue with Chen Banxia and Chen Jiaoshou, he didn't take her, only returning with the smell of barbecue all over him.

That afternoon, Yujing Academy.

Chen Shu rode Xiaoxiao's mini-motorcycle, as if riding a dog, weaving through the campus, and arrived at the computer room on the first floor of the experimental building.

Teacher Shi Qian was waiting for them in 102.

By the time Chen Shu arrived, several students were already there; one was from Chen Shu's class, and the rest were from the class next door, all holding their printed graduation theses. Teacher Shi Qian placed two copies on the table to compare them, holding a pen in his hand and constantly marking formatting issues.

These students were doing a thesis for the first time, so there were quite a few problems.

However, there were ready-to-use computers here, so everyone could fix their problems directly, and there was a print shop right outside.

Chen Shu silently queued up at the back.

People continued to arrive one after another behind him.

Some also greeted him.

After half an hour, it was finally his turn.

Teacher Shi Qian took it and examined it carefully.

At over eight thousand characters, it was much thinner than the twenty or thirty thousand-character theses of other students, but the formatting and everything else were complete; it just had less content, focusing mostly on introducing the technical characteristics and performance parameters of the improved High-level Tracer Spell, without long-winded descriptions, as the important parts were in the finished spell itself.

Teacher Shi Qian read from beginning to end, picking through the formatting, but found no issues.

"Hm?"

Then he read it again, this time picking at details.

Still, he couldn't find any problems.

"……"

Teacher Shi Qian rubbed his temples, looked at the other students, then looked at Chen Shu, and couldn't help but sigh: "You really are the most worry-free..."

"I checked it several times, and I even asked my girlfriend to help check it once before coming out," Chen Shu said with a smile.

Teacher Shi Qian also smiled and said to the other students who were still waiting: "It seems what you're lacking isn't just attention to detail, but also a girlfriend."

The other students laughed too.

Teacher Shi Qian asked Chen Shu again: "Are you busy this afternoon?"

"Emmm..."

Chen Shu eyed him, falling into deep thought.

Teacher Shi Qian winked at him.

"Alright then!"

Chen Shu didn't act coy, sitting down directly beside him and starting to help check the formatting.

You wouldn't know until you looked, but it was truly interesting; some students made mistakes so low-level they were ridiculous, as if they had never used document software before, which reminded Chen Shu of Zhang Suannai's thesis that Chen Banxia had told him about as a joke last year.

An afternoon passed.

To show his gratitude, Teacher Shi Qian treated him to a bowl of clear-broth goose, then took his printed thesis, saying he would use it as a template for comparison, and told him to go to the Commercial Street to print another copy and have it bound, and that he also needed to burn the spell design and spell test report into a Crystal Chip to be clipped into the bound thesis.

Once everything was finished, it was like settling a matter of concern, and he felt lighthearted.

Afterward, Chen Shu did not return to the small courtyard, but instead went back to the Dormitory.

He had heard that Brother Jiang was suffering from a headache over his thesis and was frazzled from revising the formatting; given that almost every student today had more or fewer errors, and Brother Jiang was someone with a rather thin skin, Chen Shu decided to go help him to avoid him being scolded by his advisor.

It had also been a long time since he had returned to the Dormitory, and he missed it a little.

"Beep, beep, beep!"

Chen Shu swiped to open the Dormitory door.

It was very quiet inside and pitch black, with only bright yellow light leaking from the gaps beneath the doors of two rooms.

Hearing the sound of the door opening, the two room doors opened one after another, and two people poked their heads out to look at him.

Chen Shu couldn't help but grin, then immediately feigned disappointment and teased, "Still living in two separate rooms? More than half a year has passed; have you two lonely men still not sparked any flames of love?"

"May I ask, who are you, brother?" Meng Chunqiu also frowned, "Did you go to the wrong Dormitory?"

"Haha..."

Chen Shu walked straight in, closed the door, and found the slippers he hadn't used in a long time to change into: "Brother Jiang, have you finished revising your thesis?"

"Still revising... what about you?"

"Me?"

Chen Shu held up the bound thesis in his hand: "Look at what this is? I took it for inspection today; it passed on the first try, not even a single typo."

Jiang Lai immediately revealed a complicated expression.

"Hand it over! I'll help you revise it!"

Chen Shu waved his hand grandly and sat down on the sofa.

Meng Chunqiu also followed and sat down beside him, turning on the lights in the living room; although it seemed like only one person had returned, the Dormitory felt as if it had gained several times the vitality.