However, after half an hour had passed, Li Yingqiao still hadn’t received any reply from Yu Jinyang.
So she came to a conclusion: Yu Jinyang was either kidnapped or thrown in jail.
Otherwise, even if you gave him a hundred times the courage, he wouldn’t dare not reply to her messages.
Back when the few of them were in Little Painting Town, under Li Yingqiao’s lead, the group would often climb trees to take bird nests or go down to the fields to catch little crawfish.
Yu Chuanhou was always the most finicky, complaining this was dirty, that there were bats.
Li Yingqiao didn’t buy into his act—if he didn’t want to go, she wouldn’t take him.
As a result, when he realized he’d been left behind by Li Yingqiao, he’d start sulking.
Li Yingqiao wasn’t one to coddle him either.
She’d just take Gao Dian and Miao Jia, and together they’d catch a whole basket of crawfish and bring them back to Little Painting Town, purposely grabbing a charcoal stove to sit at the street corner on Chuanming Street for an open-air barbecue.
Yu Jinyang got so mad about this that several times he threatened to break off their friendship, but it never worked.
He’d sulk for a few days and then find an excuse to come back.
Usually, only Shang Liang’s little pastries would pay him any mind, taking the initiative to give him a way out and coax him back.
Li Yingqiao was rarely the one to take the initiative, but this time, for the sake of the Conan series, she broke precedent and tried to make peace.
Yu Houhou actually put on his young master airs for real this time—she really had spoiled him.
With a swift and efficient motion, Li Yingqiao deleted all the text and call records from the phone and handed it back to Li Shuli.
For a whole week, under Liang Mei’s constant reminders and Zhu Xiaoliang’s crazy “sea of questions” drill mode, the kids were tormented until they were all skin and bones.
All they could see floating before their eyes were math formulas; seeing a pizza with a few bites taken out would get them calculating the area, seeing someone play badminton would make them start thinking about parabolic equations, and a long string of numbers would have them wondering if it was some kind of sequence trap.
1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 15, 17, 2…..
Li Yingqiao stared at the mistakes on Zheng Miao Jia’s test paper, biting her pen and frowning tighter and tighter.
“Miao Jia, did you not finish copying this sequence?”
Zheng Miao Jia, finally with a moment to spare, was now fully focused on sketching Bai Juyi’s muscles in her language book.
After a week of dedicated effort, the poet demon’s biceps had become so lifelike it seemed as if he’d burst from the pages any second and punch Zhu Xiaoliang into the wall.
She turned her head lazily.
“That’s my grandma’s phone number. What are you calculating?”
Only Zhu Xiaoliang looked on with admiration, maintaining a polite smile.
He adjusted his glasses, and in a tone reminiscent of his own teachers, said, “Li Yingqiao, you’ve got talent. Keep at it.”
Even Li Yingqiao, who was always confident, found herself doubting her life for the first time after being praised for her talent.
She gave an awkward laugh.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. The hardest math problems are never on the test paper. If you can understand the math in life, the math on the test is just a paper tiger.”
Sometimes Zhu Xiaoliang was as pure as a blank sheet of paper.
In his world, there was only math.
Maybe Li Yingqiao and the others would never know: when Liang Mei first found him, she’d tricked him by saying that this group of kids loved math so much that they ran into walls over it every day, but never had a good teacher.
Back then, Zhu Xiaoliang was still living in Crazy Harbor.
As soon as he heard this, he picked up his bag and came, no questions asked.
But after a couple of months together, Zhu Xiaoliang could surely see that they didn’t love math at all—they just wanted to get into Tan Zhong, to change their fate.
Zhu Xiaoliang never exposed the truth to Liang Mei.
Liang Mei had been afraid that if he found out, he’d abandon the kids.
Later, she asked him why.
Zhu Xiaoliang said that, actually, the moment that paper airplane hit him in the forehead when he first walked in, he already knew these kids didn’t love math.
So he deliberately designed the pizza game to watch them squabble, fight, and get revenge on each other.
The most fascinating thing about math is that, despite its seemingly rigid fairness, if you use your brain a little, you can easily stir up the most subtle and fragile parts of human nature.
After all, people are always less bothered by having little than by having less than others.
To use math to dissect human nature was the retribution Zhu Xiaoliang had received in this life.
Just like he hadn’t yet taught them the pigeonhole principle—the conflicts and contradictions that erupt from limited resources are the world’s eternal theme.
As for why he chose to stay, it was probably because, by the end of the pizza game, the three kids would tacitly agree—even if someone lost badly that day and didn’t get a single bite, eyes green with envy, they would never touch the last slice. Instead, they’d ask him, “Teacher Zhu, why aren’t you eating?”
He’d rarely seen this in his teaching career.
He loved using math to test human nature, and in that respect, these kids did wonderfully, giving him a cheap little surprise.
But as for math, they lost completely.
Anyone with a bit of mathematical talent would have solved the pizza game easily.
Among the math geniuses he’d taught, none would have left him any pizza—they’d just want to escape the daily pizza routine as soon as possible.
They’d calculate the smallest effective area within the rules and then have the other two take the largest possible bites, so each of the three could, in turn, get the biggest slice.
But these three—couldn’t even figure out this simple trick, just kept eating pizza happily every day, never got any themselves, yet still worried if their teacher had eaten.
Touched as he was, Zhu Xiaoliang could only pretend to take off his glasses, wipe his eyes, and say, “Good kids.”
Such silly kids.
As the high school entrance exams approached, Li Yingqiao’s determination and fighting spirit soared like never before.
It was as if she’d handcuffed herself to her desk, torturing those stubborn, error-prone problems on her test papers—pulling them apart, interrogating them, until they dared not cause trouble on her tests again.
On the eve of the final battle, Li Yingqiao gave a dramatic shake to her latest math test, the one she was most satisfied with.
Under the bright lamp, she held the paper high, gave it a crisp, resounding flick with her index finger that nearly pierced the sheet—and of course, the test paper tore.
On the test, the words “Yu Jinyang! Just you wait!” shone through the paper, their ferocious strokes glaring.
Yu Jinyang hadn’t been home for three days.
Yu Renjie and Tang Xiang had barely slept a wink in three days and nights.
Ever since receiving that threatening letter, they’d assigned bodyguards to follow him everywhere, no matter where he went.
With the exams coming up, he hadn’t been allowed to go to the dance studio lately, either.
That night, after the father and son took a walk home, Yu Jinyang went to school as usual the next day.
But after school, he never came back.
Their home was tense as a drum; Tang Xiang’s nerves were stretched to the limit.
Normally, after evening self-study, Yu Jinyang would be home before ten.
But that night, ten-thirty came and went, and the front door was still silent.
Tang Xiang immediately called Yu Renjie, and they reported him missing that night.
But three days passed with no news.
Tang Xiang fainted several times from grief and was now in the ER on oxygen, her hair so disheveled she looked like a bird’s nest after an eagle attack—not only were the eggs gone, the whole nest was wrecked.
She lay on the ER bed, all skin and bones, veins punctured and re-punctured, the sheets stained with her blood and changed again and again.
Her nerves were so taut that whenever footsteps sounded in the hallway, she’d instantly yank out the IV and sit up, ready to go fetch her son at any moment.
Whoever came in, her voice was hoarse as she asked, “…Is there any news about Jinyang?”
Getting a negative answer, she’d lie back down, oblivious to the pain of the needles, her eyes empty, staring at the ceiling.
Yu Renjie hadn’t slept in three days either, still wearing the same shirt he’d worn when he picked up his son—so wrinkled it was shapeless.
His throat burned like a hot coal, impossible to swallow or spit out, yet it scorched him all the same.
Yu Renjie wished he could trade places with his son right then.
The bloodshot veins in his eyes could fry a plate of cordyceps, but all he could do was sit at the bedside and calmly comfort the nearly collapsing Tang Xiang: “Don’t worry, just don’t worry… If Jinyang’s really been kidnapped, they’ll want money. No matter how much it is, we have it. No matter how much, I’ll get Jinyang back safely. Trust me, okay?”
He’d never seen Tang Xiang like this before.
She’d always been straightforward and easygoing, believing children should have their own luck.
The elders at home even criticized her for being so carefree a woman that she could let an elephant turn over in her heart.
She’d always let their son grow up free-range, seemingly not caring much about Jinyang.
But Yu Renjie knew: Tang Xiang’s parents were a very traditional Chinese family.
Chinese parents are like old-fashioned thermos flasks—no matter how warm their hearts, their words always come out cold.
So when it came to expressing “love,” Tang Xiang felt embarrassed—whether it was love for him or for their son.
This was the only time she showed the softness of a mother.
“Qiao Qiao, have you eaten yet?”
Li Shuli had just returned from the beauty salon.
Lately, she’d been apprenticing with her master and always came home late.
When she got back, she saw her daughter with her hair hastily tied in a messy bun, bent over her desk scribbling away at test papers.
“I’ve eaten!”
Li Yingqiao straightened up, leaned back on her chair, and flipped over yesterday’s finished test like a parade review, her eyes scanning every detail as she sipped her yogurt through a straw.
She called out again, “By the way, Mom, I’m moving to Teacher Liang’s place tomorrow night. Miao Jia and I both have our exams at No. 3 Middle School, which is right across from Teacher Liang’s house. She said we should stay there during the exam days to save time going back and forth.”
“Alright.”
Li Shuli tossed her bag by the door and headed straight for the kitchen to check the fridge, making sure her daughter had eaten.
Only then did she go into her daughter’s room, fixing the messy bun on her head.
“So, Qiao Qiao, feeling confident?”
Li Yingqiao put down her yogurt, proudly opened up her test paper, and held it up: “Impressive, right?”
Li Shuli, in the middle of fixing her daughter’s hair, looked up and gave a heartfelt sigh: “Impressive, very impressive. Three digits—one more than my weight.”
At her age, Li Shuli wasn’t intentionally keeping her weight down.
She’d suffered from bipolar disorder in her youth, and binge eating had ruined her stomach.
Whatever she ate, she’d lose it right away—anxiety had messed up her digestion.
In the end, she’d gotten thin from exhaustion.
Li Yingqiao chuckled, unable to hide her pride.
She held up her pinky and said, “…Of course, I’m still just a little short of Tan Zhong, but our math teacher Zhu said my social sciences are good enough to make up for a few points. And the ratio of easy to hard to very hard questions on the math exam is seven to two to one.”
She made a quick gesture, flashing three fingers, leaving the uneducated Li Shuli a bit dazed. Li Yingqiao went on, “Teacher Zhu says that seventy percent are basic points, twenty percent are hard questions, and the last ten percent aren’t worth wasting time on—they’re just there to screen for math geniuses. He says I’ve got the basics down, and if I do well on two-thirds of the hard ones, Tan Zhong is in the bag.”
Li Shuli nodded thoughtfully at her daughter’s explanation, reminding her not to overwork herself and to get enough rest.
Eager to get back to studying, Li Yingqiao shooed her out: “Alright, enough chatting, I need to study.”
Night had fallen, and only the windows of families with kids about to take the high school or college entrance exams still glowed with all-night lights.
Whether cramming day and night or sharpening their spears at the last minute, useful or not, they were all just loading bullets into their own guns—if they could take down one question, that was one less enemy.
Once again, Li Shuli sighed at how times had changed.
Every generation had its own hardships.
In the past, it was empty bellies; now, kids could fill up just on ink.
Who had it harder?
She didn’t know.
She just knew that Qiao Qiao was working hard, and she couldn’t afford to hold her back.
Just as Li Shuli was about to leave, she seemed to remember something.
She pulled out her phone from her pocket and handed it over: “Oh, Qiao Qiao, I’ve been so busy these past few days I haven’t had time to check my phone. Today, I got a memory full alert, and when I was deleting junk messages, I saw something odd. Is this from your friend?”
Li Shuli had originally planned to buy her daughter a phone, but Li Yingqiao insisted she didn’t want any distractions before the exams and would get one afterward.
So her contacts were all friends like Miao Jia and Little Pastry.
Sometimes Miao Jia would message her, “Auntie Li, I want to eat Lixia rice,” and that’s how Li Shuli knew that Liang Mei had lured her daughter away but didn’t know how to cook.
“What have you guys been eating at Teacher Liang’s? Don’t tell me you’re still playing that pizza game?” she asked.
“Of course! It’s so much fun.”
Li Yingqiao, distracted by the phone, replied absentmindedly, “Watching Teacher Zhu’s disgusted face is the best part. He says if we come up with the optimal solution, he’ll change the game, and the new one will be even more torturous. We’re not stupid—Teacher Zhu is so gullible. He’s even more naive than Gao Dian, honestly. Shuli, do you think all academic people are like this?”
“Shuli wouldn’t know. I’ll never be an academic. You figure it out yourself.”
With no burden at all, Li Shuli handed her the phone and quietly left.
Only then did Li Yingqiao turn her attention to the phone.
Sure enough, it was Yu Jinyang’s number, but the message had been sent two or three days ago.
This kid finally remembered to reply to her message, huh?
Li Yingqiao squinted and took a closer look, Eh?
What did he send?
—“3364”
—“626”
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