Chapter 3: Special-Type Mission

Recess time.

The shared hallway area between Class 17 and Class 18 of the freshman year.

"I'm not exaggerating, guys, something incredible happened in my class today. That dude has basically turned into a genius," Yu Luolu said, surrounded by a tight circle of good friends from Class 18. "Take Huang Ye from my class, for example—his grades are even worse than mine. And guess what? During the last Chinese class, Teacher Su decided to test us on reciting *Southeast-Southeast Fly the Peacocks*. She went around the entire room, and not a single person could recite it. But when she called on Huang Ye, he recited the entire piece word for word without a single error. The whole class was dumbfounded. You should have seen the looks on everyone's faces—good students and bad students alike, all standing there with their jaws dropped and eyes wide open. Man, it really saved face for us underachievers."

"Seriously? Stop making things up. That's *Southeast-Southeast Fly the Peacocks* we're talking about! Three or four pages, thousands of characters. He managed to memorize all of that? Without a single mistake? I call bullshit."

"Why would I make this up? If I'm going to brag, I'd brag about myself, not someone else. If you don't believe me, go ask Teacher Su. She was completely stunned too."

"No way. Is that really true?"

"Swear to God. If I'm lying, call me Luolu Yu."

Inside the Class 17 classroom, Liu Xiang kept her head down, carefully jotting something into her notebook stroke by stroke. Her deskmate, Xu Xiaoshuang, leaned over to take a peek. "Hey, isn't this that poem Huang Ye mentioned? Why are you writing it down? Don't tell me your heart is fluttering and you've fallen for him?"

"Cut it out, you dead-shuang, you're the one who's fallen for him. I just feel like this poem has collection value. I'm writing it down so I don't forget it."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, I totally don't believe you. But haven't you noticed? Huang Ye is different today. He actually looks a little more handsome. So strange."

"Look who's talking, you're the one acting like a lovesick fangirl." Liu Xiang finished the last stroke, closed her notebook, and laughed, scolding her friend. "Let's drop it. We're supposed to have an English conversation exercise this period, and if you can't answer, you get chewed out. Teacher Wang doesn't give anyone a shred of face, and I hate that the most."

"You said it. Just thinking about Fatty Wang makes my stomach turn. I wish we had physics class every single day. Teacher Meng is tall, handsome, and a rich second-generation heir to boot. Ah, just thinking about it gets me so excited. How amazing would it be to be Teacher Meng's girlfriend?"

"Alright, stop daydreaming. It's not even dark yet." Liu Xiang shook her head, utterly helpless against her deskmate and best friend, who loved indulging in wild daydreams at the drop of a hat.

Ten minutes of recess pass in a flash. It was time for class once again.

"Alright students, routine business. I'm going to call names for a blackboard dictation of vocabulary. Anyone with more than five mistakes will copy last week's words one hundred times." The moment class started, Fatty Wang dropped a heavy bomb.

"Here it comes again. That fat pig won't be happy until he alienates everyone completely."

"Damn it, the few of us are probably screwed again. I haven't even started writing out *Southeast-Southeast Fly the Peacocks* ten times yet, and now another one hundred times is coming."

"Amitabha, Buddha protect me, please don't call my name."

Fatty Wang squinted at the name roster. "Let's have the bottom ten students from the last monthly exam come up."

......I knew it would be like this. When has an English dictation ever spared me? Fatty Wang just can't live without tormenting me. Just wait and see. I'm not the same person I used to be. The current me—well, once I make a move, I shock the world, and once I start, I won't stop.

"Huang Ye, why are you standing on the side? Write over here." Fatty Wang pointed to the exact center of the blackboard.

"Got it, no problem." With a completely relaxed state of mind, feeling neither joy nor sorrow, neither anger nor grief, Huang Ye picked up a piece of chalk and stepped right up to the center front of the blackboard.

Fatty Wang looked at Huang Ye in surprise, feeling something was a bit off, though he couldn't quite put his finger on what.

"Students in the seats will do the dictation as well. Exchange papers with your deskmates to grade them afterward. Anyone with more than five mistakes will similarly be penalized with one hundred copies. First word: Hope."

The moment Fatty Wang's voice trailed off, Huang Ye's chalk moved. "Hope; ant; ish; expect;" While the rest of the students were still deep in thought, Huang Ye had already finished writing down every single English word related to hope.

Fatty Wang's eyes widened in disbelief. How was this possible? This Huang Ye, who was practically allergic to learning English, actually wrote it correctly? Not only did he get it right, but he wrote so many variations, especially the last one—*expect*. How did he know that one when I haven't even taught it yet?

"Second word: Dawn."

"Dan; daybreak; sunrise;"

......

"Dusk."

"Dusk; gloaming;"

"Pluck."

"Pluck; pick:"

After dictating more than twenty words in a row, Huang Ye wrote at least two variations for the simplest ones, and as many as seven for the complex ones. And damn it, every single one of them was correct. Fatty Wang wondered if he was still asleep and dreaming. Was this even planet Earth? The students in the audience were also dumbfounded. Many of the words Huang Ye wrote down were ones they had never even seen before.

"Ding! Congratulations to the host for gaining 1 point of fame value, sourced from Liu Xiang."

"Ding! Congratulations to the host for gaining 1 point of fame value, sourced from Gong Yanhao."

"Ding! Congratulations to the host for gaining 1 point of fame value, sourced from Yu Luolu."

"Ding! Congratulations to the host for gaining 1 point of fame value, sourced from Feng Nan."

"Ding! Congratulations to the host for gaining 1 point of fame value, sourced from Li Kunfeng."

"Ding! Congratulations to the host for gaining 1 point of fame value, sourced from Su Zhenli."

......

Fame value! My precious little babies. Huang Ye's heart raced with excitement.

"Ding! Congratulations to the host for reaching 100 points of fame value. Mission accomplished. Reward: one random primary draw. Would you like to spin the wheel?"

"Do I even need to ask? Spin! Hurry, hurry, hurry!"

"Ding! Congratulations to the host for winning the skill: Primary English Mastery."

Huang Ye felt a sudden surge of heat in his brain that came fast and went even faster. An immense amount of content instantly flooded his mind: various English grammars, usages, application techniques, pronunciation methods, and so on—it felt as though he had lived in England for decades. If even Primary English Mastery is this overpowered, what must Advanced Mastery be like? Too miraculous! As expected of a system—a little cow doing a handstand, defying the heavens without explanation!

"Ahem, well. Not bad. Student Huang Ye's performance is fairly decent." Fatty Wang felt a bit awkward. However, when he looked at the others on the blackboard, very few had managed to write down the words, and those who got them right were as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. Instantly, he found an outlet to vent his frustration. "What on earth did the rest of you write? Yue Zhengyu, look at what you wrote. Is that how your family spells 'hope'? And you, what kind of trash is this? Your parents send you to school so you can learn this garbage? Dragging the class down day in and day out—how do you expect to take the college entrance exams in the future? Do you even want to graduate? Get back to your seats, all of you! Nobody leaves today until you finish writing it one hundred times!"

Fatty Wang's inner state right now was extremely complicated and chaotic. Most importantly, Huang Ye—who used to be pliable clay in his hands, completely incapable of resistance—had actually staged a comeback today. What about my dignity? What about my face? No, wait. So what if he can write a few words? Learning English isn't just about knowing how to spell words. Just like everyone knows how to write numbers one through seven, how many people can actually write a good essay with words? Thinking of this, Fatty Wang glared at Huang Ye.

"Student Huang Ye has performed very well recently. Not only did he get all the dictation words right, but he wrote quickly and was able to draw inferences about other cases from one instance. I hope the rest of you will learn from Student Huang Ye in the future. As I said last class, knowing how to write is far from enough when it comes to English. Being able to write English only means you might become a translator of texts in the future. But you will never possess the calm and composure of diplomats and foreign friends chatting fluidly, because your—spoken English is terrible! Now, I'd like a few students to come up and have a simple English conversation. Wu Tong, Liu Xiang. You two converse with each other. Use today's weather as your topic and improvise freely."

Wu Tong and Liu Xiang were the two students with the highest English grades in the class, scoring above 130 out of 150 every single time. Fatty Wang called them up to act as prime examples simply to first elevate them and then disparage the others—using a brick of jade to attract real bricks, so to speak. Then, he would use those bricks to crush the particular student who had made him lose face.

Wu Tong: "Das Wetter von heute ist underschoen. (Today's weather is very nice.)"

Liu Xiang: "Yes, The sky is very blue, too." ......

The content of their conversation was simple and fluent; most of the class could understand it. Fatty Wang was very satisfied. "Very good. The foundational spoken skills of both students are quite solid without any grammatical errors. Sit down. Don't grow arrogant; keep working hard. Let's have two more students try. Xu Xiaoshuang, Huang Ye. Stick with the weather topic."

I knew this dead fat pig wouldn't let me off so easily. Huang Ye's stool wasn't even warm yet before round two was here. Fine. If you want to play, I'll play along. With a system on my side, who am I afraid of? Forget about having a conversation with Xu Xiaoshuang; you could drag the British Prime Minister over here and I could chat him up for three days and three nights!

Bring it on, come on baby!