Xia Qingqing was somewhat surprised that she could run into her future classmate on a train, and that the two of them would even happen to be in the same carriage.

Xia Qingqing let Gou Dan read his book by himself, while she leaned over to chat with the girl: "What a coincidence! My name is Xia Qingqing, what's your name?"

The girl replied softly, "My name is Wang Sisi, and I'm from Liuxiang County. Are you Xia Qingqing, the top scorer in the college entrance examination in our southern province?"

Although she asked this question, she was almost certain that the fact that they both had the same name, Xia Qingqing, and were both going to study at Beijing North University could not be a mere coincidence.

Xia Qingqing was surprised that even people from the neighboring county had heard of her, and readily admitted it.

Wang Sisi excitedly expressed her admiration. Although she had also been admitted to Beijing University, her score was several tens of points lower than Xia Qingqing's.

In her eyes, Xia Qingqing was the best of the best, someone to look up to.

Knowing that Xia Qingqing was her idol in her studies, Wang Sisi was no longer as shy as she had been at first, and instead became quite talkative.

She chattered away, telling Xia Qingqing about her situation, and even offered her some snacks.

"Qingqing, your whole family is taking you to school, that's so wonderful! Your little brother is so well-behaved, he even studies on the train," Wang Sisi said with a hint of envy in her voice.

Her parents both had to work and couldn't take her, but luckily her third sister worked on the train and asked her colleagues to look after her, so her family wasn't worried about Wang Sisi encountering any danger traveling alone by train.

Xia Qingqing slowly cracked open some sunflower seeds and mumbled, "Since I had this opportunity, I thought I'd take my family to Beijing for a stroll."

“Yes, I’d love to take my parents and my sisters to Beijing sometime in the future,” Wang Sisi agreed.

She has no sons, only four daughters.

At first, Wang Sisi's parents really wanted to have a son, but unfortunately, they had daughters one after another. When it came to Wang Sisi, they finally gave up.

Fortunately, Wang Sisi's parents were not so sexist and raised all four of their daughters well.

In Wang's mother's words, there's nothing wrong with having a daughter. When Wang Sisi's maternal grandparents were sick, it was always her, the married daughter, who took care of them in the hospital. Her brother at home couldn't be relied on.

Therefore, she believed that as long as she treated her daughters well, they would definitely take care of her and her husband when they got old.

She ensured that all four of her daughters received an education. Now, her three eldest daughters all have stable jobs, and her youngest daughter, Wang Sisi, was admitted to Beijing University, one of the best universities in the country.

Hearing Wang Sisi's words, Xia Qingqing nodded in agreement: "There will definitely be opportunities. We still have four years of university to go, and after graduation, we might be assigned to jobs in Beijing."

It's great to have the opportunity to stay in Beijing, after all, Beijing is the capital of the country, and it will be far ahead in terms of education and medical care in the future.

"I'd rather not go back to my hometown and be with my parents," Wang Sisi said with a smile. Her parents don't have a son, so she and her sisters will be the ones to take care of them in their old age. Therefore, she can't live too far away from her parents.

"Who can say what will happen in the future? Maybe you'll be able to bring your parents to live in Beijing someday."

This is not just empty talk. The first batch of college students after the resumption of the college entrance examination generally did very well, especially those from Peking University, who were even less likely to do poorly.

......

Time flies when you have someone to chat with, and before you know it, it's dinner time.

Xia Qingqing ate eggs and white flour pancakes for breakfast and lunch, but she really didn't want to eat those two things again in the evening.

She pulled Wang Sisi directly to the dining car and got four boxed meals. Each meal cost less than 50 cents, required no food coupons, and was very generous in portion.

Zhang Hongyan, unusually, didn't criticize Xia Qingqing for being extravagant. Since she rarely got to take a train ride, she also wanted to try what the food on the train tasted like.

The five people were eating their boxed lunches with gusto. Sister Zhen and another man swallowed hard as they smelled the aroma of the food and gritted their teeth to stuff the slightly hard cornbread into their mouths.

Noticing someone staring at her, Xia Qingqing looked up and met the gaze of the middle-aged man. The cornbread in his hand seemed to be made by the same person as Sister Zhen's.

I clearly didn't see the two of them interact at all during the day, and Sister Zhen didn't mention knowing that middle-aged man when she was chatting with Zhang Hongyan. Could it be a coincidence?

When Xia Qingqing went to sleep at night, she released the system from the dark room to act as a temporary alarm, letting it monitor the situation in the carriage and wake her up immediately if it detected anything amiss.

888 is usually very rigid and not very flexible, but it's fine for small things like this, so Xia Qingqing fell asleep peacefully.

In the middle of the night, Xia Qingqing was awakened by a mechanical sound:

[Host, the system has detected someone rummaging through your luggage.]

Xia Qingqing immediately woke up upon hearing the sound and saw two blurry figures quietly rummaging through their luggage in the darkness.

They probably realized they didn't find any money in the luggage, so they started searching the pockets of the group.

Xia Qingqing didn't rush to act, wanting to wait until the other party had stolen the money before catching them red-handed.

People generally go to bed early at this time of year, and it is the middle of the night when people are most sleepy. The noise from the moving train masked their little movements.

The two shadowy figures didn't even spare Gou Dan's pockets, searching them thoroughly.

When one of them tried to search Xia Qingqing, he met her wide-open eyes and was so startled that he almost fell off the top bunk.

Xia Qingqing smiled at her and kicked her down.

"Ah...ah."

When the other person tried to run away, Xia Qingqing jumped off the bed and kicked him to the ground.

The loud noise woke up everyone in the carriage.

"What happened? What happened?" Zhang Hongyan sat up abruptly. The first thing she did was check on Gou Dan and Xia Qingqing. Finding that the two were unharmed, she slowly breathed a sigh of relief.

“These two are thieves; they were just stealing money,” Xia Qingqing said, pointing to the two people on the ground.

Zhang Hongyan and the others looked in the direction of the sound and saw that the two people lying on the ground were Sister Zhen and the middle-aged man who had not spoken until now.

"How could it be you?" Zhang Hongyan and Xia Heping quickly checked their pockets.

Before setting off, Zhang Hongyan sewed all the money into the two of them's clothes, but in case of an emergency, she also put a dozen or so coins in her pockets. Now all the coins are gone.

Upon hearing this, Wang Sisi quickly checked her pockets and found that her clothes had been ripped open by something, and the stack of bills inside was nowhere to be seen, which made her panic.