Chapter 43 Chapter 43 One Million, Five Years

Xu Jun didn't ask any further questions and continued cleaning as if nothing had happened. Tao Ning clutched her phone, her nervous heartbeat gradually calming. The system, startled, said, "Dummy, you absolutely cannot let Xu Jun see what's in this phone."

Tao Ning was stunned and stuffed the phone back under the pillow: [Why?]

[...You don't know why?! Then why were you so nervous just now?]

Tao Ning slowly patted the pillow: [I don't know, maybe... this is the only thing Zhao Jingqun left me, I have to protect it.]

The name 'Zhao Jingqun' had not been mentioned for a long time. Tao Ning suddenly felt a little strange, and his heart seemed to be gently touched by a strange emotion. He actually couldn't quite understand what these emotions were, but he just followed his heart and wanted to guard this phone that had never been opened.

After a few seconds, the system said, "Okay, I understand. You're a fool."

[Why can't Xu Jun see what's inside? ]

The system said: "I don't know either. There's a plot in the cheat book, 'The Beautiful Wife and Her Ten Husbands.' One of the husbands came across evidence of his wife's infidelity with her previous husband and went crazy, fighting her for three days and three nights. I was afraid you'd do the same, so I'm reminding you."

Tao Ning was silent for a long moment, then said, "System, you should read less cheats."

The system's mechanical voice hummed and groaned: "You've really gone bad, idiot! You used to be so obedient and well-behaved, but now you don't even trust me!"

Tao Ning: “…”

After cleaning, Xu Jun went to the kitchen to cook. Tao Ning was busy working on her math problems. Several books of past Olympiad problems were piled up next to her desk—English, Chinese, and even a German one. Oxent had a specialized competition class, but it required closed-door training. Tao Ning, who had to prepare for the Olympiad while also balancing final exam results, skipped the class and enrolled in a regular class as a transfer student.

There were others who made the same choice as him, like Xu Jun. Tao Ning had asked him why he didn't go, and Xu Jun said he practiced and competed in the Olympiad because he was bored. Then Xu Jun looked at him, a barely audible smile on his cold face: "But now that I have you, it's not because I'm bored anymore."

Tick, tick.

The small alarm clock on the desk ticked for a few moments until a cold breath like cedar surrounded him from behind. "It's time to eat." Xu Jun prepared three dishes and a soup, all of which were the dishes that Tao Ning had eaten most often at the Xu family.

After the meal, Xu Jun poured him some warm water and watched Tao Ning finish his medicine. This time he gave him a pack of lemon-flavored cookies as a reward, then changed his clothes and prepared to go out.

Tao Ning was confused: "It's almost dark, why are you still going out so late?"

Xu Jun stood at the door, turned around, and his gentle gaze fell on the boy in the dormitory. The night breeze was rustling outside the door, and the warmth in the dormitory was like the boy. There was a childlike innocence and clarity in his beautiful eyes, which made Xu Jun dazed for a moment. Such a scene made him feel that there was a "beauty hidden in a golden house".

But he was not satisfied with this golden house at all. Besides, Song Yucong was a fool, but the extravagant wealth behind him might trap a lemon one day. The most important thing was...Tao Ning's illness.

This gave Xu Jun an unprecedented sense of crisis, and many plans were brought forward.

But Xu Jun said nothing, just said lightly: "I found a few part-time jobs recently, I'm going out to work." After a moment of silence, he looked at Tao Ning's bare ankles, "It will be cold at night, so you must cover yourself with a blanket when you sleep."

The boy nodded blankly.

"Come back soon."

"Um."

When the door closed, Tao Ning didn't think much about it and continued to do his questions. However, he was tired from traveling all day and went to bed early today, so he didn't know that Xu Jun came back in the early morning.

Taking advantage of the president's privileges, almost no one deducted points from him except Xu Jun himself.

Therefore, Xu Jun can come and go freely in Oxent at any time. In a secret basement, Xu Jun writes programs, rewrites papers, and provides various knowledge solutions for people from all over the world. He also comes into contact with computers, a high-tech field that he has a premonition that will become popular all over the world in the future.

His code name is "poem" and he charges extremely high fees on the dark web, three to four times the market price. However, because the quality of his orders is very high, there is an endless stream of people looking for Xu Jun.

Xu Jun closed the dormitory door gently and went to take a shower to wash off the cigarette smell in the basement that he hated. Then he went to Tao Ning's bed, covered him with a blanket, and stared at his sleeping face quietly for a while before returning to his desk.

He turned on the night light, pulled out a black notebook, and picked up a pen.

"One million, it will take five years."

He turned the page and began to practice his handwriting. In fact, his thin gold style of calligraphy had won an award, but if he wanted to write a love letter to confess his love to Xiao Ningmeng, Xu Jun wanted to strive for perfection.

Xu's father told him that he had written hundreds of love letters to Xu's mother.

Xu Jun took note of it.

So the eighteen-year-old Xu Jun wanted to follow his father's example and write many love letters to Tao Ning, just hoping that Lemon could belong to him as he wished.

*

The next morning, Tao Ning was supposed to go to class with Xu Jun, but he received a call. His originally cold face frowned. After hanging up the phone, he looked at Tao Ning. After sending him to the classroom door, his tense tone softened: "I have something to take care of. I can't come to class for a while. Can you go alone?"

There was a rare hint of worry in Xu Jun's cold eyes, but Tao Ning didn't notice it. He nodded and said, "Sure." He was also a loner when he was studying in the mountains, so of course there was no problem attending class alone.

But Tao Ning didn't expect that when he stepped into the classroom with his schoolbag on his back, the originally noisy classroom suddenly became quiet, and everyone looked at him.

"Another transfer student?"

"Tsk, what era is this? There are still people wearing such old-fashioned glasses."

"He looks so timid, but his skin is quite white."

"I heard he transferred from a remote mountainous area. I bet he'll be kicked out within half a semester."

"Hehe, I'll bet for a month."

There are not as many as fifty or sixty students in the classroom like in the mountainous areas. There are also fewer students, and the tables and chairs are not as shabby as those in the mountainous areas. This classroom is clean and tidy. There are only about thirty students, including Chinese faces, as well as foreign white and black faces. The tables and chairs are not only of good quality but also brand new. The central air conditioning is turned on all day. Even the blackboard is not the traditional blackboard that requires chalk to write on, but a dust-free whiteboard that can project courseware.

Tao Ning had never seen these before.

It took Tao Ning eighteen years to go from the impoverished mountainous area to the Song family, then to Oxente, and finally to this modern classroom. He felt as shocked and timid as a mayfly seeing the Kun in the North Sea.

But more than that, I'm curious.

At the same time, malicious, curious, and indifferent gazes fell on Tao Ning. He was stunned, lowered his head, and ignored them.

Because there were no seating arrangements for the first-time students, everyone sat wherever they wanted. Tao Ning chose a window seat in the back row, but before he could sit down, a man with droopy eyes, his school uniform baggy, kicked the stool under him and said in a stern tone, "Hey, this place is mine, get out of here."

Everyone in the classroom fell silent at the noise in the corner, but no one stepped forward to help; they just watched. Tao Ning, not wanting to cause trouble on her first day, was about to offer her seat to him, but a hand pressed down on her shoulder. A slightly hoarse, youthful voice sneered, "Liu Mang, you jerk! What's your skill in bullying new students? You just like finding faults and making fun of them, don't you?"

"Lu Jue, are you crazy?!" Liu Mang glared at him. His family was considered wealthy, but compared with most of the students in Oxente, they were nothing. Now that a poor student from the bottom of society had transferred here, he couldn't help but take out his anger on others.

However, if he encountered a student of higher status than him, he would not dare to act presumptuously. For example, the person who was interfering in front of him did not come from a wealthy family, but his family background was quite strong. He had a father who was a nationally renowned doctor and a brother who was a young genius biologist.

So Liu Mang didn't dare to be presumptuous. He just cursed and left.

The tension on her shoulders faded, and Tao Ning turned around. She saw a handsome, sunny face. The boy had yellow hair and looked very tall. He was carrying a schoolbag on one hand and had two dimples when he smiled. "Are you okay? Don't pay attention to that jerk. He's mentally retarded."

Tao Ning shook her head and said softly, "I'm fine, thank you."

Lu Jue smiled and left without saying a word.

Tao Ning didn't see Xu Jun until class started. He heard people whispering that Xu Jun's award had been won by cheating, and that was why someone had taken it away. Tao Ning knew Xu Jun's ability, so of course he didn't believe these rumors, but he was a little worried about him.

Tao Ning thought that if she still didn't see Xu Jun after school today, she would go find him.

Because of this moment of distraction, Tao Ning was called by the teacher to answer a question. This class happened to be an English class, and the foreign teacher was from the UK. He asked Tao Ning to understand and answer the relationship between Romeo and Juliet in English.

Tao Ning had only read the Chinese version, and the book only contained excerpts from this great drama. He thought about it, organized his words, and spoke it out haltingly.

But as soon as he finished speaking, there was a burst of laughter in the classroom.

"Hahahaha, this country bumpkin is speaking English? If you don't know, you would think it's Martian."

"That's it? Didn't someone say he was awesome?"

"Nowadays, anyone dares to come to our school."

"Such poor, shabby English. I don't know where he got the courage to say it."

Finally, the foreign teacher criticized them seriously and the students shut up, but the look they gave Tao Ning was filled with undisguised contempt and disdain.

Tao Ning pursed his lips. Behind his dull black-framed glasses, there was a sense of loss, as well as the arrogance and unwillingness of a young man. After class, he went to see his foreign teacher and asked how he could improve his spoken English.

When Tao Ning was studying in the mountainous area, he was not exposed to English until junior high school. His teacher's spoken English was quite unstandard and had a strong local accent. Tao Ning taught himself all English classes. He memorized thousands of words and knew every article in the English textbooks from the first grade of junior high school to the second grade of high school by heart. His writing and expression in English were extremely fluent.

But speaking and reading comprehension have always been his weaknesses, and it just so happens that Oxent has an oral exam at the end of the semester. Tao Ning has a clear plan for his future: to excel.

So he would never allow the hard-earned funding to go to waste, as every point in the final exam was precious.

The foreign teacher was impressed by this somewhat naive but resilient student. He kindly told him in English, "Tao, our school has students from all over the world. You can make friends with them, preferably those from Europe and America. They can help you correct your pronunciation. Of course, you can also buy an English radio. I hope these two methods can help you."

Tao Ning took note, thanked the teacher, and began to think about how to make friends with foreign students. He was walking down the corridor with his books in his arms, and because he was distracted, he almost bumped into the person in front of him.

"Country bumpkin, don't you look at the road when you walk? You hurt me." A vicious and familiar voice sounded from above his head. Tao Ning raised his head. Song Yucong looked at him with his narrow and long phoenix eyes. With his hands in his pockets, he looked away awkwardly when he saw him looking at him.

"I didn't hit you."

Song Yucong's face turned sour instantly. "I said it was a collision, so you should find a way to compensate me."

Tao Ning wasn't in a good mood, but because he was her target, she had no choice but to ask patiently, "How should I compensate you?"

Song Yucong snorted, "Come with me."

It was lunchtime, and they had two hours to rest. Tao Ning followed him to the same top floor of the office building as last time. The office was spacious and bright. Song Yucong leaned back on the sofa, crossed his legs, and with a sullen look on his handsome face, he asked him, "Where were you this weekend?"

He felt that he would lose face by questioning this country bumpkin since he had called him countless times but couldn't get through, so he asked in a different way.

Tao Ning was stunned. She didn't expect him to ask this. She answered honestly, "I went to Xu Jun's house."

As soon as he finished speaking, the man in front of him stood up with a "swoosh", his expression changed from strange to ugly. His tall body rushed over, and his shadow cast a shadow over Tao Ning. He felt a little dangerous and took a step back, but this action seemed to anger the man in front of him again. His cold hand immediately grabbed Tao Ning's shoulder and asked through gritted teeth, "Did you go to bed?"

The man's eyes were as cold as ice, as if he would eat the person alive if he said something wrong.

His cold hands felt like iron hoops, and Tao Ning felt a little pain. He couldn't break free, and he felt confused. What was the problem with going to bed? Did they sleep together? Why did Song Yucong care about this?

Tao Ning shook her head truthfully, "No."

Xu Jun has mysophobia, so of course he wouldn't sleep in the same bed with him. Song Yucong was indeed very stupid, and the questions he asked were very strange.

Song Yucong's expression obviously relaxed. He snorted coldly, retracted his hand, crossed his arms and said, "If I find out that you slept with him, you're dead."

Tao Ning: “…”

Before he could think about it, someone knocked on the door, respectfully put down a pile of English books and left. Song Yucong sat back on the sofa and said sarcastically, "You dare to answer questions in public when your spoken English is so bad? You don't know your own limitations."

Although she didn't know where Song Yucong got the news, Tao Ning endured it for the sake of her health. However, she lowered her head and whispered, "It's none of your business."

The voice was very soft, but the man on the sofa still heard it. He said with a sour face: "You are now a country bumpkin funded by the Song family. If you embarrass yourself outside, you will embarrass the Song family and me. How come it is none of my business?"

Tao Ning frowned slightly: "I'm sorry, I will practice my spoken English."

Song Yucong coughed softly a few times, looked away, and suddenly said for no apparent reason: "I was born in London."

"oh."

The boy wore the tacky glasses that he despised so much, but he was very thin, with dazzlingly white skin and no flesh to gain. He stood there like an evergreen bamboo, with lowered brows and a pleasant look. However, wearing the custom-made school suit and uniform, he looked vaguely cold and aloof.

In Song Yucong's eyes, these people were just country bumpkins who were dumb and didn't understand what he was saying. He was furious and repeated, "I said I grew up in England."

Unexpectedly, the country bumpkin looked confused, raised his beautiful eyes, and said a little dully: "Oh, then you are very good."