Chapter 18 I Bet You Won't Pass the Exam

Upon hearing that his mother was going to find the Master, Jiang Yejun's face was full of resistance.

"Mother, the teacher might not be here. He won't be back until tonight. You should go home first."

“Then I’ll wait for him to come back. Anyway, I have a niece who lives nearby, so I can sleep at her house tonight.”

Jiang Yejun lowered his head, not daring to look Song Chunxue in the eye.

"Jiang Yejun, your aunt brought you to school. I really envy you."

Just then, her roommate returned and greeted Song Chunxue, saying, "Hello, Aunt Song."

"You're back too. You must have been traveling for a long time."

"No, my home is very close to here, it only takes 15 minutes to get there."

Song Chunxue chatted with him for a few minutes, ignoring Jiang Yejun's urging her to leave.

"Is our little Jun usually well-behaved? Does she talk back to the teacher? Does she attend class on time?"

She suddenly asked a question, and the person casually replied, "He's quite well-behaved, it's just that sometimes... he's always in class and doesn't go out to play with his classmates."

Receiving a subtle hint from Jiang Yejun, the man quickly changed his tune, as if to say something rather obvious.

"I'll go look for your teacher. Has he returned yet?"

Jiang Yejun frantically gave the man meaningful glances, and Song Chunxue stood up to block their view.

"Just say it. Anyway, I'm going to meet your teacher today. My son, Xiaojun, is the youngest and he's been spoiled. I'm worried that he won't study hard at school and that it will ruin his future."

As she spoke, Song Chunxue sighed, "I have four sons in total, but his third brother is the least educated. He's still herding sheep. If Xiaojun doesn't like to study, I'll have his third brother do it."

Jiang Yejun immediately lowered his head and stopped talking, his face stern and he looked very unconvinced.

“I’ll take you there, Auntie. The teacher lives in the house above the school.”

"Okay, then I'll trouble you. I'll treat you to candy later."

The boy, around fourteen years old, was a little shy. He had a small mole on his round face, right inside his eyebrow.

Just like the third child.

But this young man had even better eyebrows, red lips and white teeth, and his shoes had patches but were very clean.

The fact that he could ignore Jiang Yejun's hints and bring her to find the Master shows that he is quite opinionated and kind.

"May I have your name?"

"Auntie, my name is Yao Wang."

He scratched the back of his head, then led her up the slope to a flat area above the school.

There are mud-brick houses that were built just a few years ago in the field, and the open space in front of them has not been properly tamped down, leaving pits and bumps after rain.

The moment Song Chunxue arrived at the Confucius Temple, she suddenly remembered the name Yao Wang.

He will become a teacher in the future, and he has also taught the children of the three children.

Song Chunxue couldn't help but raise her hand and pat his head. "Good boy, study hard, you will definitely be successful in the future."

"Thank you, ma'am, I appreciate your kind words." Yao Wang smiled shyly and pointed to the doorway of the Master's room. "Our Master is inside."

"Okay, you can go back now."

Half an hour later, Song Chunxue came out of the teacher's room, her hands trembling with anger.

Well, I didn't know until I asked, and what I found out was quite surprising.

Jiang Yejun not only did not study properly at school, but also spent all his time with those troublemakers, was competitive and only thought about playing. He also often skipped school to go out to eat.

The school was near a market, and the teacher said that almost all the shopkeepers on the street knew Jiang Yejun, as he always hung out with that group of good-for-nothing hooligans.

Although Song Chunxue was not surprised by the result, she was still furious when she heard it with her own ears.

She felt sorry for herself, for her third child, and for her fourth child's lack of ambition.

Now that we know the true nature of the fourth brother, we can't let him continue to act recklessly.

She walked down the long slope to the school gate and saw the fourth brother waiting for her in a brand-new long gown.

From a distance, he kept his head down and would steal glances at her from time to time, not daring to face her.

Song Chunxue remembered that the fourth child also studied until he was eighteen, but he failed the exam and had to give up.

Later, he heard that his second brother had gone to the northern frontier with the army. He learned that gold could be found there, so he went there and stayed for nine years.

The fact that the fourth child only took the exam once shows that he has no confidence in taking it again in three years.

Thinking about this, Song Chunxue felt much calmer.

That's fine. Children and grandchildren have their own destinies, and she won't interfere too much.

Even knowing she wouldn't amount to anything, she wouldn't let him drop out of school and go home.

If that were the case, it would only earn her the fourth son's resentment for the rest of his life, and would be meaningless otherwise.

However, after paying for several more years of tuition, their mother-son relationship faded.

What could she possibly be reluctant to part with?

She just didn't want to see him waste his tuition fees and the best years of his life.

She slowly approached Jiang Yejun and calmly asked, "Fourth brother, do you know you were wrong?"

People were coming and going at the school gate, and other students were also returning to the school from their homes one after another.

This should have been their only path to success, but many gave up halfway through.

"Mother, I know I was wrong." The fourth son lowered his head and apologized with a sob in his voice. "Mother, please give me another chance. I will not skip school with them again."

Song Chunxue looked down at him and remained silent for a long time.

The fourth child, growing impatient, looked up and asked, "Mother, are you taking me back?"

His eyes were glistening with tears, and his nose was red.

“Xiao Jun, even if you throw a tantrum here every day, just like a hooligan on the street, I can’t control you, because I can’t watch you every moment, and I can’t change your nature.”

"But I'm disappointed."

Song Chunxue turned to the side, watching the setting sun slowly sink below the hills in the distance, the wind blowing on her face gradually getting cooler.

My heart felt even colder.

"I'm only giving you this one chance. I'll come back to see the Master next month. I'll come to see the Master every month thereafter. If you're still like this after three months, I'll abandon you."

She looked at Jiang Yejun expressionlessly, "I just suddenly feel sorry for your third brother. You don't know, he secretly reads the books you've read at night, and after we've all fallen asleep, he reads them by the dim light of an oil lamp."

“When he was herding sheep during the day, he would sometimes forget about the flock and lie on the earthen slope, so engrossed in watching them that the sheep would run off to eat other people’s grain, and he would be yelled at and cursed at from a distance.”

The fourth brother kept his head down and didn't say anything, picking at his fingernails without speaking.

"Put yourself in his shoes. If I had let your third brother go to school while you stayed home herding sheep, and then saw him doing nothing at school and using all sorts of excuses to spend the money he earned through hard work, how would you feel?"

The fourth brother kicked a clod of dirt at his feet, not taking it seriously.

Song Chunxue sighed, "Let's not talk about that. If I told you now that you won't pass the imperial examination and will just spend the next three years wasting your time spending money, would you accept that?"

Suddenly, the fourth brother looked up at Song Chunxue.

Song Chunxue found it somewhat amusing, and said in a slightly annoyed tone, "What, you don't study hard, yet you think you can easily pass the imperial examination and become a scholar? Do you think it's that easy to pass the imperial examination?"

The fourth child was somewhat unconvinced. "Who said that? How can you say I'm bound to fail when I haven't even taken the test?"

Song Chunxue smiled faintly, "If you can pass the imperial examination and become a scholar, and get rid of these bad habits, I will let you do whatever you want in the future."

"But I bet you won't pass the exam, Jiang Yejun, you don't have the ability."