Chapter 33 From the Hundred Herb Garden... to the Three Flavors Study...

Chapter 33

Shen Yanzhou chuckled and pulled the person out. "Alright, it was dark last night, no one saw us."

"Really?" Yu Pan looked up to confirm.

"Really." Shen Yanzhou said with certainty, got out of bed, poured a glass of warm water and handed it to his lips, "Drink some water, it will make you feel better."

Yu Pan slowly sat up, propped herself up on the bed with her wrists, and drank most of a glass of water in small sips with Chen Yanzhou's hand. Her stomach felt much better afterward.

But the memory of sitting on the crossbar became clearer and clearer. He pursed his lips and muttered to himself, "Sitting like that... it seems like it was actually quite fun."

Upon hearing this, Shen Yanzhou raised an eyebrow and glanced at Yu Pan's still flushed face. "Does your head still hurt? Can you get up?"

"Huh?" Yu Pan didn't react for a moment, blinked, "It doesn't hurt much anymore, why are you getting up?"

"Didn't you say that would be fun?" Shen Yanzhou reached out and pinched his cheek. "I'll take you on one more time."

"Huh? Now...now?" Yu Pan was stunned.

"Yeah, the air's nice this morning, might as well get some fresh air," Shen Yanzhou said, getting up to change his clothes. "Looking at the scenery might make my head feel better."

Yu Pan's interest was piqued by his words, and she nodded in response, "Yes!"

After washing up, Shen Yanzhou greeted the old lady downstairs who was cooking porridge and said he would take Yu Pan out for a walk.

The old lady smiled and agreed, reminding them to come back early for breakfast.

It's still that same old 28-inch bicycle. Although it's secondhand, it's solidly built. It was submerged in water for two days last year and then sat idle for another year.

Before they went to Lanzhou, Shen Yanzhou simply gave the car a quick wash and applied some oil. When they returned, the car wasn't rusty anywhere, but it creaked when driven.

They didn't ride in crowded areas of town. Chen Yanzhou carried Yu Pan out of the town and walked along the muddy mountain road leading to the Baixi Fireworks Factory.

Occasionally, you'll encounter a few elderly people carrying baskets of vegetables to sell in town.

The fresh, cool air in the mountains did make Yu Pan's head feel much better.

They reached the bottom of a gentle slope. Chen Yanzhou stopped the car, braced it, looked at Yu Pan, and patted the front bumper: "Come on."

Yu Pan looked at the slender iron bar, then at Chen Yanzhou, and finally couldn't resist the temptation.

Shen Yanzhou stroked his waist and helped him sit down sideways.

The metal bar was a bit rough, but bearable, Yu Pan thought, when Shen Yanzhou's arm came around from behind and gripped the handlebars.

"Are you seated?"

Shen Yanzhou's voice came from above, and Yu Pan responded with an "Mm".

He wrapped one arm around Shen Yanzhou's waist and placed the other hand on the handlebars. This posture overlapped with fragments of his hazy memory from last night.

With a push of his feet, Shen Yanzhou's bicycle glided forward along the mountain road.

The speed was not fast. Yu Pan squinted slightly, feeling her body sway with the vehicle. Her back was against Chen Yanzhou's strong arm, and her side was against his warm chest.

The view was exceptionally wide because I was sitting in the front, and I could see the wildflowers and grasses by the roadside and the picturesque rolling mountains in the distance.

Completely different from the hazy feeling he had when he was drunk last night, he was now fully awake, immersing himself in this novel and intimate cycling experience.

"Is it fun?" Shen Yanzhou's voice, tinged with laughter, drifted into Yu Pan's ears along with the sound of the wind.

Yu Pan nodded vigorously, her hair brushing against Shen Yanzhou's chin. "So...fun!"

Shen Yanzhou chuckled, said nothing more, pedaled his bike, carrying the person in front of him, slowly climbed up a small earthen slope, and then slid down another path.

Yu Pan leaned against Shen Yanzhou's chest, looking at the ever-extending path, her mind gradually becoming empty.

After riding around for a while, Yu Pan got off the bike again when they were almost in town. He sat back on the back seat, hugging Chen Yanzhou's waist, and said with a hint of reluctance, "Brother... when we go back to Lanzhou, let's buy another bicycle, okay?"

“Okay,” Shen Yanzhou agreed without the slightest hesitation, “I’ll buy it when I get back.”

On the way back, we passed the town's junior high school, and from within its white walls came the energetic sound of students reading aloud.

"Some people say that the root of the Polygonum multiflorum has a human shape, and that eating it can make you immortal, so I often pull it up..."

The bicycle sped past quickly, and the sound faded into the distance.

Shen Yanzhou suddenly heard Yu Pan behind him quietly and intermittently repeating the text that the students had just read.

“We don’t go into the tall grass, because…legend has it that there’s a very large red-banded snake in the garden…”

His reading wasn't fluent, with brief pauses, and his voice was soft, which made Shen Yanzhou pause slightly. "Panpan, what's the title of this article?"

"From the Hundred Herb Garden... to the Three Flavors Study!" Yu Pan's tone held a hint of pride. "I learned it in the first year of junior high! Brother, look, I still remember it!"

Shen Yanzhou felt a jolt in his heart, as if tickled by a feather. He slowed down the car. "Hmm, Panpan actually remembers it so clearly. I've almost forgotten everything..."

Yu Pan's smile deepened, filled with the joy of being recognized. "I still remember, the Ballad of Mulan, brother, I'll recite it for you—"

"Chirp, chirp, chirp, Mulan weaves at her door; no sound of the shuttle is heard, only the sighs of the woman..."

-

After breakfast, Shen Yanzhou told the old lady that he was going to a friend's place and wouldn't be back for lunch.

So he took Yu Pan to Tan Ming's house, intending to continue discussing what they had talked about yesterday.

When they arrived at Tan Ming's courtyard, they found the gate ajar and could be faintly heard talking inside.

As soon as they pushed open the courtyard gate, they saw Tan Ming, dressed neatly, coming out of the house, looking like he was about to go out.

"Shen Yanzhou?" Tan Ming smiled when he saw them. "I was just saying I was going to look for you, and here you are! What a coincidence!"

He strode over and helped push the bicycle inside. "Come in and sit down!"

Yu Pan and Shen Yanzhou followed him into the courtyard.

In the courtyard, Tan Bai was slumped over the stone table, looking dejected. Paper and pen were spread out in front of him, and he looked bitter and resentful, seemingly deep in thought.

When Tan Bai saw them come in, especially when he saw Yu Pan, his expression became awkward. He subconsciously tried to hide the paper in his hand, but then felt that it would only make things more obvious. His movements froze halfway through, and finally he turned his head away in annoyance.

"Continue with yesterday's events?" Shen Yanzhou asked, taking the rough porcelain teacup from Tan Ming.

“Sigh, that’s right.” Tan Ming sighed and sat down opposite Shen Yanzhou. “I definitely want to go to Lanzhou, but look at my brother… he’s always causing trouble. If I leave him here alone, with no one to take care of him, he’ll cause a huge mess…”

Shen Yanzhou glanced at Tan Bai, who was bruised and battered, scribbling on the table, and slacking off. He agreed. At this age, if he wasn't properly supervised, things could easily go wrong.

Just as Shen Yanzhou was about to speak, he was interrupted by a loud but jarring noise from the side.

Tan Bai became increasingly agitated as he wrote, and in a fit of desperation, he slammed his pen down with a loud "crack," muttering a curse under his breath.

The commotion drew the attention of all three of them.

Tan Ming was used to his brother's bad temper, so he said "ignore him" and continued chatting with Shen Yanzhou.

Yu Pan sat quietly on the small stool next to Shen Yanzhou. Her gaze had only casually swept across the stone table, but it was drawn to the handwriting on the paper in Tan Bai's hand.

He was watching intently, his brows furrowing unconsciously, a hint of...trouble in his eyes?

Yu Pan tilted her head slightly, staring intently, completely unaware of how direct and obvious her gaze was.

Tan Mingzheng was furious because of writing this ridiculous guarantee, and he found everything extremely displeasing.

Looking up, she met Yu Pan's direct, research-oriented gaze.

The gaze fell upon... precisely on that damned guarantee he had made!

Tan Bai felt like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, a nameless anger mixed with embarrassment and annoyance rising to his head.

"Hey!" Tan Bai jumped up and yelled at Yu Pan irritably, "What are you looking at? What's so interesting?!"

His tone was so aggressive, it was as if he was about to pounce on her at any moment.

Yu Pan was startled by his sudden outburst and quickly lowered her head, shrinking closer to Shen Yanzhou.

Shen Yanzhou frowned slightly, about to speak.

"What's all the noise about!" Tan Ming yelled at Tan Bai first, then walked over irritably. "What are you dawdling about here for? You've been writing a guarantee all morning! Let me see it!"

After he finished speaking, he snatched the crumpled manuscript papers from Tan Bai's reluctant hand without saying a word.

Tan Ming frowned, his gaze sweeping over the guarantee. After reading just two lines, his expression changed from impatience to disbelief, and then his anger flared up.

"Guarantee the correctness of the document? Guarantee what correctness?" Tan Ming's voice suddenly rose, and he pointed at the words on the paper and roared at Tan Bai, "And this, 'Respect the teacher,' two out of five characters are wrong!? Tan Bai, you really are a genius!"

"Are you a primary school student, Tan Bai? All those years of schooling have gone to waste! So many spelling mistakes, and you still have the nerve to throw your pen? And your scrawled handwriting..."

Tan Bai's face turned bright red from his brother's scolding. He tried to argue back, but he was clearly in the wrong and could only pant heavily.

This was the first time Yu Pan had seen Tan Mingfa so angry, and he shrank back a little closer to Shen Yanzhou in fright. Shen Yanzhou patted him on the back.

Tan Ming had already cursed and complained, but in the end, he still had to face reality. He sighed heavily and said impatiently to Tan Bai, who was standing stubbornly to the side, "What are you still standing there for? Go inside and get the dictionary, and look up each word for me!"

Tan Bai's face was ashen, and he reluctantly hummed in agreement before walking into the house, his back view exuding intense frustration.

Tan Ming then turned around and forced a smile at Shen Yanzhou, "Look at my brother, if you leave him alone, he'll definitely fly to the sky..."

Yu Pan remained seated next to Shen Yanzhou, but her gaze involuntarily drifted to the crumpled paper lying on the ground.

He had good eyesight and saw a lot of what Tan Bai wrote on the table. Those typos lingered in his mind, and an almost obsessive instinct for the correctness of the text made him a little restless.

Yu Pan hesitated for a moment, and while Shen Yanzhou and Tan Ming were talking, she quietly stood up, went over to pick up the crumpled paper, and went into the house.

Shen Yanzhou noticed his movement and followed him for a moment. Tan Ming was about to say something when Shen Yanzhou stopped him with a shushing gesture.

Yu Pan tiptoed to the door and saw Tan Bai with his back to the door, slumped over the dining table with a dictionary spread out on it, muttering something impatiently.

He stood at the door, hesitant to go in. After a long pause, he finally spoke in a very soft voice, "Um..."

Tan Bai was already annoyed when he heard the voice and turned around abruptly. Seeing that it was Yu Pan, his brows immediately furrowed, and his tone remained sharp: "What are you doing here? Are you here to laugh at me?"

After saying that, he subconsciously used his arm to block the paper on the table.

Yu Pan quickly waved her hands, her voice even softer, "No... I didn't mean to stare, I'm sorry!"

Tan Bai was stunned for a moment, not expecting this person to apologize so quickly. His anger froze on his face. After a moment, he turned his head somewhat awkwardly and said vaguely, "Okay, I know."

After saying that, he picked up his pen again and struggled with the dictionary and the guarantee. After a while, Tan Bai irritably threw down his pen again, turned around, and said impatiently, "Why aren't you leaving yet?"

Yu Pan raised the hand holding the crumpled paper and whispered, "Could you... first correct the typos on this?"

Fearing that Tan Bai would get even angrier, Yu Pan hurriedly and stammered, "I was just not used to it and misread the words. I didn't mean that you couldn't read."

Tan Bai: "..."

A subtle silence fell over the room.

Tan Bai felt the veins on his temples throbbing, and he was about to yell, "None of your business!"

But when he met Yu Pan's clear and innocent eyes, the words suddenly got stuck in his throat.

Seeing his increasingly grim expression, Yu Pan subconsciously took a small step back. "It's just... a dozen or so words, very... very quick."

A dozen or so words? Very quickly?

Tan Bai glared at him, his chest heaving twice. Finally, he took a deep breath, walked over, snatched the crumpled paper, and said irritably, "...I know! Stop nagging!"

After saying that, he returned to the table, sat heavily back on the stool, roughly opened the dictionary, and began to look for words with extreme impatience.

Yu Pan breathed a slight sigh of relief when she saw that although his attitude wasn't very good, he had at least started looking up words in the dictionary and correcting them.

He didn't leave, nor did he get any closer. He just stood diagonally behind Tan Bai, watching Tan Bai struggle with the dictionary.

After a while, Tan Bai got stuck on a certain word again, clicked his tongue in frustration, pushed the dictionary further away, and scratched his hair vigorously.

Yu Pan hesitated for a moment, then whispered a hint: "The character '承' has three horizontal strokes, not two."

Tan Bai paused, looked up and glared at him.

Yu Pan immediately pursed her lips, lowered her eyes, and dared not say another word.

Tan Bai glared at him for a few seconds, but surprisingly didn't get angry. Instead, he looked at his 'guarantee certificate' with a strange expression, found the character '承' (chéng), and just as Yu Pan had said, he had only written two horizontal strokes.

He pursed his lips, opened the dictionary, found the page with the character "承", checked the words with the character, confirmed that he had written it wrong, and then silently corrected the character.

After making the changes, Tan Bai mumbled again, "...meddlesome."

Yu Pan heard him, but seeing that he had corrected himself, her eyes curved slightly, and she didn't say anything more.

In the time that followed, a strange pattern developed between Yu Pan and Tan Bai—

Tan Bai held his breath and struggled with the guarantee and the dictionary. Occasionally, when he encountered an uncertain word or a misspelled word, he would impatiently make a noise.

Yu Pan stood to the side, like a human error correction machine. When Tan Bai stumbled or misspelled a word, she would quietly point out the radical or structure.

Tan Bai would glare at him most of the time, but in the end he would still awkwardly do as he was told to check and correct.

The two communicated almost entirely through eye contact, interjections, and short phrases, which wasn't very efficient, but the number of typos on the crumpled "guarantee certificate" did decrease one by one.

...

Outside, Shen Yanzhou and Tan Ming were actually keeping an eye on what was happening inside.

Tan Ming was initially worried that Tan Bai might bully Yu Pan, so he wanted to go and check on him, but Shen Yanzhou stopped him.

After a while, no more arguing or fighting came from inside the house. Tan Ming became a little uneasy, wondering if something else had happened. In the end, he couldn't help but pull Shen Yanzhou and quietly walk to the door of the main room.

However, what Tan Ming saw was not the scene he had expected.

Tan Bai was still sitting at the table writing a guarantee, but he no longer seemed as angry as he had been when he entered the room. He was now holding a pen and scribbling on the paper.

Yu Pan stood not too far from him, slightly bent over, pointed to the words on the paper, and said seriously, "This '已' has a stroke that sticks out. The '己' in '自己' (yǐ zì) doesn't stick out. This is the '已' in '已经' (yǐ jīng).

Tan Bai glanced at the hand in the direction of his finger, his brows furrowing as usual, his expression still impatient, but he still erased the misspelled character and wrote the correct one on top of it.

When Tan Ming saw this, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. His brother, who was so easily angered, had actually had someone teach him to correct his typos!?

Although his face still looked as sour as if someone owed him eight hundred dollars...

Seeing this, Shen Yanzhou felt a slight stirring in his heart. He turned to Tan Ming, who was standing beside him in astonishment, and said, "Since you're worried about leaving your brother here alone, why don't you just bring him with you to Lanzhou? I'll figure out how to handle things at school."

Upon hearing this, Tan Ming snapped out of his daze and his gaze returned to the two seemingly incompatible people who were now surprisingly getting along harmoniously.

He quickly calculated in his mind, looking at Tan Bai's profile as he studied quietly, a rare sight for him, and then thinking about what Shen Yanzhou had told him...

It seems... it's not entirely impossible?

-----------------------

Author's Note: Hmm, Panpan is starting to make friends! [cat emoji][cat emoji][cat emoji][cat emoji][cat emoji]

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Manually annotated—"From the Hundred-Herb Garden to the Three-Flavor Study" and "The Ballad of Mulan"