Chapter 145: Extra Chapter: Answer Truthfully
Extra Chapter: Answer Truthfully
September, the start of the school year.
The dormitory was a four-person room, with bunk beds above and desks below—relatively spacious, all things considered.
After Wang Anquan finished climbing up and down to tidy up his things, he was already drenched in sweat, making his one thousand and twenty-fourth resolution to lose weight.
The second person to enter the dormitory was a blond, blue-eyed young man. As soon as he stepped inside, he greeted in flawless Mandarin, “Hey, bro.”
Wang Anquan was immediately puzzled and mustered his English skills to ask the foreign friend why he wasn’t staying in the international student dormitory.
“I have one-eighth Jewish ancestry. You know, I don’t want to breathe the same air as Germans in a room,” the other replied in Mandarin so impeccable it could rival a news anchor’s, instantly stunning Wang Anquan. “Besides, I want to Deep Learning Chinese, so I applied to switch dorms and classes.”
Wang Anquan stopped using English to communicate with him: “I think your Chinese doesn’t need any more learning.”
“No, no, no. My current Chinese level is just based on some book learning. I haven’t truly immersed myself in a Chinese environment,” the blond young man said. “I think my intonation is still stiff.”
Wang Anquan: “You know what? You could host the evening news right now.”
“I can’t be in news broadcast mode all the time. That’s actually a sign I’m not skilled enough,” the blond young man replied.
In just a few exchanges, Wang Anquan had already confirmed that his roommate possessed astonishing linguistic talent. He steadied his mindset—after all, in a school like this, all kinds of geniuses could appear. He was just an ordinary, humble student who had honestly taken the college entrance exam and gotten in. With a full score of 750, he had exhausted all his efforts but still only managed 690, failing to reach 700 or above.
—Who knew what kind of extraordinary beings the remaining two roommates would be.
Meanwhile, the blond young man’s gaze wandered uncertainly among the three remaining beds, seemingly caught in a dilemma of choice.
Just then, a soft knock came from the door. Wang Anquan turned to look, and his eyes widened slightly.
Leaning against the doorframe was a pretty kid in a white hoodie. Wang Anquan’s linguistic skills were limited, and he wasn’t quite sure how to describe the feeling—it was like someone accustomed to standard definition suddenly switching to high-definition mode. For no particular reason, the words “kid” came to Wang Anquan’s mind. In truth, the person by the door wasn’t short; in fact, he could even be considered tall among a crowd. Yet, there was a childlike quality about him, like a little rabbit just out of its burrow. Wang Anquan estimated his age to be no more than sixteen. His first thought was that this might be a future roommate’s family member, a younger brother or something. His second thought was that he might have encountered the legendary grade-skipping prodigy.
The kid smiled brightly at the blond young man. “Hey, bro, can we make a deal?”
The young man’s eyes lit up. “What deal?”
“Over there,” the kid pointed to the two beds connected on one side of the room. “Can you leave both of these for me? You can take the other side.”
The blond young man was already thoroughly charmed. “Of course, of course. Have I seen you somewhere before? I’m sure I’ve seen you.”
The kid just smiled with his arms crossed, saying nothing.
Wang Anquan: “?”
Are foreigners always this enthusiastic when making friends?
He asked, “You want to sleep in two beds all by yourself?”
“No, not really.” The child, who had been half-hidden behind the door, shifted further out, and with his right hand, he actually pulled out another person.
Wang Anquan was startled once again.
That person stood half a head taller than the child, wearing a black sweatshirt of the same style. Because both were strikingly beautiful and dressed identically, at first glance they looked like twin brothers. Wang Anquan squinted, trying to get a better look, but unexpectedly met a pair of cool, distant eyes. In that instant, he felt a sense of emptiness and managed to distinguish between the two.
The child in white chuckled. “We’ve slept in the same bed since we were little. We might not be able to sleep apart, so we wanted to stay close.”
Wang Anquan suddenly grasped the underlying truth. “So you’re brothers.”
“No,” the child replied with a natural nasal tone, almost like a whine. “Good friends.”
Wang Anquan nodded thoughtfully. “Then you two must be really close.”
He glanced around at his three roommates, and a guess gradually formed in his mind. The foreign friend had extraordinary language skills, probably here to study humanities. As for the two who had just arrived—they were far too good-looking, likely admitted on their looks to study something in the arts. Thinking this, he felt a surge of delight—sure enough, I’m the only one here with real substance as a science student.
Just as he was basking in self-satisfaction, he suddenly heard the foreign youth, Louis, say, “I remember now! I’ve seen you two before!”
The child said, “I’ve seen you too.”
“I saw you both at the IMO. You got a gold medal, and he got a silver, right? But actually, I think I saw you even earlier, when I visited the training camp.”
The child replied, “You also made it to the IMO finals, but you were just there for the experience. You’re into computer competitions—last year’s gold medalist.”
The foreign youth said, “Yeah. Wow, you two are insane. I heard you only left one question blank, and he left two.”
“That was just for fun,” the child said lazily, crossing his arms. “I wanted him to get the gold, so I left one blank, but he went even further and left two for me.”
As he said this, he glanced at the other person with a smile. That person looked back at him. Strangely enough, standing there expressionless, he resembled a beauty carved from ice and snow—an inorganic being. But when he looked at the child, the corners of his eyes softened slightly, as if melting, gaining a touch of lively, earthly warmth.
Wang Anquan: “??”
What had he just heard??
What kind of strange creatures had infiltrated this place? Why were they talking about winning gold medals at the Olympics as if it were as easy as drinking water?
Fortunately, the three of them only briefly caught up. Following normal logic, as roommates, they moved on to exchanging names.
As the first to arrive in the dorm, Wang Anquan spoke first. “I’m Wang Anquan.”
The child in white brightened, a mischievous smile spreading across his face as he tilted his chin up. “What a coincidence. I’m Lin Suanfa.”
Then he tugged at the sleeve of the person beside him. “He shares my surname. He’s Lin Daima.”
Next, the blond youth pondered for a minute, looking up at the ceiling. “Zhao, Qian, Sun, Li, Zhou, Wu, Zheng, Wang… I’m Zhao Jiagou!”
Wang Anquan couldn’t shake the feeling that they were messing with him, but he couldn’t find any proof.
He also felt like something had been neatly arranged, but again, he couldn’t find any evidence. As a new student, he knew nothing about computers.
Many years later, someone asked Wang Anquan how he made the most important decision of his career. He answered truthfully, “That decision was made by my father when he named me.”
Zhao Jiagou had recently felt that his good friend and roommate, Wang Anquan, was acting a bit strange.
“Anquan,” he asked patiently during a class break, looking at his frowning friend, “what’s been going on with you lately?”
“You don’t seem very happy.”
“Have you run into some difficult problem?”
“Or is it a relationship issue?”
Under this barrage of questions, Anquan finally said, “Actually, you can help me think this through.”
Zhao Jiagou was delighted. “Tell me quickly.”
Wang Anquan then opened the school forum website. Zhao Jiagou didn’t understand until, after some maneuvering, Wang Anquan found a hidden section entrance. The name of this sub-forum was “Dong Xun.”
Zhao Jiagou raised an eyebrow.
Immediately, he saw a series of posts ending with exclamation marks.
“Report! Dong Xun went to the library together!!”
“Caught two stunningly beautiful backs at the dorm entrance!!”
“Am I seeing things? Any microscope sisters want to check if this is hand-holding??”
“Dong Xun is real! If it’s fake, I’ll fail ten finals! Photo evidence included!”
Zhao Jiagou adjusted his non-existent glasses on the bridge of his nose, his eyes gleaming with a strange light.
“This is outrageous,” Wang Anquan said.
“Yeah,” Zhao Jiagou agreed. “Outrageous. While we’re still two pitiful singl—”
Before he could finish, Wang Anquan continued with a furrowed brow, “Those two have recently become obsessed with studying algorithms together. They like skipping classes as a pair, staying out overnight, and even want to move out completely. This will only make these rumors worse.”
Zhao Jiagou sensed something off. “You’ve learned to use idioms. Good, but—”
He was interrupted again by Wang Anquan. “Their friendship is precious. If we let these rumors spread, they might feel awkward and drift apart. That’s the last thing I want to see.”
Zhao Jiagou: “?”
He couldn’t quite follow Wang Anquan’s train of thought. So he asked, “So what do you want to do?”
Wang Anquan: “They need to clarify their relationship in front of their classmates. These young girls nowadays have nothing but this kind of thing on their minds. I don’t think it’s good. I even joined one of their CP fan groups. Do you know what they’re swearing is true? That those two have definitely slept together. I have to drag them into that group and show them how their friendship is being twisted.”
Zhao Jiagou: “…”
In the end, he said nothing. The classroom was crowded with prying eyes, so he simply patted Wang Anquan’s shoulder three times and silently walked away. But at three in the morning that night, Wang Anquan was fast asleep, which greatly disappointed him.
Many years later, someone asked Zhao Jiagou what kind of person his friend Wang Anquan was. He answered truthfully, “He is a dense person.”
In this city, Old Man Huo was not considered a wealthy man. All he had was merely fifty properties. Compared to those tycoons with dozens of buildings, entire residential complexes, or tens of thousands of square meters of land, he was like a Yellow River carp encountering a giant Kun fish of the North Sea—utterly outmatched.
—But fortunately, he was an old man, an old man without much material pursuit, so he also lacked grand ambitions. Simply checking rooms, collecting rent, and vetting tenants’ character each day already brought Old Man Huo immense happiness. He was satisfied on a material level; what remained was the pursuit of longevity.
Through some housing rental transactions, Old Man Huo met Xiaoyaozi, the director of the Qingcheng Mountain scenic area. The two became close friends, delighting in daily discussions about health preservation techniques. One day, Xiaoyaozi told Old Man Huo that all things in the world arise from cause and effect, and one must plant many good causes to reap abundant good fruits in the future.
These words struck a chord with Old Man Huo. He felt he should do something he didn’t particularly want to do but was meaningful. And as luck would have it, that day he happened to inspect rooms at Chaoyang Community—where the tenants were four young men. They had no bad habits, never engaged in messy relationships, and were even quite handsome. The only regret was that they spent their days huddled together tapping away at computers, clearly without much future prospects. Old Man Huo suspected they had graduated from some technical school, so he dismissed the idea of introducing his granddaughter to any of them.
However, the four young men made a living repairing computers, which was quite tough. He heard they had started some kind of company and were facing financial difficulties. Combining his friend’s well-meaning advice, Old Man Huo decided to invest a hefty sum of 200,000 yuan in them—equivalent to one two-hundredth of his annual income.
The young men were overjoyed and rewarded him with a five percent stake in their company, calling him Grandpa Huo. Of course, Old Man Huo didn’t care about the five percent share in their small, struggling company. What pleased him was his own act of generosity; surely, he had planted enough good causes in this lifetime, and this year’s health check-up report would undoubtedly be perfectly normal.
Many years later, someone asked Huo Qingshan, the tycoon of the capital, what exactly drove him to have the foresight to invest in Galaxy, a company that seemed insignificant at the time.
Old Man Huo originally intended to answer truthfully but ended up polishing his response a bit: “Because of the wisdom, kindness, and benevolence of an elder.”