Chapter 32 – A Sudden Earthquake.

“What is this?” Lang Jing Feng was restless, and suddenly felt something was not quite right. His restlessness was only slightly reduced, when he asked vigilantly, “It’s not “Compilation of 5 years of college entrance examination papers and 3 years of simulation test papers”1, right?”

Bai Ruan was walking towards the study room, and he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry after hearing those words. “How is that possible?”

Lang Jing Feng immediately felt relieved when he heard this determined tone, and said with a smile in his eyes, “Then I’ll like anything you give me.”

Unexpectedly, as soon as his voice fell, Bai Ruan’s words immediately came. “You haven’t got a solid foundation. It’s not suitable for you to blindly attempt a lot of questions.”

The smile in Lang Jing Feng’s eyes instantly froze. “…”

“This.” Bai Ruan pulled out two flat folders from the bookshelf and handed them to Lang Jing Feng, whose face was as black as carbon. “I’ve seen your mid-term exam papers and the quizzes of each subject in the past half month. Except for the comprehension questions in Chinese and English, I have sorted out all your wrong questions and compiled the important parts…”

Bai Ruan’s effort was limited, but the relevant important key points were not difficult to organise. This was due to Lang Jing Feng taking notes next to the corresponding topics according to Bai Ruan’s requirements when the teachers were going through the papers. Bai Ruan would then organise according to Lang Jing Feng’s notes, thus not consuming too much of his time.

Lang Jing Feng took the two folders in an annoyed yet amused manner. His slender and strong fingers almost crushed the fragile plastic shell of the paper clip.

“In the blue folder are the wrong questions I’d copied, and the important key points corresponding to each question are on the back of the paper,” Bai Ruan explained, “In the green folder, there are some other similar types of wrong questions that I’ve found. This green folder can be used to test yourself to see if you really know how to do it, or if you encountered changing the soup without changing the medicine2, it won’t work.”

“You’re really good,” Lang Jing Feng glared at Bai Ruan with love and hatred. His face looked a little scary, but the corners of his mouth were filled with a smile that couldn’t be hidden. He had no intention of being successfully persuaded and was just lazy. He happily teased Bai Ruan, “Teacher Bai, we are not even humans, can’t we just break the rigid rules? If two rabbits look at each other in the old forest deep in the mountains, they would have already given birth to several litters. Currently, I have no intention to progress to that point, but aside from studying, is there really nothing else between us?”

Bai Ruan showed no resistance to Lang Jing Feng’s feigning irritation but couldn’t hide his smile. Realising that the curvature of his smile had increased a little, Bai Ruan hurriedly turned away his eyes and said blankly, “Between teacher and student, there shouldn’t be anything besides studying… We have all worked so hard to cultivate to be human, and to still be the same as animals, isn’t that all for nothing? Redo these questions that you did wrong today. This could be considered as you celebrating my birthday.”

“I…fucking…” Lang Jing Feng’s swearing was halfway through. Afraid that Bai Ruan would be uncomfortable, he stopped his sentence, threw the two folders on the desk, gritted his teeth and said, “I’ll do it later. Go and eat the cake first.”

Bai Ruan also knew that this wave of operations owed him a beating and a scolding. If Lang Jing Feng was a friend and one of his peers, Bai Ruan would certainly not be so incomprehensible. But at the moment the identities of the two were clearly displayed. In any case, Bai Ruan believed in the two bottom lines that he would not let go of, love before the college entrance examination and not affecting Lang Jing Feng’s study must be upheld. Otherwise, he would be deeply self-absorbed and unable to extricate himself.

As for after the college entrance examination, if Lang Jing Feng still…

Then…

Bai Ruan bit his lower lip hard, and used the pain to dispel his many thoughts. He followed Lang Jing Feng to the living room and continued talking, “Every student in the class has this kind of a folder full of their wrong questions. I’ll sort it out for you. In the future, remember to organise and summarise them by yourself, especially the wrong questions in the examination papers and quizzes. These are the most important. Whether you know them or not will be revealed in the examinations…”

Lang Jing Feng picked up the carrot sticks on a cake, stuffed it into Bai Ruan’s mouth, and smiled softly. “Can carrots block your little mouth? If they can’t block, how about I change to something else?”

Bai Ruan silently and stubbornly munched on the carrot, and said nothing.

After quickly finishing one, Bai Ruan took out another one, licking his lips greedily, and said, “It’s so delicious. It tastes stronger than the one bought in the supermarket.” After a pause, out of consideration of social etiquette, Bai Ruan took the carrot stick and held it in front of Lang Jing Feng and asked in a low voice, “Do you want one?”

“It’s okay.” Lang Jing Feng chuckled. “This is what my aunty planted in the yard. It is absolutely green… I can bring it to you often, if you like them.”

“No need.” Bai Ruan waved his hand anxiously, “You eat it yourself.”

“We can’t finish it at all.” Lang Jing Feng replied, “Auntie is planting for fun, and she loves growing things as she gets older.”

Bai Ruan split every vegetable in the vegetable cake into smaller sizes and went to the kitchen contentedly to fetch a few food bowls used by the bunnies. The bunnies were still too small. If they ate too many vegetables, their stomachs would easily become upset. Bai Ruan just gave them a bit of everything so as to share the cake with the younger brothers and sisters.

After eating the cake with Bai Ruan, Lang Jing Feng reluctantly went into the study to practice the questions.

Bai Ruan remembered that wolves could eat some fruits. So he went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and wanted to wash some strawberries for Lang Jing Feng.

He stretched his hand to the fresh-keeping box containing the strawberries. Before he could touch it, without any warning, several bottles of chilled birch juice suddenly fell into his hands. A roar that resounded like an ancient giant rushed up from deep within the heart of the earth.

—An earthquake!

In the past, Bai Ruan was able to survive by constantly being on a run in the mountains and forests. He reacted extremely quickly to danger. He leaped out of the kitchen in two steps and swept through the row of cages by the wall like a whirlwind. The action of unlocking and opening the door was so fast that one could barely see it with the naked eye. When he rushed to the entrance of the study to meet Lang Jing Feng, the several rabbit cages in the living room were empty, and more than two dozen baby bunnies converging into a fluffy stream had already rushed to the door.

Lang Jing Feng was holding a mahogany box with exquisite workmanship, and Bai Ruan shouted as soon as he saw it, “Put it down! Don’t take anything!”

Lang Jing Feng also twitched his neck and shouted, “There are ancient books inside!”

Bai Ruan didn’t have the time to fight with him and violently opened the door. The neighbours on the left and right of the corridor were screaming and yelling for their lives. Bai Ruan and Lang Jing Feng ran out and shouted at the baby bunnies, “Take the stairs. Line up in a row and don’t get in the way!”

The bunnies with spiritual sense could understand what Bai Ruan meant, and they automatically acted as shepherd rabbits and consciously commanded the babies who were not spiritually aware to line up and run next to the steps to avoid being trampled on. At this time, the vibration ceased temporarily, but no one knew if there would be more severe ones in the future, so the masses were in a very unstable mood. They all rushed towards the escape route.

Bai Ruan ran ahead while Lang Jing Feng followed closely. Bai Ruan quickly glanced back at each floor to confirm if Lang Jing Feng was following or not. Upon seeing the entrance of the building and that the second wave of the earthquake never came, Bai Ruan calmed down and shouted in the midst of the noisy background, “Put it down if you can’t carry it!”

“I’m not putting it down!” Lang Jing Feng shouted back.

The two rushed out of the apartment with the turbulent crowds and ran all the way to a small open square in front of the apartment. Bai Ruan circled two fingers and put them in his mouth to make a loud whistle. The bunnies who escaped the apartment before them heard the sound and moved towards Bai Ruan from all directions. The neighborhood was like the area where PlayerUnknown’s Battleground3 players succeeded, and when people saw this spectacular and lovely scene, they laughed. The arena was filled with joyous laughter from the crowd.

“Looks like there aren’t any earthquakes anymore,” Lang Jing Feng put the mahogany box on the ground again. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have taken it. My hand is now numb.”

As he spoke, Lang Jing Feng opened his palm and showed Bai Ruan the fingers that had been marked red by the heavy bookcase. He took the opportunity to act like a coquettish dog and said, “Bouncy Brother, help me rub.”

“Told you to put it down, why were you not obedient?” Bai Ruan looked distressed, but he didn’t dwell, only taking Lang Jing Feng’s hand and kneading it for him.

“This box of books seemed important.” The little wolf cub was not convinced.

“These are the ancient Taoist books passed to me by my master. They are all the original copies.” Bai Ruan said with his eyes down.

Lang Jing Feng chuckled. “What did I say? Aren’t these important?”

Bai Ruan frowned. “They’re not as important as your safety. Be obedient when you encounter this kind of situation in the future.”

“…Fuck, are you flirting with me now?” Lang Jing Feng raised his eyebrows.

“How can this be called flirting?” Bai Ruan couldn’t laugh or cry as he continued to rub Lang Jing Feng’s fingers. “Books are non-living while people are alive. They are…”

“I don’t care,” Lang Jing Feng interrupted, holding Bai Ruan’s finger with his hand, and squeezing it ambiguously, “I’m touched.”

Bai Ruan silently loosened his hand. “…”

The mood of the crowd in the small square gradually stabilised. Bai Ruan counted the number of bunnies. Seeing that there weren’t any missing, he was relieved. After thinking for a moment, he was puzzled and said, “I think this earthquake is quite strange.”

Lang Jing Feng scratched his ears. “There wasn’t any movement before the earthquake. Six years ago, I felt it before an earthquake happened.”

Animals were much more sensitive to earthquakes than humans. Infrasound waves and small foreshocks allowed many animals to predict earthquakes before they occurred.

“My exact thoughts.” Bai Ruan nodded.

Six years ago, their city suffered an earthquake. Before it happened, Bai Ruan had a hunch. He had coaxed a lot of students from the dormitory building downstairs and at that time, he had come to school because of this. Afterwards, he was regarded as a master of Taoism by his students, and some people asked him to predict the World Cup.

But this time, Bai Ruan didn’t feel anything before the earthquake. It was very abrupt and unscientific.

Bai Ruan was thinking about this, and suddenly he caught something out of his line of sight. He turned his head subconsciously and saw a pillar-like black smoke rising to the sky at the north of the city, which looked like the ancient film, Wolf’s Smoke4, that was used to report news on the battlefield.

“Is that on fire?” Bai Ruan didn’t think much, touched Lang Jing Feng with his elbow, and motioned for him to look north.

The author has something to say: 　　

Lang Jing Crazy: I want to plug Teacher Xiao Bai’s mouth with my big carrot. 

Bai Ruan Ruan: Are you not afraid that I might chop it off? :)

1

(abbreviation: 5.3) It is a book published by Capital Normal University Press and Education Science Press in June 2008. The author is Qu Yixian. This book mainly summarises the content of the college entrance examination propositions, analyzes the forms of college entrance examination propositions, and predicts the college entrance examination questions.

2

It means that although the name and appearance of the metaphor and the surface have changed, the actual content is still the same.

3

PUBG: BATTLEGROUND is a battle royale shooter that pits 100 players against each other in a struggle for survival. Gather supplies and outwit your opponents to become the last person standing.

4

Name of the film《狼烟》It is a period anti-Japanese drama produced by Hairun Film and Television, directed by Sun Xiaoguang, starring Lian Yiming, Yang Ruoxi, Wang Xin, Wang Ke and others. The play tells the story of a group of ethnic minorities in western Hubei, under the guidance of the Red Army, transformed from a life-and-death confrontation to helping each other until the suspicion was released, and they finally joined the Communist Party and jointly smashed the enemy’s conspiracy of aggression.