Opening his eyes and looking at the old-fashioned light on the ceiling, Ning Xiaobei smiled faintly.
Just now in the real world, following his earlier guess, he had opened the diary with the feather inside and read a little. Then he felt a warm surge from his heart. Sure enough, when he opened his eyes again, he was once more primary school Xiaobei.
In the classroom, Fan Xia sat with his head down, sullen, drowning in guilt.
Earlier in PE class, he had imitated Fan Zhiyi, the captain of the Shenhua football team, and taken a powerful shot at the goal, but it went straight to Ning Xiaobei’s face, knocking him out cold.
The kicker? Ning Xiaobei was supposed to be his teammate in that game.
Seeing the PE teacher carry the unconscious Ning Xiaobei to the nurse’s office, Fan Xia was so scared he started crying on the spot.
Though he hated to admit it, Ning Xiaobei was clearly his boss now.
As a mere underling, he had injured the boss. According to movie logic, he should face family punishment, even if he didn’t atone with his life, he still wouldn’t escape the serious beating.
Even though their gang was small right now, just the two of them, in the underworld, the principle of loyalty comes first. If the boss doesn’t punish, the subordinate still has to punish himself.
So when Ning Xiaobei, with a bandage on his nose, walked back to the classroom from the nurse’s office, he saw little Fan Xia holding a craft knife, looking seriously at the strange drawings on Ning Xiaobei’s left arm.
“Really, I can’t believe it…tsk tsk.”
Ning Xiaobei looked at little Fan Xia’s silly, dopey expression and thought back to the image of the tall, heroic, and handsome big Officer Fan he had seen not long ago. He really couldn’t understand how this goofy little brat had turned into such a completely different person as he grew up.
“Boss, you’re okay, right?”
Three cuts and six holes1“三刀六洞 (three cuts and six holes)” hyperbolic way of saying someone would get severely beaten for defying a superior. 三刀 = three slashes (usually with a blade) 六洞 = six punctures (more injuries)… just thinking about it hurt.
Better to let it go.
Fan Xia hesitated for a moment, then put the craft knife back in his pencil box. He decided not to poke himself after all. Deep down, he knew he owed the boss once, and could just repay it double later.
“Fan Xia, you have to speak Mandarin at school. No Shanghainese allowed, or the teacher will dock points.”
Before Ning Xiaobei could respond, the vice-class monitor, Ding Zheyang, sitting in the row in front of them, turned around and said coldly to Fan Xia.
Starting this semester, the school had strictly promoted Mandarin: anywhere on campus, neither teachers nor students could speak Shanghainese. If even a single phrase slipped out, teachers would dock bonus points, and students would lose behavior points. The tension spread fast, like a sudden alarm.
“Tch, if you don’t snitch, how would the teacher know? Brown-noser! All you do is tell tales.”
Hearing this, Fan Xia’s stubborn streak flared up. He shot back at Ding Zheyang.
Little Ding didn’t respond, just pushed up his black-rimmed glasses, turned back around, opened his book, and pretended to read seriously.
“This four-eyes is tricky,” Fan Xia whispered to Ning Xiaobei.
“He can’t beat you on tests, the teachers like you, not him. He hates you so much, so he even looks down on me too.”
Though Fan Xia looked like a tough streetwise kid, inside he was quite pure. Now he felt that he and Ning Xiaobei were two sides of the same coin. To quote a radio storyteller, they were like “Jiao does not leave Meng, Meng does not leave Jiao2 This phrase “焦不离孟，孟不离焦” comes from Chinese classical literature, specifically the Zuo Zhuan (左传). It originally referred to two types of millet grains, Jiao and Meng, that are always grown together or inseparable”.
Ding Zheyang making things difficult for him was really just making things hard for his boss, Ning Xiaobei.
He heard from the other classmates that Ning Xiaobei and Ding Zheyang usually took turns being first and second in class.
Since the start of the school term, Ning Xiaobei had scored full marks on every test and had never slipped from first place again. Ding Zheyang tried every trick he could think of to catch up, but he couldn’t, which frustrated him to no end. Normally, reading too much already made him a bit obsessive, but now it was just…
Fan Xia scratched his chin and finally found the word. He was obsessively fixated. Yes! That’s exactly how the villains in martial arts novels behave.
“Don’t talk nonsense. We’re all classmates. I think it’s you who wants to bully him,” Ning Xiaobei shook his head, packed his bag, and got ready to go home.
Ding Zheyang, it seemed, had probably spent more time interacting with him than anyone else in the class. According to the original timeline, after elementary school graduation, they would both go to No.1 High School and experience all of middle school together.
Ning Xiaobei vaguely remembered that they kept in touch all the way through university. Only a few years later, as work got busy, they gradually lost contact.
In his eyes, Ding Zheyang was a bookworm, a bit silly, but he meant no harm.
“Nonsense! You don’t let me bully anyone, so how would I dare provoke him?” Fan Xia followed behind Ning Xiaobei, whining a little.
His boss didn’t have any of the usual boss style at all. Every day was just school, meals, and bathing. Unlike other big brothers in other classes who roamed the streets with their followers, eating and drinking, looking super cool.
Still, the book stall Ning Xiaobei found was really good. There were lots of martial arts novels he hadn’t read before.
Besides Jin Yong and Gu Long, there were so many other authors writing martial arts stories, Wen Rui’an, Wolong Sheng, Liang Yusheng, Huan Zhu Lou Zhu… names he had never even heard of.
At the time, extracurricular reading wasn’t really encouraged, especially works criticized as the “Four Vulgarities31990s Shanghai cultural term criticizing popular culture seen as lowbrow: Jin Yong, Gu Long (martial arts novels), Qiong Yao (romance novels), and Jackie Chan (action movies)”— Jin Yong, Gu Long, Qiong Yao, and Jackie Chan— considered by teachers as a cultural plague. Parents guarded against them as strictly as they later would computer games and mobile games.
But Ning Xiaobei’s grades spoke for themselves, and Ning Jianguo naturally let him read whatever he liked.
As for Fan Xia, no one bothered with him at all. Uncle Zhao Jingwen was a young man, unmarried, and managing his own life well was enough. Fan Xia even had to compete to read the martial arts novels he brought home.
Ever since he got hooked on novels, Fan Xia had lost much of his interest in 《Young and Dangerous》 and stopped obsessing over Brother Haonan.
It turned out that reading novels was far more fun than watching TV. Every day he would lie in bed, watching the light filter through the thin pages, marveling at how these words could transform into vivid pictures and play like a movie in his mind.
But it was only from reading novels that he realized just how terrible his language skills were. He didn’t even recognize half the characters, couldn’t guess the meanings of idioms, and stumbled through every sentence. Ning Xiaobei had finished an entire series, while Fan Xia hadn’t even gotten through a single book.
To help him, Ning Xiaobei took him to Xinhua Bookstore to buy a 《Xinhua Dictionary》 and a 《Student Idiom Dictionary》, instructing him to read novels while constantly looking up words, learning on his own.
With this method, Fan Xia’s Chinese grades improved by leaps and bounds. In the last exam, he scored 85 points. Even his short essay earned the teacher’s praise.
The teacher said his writing was smooth, the word choice precise, and although the topic about helping an elderly woman cross the street was a bit old-fashioned, the improvement was obvious. It was far better than the last essay where he had written about giving a penny to a policeman.
Fan Xia felt a little embarrassed at the compliment.
Since starting elementary school, although he had never repeated a grade, his exam scores had always been low. Occasionally he’d hit 70 points, and the old teachers would even suspect him of cheating. Scoring in the 80s was practically unprecedented, truly a milestone.
Moreover, a few days ago, while reading Jin Yong’s 《The Legend of the Condor Heroes41957 wuxia novel》, there was a part he just couldn’t understand: the scene where Huang Rong and Yinggu, Zhou Botong’s old flame, play arithmetic games.
Terms like ⟬ Nine Palaces Diagram ⟭, ⟬ Gui Guizi Divine Calculation ⟭, ⟬ Han Xin Counting Troops ⟭, and even ⟬ Seven Luminaries Nine Executive Tianzhu Pen Calculation⟭ left him completely bewildered.
After school, Fan Xia pulled the book out of his bag, found the passage, and pointed it out to Ning Xiaobei.
Ning Xiaobei leaned over, glanced at it, and laughed: “It was actually about square roots and least common multiples, just math concepts.”
“So, even if you want to understand martial arts novels, you also need to improve your math grades, got it?”
Ning Xiaobei patted his shoulder hard, watching Fan Xia gape like a fool.
Fan Xia stared blankly at the novel in his hands, then ground his teeth and said, “The teacher was right. Wuxia novels are dangerous!”
Ning Xiaobei laughed so hard he nearly doubled over.
In this era, students didn’t have such heavy workloads yet, and with Ning Xiaobei’s abilities, there was no need for any tutoring classes. After school, their time was all free.
Zhao Jingwen had been away on a business trip for the past few days, so Fan Xia was staying at his house, sleeping on the floor upstairs. The two of them came and went together, inseparable.
When they left the school, Ning Xiaobei said there was no rush to go home. He wanted to stop by a bookstore to buy Fan Xia a set of math practice books so he could reinforce what he learned. Fan Xia looked utterly helpless.
Owing a debt and unable to resist, he trudged along with heavy steps toward the Xinhua Bookstore, thinking to himself, ‘After being a ‘gang member5Guo Huai Zai (古惑仔) is the Cantonese/Hong Kong term for a gang member or hoodlum’ to this extent, I really am pitiful.’
Ning Xiaobei walked a few steps, then suddenly stopped.
“Do you smell that?”
He sniffed deeply, eyes closed in delight.
Once the National Day holiday ended, the whole city began to fill with the scent of osmanthus. Shanghai truly became a city of osmanthus fragrance.
Ning Xiaobei loved autumn, and the main reason was the smell of osmanthus all around the city.
But today, the scent near the school gate was especially strong and tempting, making him… a little hungry.
“Someone’s selling osmanthus lotus root starch over there.”
Fan Xia pointed to the mouth of an alley across the street, where a tricycle with a thermos barrel was parked.
One bowl of osmanthus lotus root starch each, and the two little brothers ate until their bellies were round, their mouths full of sweet fragrance.
“Granny, will you be here tomorrow?”
Ning Xiaobei licked the osmanthus sugar from the corner of his mouth and returned the enamel bowl to the elderly lady selling the lotus root starch.
“Of course, of course! Tomorrow I’ll also have osmanthus eight-treasure porridge. You two young gentlemen must come again, okay?”
The granny collected the bowls and money, smiling warmly.
Rubbing their full bellies, the two headed toward the bookstore, when Fan Xia suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Ning Xiaobei looked around in surprise, spotting five or six people emerging from a dark alley.
Seeing these boys and girls with “modern” hairstyles and clothes with holes everywhere, Ning Xiaobei frowned.
What’s going on? Have they really run into true delinquents this time?
………………
Author’s note:
The fake gangsters meet the real gangsters.
Guess who sent them…no prize for guessing correctly, haha.
Tomorrow, we are going out for dinner and shopping.The update will go live promptly the day after tomorrow at 9 AM~~
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『dapotaturs note』
- Nine Palaces Diagram (九宫图)
- Originally a magic square or layout used in Chinese numerology and geomancy (Feng Shui). In martial arts novels, it’s often portrayed as a puzzle or tactical arrangement, sometimes for strategic planning or a clever challenge.
- Think of it as a 3×3 grid with numbers or moves arranged to follow a pattern; in math, it’s often used to illustrate squares, addition patterns, or magic squares.
- Gui Guizi Divine Calculation (鬼谷神算)
- “Guiguzi” was a legendary strategist and teacher in ancient China. “Divine Calculation” refers to clever, almost magical ways of counting or predicting outcomes.
- In novels, it’s often a clever puzzle, riddle, or strategy method disguised as a calculation, which a clever character would solve using logic or math.
- Han Xin Counting Troops (韩信点兵)
- Han Xin was a famous military general of the early Han dynasty. This phrase refers to how he counted and arranged troops.
- In math riddles, it’s often used to describe modular arithmetic problems, like “how to divide soldiers into groups so that X are left over” — basically an ancient remainder/partition problem.
- Seven Luminaries Nine Executive Tianzhu Pen Calculation (七曜九执天竺笔算)
- This is a classical reference, often appearing in Wuxia novels or historical riddles.
- It combines cosmology [“Seven Luminaries” = Sun, Moon, 5 visible planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) ] with a counting/abacus technique (“Tianzhu pen” = an abacus-style calculation method) and “Nine Executive” refers to numerology or celestial arrangement.
- It’s basically a mystical way of describing complex math calculations or puzzles.
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