Did Zhuang Zhou dream of becoming a butterfly, or did the butterfly dream of becoming Zhuang Zhou
Cheng Ran opened his eyes on the desk. The bright and warm sunlight was shining through the tall old locust branches outside the third floor and shining on his face.
An unidentified object hit his forehead at an extremely fast speed and with great precision, making a crisp sound as it collided with his flesh and bones, and bounced to the side.
The air was filled with the smell of powder and dust, like the battle in Normandy after the war, which was much more tragic than the Incheon Landing. Cheng Ran raised his head and saw his deskmate next to him staring at him with an incredible look in his eyes, his head tilted and his eyes tense as if he was watching a horror movie.
Cheng Ran felt a little dizzy, as if he had not yet woken up from a long dream.
He felt that his deskmate looked very familiar, but he couldn't remember where he was.
He remembered that the previous drinking party had moved across most of the city, from the private courtyard restaurant to the 80th floor of the Jinmao Tower, all the way to the seafood food stalls on the river beach, and finally to the final battle at KTV. People from all sides played finger-guessing games and toasted each other until the sun and moon were dim. Sometimes the boss would warn in his ear, "Xiao Cheng, you have to go. This project is a gamble!" Sometimes the subordinates would say, "Old Cheng, I'm going to quit. I still have to rely on you to help me out..."
He fought in drinking games like this for three days and three nights, during which he slept for less than five hours. Finally, at the last moment, he felt the blood rushing to his head and the world turned red.
Everyone at the drinking party was dumbfounded. Finally, they rushed forward, some shouting his name, some slapping his face. The world was spinning as he heard these sounds. At that moment, he remembered that he had only one last thought, "This can't be the sudden death that they say in the news!"
It is said that before a person dies, his brain will produce many strange dreams. Is this the case now
If he had known that his life would end in this way, Cheng Ran would have made sure that he would have eaten a few more mouthfuls of food before that. It would be so ugly to die of hunger with a stomach full of wine from all the socializing.
Of course, there are still many things I regret. This is a life that can only be tied to the chariot of life and dragged forward without a moment to stop and breathe.
"Cheng Ran, stand up for me!"
He looked up and saw that he was in a middle school classroom. The classroom was a bit old, with scratches and peeling paint on the walls. Sitting on the podium right in front of him was Li Zhan, the middle school teacher who was known as the "butcher".
The reason for this nickname was that in that era, he dared to openly accept gifts from students' parents, and he was extremely mean-spirited. He arranged those who received gifts and were close to him in the best positions.
If you don't give him a gift, or if he thinks you are saying bad things about him behind his back, or if he just doesn't like you, he will find all kinds of reasons to make trouble for you, make things difficult for you, and belittle and criticize you.
There was once a girl in the class whose parents still refused to give him gifts even after he hinted at them. He then found all kinds of sarcastic and mocking ways to insult her, causing the girl's grades to plummet and she eventually couldn't get out of the shadow.
His teaching stick was a thin bamboo twig used as a broom. It made a loud noise when swung, and he was always ruthless in his actions.
So the students privately gave him the appropriate nickname "Butcher".
The whole school is intimidated.
So much so that many years later, when everyone recalls it, they still remember the horror of the three years of junior high school under his rule and hate him to the core.
And now, the whole classroom was as cold as falling into an icy cave.
This is the dream of a last burst of light... But why did I dream about this annoying Butcher Li
At this moment, Li Zhan had one hand on his waist, with a middle-parted hair, and stared at Cheng Ran with his lips bitten with an expression of "I think you're going to fly to the sky", while his other hand was waving in the air. It was obvious that the chalk just now was thrown from this hand that was comparable to that of a Tang Sect master.
In the dream, he is still so arrogant...
He remembered his desk mate who had been glaring at him. It turned out to be Yu Xiao, one of his good friends who grew up in the same compound. Not only were they in the same class in middle school, but they were also desk mates. They were two famous "barking leaders" back then.
We spent many carefree days together, but we went to different places in college and later on, we each pursued our own careers and were drowned in the vast crowd.
I didn’t expect that I could still dream about it. It might be because of the high-intensity work that made me miss the past so much.
Cheng Ran reached out his hand, patted Yu Xiao on the face in front of the whole class, and smiled, "You kid."
Yu Xiao touched half of his face and looked at Cheng Ran with his mouth open in horror. It was okay for him to sleep, draw, and make jokes in class, but this was a butcher's class!
What was even more unlucky was that the results of the simulated high school entrance exams had shown that their class's ranking in the city had dropped compared to the past. This directly affected Li Zhan's cake. You know, the final high school entrance exam results were linked to his bonus! For Butcher Li, if his interests were affected, it would be a big deal.
At the class meeting on Friday, Li the Butcher was furious and handed out test papers one by one, reading out the results, and picking out typical cases to punish. He read Cheng Ran's name twice, but there was still no response, so he realized that he was sleeping.
Even the troublemakers in the class couldn't help but admire him at this moment.
"You bastard! Are you trying to rebel?!" As expected, all the books stacked on the desks in the first row were gone. The students in the front row had no time to protest. Li Zhan picked up a large book and threw it at Cheng Ran.
This trick again!
Seeing the book "clattering" violently through the wind, Cheng Ran, who had suffered this kind of loss many times, raised his hand, and the "Chinese" book that flew close to him slammed! Like Peter Pan being slapped away by the Hulk, it flew from one end of the classroom to the other, and then fell into a pile of books.
At that moment, the whole world seemed to suffocate, and even Li Zhan was stunned.
In just a short moment, his face turned pale, and his voice trembled with a hint of dignity being challenged, "You dare to fight back?"
This was the first time in the history of Li Zhan's rule over junior high school that someone dared to fight back, and the person who did it was Cheng Ran, who usually seemed the most docile
Li Zhan feels that as graduation is approaching, anyone would dare to challenge him.
Li Zhan rushed off the stage, waving the thin bamboo stick that made everyone's feet dig into each other's soles, shaking it, "Show me your hands!"
Perhaps he was frightened by the reality of the dream, or because Li Zhan's power over the years had taken effect in the dream, or perhaps he wanted to verify something, Cheng Ran spread his hands in front of him.
Snap! Snap! Snap!
The thin bamboo stick made several crackling sounds in his hand, making the whole class grimaced. The burning pain in his hand and heart made Cheng Ran gasp, and he began to waver in his belief that all this was a dream.
Cheng Ran turned his head and saw his shadow reflected in the window. In the double images, he could vaguely make out his current self, wearing a clean white shirt, with short, shaggy hair, and a few unruly strands of hair on the back of his head that had curled up from sleeping. His body was thin and tall... He looked clearly about fifteen or sixteen years old.
It's just a dream after all!
Since it's just a dream, it doesn't matter to me.
Li Zhanyou was still not satisfied. He wanted to deal a heavy blow to Cheng Ran's dignity. He slammed the test paper in his hand on Cheng Ran's desk and said sarcastically, "You fell asleep when your score was read out! Come on, read it out loud to the whole class! How many points did you get in this last mock exam before graduation!?"
Cheng Ran looked down at his test paper and saw that it was marked as a Chinese test paper, and the score was 82!
Cheng Ran remembered that the full score of the junior high school Chinese test was 150, and one had to get 90 points to barely pass. He quickly flipped through it and saw that there was only a red "17" on the last essay. The entire test paper could be said to have failed in terms of score.
Li Zhan, who was standing next to him, showed a hint of satisfaction when he saw him keeping silent.
"I'll let you read it out loud!"
It seems that if I don't recite it, the butcher Li in front of me will not give in.
Cheng Ran said, "Eighty-two..."
"Are you crying? Read each item separately! Louder!" Li Zhan said.
"Multiple choice questions are worth 30 points. Fill-in-the-blank questions are worth 25 points. Reading questions are worth 10 points..."
"Wait a minute! I won't talk about the major score items above. You only got 10 points out of 40 for such a simple reading comprehension test..." Li Zhan sneered, "If I ask a tricycle driver to do it, he would probably get a higher score than you!"
The classmates in the class wanted to laugh, but they were too suppressed to laugh at this moment. Everyone felt how miserable it was if they were standing in Cheng Ran's perspective.
"Read on. How many points did you get for your composition? How many points did you get for your composition..." Li Zhan didn't wait for Cheng Ran to speak. He glanced sideways and read out the composition first. "The composition... the title is "Looking Forward to My Future"... The score is 17 points! You are self-aware and know that you don't have much of a future!"
Li Zhan's expression plus this kind of amusing disparagement finally made people laugh this time.
Li Zhan was very satisfied with the results. The overall ranking of the high school entrance exam simulation class dropped this time, and he was actually in a gloomy mood. Today, the results were read out in class one by one, and Cheng Ran was just unlucky enough to come to the door on his own!
Cheng Ran's family also belonged to the type of parents he described as "not willing to make sacrifices for their own children, and not even willing to pay for the cost of getting along well with the teacher, so there's no need for me to help you take care of your children", so naturally Li Zhan never liked Cheng Ran.
So he became even more relentless, and walked up to the podium like a rooster, spread out the roster on the desk, and combed it with one finger, "Come on! Let's see your overall scores and ranking in this mock exam..."
"Here! Chinese, 82, mentally retarded! Math 89, low intelligence! English 120, Physics and Chemistry 90, Ideology and Politics, you got 41 out of 100, a glorious 420 in total! You're ranked 928th out of 1,200 people in your grade! With this IQ, do you still want to get into our No. 1 Middle School, a provincial key high school with a score of 600? I think you should buy a cart and haul coal for people after you graduate from middle school!"
Even in the dream, Cheng Ran still wanted to leave a way out, but Li Zhan's excessive demands made Cheng Ran finally unable to hold back, and the evil fire that he had suppressed in middle school began to bubble up in his heart.
He looked at Li Zhan, and his whole person seemed to be different. He sneered and said, "I'll correct you. My total score just now was 422, not 420. Teacher Li, you said that I couldn't get into any school with this score in the mock exam and could only work as a coal hauler... Then can you tell us what your score was in the high school entrance exam that year?"
Cheng Ran's unique temperament at this time and his unprecedented courage to talk back caught Li Zhan off guard. He felt that he was not facing his student, but another strange soul.
Li Zhan let out a natural sound from between his teeth, "Of course you can't compare to my achievements back then!"
"Really?" Cheng Ran smiled with his elegant face. "Of course there is no comparison, because you were fired at that time."
As soon as these words came out, Li Zhan was stunned! A strange expression appeared on his face, and he looked around in panic. Seeing the eyes of those students, he was not sure where this matter came from, but this was his huge secret. He knew that he had a bad reputation, and students and teachers sometimes discussed him privately in the office. Of course, he could discipline students in various ways, but where did this shocking truth come from
His voice was obviously panicked. "Who told you that? Whose nonsense did you listen to? From whose office did you hear this bullshit? The person who spread this kind of thing privately is simply a vicious person!"
He pointed at Cheng Ran again, "You have a vicious heart!"
Li Zhan usually looked so domineering, and his expression at this moment was reflected in the whole class. Everyone immediately understood that what Cheng Ran said was most likely true.
But countless people were also shocked. How did Cheng Ran know such a secret thing
Actually, Cheng Ran heard about this after he started working from many classmates who were dissatisfied with Li Zhan. When the classmates who had a trauma in their hearts talked about Li Zhan's dark history, they found out that he was expelled for fighting outside the school, and later he changed his name and returned to school. After learning about this, all the classmates scolded him for misleading the students, and they were even more angry when they thought of his usual appearance. It's a pity that no one slapped his arrogant face with his grades back then.
"You were expelled but still managed to get into No. 1 Middle School... You said I can't pass the exam with honor?"
"What if I pass the exam? What if I win five million tomorrow? What if the president of the country summons me tomorrow? There are not so many daydreams in this world for you to dream about," Li Zhan had already made up his mind to kill in a split second. He suddenly calmed down after hearing Cheng Ran's words. His voice was chilling and his smile was like a mask on a dead man's face. "Don't talk nonsense. Let's make a bet... If you pass the exam, I will apologize to you. If you don't pass the exam, you must make a self-criticism for slandering the teacher in front of the whole school before graduation. I will withhold your diploma, and when you do it, I will return it to you!"
Cheng Ran's eyes were clear and smiling. Even in his dreams, he wanted to embarrass Li Zhan.
"You don't have to apologize. I don't want to accept false compliments. You not only humiliated me today, but also many people in the class... Since you, who was expelled, can become a teacher, then I, who was humiliated by you just now, can also become your teacher. How about you call me teacher when the time comes?"
Cheng Ran must be crazy, this was the first thought in the class. No. 1 Middle School is the best school in Shanhai City, and the high school department is a provincial key school. The score line is around 600 points every year. The top students from the seven middle schools in the city have to climb a narrow path to get in. Cheng Ran usually scores more than 400 points, even if he adds the full score of 50 points for physical education, it is still less than 500 points. How can he rush to the high school admission line in the last month
This is just bragging and dreaming. What a pity, Cheng Ran is so depressed that he is driven crazy by Li Zhan.
Li Zhan's face was covered with thunderclouds. He looked at Cheng Ran with a completely unfamiliar paleness, as if his dark side had been exposed and his face had been torn apart.
After a moment, his grim face smiled, but it made the whole class feel cold. "Cheng Ran, you have to be responsible for what you said! I don't want you to apologize, I want you to reflect on your words in front of the whole school when you graduate! And I want to put this matter in your file! In the future... don't blame me!"
This is not only heartbreaking, it is also a personal crime. If Cheng Ran is asked to make a self-criticism in front of the whole school and it is written into his file, this stain will follow him for the rest of his life. He will basically have no chance of going to a good university or getting a good job! Li Zhan, this is going to take Cheng Ran's life!
Some smart students in the class couldn't help but secretly shake their heads, thinking that age is always more experienced, Cheng Ran had fallen into Li Zhan's trap!
Cheng Ran nodded, "Okay! Whatever you want."
This attitude made Li Zhan almost vomit blood.
At this moment, the bell for the end of get out of class suddenly rang.
The whole class would scatter like birds and beasts as if they were granted amnesty.
But everyone knows that today, history was born.