Chapter 18: Don’t Let Him Get Away!

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

“Class!” The PE teacher walked up to the lectern, looking down at the students of Class 2-2. Gesturing with his hand, he shouted,”Get up! Assemble at the field right now!”

However, despite hearing the PE teacher’s words, Class 2’s students showed no respect to him whatsoever, as none of them stood up from their seats. Instead, every one of them started whispering to each other.

“Who is he?”

“No idea.”

“I think I saw him around in school once. Could it be the PE teacher?”

“We still have PE teachers in high school?”

“Good high schools don’t, but ours do.”

“I heard that my dad had PE lessons during his high school days…”

“I had them during primary school too. Those are some great memories…”

Hearing the students’ disjointed words, the PE teacher couldn’t help but feel sorrowful. “Class, I’m Niu Lanshan, the PE teacher at your school. You can call me Mr. Niu. This is our first meeting in two years. There will be a physical fitness assessment taking place today for the whole school, so I need your class to get up and gather at the field right now!”

“…Oh.”

“Wow! Wow! Wow!”

“I love PE! Long live Mr. Niu!”

“Let’s go.”

After a short silence in Class 2-2, both male and female students were all bustling with excitement as they scrambled to the door.

Realizing that the situation was not going well for him, Chen Yu stood up without hesitation and blended himself into the crowd.

As the crowd flowed out of the class along with Chen Yu, he was in despair.

From the windows in the hallway, Chen Yu could clearly see the whole school standing in neat rows at the back of the school field, waiting for the physical fitness assessment to begin.

“Did I step on your ancestor’s grave? Is there a need for such a huge commotion?”

Chen Yu wanted to escape, but the PE teachers were already following their class. If he dropped out of the crowd right now, he would be eye-catching for sure. Thus, he had no choice but to follow the crowd down to the field and stand with the school under another PE teacher’s command…

“No matter who you are, as long as you are a student of No. 6 Senior High, I’ll find you.” Niu Lanshan stood at the front of the field, nodding his head in satisfaction. He turned to the discipline director next to him. “Director, is the whole school here?”

“Uh…” The discipline director raised his finger, counting class by class. Thirty seconds later; “Yes, they’re all here. None of the classes are missing.” He nodded.

“Great.”

“What did you tell our principal? Is there a need to cause such a huge scene?” the discipline director asked, puzzled.

“Haha.” Niu Lanshan smiled, lowering his volume. “There’s a genius in our school, and I found him.”

“Genius? This is Sixth High, are you sure there’s a genius here?”

“There’s no doubt. I can dig up any genius no matter how deep they’re hidden,” Niu Lanshan said, boasting. He then took the loudspeaker from the discipline director’s hands and gave it a few sound tests before shouting at the students with it, “Students! This physical fitness assessment is extremely important. Please give it your best! The school will be recommending the students that do well here to participate in the country’s second-grade athletic physical fitness assessment. If you pass the assessment, you will be categorized as a student with special talent in sports and gain over ten marks or even several dozen marks for the national examinations! This is an incredibly rare opportunity!”

Unfortunately, this opportunity did not spark up the interest of Sixth High’s students whatsoever. The students stood at their places, looking extremely bored and lacking motivation.

As the students of Jinzhou District’s Sixth High School, a few dozen marks would not make a difference to their national college entrance exam.

“Attention, we shall start with year one students. You will be assessed with a 100-meter sprint using this track!” Niu Lanshan pointed to the 100-meter track on the outside of the field. “You will run in groups of eight, and each of you will only have one chance. Your results will be taken down immediately. Warming up starts now!”

Right after Niu Lanshan finished his words, he only swallowed a mouth of saliva before he announced again, “Time’s up! Now, start!”

Sixth High’s students and teachers: “…”

The physical fitness assessment started.

After the first group of Class 1-1 ended the assessment, Chen Yu was certain that this was just a show that was being put on to get him, because the PE teacher at the endpoint didn’t even bring a book or a pen to record the results. All the teacher did was fiddle with a stopwatch.

So what was he assessing? The speed at which his hand could move?

Chen Yu started to look for chances to escape.

Unfortunately, any student that tried to report in sick would be brought to Niu Lanshan for a look. Chen Yu dared not risk it. After a tough decision, Chen Yu decided to stay with his class, hoping that Niu Lanshan would fail to recognize him during his assessment with his group.

“Just what on earth did I step on yesterday?”

Chen Yu felt like tearing up right now.

Time passed, and very soon, every year one student had done the assessment. They were brought back to the classroom blocks by their respective form teachers.

“Year two students, we will conduct the assessment following the sequence!” Niu Lanshan shouted through the loudspeaker. He frowned and drank a mouthful of water.

According to his conjecture, the student that ran so fast yesterday was most likely part of the year one students. However, even after going through all the year one male students, he still hadn’t found the student he was looking for. He could not help but grow anxious at this situation. For a moment, he even started wondering if he had let that student slip through his observation.

“Little Niu, how is it going on? Did you manage to find him?” A slightly obese man who was around sixty walked over to Niu Lanshan with a huge group of teachers following him. He asked, smiling happily.

Hearing this, Niu Lanshan immediately turned around to greet him. “Principal, you’re here.”

“I’m here to take a look.” The principal nodded in acknowledgement. “Have you found that kid?”

“Soon. He’s not a year one kid, so I’m moving on to the year two students now. Just like I guessed, he should be a year two student.”

“If you manage to find that seedling, you would have performed a meritorious deed to the school! But are you sure that he’s good enough to be a national champion?”

“Principal, didn’t we take a look at the surveillance system together yesterday. With that speed, there’s a chance that he might be the best in Asia!” Niu Lanshan rubbed his hands in excitement.

“That’s good, that’s good.” The principal laughed heartily. “It’s such a pity that we only got a back view of him and the front view was blurry. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have to go through all this trouble.”

As they were having a conversation, Class 2-1 had finished their round. Now, it was time for Class 2-2, Chen Yu’s class.

“Eight in a group. There’s no need for girls to do it, only boys!”

A PE teacher walked up, pointing at eight students randomly. “You, you, you, you…and you. Come up.”

Eight of the male students who were chosen walked up to the track.

But to Chen Yu, he felt as if he was walking up to an execution ground instead.

“Go!”

As soon as they heard the command, Chen Yu’s classmates took off immediately, running with slow steps.

Normally, a school’s academic performance and sports performance were inversely proportional.

However, Sixth High was an exception. Not only were the students here the worst school in town when it came to academics, but they were also the worst in sports!

Why was that so? Even Jinzhou District’s Ministry of Education was trying to figure out why…

“Next group! You, you…”

Chen Yu was called to go as part of the second group for Class 2-2.

“Hu….”

He took in a deep breath, wore his mask well, and walked up to the starting point with his seven classmates. He chose the 2nd lane, which would be less obvious.

“Take off your mask.”

His body freezing up, Chen Yu said, “Teacher, I have a cold.”

“Take it off.”

“It might be an infectious flu.”

“Take it off.”

“Uh… fine.”

Noticing that the other party was starting to get suspicious, Chen Yu took off his mask and lowered his head, trying to hide his face from Niu Lanshan, who was standing near him. He was prepared to finish the run with his normal speed.

But as time trickled by, there was no still instruction for them to start. Chen Yu felt a sense of danger and looked up subconsciously to see Niu Lanshan running over with a group of teachers.

“That’s him! Don’t let him get away!”