The girl hid behind me, the hand holding my clothes trembling slightly. She was obviously frightened.
The young man really was strong. That sword just now had hurt.
"Get out of the way," the young man said, gesturing at us with his sword. "Don"t be misled by fierce ghosts. Ghosts that can show themselves in the current age aren"t easy to deal with. They"re extremely violent. Even if they don"t deliberately harm you, if you stay in contact with her for a long time, your Yang energy will gradually drain away and your health will get worse and worse."
"You"ve misunderstood." I shielded the girl in the red dress, not letting the young man frighten her further. "She was joking with me just now, right?"
The last part I said to the girl behind me. She immediately replied, "Yes, I was just playing a trick on the new teacher."
I took this opportunity to instruct her. "Don"t go around tricking people in the future. Not even if it"s a joke. You must have heard the story of the boy who cried wolf. If you trick people over and over, eventually no one will believe the truth."
"I"m sorry, Teacher Shen. I was wrong." The girl"s voice grew smaller and smaller. She had learned her lesson. I was very satisfied.
"Are you blind?" the young man said coldly. "Turn around and have a look at what"s behind you!"
I looked back. Wasn"t it a pretty girl with a clean face? Fortunately, I was interested in men. Otherwise, I might not have been able to resist being a beast of teacher — bad thought, I shouldn"t have been thinking it.
"Her face is covered in blood and her tongue is a foot long. What kind of person looks like that?"
"Oh, I get it," I said. "You saw wrong. She pretended to be like that just now to scare me. A misunderstanding, it"s all a misunderstanding."
The girl nodded desperately behind me, tightly clutching my suit jacket.
"You… Student, I know you"re afraid. Don"t worry, I"ll explain the misunderstanding. But first, can you not clutch so hard? My clothes… may not stand up to it." I heard a tearing sound from behind and silently mourned for my only suit jacket.
First the shirt, then the jacket. My losses were too great!
"Your eyes have been bewildered by the fierce ghost"s mystification. I won"t say anything else to you. You will understand when I have gotten rid of her!" The young man pulled the wooden sword out of my hand with a little effort.
I was strong enough to s.n.a.t.c.h the electric saw from the hand of the mad Mr. Saw. I had come first in the arm wrestling compet.i.tion in my department every year. I didn"t expect that the handsome young man in front of me would be even stronger.
Thinking back to his steady steps when I"d seen him a few days ago, I thought I couldn"t beat him, so I rushed at him and grabbed him by the waist. I said to the girl, "Run quickly! When he calms down, I"ll explain it for you."
The girl"s voice a little moved: "Teacher Shen, my name is Mu Huaitong. I"ll come attend your cla.s.s in the future."
She walked without a sound. I didn"t know whether she"d really run away or not. I could only keep up my struggle with the young man.
The young man really was strong. I heard constant ripping sounds. My suit jacket was turning into rags.
After tearing for a while, the young man"s struggles grew weaker. He pushed at me. "Get up. The ghost has run away already, how much longer are you going to tie me up?"
I estimated that there had been enough time for Mu Huaitong to run out of the school, so I let go of the young man and got up. As I was getting up, pieces of my clothes fluttered off me. I picked up my phone, which had fallen on the ground, then picked up the sc.r.a.ps of jacket using the flashlight. I couldn"t just leave garbage lying around in the corridor.
I hadn"t seen that tongue for some time. Mu Huaitong had probably taken it away. She really was a good student who cared about protecting the environment. I would have to praise her next time she was in cla.s.s.
In the dim light of the flashlight, the young man stared at me coldly, his gaze like a knife.
He didn"t speak, stared at me for a moment, then walked away, straight towards the Fourth Cla.s.s, Third Year cla.s.sroom. I remembered my students were waiting in that cla.s.sroom, slapped my thigh, and followed the young man.
The door of the cla.s.sroom was ajar. The lights were out and the students were gone.
I heard the WeChat message notification and opened it. It was Princ.i.p.al Zhang:
Because of today"s emergency situation, cla.s.s is cancelled, to be held another day. Your salary will be paid as usual for full time work.
Princ.i.p.al Zhang was such a warm-hearted and nice person. I felt deeply moved and replied: Princ.i.p.al, that professional you brought in before showed up and wanted to beat up a student. Isn"t his disposition a little intense?
I would have liked to say that I"d gotten my clothes torn up stopping him from hurting the student and wasn"t that a work-related injury that I could be reimbursed for? Unfortunately, my face wasn"t that thick. I felt uncomfortable saying something like that.
Don"t mind him, Princ.i.p.al Zhang replied simply.
But I think he has been deeply poisoned by superst.i.tion. He took the student"s joke seriously and wanted to exorcise her. Princ.i.p.al, was it really OK for Mr. Saw to go with him? I"m a little worried.
Princ.i.p.al Zhang didn"t reply immediately. When the young man saw the empty cla.s.sroom, he snorted and said, "They ran off pretty fast."
Then he looked at me again, grabbed the collar of my shirt, pushed me against the wall, and said angrily, "Next time clear your eyes. Don"t be fooled by ghosts!"
He was stronger than me, and fierce. But I"ve never been an easy person to bully.
"Your frame of mind is all wrong. You have a big ideological problem." I stared back, using a persuasive expression. "In this day and age, to still believe in feudal superst.i.tions and think that ghosts exist won"t do. Understand?"
Seeing that I was holding steady, he released me. "What"s the use of talking to a muddled idiot like you."
He shook his head, turned around, and with his wooden sword on his back walked away. His posture was light and easy, like a knight in a TV drama.
But life wasn"t a novel or a TV drama. You couldn"t live in an imaginary world. If he went out in the street like this, people would think he was a lunatic or a performer at a tourist attraction.
He walked very fast. I ran a few steps to catch up with him and caught him before he started down the stairs. "Take it slowly. It"s very easy to twist your ankle going downstairs in the dark. It"s very dangerous."
I pa.s.sed him my phone. "Here, a flashlight."
"No thanks." He pushed away my phone. "I"ve opened my Yinyang Eyes. I can see in the dark."
"..."
This young man really had it bad.
I grabbed his yellow robe in one hand and held up my phone in the other hand to light the way.
He stopped and looked back at me. His expression wasn"t so piercing this time.
I gave him a friendly smile. "My name is Shen Jianguo, 26 years old. What"s your name? How old are you?"
Honestly, I was beginning to suspect he was one of the students at our school.
"Ning Tiance, 20, 187th generation chief disciple of the Maoshan Sect. I am dedicated to saving you and all those who have been blinded by evil spirits."
"What a coincidence! I am dedicated to guiding nice young men like you who have been fooled by feudal superst.i.tion back to the path of science and democracy."
By this time, we had come to the hall on the first floor, the two of us walking side by side. After hearing my words, he turned around gave me a direct look. I looked straight back at him without wavering.
He was somewhat taller than me. I had to tilt my head up at a forty-five degree angle.
"Ha," he sneered again. "The ignorant are innocent. I"ll spare you this time."
"But I can"t spare you so easily," I said to him good-temperedly. "How about we add each other on WeChat, and I"ll send you any information about breaking free of feudal superst.i.tion I come across in the future. Of course, if you believe you can persuade me, you can also send me videos about evil spirits and ghosts."
I would try my hardest in order to save this misguided young man.
"Well," said Ning Tiance, "if you"re ever in a dangerous position because of a ghost, you can contact me."
After we friended each other, we walked out of the school building, and Xiao Ning ran straight to the gate. I wanted to tell him that there was a small door open on the east side, but on level ground he ran unusually fast. In a step he was at the base of the wall. He leapt two meters up in a single breath.
I couldn"t help applauding from a distance. But for a move like that, how much experience skipping school must he have had to get so practiced at it!
Xiao Ning was 20 years old, university-aged, but instead of going to university he was wrapped up in law-breaking and superst.i.tion. It was heartbreaking to think about.
I had to guide him to the right path and make him a young man who believed in science and worked for the benefit of the country and society.
When I had sworn this, another strip fell off my clothing. I picked it up awkwardly and blushed in the night with no one to see.
It really was a mess.
It was only one o"clock now, not the scheduled time yet. Of course the school bus wouldn"t be waiting at the front gate. I didn"t have the driver"s contact information, so I had to send a message to Princ.i.p.al Zhang: Please tell the driver not to come to pick me up. I will go back by myself.
I walked two kilometers before I found a bikeshare in front of a police station.
When I went to scan the code, a police officer on duty saw me. He swept his flashlight over me and immediately came over. He looked me up and down and said, "Have you been fighting, or were you mugged?"
My jacket was in shreds and my shirt was covered in blood. It looked pretty tragic. It was no wonder that the policeman wanted to question me.
"I"m fine." I shook my head. "There was just a misunderstanding between a boy and a girl."
He looked at the blood on my chest and frowned. "There isn"t that much blood. Did you hurt someone?"
"It"s fake blood." I sighed. "The girl pretended to be a ghost to frighten me and got her makeup all over me. As for the suit, I"m pretty upset about it myself."
The policeman saw that I didn"t seem to be lying and said, "Well, leave me your contact information. If anything turns up in this area, we may be in contact with you."
I left my contact information, got on the bike and rode ten kilometers in the dark to the Farther Sh.o.r.e Estate.
Apartment 404 was very quiet. The doors of my two roommates were closed. I opened the bathroom door and saw that Li Yuanyuan wasn"t in there. I relaxed, then showered and changed.
After my shower I lay in bed feeling exhausted. It had been a very tiring day. Probably everyone who had to work for a living had this kind of difficulty.