Chapter 327 - Who Do I Favor?
Chapter 327: Who Do I Favor?
Translator: Noodletown Translated Editor: Noodletown Translated
Hao Ren put away his cell phone.
After a moment of consideration, he decided to go in and have a look. Zhao Yanzi said that she was cleaning, but it was more likely that she was being lectured by a teacher for misbehaving.
The school gate was now open.
Hao Ren walked into the campus and mingled in with the crowd.
In fact, the old gatekeeper had noticed Hao Ren, but he let him in since Hao Ren was the Fuma of East Ocean, and the school had ended for the day.
Hao Ren entered the school and walked against the flow of students toward the academic building where Zhao Yanzi was staying.
Since LingZhao Middle School was a semi-boarding school, when the school day ended, some students went out for dinner while others went home. The academic building was now empty.
Hao Ren went to Grade Eight Class Two’s classroom. Through the glass window on the door, he saw Zhao Yanzi straightening up the desks and chairs.
She was flipping the dozens of chairs onto the desks, cleaning the blackboard, and sweeping the floor… Hao Ren pushed the door open and entered.
Zhao Yanzi had flipped up half of the chairs, and her gaze turned to the door. “Oh. You came in after all.”
“It sucks to be a middle-schooler since you have to do the cleaning,” Hao Ren mumbled and walked in.
“It can’t be helped. It’s my turn this week.” Zhao Yanzi pouted. She never did housework at home, and it was hard for her to clean the whole classroom.
“Are you doing it alone?” Hao Ren closed the classroom door and asked her.
“Little Ling is supposed to do it with me, but today is her mom’s birthday, so she went home early.” Zhao Yanzi lifted another chair and flipped it onto a desk.
It was hard work for little girls, but Zhao Yanzi was now a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator, and such labor was no sweat for her.
Now that he was in the classroom, Hao Ren wouldn’t wait and watch her do the cleaning. He helped her flip the remaining chairs onto the desks.
In her blue school uniform and with her hair up in a ponytail, Zhao Yanzi reminded Hao Ren of his years in middle school. Her figure was neither fat nor thin, and she looked young and energetic in her school uniform. Beneath her skirt were a pair of white stockings and a pair of running shoes, the most common attire for a student.
When she bent down to lift the chair, her ponytail swung swiftly, showing the brisk energy in her small body.
“Hey! Why are you staring at me!” Seeing Hao Ren watching her in a daze with a chair in his hands, Zhao Yanzi yelled and frowned.
Her fierce look was not mean to him. Instead, Hao Ren found it quite cute. With Zhao Yanzi’s personality, if she disliked someone, she wouldn’t speak to that person at all, let alone asking that person to help her.
“Ok! Ok! I don’t need you to flip the chairs for me. You go and help me clean the blackboard. The water bucket is over there, and the wipes are there too!” With one hand on her hip, she gave him orders.
Since Little Ling had left early, she had to do two people’s work. Although the work wasn’t too heavy for her, she found it very annoying. With Hao Ren at her command, she didn’t need to be polite with him.
Hao Ren glanced at her with a smile before walking to the teaching platform and picking up the wipe. After dipping it into the water in the bucket, he stood on his toes and began to clean the blackboard.
Nowadays, the ‘blackboards’ were different from those in Hao Ren’s time. They were now made with white plastic, and the teachers used color markers instead of chalk. However, the process of cleaning the boards was the same.
The top of the board was a bit high for Zhao Yanzi, and she would have to do the cleaning on a chair and move the chair constantly to reach other areas of the board. No wonder she assigned the annoying job to Hao Ren.
If traces of the markers left on the whiteboard were not cleaned properly, they would sink into the board and become permanent. Therefore, after cleaning it once, Hao Ren washed the wipe and waited for the board to dry up a bit before cleaning it a second time.
After two rounds of cleaning, the whiteboard was as shiny as a mirror without any traces of markers.
“Perfect…” Hao Ren tossed down the wipe and exhaled deeply.
“What are you doing? It’s not art!” Seeing Hao Ren cleaning each corner of the whiteboard including the marker holders, Zhao Yanzi suddenly complained.
Hao Ren was here doing the cleaning only this once, and he did it too thoroughly for her comfort. After all, she had to do the cleaning for the rest of the week!
Just imagine, if on the second day, the Class Advisor praised Zhao Yanzi by saying, “Little Zi cleaned the classroom very well yesterday. From now on, everyone else must learn from her, and I hope she will keep up the good job…”
Zhao Yanzi felt devastated by this prospect!
Her attitude toward life was entirely different from Xie Yujia who tried to do everything perfectly.
Hao Ren didn’t expect Zhao Yanzi to complain about the work he did for her. He froze for a moment and understood her intentions. Obviously, if he cleaned too well, Zhao Yanzi would have a high standard to follow for the rest of the week.
“Humph!” Zhao Yanzi gave him a dirty look before picking up the broom and cleaning the floor. At the end of the school day, the floor was littered with paper slips, snack wrappers, and pencil shavings, etc.
After putting the garbage into the bin, she picked up the mop in the corner and wetted it in the water bucket before mopping the floor.
Cleaning duty after school was full of trivial details and tiring, and the clean classroom would return to its previous messy state the second day. No wonder Zhao Yanzi was impatient.
Hao Ren stood on the teaching platform and watched from above while Zhao Yanzi mopped the floor of the aisles. He had an illusion that he was classmates with Zhao Yanzi, and they were on the same duty team in which the guy would loiter around and avoid doing the work while the girl would quickly carelessly finish the job.
“Well, it would be fun to be in the same class as Zhao Yanzi and bicker with her every day,” Hao Ren thought to himself.
“What are you looking at? Dump the dirty water and wash the mop.” Zhao Yanzi rushed over and pushed the mop into Hao Ren’s hands before kicking the water bucket.
“Is it finished?” Hao Ren looked around the messy chairs and desks and asked her.
“What more do you want?” Zhao Yanzi glared at him.
With a smile, he lifted his right hand and activated the Light Splitting Sword Shadow Scroll.
A suction force appeared in his palm while all the fine dust in the classroom flew toward him.
Metal, wood, water, fire, and earth!
The dust in the classroom belonged to earth!
The Light Splitting Sword Shadow Scroll could absorb and dissolve these matters!
However, this kind of earth elements was not pure, and Hao Ren wouldn’t take it into his body. He just collected them a few centimeters away from his palm and turning them into a spinning ball.
He then lifted his left hand slightly.
The water in the water bucket rose up in the form of a water beam. As his left hand shook, the water beam turned into many tiny water drops, splashing onto the surface of the floor, desks, and chairs and even on the window.
“Back!”
The water in the classroom formed a whirlpool flying toward his left hand before rolling into a huge palm-sized water drop.
Bang!
The huge water drop fell into the water bucket, and the dark yellow ball of dust condensing in his right hand was also tossed into the water bucket.
The somewhat clear water instantly turned dirty.
Now, the entire classroom including the windows was sparkling.
Zhao Yanzi watched what happened over the last few seconds incredulously and gasped at the clean classroom.
“You… Jerk!” she suddenly shouted, and her fists hit Hao Ren’s shoulders repeatedly.
He had cleaned the classroom so well! How could she manage it for the rest of the week?!
“Ok! I’ll go and wash the mop!” Disengaging himself from the attacks of her fists, he picked up the mop and water bucket and ran out of the room into the men’s washroom at the end of the corridor.
“Doesn’t matter how fierce she is, she wouldn’t dare to enter the men’s washroom!
While he was messing with her, Hao Ren felt as if he had returned to his middle school years, and Zhao Yanzi was his nemesis in the class.
After dumping the dirty water in the sink and washing the mop, Hao Ren returned to the classroom. Under her cold glare, he walked downstairs with her while laughing.
Minutes after they left, Luo Ying, the Class Advisor who just finished correcting some homework, came to the classroom to check the cleaning job.
When she saw the sparkling classroom, Luo Ying rubbed her eyes, thinking that her eyes were playing tricks on her.
She thought Zhao Yanzi would be sluggish with her cleaning duty, but to her surprised, Zhao Yanzi had finished it with such efficiency and excellence!
Meanwhile, Hao Ren and Zhao Yanzi walked out of the school and took a bus back to Zhao Yanzi’s home.
When Zhao Hongyu carried the dishes to the dining room, she was surprised to see that Hao Ren had returned with Zhao Yanzi.
She thought Hao Ren wouldn’t come today after yesterday’s incident. After all, Zhao Guang said that the East Ocean Dragon Clan might cut Hao Ren off, which was indeed an awkward topic.
“Dad! Mom!” Zhao Yanzi pulled Hao Ren into the room and called out cheerfully.
“Uncle, Auntie,” Hao Ren greeted them.
“Eh.” Zhao Guang put down the newspaper and nodded before walking to the dinner table.
He also thought that Hao Ren wouldn’t come today. However, to his surprise, Hao Ren came back with Zhao Yanzi. Obviously, he had picked Zhao Yanzi up from school.
“Ren, please sit down.” Zhao Hongyu gestured at the seat Hao Ren usually sat in and placed the bowls and chopsticks on the table.
“Zi will have final exams soon, so I came to tutor her,” Hao Ren said when he took his seat.
“Hehe, thank you for your effort, Ren,” Zhao Hongyu said, trying to smooth things over.
“Let’s eat,” Zhao Guang, the head of the family, picked up his chopsticks and said.
No one mentioned the unpleasant topic they had yesterday.
However, Zhao Guang’s expression was still frighteningly dark. In the last couple of days, the West Ocean Dragon Clan had been doing well by drawing other forces to its side, playing the card of the victim.
The envoys and gifts the East Ocean Dragon Clan sent to the North Ocean Dragon Clan and the South Ocean Dragon Clan were turned back, and the businesses on land were impacted severely as well.
The South Ocean Dragon Clan and the North Ocean Dragon Clan both had businesses on land that had partnerships with the Mingri Group. Now, these projects were either stopped or postponed, and a venture that had been agreed upon one month ago was put on hold as well.
“Dad, I have made a decision.” Zhao Yanzi broke the silence on the dinner table.
She paused for two seconds and looked at Zhao Guang before continuing, “I plan to sever ties with you guys and move to Hao Ren’s home.”