Superstars of Tomorrow

Curly Hair worked even harder in order to advance from his learning console to a game console. However, there were some things such as reading comprehension and writing essays that were really too difficult to learn.

Curly Hair wasn’t even able to obtain a C each time and didn’t know whether he was making any progress.

After yet another test, Curly hair had to defend himself when Fang Zhao checked his learning progress.

“I feel I have made great progress. Not far from a C- now.”

Because of this sentence, Fang Zhao changed the grading system to score from 100 marks. On the next day’s test, Curly Hair’s reading comprehension received a grade of 21 marks.

He wasn’t even able to meet the passing criteria of 50/100 marks.

The weather was fine. Nanfeng and Zuo Yu had been looking at a few houses for Fang Zhao and came over to report their findings. Upon entering the dormitory, Nanfeng saw Curly Hair crouching in the corner with his head drooped. There were clearly tear marks beneath his dog eyes.

“Why is our Little Curly Curls crying again?” Nanfeng was about to say “Did you receive a scolding again?” but caught sight of Fang Zhao from the corner of his eyes and changed his tune. “Feeling heaty again? Here, have some fruits.”

Nanfeng then brought out a paper box filled with little fruits. He saw Fang Zhao looking over and explained hastily, “Got them from the fruit store outside of HuangArt. I asked already; dogs can also eat these fruits. They are rather cheap too. One box only cost 21 dollars.”

Curly Hair cried even harder.

With that, Nanfeng could only have Zuo Yu bring Curly Hair out for a walk. If the dog wasn’t in a mood, walking one round would make him feel better. If that wasn’t enough, then two rounds was needed. As for everything else… what could he say as an assistant?

Whoever paid the wages was the boss!

Curly Hair didn’t seem to be in better spirits after walking two rounds. However, the dejection of scoring 21 marks was quickly forgotten when he regained his self-confidence after taking a math test at night.

The learning console also had reference books compiled by various teachers of various continents. Unless the user loved doing questions, most students would simply have psychological scars from those reference books.

Curly Hair had similar sentiments, but his were slightly more complicated. Practice questions in the sciences were a piece of cake. He could do ten sets of science practice questions in the same time he took for a reading comprehension question. Even then, he might get the reading comprehension question wrong.

After Curly Hair finished the primary school curriculum, Fang Zhao looked through Curly Hair’s grades. Curly Hair scored close to full marks on math and science. The only blip on his report card was a narrow pass on language, but overall, it was good enough for him to start the secondary school curriculum.

To celebrate graduating primary school and being one step closer to his own personal terminal, Curly Hair happily devoured five kilograms of dog food.

Secondary school curriculum was more complicated. Fang Zhao added some money to the account to purchase some of the online classes. After watching a few videos, Curly Hair chose the online classroom of a very popular teacher.

The microphone was also turned on.

Sometimes, students would have questions. Of course, there were also students unwilling to turn on their mics and would just type questions out in text.

This type of classroom mode was rather novel to Curly Hair. This was the first time in his dog life that he was acting as a human. He needed to be on his best behavior.

Curly Hair pretended that he was a secondary school student and started his journey of attending online classes.

However, this unique student still gave teachers some headaches.

For example, when a certain teacher that specialized in tackling test and examinations questions said, “Encountering a tough question is like a stumbling block in the middle of a road. How would you go about solving it?”

Curly Hair: “Eat it up!”

“Can this student please be more serious?”

As the other online students roared with laughter, the teacher took note of the online student ID [Little Curly Curls].

Afterwards, Curly Hair felt that the stuff this teacher taught was too simple so he went over to the next classroom and stumped the teacher with his questions.

He wasn’t purposely causing trouble. Even though he asked seriously, the kind of questions he asked were either from unorthodox perspectives or were beyond the scope of the syllabus.

For students, those that could stump teachers by asking questions had a “cool” halo in the eyes of others. Some students also took note of [Little Curly Curls]. But, this bookworm seemed to not like accepting friend requests.

It wasn’t that Curly Hair was unwilling to add friends. Rather, he remembered what Fang Zhao had said.

“No adding friends before ‘graduating from university’ or scoring at least 85/100 for a language examination.” Fang Zhao was worried Curly Hair would reveal his identity in a fit of carelessness.

The teacher of this classroom didn’t know this. He had spent the past few days studying this student who had asked many crafty questions. Although there was a voice, the student couldn’t be seen. The voice sounded young, and the questions were sometimes very naive.

Nonetheless…

There would surely be a vile and sinister face behind this innocence! A wide mouth and sharp teeth were just waiting to bite a huge chunk of his flesh!

Some people were just the best at pretending to be innocent!

“Don’t think you can deceive me!”

A question solving genius? He didn’t believe it!

How could there be so many geniuses in the world. If this were really a genius, he would have been snatched up long ago. Those at schools weren’t stupid. Nowadays, every continent and district were competing for talents. There was no way such a talent would use a learning console’s platform to attend classes.

Therefore, it definitely had to be a professional troll!

This sort of situation was commonplace. Currently, competition among online classes was intense. Mutual sabotage occurred frequently. He reckoned that surely this ID had been sent by someone from the same industry. He couldn’t keep this fellow any longer!

Right now, what he needed was to think of a reason to kick this person out of the classroom.

After another round of questions left him stumped, the teacher sent a private message to Curly Hair. The main idea was this: You are already very impressive. I have nothing more to teach you. I can recommend you a teacher, for example XXX[link]. Since you have only attended half of the scheduled classes, I will refund you the remaining half.

Don’t bring me down. If you want to harm others, then go ahead , the teacher thought to himself.

Curly Hair was also surprised when he saw the message.

“This teacher is really great! Introducing a new teacher and even giving a refund! Woooo!”

The refunded money could be used to buy dog food!!

Curly Hair felt that this transaction was rather worthwhile and agreed to leave the original classroom. He even sent a red packet to that teacher as thanks when he left the classroom. It was mentioned in literature that one must respect their teachers.

That teacher was thinking of agreeing to a full refund if the other party didn’t agree. He could only count himself unfortunate this time. He never imagined that the other party would really agree. When he glanced at the classroom’s online enrollees, he no longer saw [Little Curly Curls].

There was even a virtual red packet attached to the private message that wrote, “Thank you teacher! You are a really good person!”

The teacher: “???”

Is there poison in this red packet?

Curly Hair didn’t know what the former teacher was imagining. After exiting the classroom, Curly Hair clicked on the link the previous teacher had recommended and entered another online classroom.

The new classroom mainly targeted the upper secondary students. There were many people in this online classroom, and more than half had been attracted by the teacher’s background and experience at a university that had many essays and lots of lecture videos. A large portion of the introductory web page displayed various awards and honors the teacher had received. These online classes were just a part-time job for him.

Parents were very satisfied with the awards and honors of this teacher, but students were different. They felt that listening to this teacher’s lessons was very tiring. Every lesson touched on complex knowledge that left them blank ank unable to keep up, especially when the teacher threw out complicated and rare jargon that wasn’t in their secondary school textbooks. Every concept and formula required a lot of time to absorb. There were also many questions that combined the covered material. The students simply couldn’t keep up when the teacher spoke too quickly.

However, for Curly Hair, such content was easy to receive. Thus, after adapting for two days, Curly Hair once again started to hunger for more knowledge and had a debate with the teacher over his question response that was marked wrong.

After that, on his third day at this new class, Curly Hair was kicked.

The teacher had forcibly kicked him out of the classroom and left a message. “I will return the money. Leave.”

Curly Hair left rather happily.

“You are a really great teacher for teaching without accepting payment!”

Fang Zhao said, “… The newly released ‘New Reading Compilation’ has good short essays. Go take a look at the first ten.”

As before, Curly Hair still couldn’t distinguish certain words and sentences. He was also unable to perceive some words with derogatory connotation. However, speech was fine for him. Outside, Curly Hair could listen to someone’s tone, mood and body language to determine whether the other party had any malicious intent. However, Curly Hair was still particularly sluggish when facing written words.

While Curly Hair drooped his head and analyzed the short essays, Fang Zhao received a call from Mo Lang.

“The dissertation committee list has already been finalized. The time slot to to defend your thesis will also be set in the next few days. According to the sequence of submitted applications, you will be the first. Prepare early.”

There was still time before the dissertation. However, Fang Zhao would the first postgraduate from the advanced studies course to defend his dissertation. Furthermore, there could also be pressure from various other sources, so Mo Lang was worried whether Fang Zhao would be nervous. It was easy to make mistakes during the dissertation defense if one was nervous. Thus, he had informed Fang Zhao beforehand so that Fang Zhao would be able to mentally prepare himself.

Fang Zhao wasn’t nervous. The dissertation touched upon his thesis that was completely written by himself. Points that needed to be taken note of had already been discussed with Mo Lang already. Fang Zhao was sufficiently prepared.

Mo Lang then analyzed the dissertation committee chairperson and the members of the committee before hanging up.

Fang Zhao brought up his virtual calendar and checked his schedule. Nanfeng would indicate if there were any new work related matters or things to take notice of. However, there was a period coming up without any events. Many people knew that Fang Zhao would be defending his dissertation. They wouldn’t seek him out if it wasn’t anything important. Other small matters could be handled by Nanfeng on his own.

Fang Zhao marked out a row of dates on the calendar. This would probably be the period where he would defend his dissertation.

While he was doing so, he received another call notification.

Fang Zhao picked up the call and had yet to speak when the other party shouted, “Hello, Fang Zhao! It’s me, Samoyed!”

Fang Zhao: “….”

What sort of stimulation had this Zaro child received recently?