Chapter 5: Once I Dreamed of Roaming the World with a Sword; Now I Make My Home Wherever I Go!

“And now! Your loudest applause! Welcome Ji Bai to the stage to share his experience!”

Principal Wang finally finished showering him with praise. Face glowing, he handed Ji Bai the microphone.

Ji Bai took it without a trace of stage fright.

Please. It wasn’t his first time making a public apology in front of the whole school. Small stuff.

He knew this platform better than the student who led morning exercises.

“Ahem…”

He cleared his throat. The microphone gave a faint hum.

“First, I’d like to thank Principal Wang. Without his wise leadership, No. 99 wouldn’t have such an excellent learning environment, and I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

“Second, I’d like to thank my homeroom teacher, Ms. Li Mei, and all my subject teachers. Without their tireless dedication and patient guidance, I could never have achieved these results.”

“Everything I have, the school gave me. Everything I know, my teachers taught me!”

An impeccable little speech of public gratitude.

Up on the platform, Principal Wang’s grin kept climbing, harder to force down than a certain stimulant-assisted salute. He stood with his hands behind his back, straighter than he had ever stood in his life.

This boy got it. He really got it!

The subject teachers seated below all glowed with pride.

Teacher Zhou, the math teacher who used to scold Ji Bai every day for sleeping in class, clapped the teacher beside them on the shoulder, beaming.

“See that? My student! I always said that boy would amount to something!”

The Chinese teacher, who had once made him stand for an entire lesson as punishment, adjusted their glasses and nodded repeatedly.

“I knew all along that he had an exceptional disposition. All that was true wisdom hiding behind a foolish exterior!”

Everyone was basking in the reflected glory. They had taught the city’s top scorer. Imagine telling people that!

The brief opening was over.

Out on the field, thousands of students craned their necks, waiting to hear the top scorer’s ‘study secrets.’

Most of No. 99’s students might be slackers drifting through school, but they were still curious about how someone scored over seven hundred.

Even the troublemakers who usually slept through class had lifted their heads, watching the platform with interest.

How did someone who hadn’t even managed three hundred in the high school entrance exam become the city’s top scorer three years later?

How did he study?

How many hours a day?

Which revision books did he use?

Did he have some special secret?

Every eye was on Ji Bai.

Then, to everyone’s surprise, he changed tack. Smiling, he spread his hands.

“Principal Wang asked me to offer you some advice about studying. But as someone your age, I know what you hate most is people who’ve been there telling you what to do.”

“So my advice is: stop giving young people advice!”

The field, still a little noisy a moment before, went quiet for one second.

Then it exploded.

“Pfft!”

“Holy shit?”

“Hahahaha!”

One moment, they could have heard the wind rattling the flagpole. The next, someone might as well have dropped a bomb into the crowd.

“YES!”

One of those ‘isolated individuals’ in some class shouted first, loud enough to suggest he’d been bottling it up for three years just for this moment.

Cheers erupted all around him.

“Well said!”

“Fucking exactly!”

“Ji Bai, you’re a legend!”

Some were already applauding. Others whistled.

Scattered claps swelled into a roar, rolling across the field like thunder before a storm.

A few boys in the back rows stripped off their uniform jackets and waved them overhead like they were at a music festival.

When had the students of No. 99 ever heard anything like this at a school assembly?

Usually it was all ‘study hard,’ ‘put in the effort,’ ‘don’t do this,’ ‘don’t do that.’ This was the first time someone had stood on that platform, microphone in hand, in front of the principal and every teacher, and said, ‘Stop giving young people advice.’

What did it mean to be one of them?

This. This was one of them!

The students went wild, applauding desperately, faces flushed.

Who the fuck wanted to hear ‘work harder, do more practice questions, pay attention in class’?

Now this was what a top scorer should be saying!

He spoke their language!

Principal Wang stood beside him, the corner of his mouth twitching. He started to say something, then swallowed it.

Forget it. Whatever the top scorer said was right.

Today, even if Ji Bai proposed turning No. 99’s cafeteria into an internet café, he would have to lead the applause.

Ji Bai hadn’t expected such an enthusiastic response either. He motioned for quiet. Once the applause died down, he smiled.

“I’ll skip the study tips. You wouldn’t listen anyway. To finish, let me sing you a song.”

Ignoring the utterly bewildered principal beside him, he turned and picked up the acoustic guitar from the corner. He pulled over a chair, sat down, and plucked a couple of strings to test it.

The tone was decent. Old, but nothing seriously wrong with the tuning.

Settled on the chair, he adjusted the microphone stand and rested the guitar on his lap, as relaxed as a folk singer busking by the roadside.

The field gradually grew quiet.

Everyone watched, curious about what this gaokao top scorer was going to sing.

Ji Bai took a deep breath. His fingers touched the strings.

A clean, fluid progression of chords, gentle yet strong, flowed from the platform’s loudspeakers and across the field.

The intro was short, but every beat seemed to pluck a string in the listeners’ hearts.

No one in this world had ever heard this melody. Yet there was something oddly familiar about it, as though they had heard it somewhere before, and as though they never had.

The last restless stirrings in the crowd faded.

Ji Bai leaned toward the microphone and sang the first line in a clear, bright voice.

“Once I dreamed of roaming the world with a sword, seeing all its splendor. A young heart is always a little wild; now you make your home wherever you go…”

Everyone on the field froze.

What song was this?

They had never heard the melody. Never heard the words.

But it was so good.

Those words, that melody, slipped like a needle into each listener’s heart.

The girls in the front rows lit up, whipping out their phones to record. Watching Ji Bai sing onstage with the guitar in his arms, they blushed.

Even the boys who normally lounged around fooling about stopped jostling one another. They listened quietly, humming along under their breath.

The teachers on the platform were stunned too. Who would have thought this mischievous slacker could sing so beautifully? And write songs?

Standing below the stage, his homeroom teacher Li Mei heard the line ‘now you make your home wherever you go,’ and her eyes suddenly reddened.

Others might not know his circumstances. She knew them better than anyone.

Both parents dead. Relatives who didn’t care. Three years all alone. When the gaokao ended, everyone else had parents to pick them up, family to celebrate with. He had only himself.

He always seemed so carefree, always getting into mischief. How much had that boy been keeping inside?

Li Mei wiped the corners of her eyes. Maternal affection surged through her.

She remembered the spring of his first year, when Ji Bai had written her a love letter.

Though calling it a love letter was generous. It had been more like a two-page essay, opening with ‘Ms. Li, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’ It had given her quite a fright.

Looking back, perhaps it had only been a student’s prank.

Or perhaps a child who had just lost his entire family had instinctively reached for an adult who was reasonably kind to him, trying in that clumsy, almost laughable way to find someone he could depend on.

And she hadn’t understood.

Li Mei took a deep breath and silently made up her mind.

She forgave him!

After all, wasn’t Ji Bai part of the first cohort she had taught?

Wasn’t he the first top scorer she had ever produced?

And wasn’t this child already all alone in the world?

She raised her hands and applauded Ji Bai on the platform as hard as she could.

Meanwhile, the system notifications in Ji Bai’s ears had scarcely paused.

[Ding! Shock from Ding Dan: +1]

[Ding! Shock from Wei Meng: +1]

[Ding! Shock from Xia Qing: +1]

[+1, +1, +1, +1, +1]

His grin nearly reached his ears.

Yes!

This felt so damn good!

“Dilililidilililidadada…”

“Dilililidilililidada…”

“Walking the road, pressing bravely onward…”

At the same time, a fifteen-second video began appearing everywhere on Douyin and Weibo.

It opened on No. 99’s shabby gate, half the wall coating peeling away. The bright red top-scorer banner hung above it, making the contrast impossible to miss.

An infectious voice-over supplied the commentary.

“Guys, are you seeing this? Is this one of those novels where a crumbling sect at the bottom of the rankings suddenly produces a peerless Holy Son who crushes the entire continent?!”

“A garbage high school ranked tenth from the bottom in the province has produced a gaokao top scorer ranked sixth in the province!”