I Studied Abroad in the Modern Times

Chapter 22: Generosity

Mathematics doesn’t lie, but it sure knows how to humiliate.

Old Bai rattled on about the lesson, and to Zheng Fa, every word sounded like it was hammering his brain.

“Got it now?”

Zheng Fa heard the question and looked up, responding with a blank, bewildered expression.

“And you?” the old man asked Tang Lingwu, who was sitting nearby.

“More or less,” she replied softly. “It’s not that hard.”

Old Bai nodded approvingly at Tang Lingwu, then glanced at Zheng Fa, letting out a long, heavy sigh.

Zheng Fa thought to himself: You two may not be targeting me directly, but your words feel like daggers anyway.

Determined, Old Bai picked up his pen and practically spoon-fed the material to Zheng Fa, bit by bit. And then Zheng Fa finally understood something important: you won’t truly know your limits unless you try your hardest.

Next to him, Tang Lingwu had already begun yawning out of boredom. Meanwhile, Zheng Fa remained as lost as ever, only partially comprehending the lesson.

“I’ve never taught a student as dense as you!” Old Bai exclaimed, tossing his pen aside in frustration.

Zheng Fa felt a bit dejected but heard Tang Lingwu whisper beside him:

“Professor Bai used to teach at Jingcheng University. It’s normal not to measure up.”

That did cheer Zheng Fa up a little. Jingcheng University was the nation’s top university, a level far above Zheng Fa’s dream school, Jiangnan University.

Zheng Fa was self-aware—he might count as diligent, but he was certainly no prodigy.

But the old man was losing patience. His words turned sharper:

“Idiot!”

“Dense as a rock!”

“Are all the students at Qingshui High School like you? I bet your teachers only stay for the hazard pay!”

Zheng Fa stayed calm, but Old Bai’s temper was clearly spent. He kept grumbling as he left the room and stormed out to the balcony to smoke.

Zheng Fa didn’t break down, but Old Bai seemed to have had enough.

“You okay?” Tang Lingwu asked, concerned after overhearing Old Bai’s sharp remarks. “He went a bit too far just now.”

“He’s used to teaching geniuses. Teaching someone like me must feel like his own personal tribulation,” Zheng Fa replied calmly.

Compared to the crude jokes back at the estate, this scolding was practically polite.

“That’s true...” Tang Lingwu nodded. “I heard him once say he couldn’t understand how anyone who scored full marks in math on the college entrance exams dared to apply to Jingcheng University’s math department.”

“?”

“Because the real geniuses usually get in through competitions.”

Tang Lingwu’s explanation gave Zheng Fa a deeper understanding of just how little potential Old Bai saw in him, someone who only occasionally scored above 130 in math.

“But his words were still too harsh.”

“No big deal. Having higher expectations for me is a good thing!” Zheng Fa reassured Tang Lingwu, even flipping the situation to comfort her instead.

The girl glanced at him, impressed. “I have to admit, you’re pretty magnanimous. If it were me, I couldn’t take it.”

---

“Fine, you won’t grasp everything right away. Let’s just go over these diagrams!” Old Bai finally gave up on a broader lesson. “These few diagrams boil down to just two basic patterns.”

He added a few strokes to the illustrations and drew two simpler shapes on paper. “These diagrams are all transformations of these two basic patterns.”

Zheng Fa looked at the two shapes and committed them to memory.

“Teaching you for thirty minutes feels like it’s taken three years off my life!” Old Bai groused, clearly regretting not quitting earlier.

“Want me to teach you instead?” Zheng Fa offered with an innocent smile.

“Huh?”

“It’s a secret technique, a unique skill passed down in my lineage,” Zheng Fa added.

“Show me!” Old Bai immediately perked up and led Zheng Fa into an empty room.

“Follow my lead!”

Zheng Fa wasn’t joking. He adopted the Pine Crane Stance and demonstrated the posture for the old man. Tang Lingwu watched curiously from the side, but Zheng Fa paid her no mind.

Old Bai twisted his body, trying to mimic the stance, but ended up looking more like a pretzel.

“Smack!” Zheng Fa gave him a slap on the back of the head.

“What are you doing?”

“Your head’s not in the right position!” Zheng Fa said seriously.

“Oh.”

Old Bai obediently adjusted his posture.

“Smack!”

“Tuck your arms back!”

“Smack!”

“Don’t stick out your stomach!”

“Smack!”

“Plant your legs firmly!”

The repeated slapping sounds made Tang Lingwu wince just from hearing them. Both she and Old Bai were grimacing in pain.

“Bend your legs forward!”

“No, no! My legs are going to break!” Old Bai wailed.

With a tone of exasperation, Zheng Fa scolded him:

“Idiot!”

“Your body’s too stiff!”

“Your previous teacher probably turned himself in to the authorities just to avoid teaching you any longer!”

Tang Lingwu, watching from the sidelines, cast a deep, apologetic glance at Zheng Fa. In her heart, she silently bowed to the concept of magnanimity.

After Old Bai managed to hold the stance for ten minutes and finally couldn’t take it anymore, Zheng Fa let him off the hook.

By Xu Instructor’s standards, Old Bai had mediocre talent at best, worsened by age and inflexible joints. If he could train at one-tenth of Zheng Fa’s speed, it would already be remarkable.

Clutching his sore arms, Old Bai jumped up and down a little. “I’ll admit, though, I feel a lot lighter now!”

Zheng Fa figured it was mostly psychological. No way Old Bai could achieve much with such limited aptitude in such a short time.

“Well, we’ll be taking our leave now.” Zheng Fa was ready to escape.

“Wait!” Old Bai blocked the doorway. “After getting to vent on me, now you want to leave?”

“...”

“Spend another half an hour with me!”

Dragging Zheng Fa back, Old Bai even fetched a reference book he’d used earlier and resumed “torturing” him.

By the time Zheng Fa and Tang Lingwu left, it was already past ten at night.

---

“Did you do that on purpose?” Tang Lingwu asked in the hallway, blinking at Zheng Fa. “Provoking Old Bai so he’d teach you more?”

“No, he did it on purpose,” Zheng Fa replied, glancing back at her while carrying his bag. “That old man is just itching for someone to teach.”

He hadn’t missed the fleeting loneliness on Old Bai’s face when they said goodbye.

---

The next time Zheng Fa woke up, he was back at the Zhao Estate.

On another bed, Gao Yuan was sprawled out in a mess, with scattered papers littered around his pillow.

The diagrams on them were now so familiar to Zheng Fa that he felt sick of seeing them.

After a crash-course weekend with Old Bai, Zheng Fa still found math hard. But at least he’d figured out those diagrams and understood their patterns mathematically.

“Awake?” Gao Yuan groggily turned over, rubbing his eyes as he noticed Zheng Fa getting up.

“Hurry up, Xu Instructor is waiting for us,” Zheng Fa urged him.

After teaching them the Pine Crane Stance, Xu Instructor had mostly left them to their own devices. The day before—or rather, the day before Zheng Fa’s brief journey to the modern world—Xu Instructor had suddenly announced that he wanted to see their progress.

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