Chapter 400 - 413: Just Give Him to Me
An Ning scanned her surroundings but couldn’t find any sign of Jiang Xia. ’Hasn’t he checked in yet?’
She remembered his injuries. ’They should be mostly healed by now. There’s no way he couldn’t have gotten on the train, right?’
"Sis— what are you thinking about?"
"P versus NP."
An Guoping, who had asked the question, wanted to slap himself. ’I really need to learn to keep my mouth shut!’
An Guoping couldn’t even tell if An Ning was just messing with him or if she was actually thinking about it.
After her calm reply, An Ning started doing stretches on the spot to warm up.
Seeing this, the others also began to warm up, getting ready to run.
Ten minutes later, their run began, with An Ning in the lead and the others following in a neat formation, their footsteps falling in perfect unison.
Beijing University was already bustling with students in the early morning. The athletic field was crowded with people exercising, which was to be expected, since the university had a proper physical education department.
At first, no one paid any attention to this group of runners. People watched calmly as they finished their first lap, then their second.
After two laps, they had covered 1,600 meters, a point where most people just looking for a casual workout would have stopped.
But An Ning’s group didn’t stop. Instead, they kept up a steady pace, their breathing even and their strides perfectly in sync.
Their professional form made many of the PE students ask each other: ’Are they freshmen? First-years, probably? Yeah, looks like it.’
By the time An Ning was on her fifth lap, many of the PE students who were training started getting competitive. They were upperclassmen, after all. They couldn’t let a bunch of freshmen show them up, could they?
A silent competition began.
An Ning’s competitive spirit wasn’t always obvious, since she was usually the one winning, but in reality, she had an extremely strong desire to win.
When she saw someone pass her, she suddenly picked up the pace, causing Zhou Xiaoshan behind her to grunt as he struggled to keep up.
One by one, Yin Xuemei, Yang Jianguo, and An Guoping also sped up, resigned to following her lead.
They clearly remembered a few times when Jiang Xia and An Ning had competed just like this. The rest of them had wanted to watch from the sidelines, only to be scolded by An Ning until they felt like circus monkeys.
According to An Ning, even if you couldn’t keep up the whole way, you had to give it your all to keep up for as long as possible.
As An Ning accelerated, the atmosphere on the track heated up.
Putting in a burst of speed, An Ning quickly overtook the PE student.
The student’s pride, both as a man and as an upperclassman, was magnified in that moment.
The guy was now determined to beat An Ning.
But no matter how much he accelerated, he always remained a few meters behind An Ning. When he sped up, she sped up. When he slowed, she simply maintained her speed.
Most importantly, after another three laps, An Ning’s speed was still consistent. She looked completely relaxed, as if she could accelerate at any moment, which made the guy behind her gradually lose hope.
When the guy finally accepted that he couldn’t outrun her and slowed to a walk on the track, An Ning’s group stopped as well.
An Ning was calm and composed, but the others behind her were gasping for air, walking unsteadily along the edge of the outer lane to catch their breath.
The only one who wasn’t panting quite as hard was, surprisingly, An Ning’s new roommate, Luo Li.
Luo Li used what little energy she had left to quickly walk a few steps to An Ning’s side. After taking several deep breaths, she finally managed to speak.
"Seriously, do you guys in the math department need to be in this good of shape?"
"And you, as a medical student, can you still perform surgery after running all those laps?"
Their back-and-forth questions left a nearby PE student dumbfounded. He ran over without a second thought and asked, "You’re not PE students?"
An Ning and Luo Li waved their hands in perfect sync. "Nope."
The upperclassman, a PE student, walked away with tears in his eyes. This was too demoralizing!
’Damn it! It was one thing not being able to out-study these people in high school, but how can I not even outrun them in college!’
After the "heart-pounding" run, the group went to the cafeteria to eat together.
During the meal, they agreed to run together every morning and exchanged their departments, class numbers, and dorm addresses.
Yin Xuemei was in Class 2 of the Finance Department, Yang Jianguo was in Class 1 of the Computer Science Department, and Zhou Xiaoshan was in Class 1 of the Math Department along with An Ning. An Guoping and Luo Li were lucky enough to both be in Class 1 of the Medical Department.
After eating, the group went their separate ways.
An Ning didn’t go back to her dorm. Instead, she decided to go with Zhou Xiaoshan to see his father, and if there was time later, she would check on Yin Xuemei’s shop.
An Guoping went to find Yu Zheng to tidy up the siblings’ off-campus apartment.
Yang Jianguo headed to the library, planning to get a head start. He had a very clear understanding of his own abilities.
Luo Li, the last one, also had her own things to do, and An Ning didn’t ask what they were.
They parted ways at the cafeteria entrance, each heading off to their own destination.
An Ning followed Zhou Xiaoshan off campus, and they walked to his house.
Ten minutes later, Zhou Xiaoshan made an inviting gesture. "Teacher An, please, come in."
An Ning looked at the small courtyard before her. It had red walls and gray tiles, with a small wooden door at the very end of the alley. The branches of a jujube tree reached out from over the courtyard wall, creating a picturesque scene.
An Ning murmured her assent and stepped into the courtyard.
The courtyard wasn’t very large, but this was only in comparison to where Zhou Xiaoshan used to live. For a father and son, it was quite spacious.
"Whoa—"
"Zhou Yicheng, what are you doing!"
Zhou Xiaoshan’s shout startled Zhou Yicheng, who had been sneaking around the yard. The tough man, who stood over 1.8 meters tall, panicked like a headless fly, spinning around on his crutches.
Zhou Xiaoshan rushed forward to steady Zhou Yicheng. "You just won’t listen! The doctor told you not to move, not to move!"
"Why do you have to be so difficult! What are you doing up and about? Didn’t I set everything up for you? There’s a bedpan inside, I’ll clean it when I get back."
This nagging version of Zhou Xiaoshan made An Ning want to laugh. ’She was starting to notice that after leaving Lin Cuihua, everyone around her was becoming a little bit like Lin Cuihua themselves.’
"Oh— I get it. You don’t want to go back, do you? You’re trying to make your injury worse so you can stay, right?"
"Dad, let me tell you, that kind of thinking is wrong. It’s not proactive. It’s an embarrassment to the Party."
"With an ideological awareness like yours, I’m telling you, you wouldn’t even pass a politics exam!"
Zhou Xiaoshan got more and more cheerful as he spoke, even forgetting that An Ning was standing right behind him. Zhou Yicheng, who had been listening seriously and feeling a little guilty, found his expression gradually changing.
When he heard about failing politics and having poor ideological awareness, he finally couldn’t take it anymore and raised his crutch.
"You little brat, you dare lecture your old man!"
"You’ve got some nerve!"
Zhou Xiaoshan leaped nimbly away, making a face and sticking his tongue out at Zhou Yicheng.
"Can’t hit me, can’t hit me, can’t hit me!"
The bratty Zhou Xiaoshan provoked Zhou Yicheng so much that the man on crutches insisted on trying to stand up on his own.
"Gentlemen, I’m still here."
An Ning finally spoke up to make her presence known. The father and son both gave an identical, awkward laugh and invited her to sit down.
Zhou Yicheng expressed his heartfelt gratitude to An Ning. He could clearly tell that Zhou Xiaoshan was different this time he came back.
"No need for thanks. Just hand him over to me."