Chapter 1178: 1051: Before the College Entrance Exam

After circling around inside and outside the city, Ping’an spent an entire morning contacting all parties, and only just before lunchtime did he finally reach the front door of the house. Everything that needed to be done was now done.

With that, Ping’an figured he no longer needed to concern himself too much.

Just as his dad had said: money, money, money—it’s not like the Zhou Family was really short of this bit of drizzle.

Mm, although calling a potentially considerable future asset "drizzle" was a bit much, if he really let himself get bewitched by these external possessions and mess up his priorities...

Ha! Then he really would have let down all the painstaking teachings his elders had given him since he was a child.

In any case, the focus for the three brothers really should be on their studies. After all, no matter what path they chose in the future, anything involving their prospects couldn’t be taken lightly.

Over the next few days, Ping’an buried himself completely in the study.

And the subjects he was tackling were no longer just reviewing high school material; he’d also started going back over the university textbooks and notes his parents had left behind, refreshing and deepening what he knew.

To be honest, when it came to this college entrance exam that had been suspended for ten years, he was confident he would get in, but he wasn’t sure he’d achieve any particularly stellar result.

—Who the hell knew what kind of abstruse questions those professors would come up with!

Still, for his mom to feel at ease, given her personality of insisting on going all out in everything, as her son he could only grit his teeth and charge forward without looking back.

Ping’an certainly showed his determination, and it ended up giving Aunt Chen quite a scare.

All these years, she’d watched the three children grow up—how smart they were, how could she not know?

It seemed this so-called college entrance exam really was extremely difficult this time. No wonder every household with a candidate was racking their brains to procure nutritional supplements.

There was a small cellar connected to the bottom of the Zhou Family’s warehouse, and one of the keys to it was in Aunt Chen’s hand.

The things inside were all rare and precious, like tiger bone wine, deer blood wine, and some bird’s nest, Ah Jiao, white fungus, and red dates.

Previously, when sleeping in the room next door, Aunt Chen would still joke that her room, sitting atop the provisions and checkpoint, would have been the most important strategic position if this were ancient times.

Now, this didn’t delay her actions one bit.

The original one late-night snack in the Zhou Family’s routine had, for Ping’an, been turned into three—one at dusk, one at night, and another right before the three brothers went to bed.

She wasn’t stingy at all with the food either, and even resumed those days of trekking out to an old sister’s home in the suburbs to trade for what she called fresh eggs.

When she heard Zhou Jiao mention that walnuts were good for the brain, Aunt Chen would, whenever she had a spare moment, keep cracking walnuts nonstop with a pair of pliers. You’d see her busy all day long.

The family had originally taken a relaxed attitude toward Ping’an sitting this exam, but after all her fussing, even Zhou Jiao could no longer sit still.

The more Zhou Jiao thought, the more it weighed on her...

Even though she knew history like the back of her hand, she still couldn’t help worrying about her eldest son like any ordinary mother.

Because in those earlier years, out of pure good will, she had repeatedly, openly and quietly, stepped in to help those old professors and senior experts.

That had led to some elders who, by rights, should already have passed away, being rehabilitated and returning to Beijing.

With her meddling like this, how big was the butterfly effect?

They say even the most inconspicuous little action can set off a chain of huge reactions. All the more so when it’s a matter of human lives—especially these outstanding seniors in their respective fields.

Standing where she did as a mother, Zhou Jiao’s state of mind could no longer remain as calm as usual; the severity of it far exceeded what she’d felt during her own college entrance exam back then.

During this period, especially as she watched the children’s attitude toward their revision, she found herself worrying on one hand that her son might not get into the university he had his heart set on, and on the other fretting over whether she might have disrupted many people’s fates.

Would she, by accident, end up slapping Grandpa Zhang of xg out of existence?

Her man had always been looking forward to reform and opening up arriving sooner, so he’d have a chance to investigate, maybe even see Grandpa Zhang in his youth.

Why do people become more and more "vulgar"?

Simply because they have more and more on their minds.

And what can most tug at a woman’s heart, nothing more than her parents, her husband, and her own flesh and blood.

Outwardly, Zhou Jiao remained as composed and calm as ever, and she’d even advanced another step in her work. But she felt no joy at this promotion.

Yet the old man of Time never stops for anyone. Whatever thoughts Zhou Jiao might have, the date of the exam was drawing closer and closer.

A special exam in a special era, with an extremely tight schedule—there were not even two full months from registration to the test.

And Ping’an was already considered one of the fortunate ones.

—His photographic memory was the greatest gift heaven had given him.

But not everyone was like that.

To pick up in this frantic, race-against-the-clock period all that had been wasted and forgotten over ten years—one can well imagine the difficulty. Their so-called "textbooks" had to be hastily scrounged and borrowed from friends. As for any "exam syllabus," there was basically no such thing; everything depended entirely on the foundation they’d built back when they were still in school.

While he was in a warm house, enjoying his family’s care, a great many others were, in the dead of winter, braving the cold, working by day, and studying through the night under a faint light.

Like at a certain farm in the Northeast, where it happened to be the season for river breaking; almost all personnel had "emptied the nest" and rushed to the river-breaking site.

The male educated youths, amid ice and snow, braved the bitter wind and stood in the freezing riverbed, swinging iron shovels to dig up mud. The female educated youths carried loads of mud on their shoulders, struggling to haul it up onto the embankment.

Even in such an environment, some still didn’t forget to study, silently reciting definitions of terms, mathematical formulas... racing against time every moment.

As letters to and fro increased, the educated youths in Zhang Family Village’s production team became all the more grateful for the Old Captain’s protection and consideration.

From the moment the radio announced the resumption of the college entrance exam, the Old Captain had told Zhang Qingshan and the others that the times were changing, that the days for people of learning to emerge were coming, and that they must treat these youngsters well.

Since he’d said that, the team immediately reassigned all the educated youths to lighter work. They even allowed them to take leave if they didn’t want to earn a few work points.

Under such conditions, combined with the pile of review materials Mr. Zhang sent over afterward, the educated youths in Zhang Family Village felt a warmth in this freezing winter and proactively suggested studying together with the candidates the team had organized.

The effect was, unsurprisingly, a more united effort from top to bottom.

Especially since the first batch of educated youths sent down were genuine high school students with a solid foundation.

Thus, that winter, Zhang Family Village once again became a banner among the nearby production teams.

—None of the educated youths who had married into farm families or taken village girls as their wives had caused any unpleasantness; each had already arranged for their children to throw themselves into their studies.

Of course, this was inseparable from the Old Captain’s repeated insistence, back when they applied for marriage, that both sets of parents consent.

As for anyone who thought about "acting first, reporting later"?

Given that the educated youths the old man had handpicked were, in essence, of decent character, and considering that practically the entire production team was made up of Zhang clansmen, no ripple of trouble could escape notice.

But as the saying goes: who can truly fathom the human heart?

In the future, some of these people would inevitably have to face the reality of living apart in different places.

What would become of them?

All of this, one could only say, would have to be left to time to prove.