Chapter 65

Shen Cui’s expression was odd, and Zhou Shi felt even more that she was not cut out for this. Feeling embarrassed, she was about to get up and leave.

Shen Cui explained to her, “What you wrote is different from mine, but it’s not wrong. Mine is the one that looks bad.”

She then took out a model character sheet and told Zhou Shi what character it was. “There’s also a stroke order on this. You don’t need to look at me, just follow this to practice.”

Since Zhou Shi had talent, there was no need to force her to follow her own pace.

As Zhou Shi continued to practice, Shen Cui watched her for a while. Seeing that her writing was becoming more and more decent, she couldn’t help but complain to the system, “What’s wrong with my hand? How can the influence of the original owner still be so strong? Haven’t I completed another main task? Shouldn’t I have shaken off another layer of constraints?”

“Host, you didn’t ask before, so I didn’t have the heart to tell you. Is there a possibility… that it’s not about the original owner, but purely about you not having the talent for writing with a brush?” the system replied.

Shen Cui was taken aback. Upon careful recollection, it seemed that when she wrote with a hard pen in her previous life, her handwriting was completely different. After graduating, she relied on electronic office work, at most using a pen to sign documents.

Observing that her concentration was also dropping, Shen Cui stopped chatting. What to do without talent? Practice! Even if she couldn’t write a good character, she couldn’t continue to scribble like this.

Unconsciously, half the night passed. Mu Er Pang began to rub his eyes incessantly, his concentration dropping, and as for Wei Xi, although he didn’t attend class at night and usually studied on his own, after studying for twice the time, his constitution also dropped by 2 points.

Shen Cui immediately turned off the time gain and urged everyone to rest early.

But the two children refused to go to bed. They insisted on studying for another half hour before finally agreeing to rest.

Shen Cui then thought about putting some system-produced pills to eliminate fatigue in their meals, so that they wouldn’t affect their health due to studying twice as long every day without knowing it.

With this additional expense, Shen Cui didn’t slack off during that half hour. She practiced writing even more seriously.

From that day on, Zhou Shi still did her own work during the day, but she stopped doing needlework at night and studied and practiced writing with Shen Cui. Shen Cui didn’t give her too many tasks each day, just twenty common characters a day.

After a few days, it was the ten-day break of Qingzhu Academy, and Wei Shu was coming.

At this time, as an outsider of the academy, he would disrupt the gain. With the academy already at full capacity, even if Shen Cui replaced a miscellaneous worker with him, Zhou Shi would still be an outsider. When she came to deliver food and practice writing at night, she would still be able to take care of the beginning but not the end.

But Wei Shu was a legitimate investor in the academy, and he had secretly given some advice to Mu Er Pang during the minor competition, so Shen Cui couldn’t not let him come to see Wei Xi.

The system ‘kindly’ suggested to her, “Since your academy has been built for more than half a year, you can upgrade it. After upgrading to level 2, you will have an additional position for a replaceable trainee. This will be perfect for Wei Shu, so you won’t have to worry about it whenever he comes over. And after the academy is upgraded, the daily rewards will be more abundant.”

Shen Cui needed to manually upgrade the academy, and going from level 1 to level 2 was very simple. She just needed to recruit a Headmaster, a Master Teacher, two trainees, and one miscellaneous worker. However, the upgrade required 1000 shopping points.

Shen Cui had just ‘bled’ a lot of points for the academy competition, so she didn’t have enough points and had to give up for now.

Anyway, Wei Shu usually came in the late afternoon or early evening, stayed overnight, and left the next morning.

Calculating this, she would only lose one night of time gain, and it would also give Labor and the two children a break.

Thinking like this, Shen Cui inexplicably felt guilty. How did she start to feel like a capitalist? She had turned the normal flow of time into everyone’s rest time.

Wei Shu still came in the late afternoon the day before his vacation. From him, everyone also learned the final results of the academy competition—

Because Lao Buyu felt that their Academy could not pass the retest, He did not tell everyone about the subsequent schedule. At this time, Wei Shu explained it in detail to everyone. The primary and retests of the academy competition were about the six arts of a gentleman. However, the subsequent competitions were different; they were about the Four Books and Five Classics and the eight-legged essays used in the imperial examinations. After all, the faction like the one led by Old Headmaster, which taught without distinction, was rare. Most of the academies in the world were aimed at cultivating imperial examination talents.

Therefore, the competitions that truly made students famous were still based on those subjects, with at most an additional competition for poetry and lyrics.

But ironically, those more utilitarian academies not only couldn’t match Hongle Academy in the six arts of a gentleman but also couldn’t match them later on.

Hongle Academy had only missed first place once in the year when they were not hiding their edge under Mu Yunchuan’s leadership. This time, they had once again taken the lead.

As for Qingzhu Academy, because they didn’t have someone like Mu Yunchuan, their performance was quite mediocre, only reaching the semi-finals.

This also had to be said, Lao Buyu’s earlier decision was correct. If they had continued, Cuiwei Academy would definitely have lost. And ‘Zhang Sheng’ only knew mathematics; not to mention earning a chance to become famous, he would probably embarrass himself in public. Those who looked down on ‘him’ and were jealous of ‘him’ being appreciated by Old Headmaster would probably come up with countless derogatory remarks.

It was said that Hongle Academy had the best results, and everyone was happy for the Old Headmaster.

After Wei Shu finished recounting the results, he seemed somewhat unnatural and handed over a package.

He usually brought some things from time to time, all daily necessities for Wei Xi. Today, Wei Xi naturally reached out to take it, but he said, “It’s not for you; it’s for your senior brother.”

“For me?” Mu Er Pang was puzzled as he took the package.

Opening it, he found a small bow, a few blunt-tipped arrows, and a small target inside. The materials were quite common, not precious, but the small bow was only half the size of a normal bow, very delicate.

“This bowstring can be replaced,” Wei Shu explained to him. “Right now, the draw weight is less than half a stone. When you get used to it and your strength increases, you can replace it. But this bow can only handle up to one stone; if the draw weight is too high, the bow will crack. By then, you can use adult bows and arrows.”

Saying this, Wei Huo urged him to try pulling it. Mu Er Pang followed his instructions and found that he could indeed pull it!

Bows and arrows were not common items in a small town, so it was not easy to buy them. Otherwise, Qingzhu Academy would not have changed the “shooting” field competition to throwing pots.

The bows and arrows suitable for semi-adolescents needed to be specially customized.

Before the major competition, Wei Shu taught Mu Er Pang how to Shoot Arrows and found that he had quite a talent for it. Later, when the servants went to the prefectural city to purchase supplies, he had them custom-make the small bow and arrows.

Unfortunately, the time required to customize such a small bow was much longer than he had expected, and he only received it just after the academy competition ended.

Wei Shu then demonstrated the standard bow-pulling movements and the key points of using force, and he began to rehearse his speech again. He had always been generous in giving gifts. In the past, he would give whatever he thought of giving. But later, after getting to know Mu Yunchuan, and realizing the vast difference in their backgrounds, he encountered several setbacks in giving gifts. He learned that giving gifts also required consideration for the other party’s self-esteem.

So he said, “It’s not something valuable, and it didn’t take much effort, so…”

As he was about to make up something, Mu Er Pang’s eyes lit up as he looked at Shen Cui. Seeing that he truly liked it, she nodded, indicating that she could accept it.

Mu Er Pang immediately thanked Wei Huo, “Thank you, Big Brother Wei, I really like it, I really do! I will practice hard!”

Wei Shu didn’t need to bother making up any excuses. Seeing Mu Er Pang’s sincere and grateful smile, he felt good about giving the gift. “Although the imperial examinations don’t test these skills, practicing this can improve your concentration. In the future, if you encounter anything you don’t understand, you can ask me anytime.”

Reciprocity is a courtesy. Mu Er Pang now understood this principle very well. Seeing that it was still some time before dinner, he took out the box of peach pastries that belonged to him and offered some to Wei Shu to fill his stomach.

To Shen Cui, buying such an expensive snack was a bit painful, but to Wei Shu, it was just a very common thing.

He opened it without any hesitation and began to eat the peach pastries.

Mu Er Pang, though itching to play with the small bow and arrows, obediently sat back at his desk and continued with his previous homework.

“You… eat less,” Wei Xi suddenly whispered to him.

Wei Shu, who had just taken a second piece, raised an eyebrow and smiled, “Really? I give a gift, and you complain when I eat two pieces of peach pastry?”

Wei Xi shook his head, then explained to him that each person had their own bag of peach pastries. He and Luo Buyu had finished theirs in the past few days, but Mu Er Pang’s bag had remained unopened. He had saved it, thinking of eating it with his mother next time they celebrated a festival. In fact, when Shen Cui bought the peach pastries and distributed them, Mu Er Pang had said he wanted to share them with Shen Cui. Shen Cui said she didn’t like them, so he planned to share them during the festival when his mother would definitely not refuse.

With this explanation, Wei Huo felt embarrassed to eat something that someone had saved. At this moment, he even felt that the customized small bow and arrows were far less precious than these peach pastries!

But he had already taken a bite out of the second piece, so he couldn’t put it back. He could only tentatively ask, “Can I buy him a pack next time?”

　　As the two brothers were talking, Mu Er Pang finished his homework and came over, deliberately keeping a straight face and said, “How can that be? This pack of peach pastries is my gift. Even if Brother Wei can’t finish eating it, he still has to take it with him.”

　　With that, he couldn’t hold back his smile, and continued, “Just eat it. We are family, so I won’t be polite to you, and you don’t need to be polite to me. Besides, if it weren’t for you reminding me during the retest, I’m afraid I wouldn’t have hit a single arrow.”

　　His genuine and infectious smile made Wei Shu and Wei Xi smile too, no longer fussing over a pack of peach pastries.

　　As for Shen Cui, the peach pastries could be considered Mu Er Pang’s gift in return. As the head of the family, she couldn’t show no gratitude.

　　And the only thing she could offer was to include Wei Shu as the 3rd cultivation target according to the system. This way, she wouldn’t have to worry about Wei Shu occasionally coming over and making the academy’s time gains ineffective. It would also allow him to enjoy a benefit for half a day.

　　It looks like upgrading the academy needs to be put on the agenda.