This means Yongchuan Evergrande leads the standings with 12 points, while Shen Cheng Hai Bo and Yu Zhou Silver Elephant each have 4 points.
Their Hongjing No. 8 Middle School, having only won against Yuzhou Silver Elephant in the first round, has 3 points and sits at the bottom of the standings.
Being last in the standings certainly doesn’t look good, but losing to Yuzhou Silver Elephant is an established fact. With Yongchuan Evergrande guaranteed to advance, they can only hope that their competitor Shen Cheng Hai Bo also loses to the group leader. That way, everyone would be back on equal footing, with only a 1-point gap, keeping their hopes of advancing alive.
The room buzzed with lively discussion, and everyone was in high spirits. This brief period suddenly became the happiest time they’d had in days, as if there was still hope for everything.
However, the joy of seeing their competitors lose couldn’t last long.
Once the page was closed, everyone calmed down.
Whether it was Yongchuan Evergrande or Shen Cheng Hai Bo, who had nearly tied with them, both were opponents they would struggle to defeat even with a full squad.
And now, they only had ten players left.
The evening sun gradually cooled, and the rooftop lights flickered on.
“Let’s go review. The school exam is tomorrow,” Fu Xinshu said.
Chapter 99: Homework
Lin Wanxing saw Wen Chengye again when she received the list of students for the exam hall.
As she posted each student’s exam permit on the top left corner of their desks, she paused when she saw Wen Chengye’s indifferent ID photo.
Taking a closer look at the exam permit, it read: Wen Chengye, Class 1, Grade 12. With his cold eyes and brows, it was indeed the same Wen Chengye.
What could she say?
The current situation was different from when Wen Chengye didn’t want to return to the football team, and she had discovered his cheating and demanded he join. Now, the accumulated grievances had erupted. The students resented Wen Chengye, while he himself seemed utterly indifferent to it all.
How could this be resolved?
It seemed like an impossible situation.
“Oh, who did you see?”
Behind her, the chief invigilator for the exam hall, Teacher Xu, popped up.
Teacher Xu glanced at the exam permit in her hand. “Wen Chengye? From your football team?”
Lin Wanxing flipped over Wen Chengye’s exam permit, applied glue, and calmly stuck it to the top left corner of the desk. “Yes, but he hasn’t come to play for a long time.”
“Oh?” Teacher Xu said. “But that’s not surprising. Wen Chengye’s father came to the school yesterday, saying he might be arranging for him to study abroad or something.”
A sparrow outside the window let out a long chirp. Lin Wanxing’s heart sank, and the glare from the window was blinding. “Wen Chengye is going abroad?”
Teacher Xu whispered, “Then today, his mother came and insisted that her son should study properly at Hongjing No. 8 Middle School, telling us teachers not to listen to his father.”
Lin Wanxing frowned. “It’s that chaotic?”
“It’s pretty extreme. I heard his parents are accusing each other of affairs, and the family is a complete mess.”
Lin Wanxing’s steps halted as she moved to the next desk.
The closer it got to the college entrance exam, the more emphasis the school placed on every mock test.
The bell rang, exam papers were distributed, and the invigilators began patrolling the hall.
Lin Wanxing sat, as usual, at the back of the classroom.
Outside the school window, plants were sprouting, and the classroom was bright and refreshing.
Wen Chengye sat two seats away from her, “diligently answering questions.”
The air was filled with the soft rustling of pens on paper, occasionally interrupted by the sound of students vigorously erasing their answers, accompanied by the louder creaking of desks and chairs.
Only Lin Wanxing knew that Wen Chengye was still completing the exam at the same steady, thoughtless pace as before.Although Lin Wanxing had heard Teacher Xu's gossip about Wen Chengye's family situation yesterday, she didn't bring it up.
Just as she found it difficult to intervene in conflicts between players, she couldn't solve Wen Chengye's family issues either.
As a teacher, she could only do what was within her capabilities. Whether students would change or not wasn't something she could control.
When the exam-ending bell rang, Lin Wanxing collected the test papers from back to front as usual.
Passing by Wen Chengye's desk, she took a moment longer to glance at his answer sheet.
Wen Chengye looked up, and their eyes met. The boy's eyes narrowed slightly, carrying an indescribable coldness.
Lin Wanxing simply looked seriously into the student's eyes, then collected his paper and moved to the next desk.
After all the exam papers were collected, students began organizing their stationery, leaving the examination room in small groups while chatting, making the entire teaching building lively.
Wen Chengye was no exception.
Carrying his transparent stationery pouch alone, he was passing by the podium when Lin Wanxing stopped him: "Stay behind for a moment, Wen Chengye."
Lin Wanxing asked Teacher Xu to submit the answer sheets. After all the students had left, she began tidying the examination room, checking for any items students might have left behind and arranging the desks and chairs neatly.
Throughout this process, Wen Chengye didn't help at all. He just stood beside the desk, enduring the curious glances from people passing by outside the window. Actually, Lin Wanxing was quite surprised that Wen Chengye was willing to obediently stay and wait. So she deliberately slowed down her cleaning pace, wanting to see how long Wen Chengye's patience would last.
After a while, Wen Chengye finally couldn't stand it anymore. His way of expressing impatience was to head directly for the door.
Lin Wanxing called out to stop him: "Come here for a moment."
Wen Chengye halted, then turned around and walked over to her with a cold expression, but made no move to help.
"Couldn't you at least help your teacher move the desks? Where are your manners?" Lin Wanxing said. "Besides, standing around doing nothing after being kept behind by a teacher looks rather suspicious, doesn't it?"
"Are you threatening me, teacher?" Wen Chengye asked.
Lin Wanxing smiled: "Oh right, I almost forgot you have leverage in my hands. You haven't been coming to training these days - aren't you afraid I'll report you?"
"You still have use for me, so you won't report me," Wen Chengye said coldly.
"But since you're not showing up for work, what value do you have for me now?" Lin Wanxing asked while arranging the last desk.
Wen Chengye was speechless.
These past few days, Lin Wanxing had been asked many questions she couldn't immediately answer. Now that she had finally rendered someone speechless, she felt her eloquence was returning.
The boy just stood there, slightly looking down at her, his gaze cold and hard.
A stalemate ensued.
Lin Wanxing knew very well that he was waiting for her to say something - perhaps an excuse to leave, or something else.
Someone passed by in the corridor, a girl carrying books curiously peeking into the classroom.
Wen Chengye grew tired of waiting and turned to leave.
"Wen Chengye," Lin Wanxing called out.
The boy turned back. Against the light, his profile appeared icy, showing no emotion.
"You haven't submitted your homework, have you?" Lin Wanxing said.
Wen Chengye frowned, looking at her with disbelief."You still haven't turned in the winter break homework I assigned," Lin Wanxing emphasized. "It's that assigned topic. If you've forgotten, do you need me to repeat the title for you?"
The full title of the winter break homework Lin Wanxing assigned to her students was "Football is for Victory."
Around the start of the semester, the other students had gradually submitted their assignments.
Since they completed their work after losing to Yuzhou Silver Elephant, the emotional tone of their responses was relatively negative.
Qin Ao wrote a short essay agreeing with the viewpoint expressed in the topic. In his paper, he cited various sources to discuss the importance of victory in football matches, concluding that football without victory is meaningless.
Chen Jianghe submitted a video as his assignment.
Qi Liang completed his homework in a clever way—he directly posted a thread with the title on Douhu Forum. At first, the discussion was sparse, so Qi Liang used an alternate account to argue both sides of the issue.
As the thread grew, it attracted more and more football fans to join the discussion. The post became highly popular, even recommended by the moderator to the portal's homepage, sparking widespread debate. His submitted assignment was a printed copy of these discussions.
Lin Lu continued with his four-panel comics.
To show his serious attitude toward completing the assignment, he drew an entire booklet, recording the stories their football team experienced throughout the winter break. Lin Wanxing flipped to the end of the booklet and saw that Lin Lu had crossed out "TBC" with a black pen and changed it to "END."
Everyone completed the assignment in their own way. What surprised Lin Wanxing was that Fu Xinshu did not submit his homework.
"Teacher, I thought about it for a long time. I feel like this statement should be correct, but I just couldn't write it. I don't know why," Fu Xinshu said.
Naturally, as one of the students in the class at the time, Lin Wanxing also asked Wen Chengye to submit the assignment.
"What's your reason for not turning in the homework?" Lin Wanxing asked Wen Chengye.
"How did Wen Chengye respond?"
Standing on the plastic track of Wuchuan Road Stadium, Wang Fa asked this question.
The weather was getting warmer. The students came to the field for training after their exams, and Lin Wanxing was dragged along to stretch her legs. She ran a lap first, then slacked off while telling Wang Fa about her encounter with Wen Chengye that day.
"Coach, want to take a guess?" Lin Wanxing deliberately slowed her pace and stopped in front of Wang Fa.
Wang Fa pressed the stopwatch, blew a whistle at the players training on the field, and said, "I guess Wen Chengye turned around and left, and Teacher Lin definitely needs to run a couple more laps."
Lin Wanxing gasped for breath, looking at Wang Fa in shock, almost unable to catch her breath.
Of course, Wang Fa was right—Wen Chengye did indeed turn around and leave. Aside from a few comrades with an abnormal enthusiasm for completing assignments, Lin Wanxing had yet to meet anyone who would voluntarily submit their homework.
Homework is something that teachers have to collect, after all.
After running another half lap, Lin Wanxing said this to Wang Fa.
"Teacher Lin sounds quite confident about collecting the assignments."
"Actually, it's not confidence. I'm just doing what a teacher should do," she said.
"What should a teacher do, collect homework?" Wang Fa asked.
"Treat everyone equally," Lin Wanxing replied.
Football training time grew shorter.
The students came to the field after their exams ended at three, and by a little after five, their training was over.As the days grew longer, the sky was still bright at five o'clock. While everyone was busy packing up the training equipment, some people began trickling into the field in small groups.
With the gradual warming of the weather, more and more people came to Wuchuan Road Stadium to play casual soccer.
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