The characters were written in white chalk.
The blackboard still bore the words "smart" that Lin Wanxing had written back then, along with everyone's daily earnings ledger. These messy scribbles made Lin Wanxing fail to notice the two additional lines of characters at first glance.
But the moment she turned off the lights, she spotted them and instinctively switched them back on.
[emailprotected]
Yyds丨mx0716
These were the two extra lines on the blackboard.
At first, she thought they were just random chalk marks left by students. However, the unusual structure of the first line quickly made her realize it was an email address.
Wanxing_lin—Lin Wanxing?
Was this her email?
Under the fluorescent light, Lin Wanxing stood frozen.
She stared at the characters on the blackboard, having no recollection of ever registering such an address, though she couldn't rule out the possibility that she might have done so accidentally and forgotten about it.
But then, who had written it there?
Calming down, Lin Wanxing examined the two lines of characters carefully. Her first step was to determine the website where the email account was registered.
The "@" suffix should indicate a specific mail server.
Lin Wanxing chose the simplest method: she took out her phone, opened Baidu, and entered the email suffix into the search bar.
Numerous search results appeared, with the highlighted portion reading—"Yongchuan Evergrande Football Club."
Lin Wanxing looked up at the email address on the blackboard, even more incredulous.
Was this an email account registered on the Yongchuan Evergrande Football Club website?
Using her name?
Her initial "peculiar" thought turned into "alarm," and a cold sweat broke out on her back.
She then shifted her gaze to the second line of chalk writing.
"Yyds丨mx0716"—it looked like meaningful gibberish. Lin Wanxing silently repeated the first few letters. The intentional capitalization and combination of numbers and letters made it resemble a password.
Was it written by Wang Fa?
Lin Wanxing looked up at the ceiling. If Wang Fa had registered the email in her name and secretly left it on the blackboard, he would have intended for her to find it only after he left. Could it be that Wang Fa had already gone?
Lin Wanxing immediately dialed Wang Fa's WeChat.
The call took a while to connect.
"Where are you? Have you left?" Lin Wanxing asked.
"I'm upstairs washing dishes," Wang Fa replied, a rare hint of resignation in his tone. "I'll leave in a bit."
"Wait for me, then," Lin Wanxing said, gripping her phone. "Is there any drink you'd like? I'll bring one up later."
"No need, there are still some in the fridge. I'm leaving soon," Wang Fa said in a very businesslike manner.
"Consider it one last drink. Let me know on WeChat if there's anything you want." With that, Lin Wanxing hung up, pretending not to hear Wang Fa's final "No need."
Wang Fa's voice sounded completely normal, and he was still upstairs, which meant it was unlikely that he had left the email address there.
Squinting at the blackboard, an idea suddenly occurred to Lin Wanxing.
Once, Chen Jianghe had received a "100 Free Ball Rentals Card," which led him to the sports equipment room.
Later, someone had slipped Qin Ao a pack of cigarettes containing many motivational quotes, prompting Qin Ao to come and confront her.
Together, they had deciphered the riddles in the cigarette pack and found Fu Xinshu.Next, Fu Xinshu also received a map and led the players of Hongjing No. 8 Middle School to start the "Yuan Yuan Cram School."
And now, on the blackboard of the cram school, right in front of her, another string of email addresses appeared.
Could it have been left by the person the students called the "mysterious figure"?
Lin Wanxing felt as if she were trapped in some bizarre puzzle, the milky-white light around her like an illusory spiderweb.
Normally, you wouldn't sense any issues, but occasionally, a sticky thread would dangle down, lightly landing on your cheek or arm. It wasn't frightening, more like a mischievous prank, but it always left one feeling restless.
Thinking of this, Lin Wanxing opened the Yongchuan Evergrande Football Club website on her phone.
The homepage featured news congratulating the club on winning the xth Chinese Super League championship. The image carousel automatically switched, and Lin Wanxing saw group photos of Yongchuan Evergrande players from different tiers participating in various events flash by one after another.
She scanned the webpage and found the "Email" option in the upper right corner, clicking on it.
The page redirected, and sure enough, it was the email login portal.
Lin Wanxing looked at the two strings of characters on the blackboard and entered the email account into her phone.
Then came the password field.
Lin Wanxing looked up at the blackboard again. Though it seemed incredible, she took a deep breath and typed in the second line of letters from the blackboard.
She pressed enter on her phone's keyboard to confirm.
Lin Wanxing's palms were sweaty. The moment the page loaded, she felt as if she were sinking to the bottom of the sea, even though she was standing in a brightly lit classroom.
Clicking into the inbox, there lay an unopened email, the most recent one, sent on September 30th—today. The logo remained closed, as if waiting for her to open it.
The subject line of the email read: "Yongchuan Evergrande Football Club Chairman's Office - Executive Committee - Appointment Notice."
She clicked to open it.
The surroundings were silent and dark, with only the sound of her heartbeat.
Thump, thump...
The page slowly unfolded.
A red-headed document appeared on her phone screen, with the following content:
To all staff of Yongchuan Evergrande Club:
This is to notify that Coach Liu Chuangguang has been appointed as the head coach of the Yongchuan Evergrande Club's first team.
Yongchuan Evergrande Football Club
September 30, 201x
—
Confusion surged like a tidal wave.
Lin Wanxing rose from the depths of the sea, only to be struck by the white foam washing ashore.
The classroom, without a fan, felt stuffy and hot. Sweat beaded at Lin Wanxing's hairline and trickled down her temples.
She read the email again.
The content was simple, but the official seal at the signature reminded her that this was an extremely formal club appointment notice.
Lin Wanxing remembered the name "Liu Chuangguang." He was one of the middle-aged men who had come to Hongjing to "humbly recruit talents" like Wang Fa. According to the students, he had once served as the head coach of the national team.
In this appointment notice, Liu Chuangguang was the next head coach of Yongchuan Evergrande Club. But wasn't Wang Fa about to go to Yongchuan for his debriefing?
Could this email have been sent before the matter was confirmed?
Lin Wanxing checked the email's timestamp again.
But it was indeed an internal email sent an hour ago, at exactly 7:00 PM on September 30th.
Lin Wanxing couldn't make sense of it. She simply found a desk to sit at and searched online for "Liu Chuangguang."
The news said that Director Liu had previously been serving as the "technical director" at Evergrande Club. There was no official announcement online about Director Liu taking over as the coach of Yongchuan Evergrande.But there were indeed records online. Half a month ago, due to the team's poor performance, the then head coach Terin was dismissed. The team had been searching for a new head coach, which coincided roughly with the time Liu Chuangguang came to Hongjing to find Wang Fa.
So why did the next head coach candidate in this appointment letter change from Wang Fa to Liu Chuangguang?
There were only two possibilities:
First, this appointment email was fake.
But Lin Wanxing thought, why would someone specifically register an email account in her name, secretly write the username and password on the cram school blackboard, and finally send her a fake email?
That seemed completely unnecessary.
Then the second, and most likely, possibility was that the email content was true.
And this also meant that Wang Fa had lied to them.
Lin Wanxing found it difficult to describe her feelings at that moment.
It was as if she had returned to the day they defeated Green View International.
By the stove on the rooftop dining table, the hotpot bubbled with steam. Wang Fa told her he was going to take a position at Yongchuan Evergrande because they had offered an astronomical price he couldn't refuse.
Light mist swirled in the air. Through that haze, Wang Fa's face was calm.
He said: "Yes." "There won't be a better choice."
Were all those words false?
Lin Wanxing didn't understand—was it that Yongchuan Evergrande hadn't hired Wang Fa, or that Wang Fa had declined the head coach position at Yongchuan Evergrande?
But Director Liu did come to Hongjing, and the figure of 15 million euros was too specific. Lin Wanxing thought perhaps it was indeed a real, enormous temptation.
But just as she and the students couldn't sway Wang Fa, neither could the massive sum of money.
He had refused all of it and was determined to leave.
Why?
——
Though sitting in the stuffy classroom, her sweat gradually turned cold.
Lin Wanxing couldn't sort out her thoughts when, right then, an email notification lit up—she had received a new message.
The subject was straightforward: Something you need to know about Winfred.
Winfred—Wang Fa's WeChat name. Presumably, this was also Wang Fa's English name.
Probably because she had opened the previous email with a read receipt, the sender had sent another one.
Her heart raced wildly. In the surrounding silence, she clicked open the email. Standard English commentary and faint background noise preceded the appearance of the video.
The footage was shot on a phone. As the zoom magnified, a blurry soccer field came into view.
On the field, players from both teams were gathered together, the atmosphere tense and confrontational. The next moment, the standoff turned into a brawl. It was impossible to see who threw the first punch, but the screams from the stands, transmitted through the phone's speaker, were particularly shrill.
Yet those weren't cries of fear but of excitement. The phone camera shook continuously, nauseatingly. The audience's roars became the perfect soundtrack to the fight—fists against fists, shouts against shouts—the most primitive human violence and pleasure.
Finally, someone fell on the field, and the phone dropped to the ground. The camera lens quietly faced the sky as an infinitely magnified, distorted shoe sole crushed across the screen.
It felt like melting ice water dripping drop by drop onto the crown of her head.
A sudden chill descended from her forehead, seeping through her entire body. Lin Wanxing felt her fingers turn icy.
She couldn't help but look up at the ceiling. The light, cold as substance, drenched her entirely.
In the footage she had just seen, she was certain—she had spotted Wang Fa by the sidelines of that field.
——It took Lin Wanxing a long time to calm herself down.
She clicked on the video again and carefully re-watched the news report.
The content was roughly as follows:
During the English U21 League Group A match between Southampton FC and Portsmouth FC, a severe incident of pitch violence occurred, resulting in the unexpected death of a Portsmouth player due to a sudden illness.
Southampton players are under police investigation, and the club’s officials, along with the deputy head of youth development and acting head coach Winfred, have declined to comment.
Lin Wanxing knew she hadn’t been mistaken earlier.
There had been violence on the pitch, an opposing player had died, and Wang Fa, as the head coach at the time, was right there on the field.
If this was the reason Wang Fa left Southampton and returned to China, then what about Yongchuan Evergrande?
Lost in thought, Lin Wanxing realized that an entity as massive as Yongchuan Evergrande would never skip a background check—they couldn’t possibly be unaware of Wang Fa’s past. That left only one possibility—
Wang Fa had turned down the position and salary offered by Yongchuan Evergrande, using the excuse of 15 million euros to walk away from them.
The classroom seemed to exist in a peculiar space—both bright and stiflingly hot, yet dark as night.
Lin Wanxing’s hand gently traced the surface of the desk, where years of students had carved simple sketches.
Suddenly, she remembered a night from before—the night Director Liu had come to Hongjing to humbly seek out Wang Fa.
She and Wang Fa had walked home together, just the two of them, along a path near the village. She had tried to persuade him with various reasons, hoping to convince him to coach the high school football team.
Back then, Wang Fa had asked her, "What can a school football team offer me?"
Now, in the stillness of the night, Lin Wanxing began to recall her answer.
She seemed to have said just two words—"Dreams."
And what had Wang Fa said in return?
It was a brutally honest statement—"I have no dreams."
Closing her eyes, the first image that always surfaced in her mind was Wang Fa gazing at the football pitch.
The grand stands, his solitary figure, the brim of his cap pulled low, as if half-asleep.
She had never understood why Wang Fa always sat in the stands, why he was always watching the field.
It wasn’t until just before they parted that she finally asked him for the first time—"What are you looking at?"
Where do you come from, and where do you want to go?
What do you want to see, what are you watching?
Countless times, Wang Fa’s gaze toward the pitch overlapped in her memory.
Calm, silent, puzzled, nostalgic… until the final image froze on that moment under the setting sun when he suddenly turned his head.
Lin Wanxing finally understood the feeling she had been grappling with all day but couldn’t quite grasp.
It wasn’t romantic affection, nor was it the sorrow of parting—it was an overwhelming sense of regret.
Whether Wang Fa had lied to them no longer mattered to Lin Wanxing.
The minute hand on the wall moved two more notches. She knew her time was running out.
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