Ch 4: After My Mother Returned to the Rich Family

Class 10.

The English teacher finished speaking and noticed Ruan Cha still sitting dazedly in her seat, not even opening her notebook. With a hint of displeasure, she tapped the podium with her rolled-up textbook and glanced at the freshly printed roster. “Ruan Cha? Come up to the board and write the vocabulary words.”

“Huh?” Ruan Cha, still debating whether to drag Ren Qingqing out for mutual destruction to save her parents from future misery, was startled by being called. She froze, unable to react immediately.

Her stunned expression and wandering gaze seemed, to her classmates, like the classic signs of someone unprepared and feeling guilty.

After all, she was from a small town with average grades. Considering that Second High School’s curriculum was fast-paced, it was no surprise if she couldn’t keep up. How pitiful, they thought.

The English teacher’s lips pressed into a thin line as she repeated, “Come to the board and write the vocabulary words.”

Ruan Cha nodded, begrudgingly tucking her phone—originally pulled out to play games—back into her desk. Sighing in frustration, she walked to the podium. In just one night, she’d gone from learning she was in a novel to discovering she was a dumb, unattractive, and doomed supporting character who would even drag her parents down with her. It was beyond irritating.

Reading the novel, Ruan Cha had only paid attention to how Ren Qingqing’s system gave her opportunities for cerebral enhancement with each task she completed. Smarts and looks both improved.

While Ruan Cha didn’t care for a scholar system herself, she had to admit that in this academic-upgrade novel, the female protagonist’s cheat-like advantages were significant. Now, being reduced to nothing more than a resource for that cheat system was infuriating.

For someone who had always been a law-abiding citizen, Ruan Cha was shocked at herself for seriously contemplating violence. However, she hesitated—if she and Ren Qingqing destroyed each other, would it really stop her parents from meeting their tragic ends as written?

When Ruan Cha passed by Lin Ling’s desk, Lin Ling, recently scolded back to her seat, couldn’t hide her glee. Smirking smugly, she sneered, “Some people really overestimate themselves and deserve public humiliation in front of the whole class!”

Immersed in her dark thoughts about potentially becoming ugly, Ruan Cha couldn’t care less about Lin Ling’s taunts. But the bubbling rage toward Ren Qingqing triggered a stabbing pain in her temples, like being pierced by needles.

When she reached for the chalk, her hands trembled so badly from the pain in her head that she nearly dropped it.

Sitting nearby, Xie Changan glanced up and noticed her pale face. Scratching his cheek in confusion, he wondered, Is it really that scary just to write a few vocabulary words?

“Obvious—显然的，明显的,” the English teacher dictated while scanning the room. Spotting some students sneaking peeks into their desks, she added lightly, “Mark your own scores after writing. Let’s keep it honest, people.”

Due to Class 10’s reputation, teachers often turned a blind eye to minor mischief during quizzes. After all, most of these students had family businesses waiting for them. Lecturing them about needing to get into a top university seemed impractical at best.

The English teacher swept her gaze across the classroom before turning her attention to the blackboard to assess the new transfer student. After scanning the board from top to bottom, she froze in astonishment.

At the start of class, she had dictated thirty-five vocabulary words. Occasionally glancing at the better students’ work, she noticed even the top performers left five to six blanks, while the weaker ones left around ten or more.

By the usual standards of Class 10, those results were considered decent. But compared to Ruan Cha’s performance, they were simply unremarkable.

Not only had Ruan Cha written all the words without missing a single one, but every single one was correct!

The English teacher’s eyes lit up. In a class typically filled with underachievers, encountering a diligent and strong student was a rare and heartening surprise.

“Aspiration,” she announced.

The moment the word was spoken, the room filled with the sound of shuffling papers and hushed whispers. Up until now, the dictated words had been from the vocabulary they had learned the previous week.

Even if some students struggled, they at least had some impression of the words. But now, with an unfamiliar word and no definition provided, they wouldn’t be able to get it right even if they looked it up on their phones.

Several students scratched their heads and muttered among themselves, trying to piece it together by peeking at each other’s work. However, no one seemed to have the correct answer.

As they glanced around helplessly, they caught sight of Ruan Cha, who wrote the new word on the board fluidly. As they scrutinized the spelling, it dawned on them that it matched the teacher’s pronunciation of “aspiration.”

Lin Ling’s eyes widened in disbelief when she saw Ruan Cha write “aspiration.” She stabbed her pen hard against her notebook. “How is that even possible?!”

Her eyes were glued to the blackboard as Ruan Cha continued not only to write “aspiration” but also to correctly spell the next three words, which were equally unfamiliar and without definitions!

The earlier mockery of Ruan Cha’s supposed overconfidence now felt like it applied to Lin Ling herself.

Seated nearby, Xie Changan slowly lowered the hand he’d been using to scratch his cheek. He copied the words from the board, mumbling with excitement, “Quietly competent, huh?”

Meanwhile, over in Class 2, Ren Qingqing hesitated as she heard the unfamiliar word. Her pen hovered uncertainly over her paper. Drawing on her past experience and phonetics, she carefully pieced together the spelling of the word, all the while muttering in frustration, “Why are they testing words we haven’t learned yet?”

“Effective,” the English teacher read aloud another word, watching as Ruan Cha wrote it flawlessly. Her fondness for the new student grew with each correct response, her demeanor softening further as she provided the next word’s definition.

But her favoritism didn’t sit well with the rest of the class. Even underperformers had their dignity!

“Ms. Xu, seriously? You didn’t give us definitions earlier, so we could at least guess based on pronunciation. Now you’re just calling out the meanings?”

“And isn’t ‘effective’ one of the words we haven’t learned yet? I saw that even Song Mengyu didn’t know it!”

“Yeah, exactly! And Mengyu’s our class rep!”

The English teacher, Ms. Xu, replied calmly, “Can’t you use Baidu? Don’t think I can’t see what’s happening. After class, why don’t you stand up here and see for yourself? I can spot every little move you’re making down there.”

Her words made a few students who were playing games on their phones look slightly embarrassed—but only slightly.

Ms. Xu glanced at Song Mengyu’s notebook and saw the blank spaces. She shook her head lightly. “This test is to evaluate your preparation. The difficulty for Class 1 and 2 is more than half a level higher than yours. Be grateful.”

Though she said this with a casual air, Ms. Xu felt a bit guilty. After all, she had raised the difficulty of the test to match that of the top classes, specifically to gauge Ruan Cha’s abilities.

Who would have thought that Ruan Cha would surprise her so greatly!

Meanwhile, Song Mengyu, who was mentioned, felt her face burn with embarrassment. Her grip on her ballpoint pen tightened until her knuckles turned pale. She turned slightly to glance at Lin Ling, who usually basked in being the top scorer of Class 10. Seeing that Lin Ling hadn’t managed to write the answers either, she felt a brief sense of relief.

But that relief evaporated the moment her gaze landed on the blackboard, where Ruan Cha’s list of neatly written vocabulary words was displayed. Song Mengyu’s eyes widened in shock. Ruan Cha managed to write them all down?!

Surely the last few words, which only had definitions, must’ve been guesses!

Any hope she had left was immediately dashed by Ms. Xu’s next words.

After reviewing Ruan Cha’s work on the blackboard, Ms. Xu smiled in satisfaction, her expression visibly delighted. “You have five minutes to check your answers against the words on the blackboard. Don’t bother flipping through your books—Ruan Cha’s answers are all correct!”

The entire class: “!!!”

Ruan Cha listened to the collective gasps from her classmates. Glancing at the blackboard filled with what she considered very basic, commonly used words, she suddenly had a much clearer—and humbling—understanding of the phrase “Your grades are considered good in Class 10.”

In Class 10, someone like her, a proverbial bronze-tier player, could easily pass as a king-tier expert!

Just as Ruan Cha was about to step down from the podium and return to her seat, a cold, emotionless electronic voice suddenly echoed in her ears without warning:

[Ding! Congratulations to the host for achieving full marks on the vocabulary test. However, as the associated target completed the task first, the host’s task has been marked as failed. 1 point has been deducted.]

Ruan Cha: “!!!”