13 Chapter 13 Respecting Teachers

"Beep beep beep."

The ringtone sounded just as Li Ang stepped onto the street and pulled out his phone. The caller ID showed Wang Congshan.

"Hello?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm strolling around the streets while checking my WeChat step count." Li Ang replied, "Is something up?"

Wang Congshan's voice sounded somewhat speechless, "Didn't you see the QQ group? I notified everyone yesterday in the group, called a few classmates who live nearby to visit Teacher Shi at the hospital, I even @mentioned you."

"Really?" Li Ang scratched his head and gave an embarrassed smile, "Where are you guys now?"

After all, it was he who had caused Shi Qingsong to be hospitalized with broken ribs, and paying a visit was the least he could do.

It's all about respecting teachers and valuing education.

Wang Congshan said, "Yin City First People's Hospital."

Li Ang nodded, "I'll be there soon."

After hanging up, on the other end of the line, Wang Congshan shook her head helplessly and put her phone back into her bag.

At this time, the hospital ward was packed with people surrounding the emotional Shi Qingsong, who was holding an apple peeled by a student.

The visitors included students from Class 7 Grade 2 at Experimental Middle School of Yin City, and others were students Shi Qingsong had taught, ones who had long since graduated and even entered society.

Not all of these students who had graduated from Experimental Middle School of Yin City were "good students" or "well-behaved students" in Shi Qingsong's memory.

The top-performing students, who could get into key universities through their own efforts, naturally did not have a deep connection with their teacher.

The average students, who were quietly obedient, mostly had unremarkable characters and virtually no communication with the teacher.

Contrarily, many of those who visited Shi Qingsong today were students who once sank deep into quagmires and couldn't pull themselves out.

Some had repeatedly failed examinations and eventually gave up in despair,

others had encountered school bullying, being ostracized from student social circles and subjected to daily mockery and ridicule,

and there were those who nearly abandoned their education to become idle members of society because of parental divorce, uncaring grandmothers, and indifferent uncles.

The four characters "educate and cultivate people" carry the weight of a heavy responsibility; as a teacher, Shi Qingsong dared not abandon any student. As long as it was within his power, he had to pull those students back from the edge of falling further, to prevent them from becoming even worse people.

Just as everyone was reminiscing about Teacher Shi's kindness and feeling moved,

"Teacher——"

The voice arrived before the person did. Shi Qingsong, who was eating the apple, coughed, almost choking on an apple piece.

Out of all his students, Li Ang was definitely the most troublesome one. Even just hearing his voice made Shi Qingsong feel his nerves starting to fray.

Li Ang entered knocking on the door, holding a bunch of colorful flowers in his hands.

"You've come...." Shi Qingsong's expression stiffened as he said faintly, "Why did you even buy flowers? Isn't that a waste?"

Li Ang smiled and shook his head, "Not a waste, I picked them from the flower bed at the hospital entrance."

"...Isn't that inappropriate?" Shi Qingsong's eye twitched as he spoke.

"Flowers are meant to be picked if they can be picked, don't wait until there are no flowers and only branches to pick. Initially, I thought about plucking a few white flowers from a funeral wreath, but that seemed inauspicious, and the shop owner didn't agree." Li Ang said offhandedly, squeezing to the front of the sickbed and casually placing a bunch of yellow bananas on the bedside table.

Shi Qingsong's voice was filled with alarm, "Those aren't also plucked by you from somewhere, are they?"

"You really don't trust me, teacher. They're bought from a fruit shop." Li Ang said, "Patients who have been hospitalized for a while, due to being bedridden for long periods, often experience constipation. Bananas can help with bowel movements."

As he spoke, Li Ang quickly peeled a banana and passed it over.

Unable to refuse such earnestness, Shi Qingsong took it and began to eat it, bite by bite.

By the time he was halfway through, Li Ang said leisurely, "Well, I also had some trouble with my digestion before, and the doctor told me to buy some bananas to cure constipation. But after three days, I still hadn't been to the toilet. It wasn't until I went back to the doctor that I found out the bananas were meant to be eaten."

...

With a bite of food in his mouth, Shi Qingsong's face turned a bit greenish as Li Ang cordially said, "Teacher, don't stop, eat it while it's hot."

"Can you not be stupid for once!" Wang Congshan smacked Li Ang on the forehead with a chop of her hand, "Stand there properly."

"Oh," Li Ang obediently stood up.

"Well," Shi Qingsong discreetly put the half-eaten banana on the bedside cabinet, cleared his throat, and said to Wang Congshan, "Congshan, I've communicated with the school, and they will be sending a teacher over for the next two months to temporarily take over as the homeroom teacher. I hope you can hand over the work to her when the time comes."

"All right, Teacher." Wang Congshan nodded.

"Damn it!" Li Ang, standing beside them with a frown, rubbed his chin, "I actually slipped the school leaders some red envelopes, trying to get promoted from student to homeroom teacher. To think the position was snatched away—how can someone take the money and not do the job...."

"Will you die if you don't speak?" Wang Congshan already regretted inviting Li Ang over and started to pull him by his clothes out of the ward.

Once in the hallway, Li Ang frowned and, with a tilt of his chin like a domineering CEO, coldly said, "What kind of dignity is this, grabbing and pulling? Woman, if you're doing this to get my attention, well, you've succeeded. But I'm warning you, you're playing with fire."

Wang Congshan, already accustomed to Li Ang's occasional foolish acts, glanced at him sidelong and said, "Brother, you've been reading too many overbearing CEO novels, haven't you?"

"Eh? Not convincing?" Li Ang instantly returned to normal, sullenly replied, "And I even went out of my way to learn some CEO quotes. Like 'baby, if you feel good, just moan, I see your face is all flushed.' 'Baby, you are the only woman in the world who dares to be rough with me.'"

God damn baby....

Wang Congshan felt as if a black line was falling from the corner of her eye, and while the two were interacting in the hallway, a middle-aged woman, sobbing softly, pushed by an old man in a wheelchair.

"Huh?"

Li Ang turned his head to look at the man in the wheelchair.

The elderly man was thin, his expression vacant, his mouth slightly open, and a clear string of drool slid down from the corner of his mouth, landing on the white towel in front of him.

Stroke? Senile dementia? Cerebrovascular disease?

Li Ang's mind raced—the enhanced Perception Attribute in combination with Cat's Eye enabled him to sense a faint aura that lingered on the man in the wheelchair, which came from the presence of a Spiritual Body.

The rhythm of a mission.

Li Ang's expression changed in a flash as he approached the middle-aged woman, putting on the air of a refined, easy-going, kind-hearted young man, gently asking what happened and if there was any way he could help.

Idol type, actor type, power type—all were labels that belonged to Li Ang; with his divine level of acting skills, the plainly dressed middle-aged woman quickly opened up.

It turned out the man in the wheelchair was her father. A few days ago, he was supposed to take some local specialties to visit another daughter but came home groggy by himself, unable to utter a single word. When the woman called that sister, she found out that her father hadn't visited her at all that day.

Fearing that the old man had developed senile dementia, the woman and her husband hurriedly took him to the hospital for a consultation, but the results showed that all was normal with his health.

"Everything seems fine, so why can't he speak or move?" the middle-aged woman said, wiping away tears.

[Mission trigger conditions fulfilled]

[Mission type: Regular mission]

[Mission name: Between the Cracks]

[Mission objective: Uncover the true cause of Qian Jianjun's dementia]

[Time limit for the mission: 30 minutes]

[Mission reward: Random common quality item*1]

[Accept/Decline]