After returning to the mountain, Zhu Siqi excitedly told his master about everything he had seen and done that day.Liaofan was genuinely happy for him. After all, his disciple had managed, in a single day, to learn almost everything that normally took others half a year to complete—and had learned it well. Geography, history, and Chinese didn't even need mentioning; he had memorized the textbooks completely. Exams would pose no difficulty at all. Even mathematics, which required logical thinking, he had tested himself on and achieved full marks. That was truly impressive.
Still, Liaofan worried that Zhu Siqi might become complacent. Wanting to temper his pride and cool him down a little, he said, "Your learning today was quite good, but remember that school is a collective environment. You need to interact more with your classmates and make friends. You also said you didn't attend PE class—that's not ideal. These sports are popular in modern society, and you should learn them. At the very least, when others invite you to play, you should know how. With your strong martial arts foundation, you'll pick them up quickly, but you must be especially careful—never reveal that you know martial arts, and above all, never let anyone sense your internal energy. Do you understand?"
Hearing his master's words, Zhu Siqi calmed down. He knew his master was right. There was still much for him to learn—not just academically, but in other aspects as well. After all, he had only truly stepped into society for a little over half a month. He didn't realize that what he had already accomplished in that time was nothing short of genius.
After dinner, he returned to his room and took out the English textbook he hadn't yet read. First-year English was very simple: not many words to memorize, mainly phonetics, pronunciation, and writing. If pronunciation wasn't learned correctly at this stage, it would be hard to fix later. The book included diagrams showing how sounds were produced—whether the tongue should go up or down, bend or curl—clearly illustrated. Zhu Siqi studied them and memorized all the diagrams.
However, without someone guiding pronunciation aloud, it was difficult to be completely accurate. Skimming through the later sections, he found them all very easy; he had memorized those vocabulary words years ago. As for writing, although it was his first time using a fountain pen and a ballpoint pen, the book provided clear diagrams. After copying the 26 letters once according to the illustrations, he encountered no major problems. If asked to write English now, his handwriting would be just as standard as the examples in the book. It seemed that the main thing to pay attention to the next day would be the teacher's pronunciation.
Only then did he remember that he still had unfinished business. He had planned to gather medicinal herbs that day, but it was already late. Still, with his mastery of the Yijin One-Source Technique, within a controllable range of a hundred meters, day and night made little difference to him—even with his eyes closed.
With that thought, he immediately entered the primeval forest, circulated his internal energy, and quickly gathered all the required herbs. At night, though, he wasn't used to washing them when visibility was poor, so he simply carried them to the stream. No one else would come there anyway; he could wash them the next morning.
At daybreak, Zhu Siqi rushed to the stream and cleaned all the herbs thoroughly. He still needed to attend morning reading at school and didn't want to be late on his second day. He hurriedly placed the herbs on the mountaintop—without even cutting them up—shouldered his new schoolbag, and headed down the mountain.
Morning self-study at school was usually for reading Chinese or English aloud. Some students were also finishing homework they hadn't completed the day before. Only then did Zhu Siqi suddenly remember—yesterday, every teacher seemed to have assigned homework, but he had been so absorbed in reading that he hadn't paid attention. He immediately asked his deskmate, Zhu Aiguo.
"What homework did we have yesterday?"
Zhu Aiguo laughed. "You didn't do any of it? Then you're in trouble. Every teacher checks homework. If you didn't finish, you'll be punished."
"Then hurry and tell me—what homework was there?" Zhu Siqi asked anxiously.
Zhu Aiguo took out his Chinese, math, geography, and history homework notebooks and handed them over. "Take a look. If you can't do it, just copy mine."
Zhu Siqi flipped through them and saw that he could do every problem. He took out his own homework books and began writing with his fountain pen. He still preferred fountain pens to ballpoint pens; to him, they shared something in common with brushes—except a pen could write continuously, while a brush needed frequent dipping in ink. The fountain pen didn't allow the same sweeping strokes as a brush, though.
He wrote quickly, but it still took over half an hour to finish everything. He didn't need to look at the textbooks at all—everything was done from memory. Even the math problems were easy for him now. Of course, if he'd been asked to do them the previous day, he would have been unable to write a thing. Seeing how fast he worked, Zhu Aiguo assumed he was copying and didn't suspect anything.
Zhu Siqi, however, felt that doing this every day would be torture. If the homework were challenging, that would be one thing—but these problems were so easy he could solve them with his eyes closed. As for handwriting practice, he had copied scriptures for over ten years; there was no need for this. It seemed he needed to find a way to discuss canceling his homework with the teachers.
After morning self-study, class representatives collected homework to deliver to each subject teacher. Zhu Siqi handed in his work as well.
The first two periods that morning were English, the third and fourth were math. In the afternoon, there were two Chinese classes and one self-study period.
The English teacher was a young woman who had graduated just two years earlier, named Wang Ying. Since the semester was already more than halfway through, the pronunciation section had been completed long ago, leaving Zhu Siqi somewhat at a disadvantage. Fortunately, Teacher Wang's pronunciation was fairly standard. Zhu Siqi listened carefully whenever she read words aloud, comparing her pronunciation with the phonetic symbols and the diagrams he had memorized. It was hard work. Moreover, she didn't cover all sounds systematically—sometimes one word, sometimes another phonetic symbol. By his count, she hadn't even covered a fifth of all phonetics in one class. First-year vocabulary was limited anyway, mostly common words with repetitive sounds.
Near the end of class, the teacher advised students that to learn English well, they needed to speak more and memorize more words. Ideally, they should buy a tape recorder (there were no repeaters at the time) and the matching first-year tapes. For rural children, this was unrealistic—most families couldn't afford such things. Hearing this, Zhu Siqi's heart stirred. It seemed he should visit the market shops at noon.
Math class held little novelty for him. During breaks, he met two more classmates sitting in front of him, Wang Yu and Zhang Bo—both boys. The girls in the class all sat closer to the front.
After lunch, he rushed to the market shops. They did sell tape recorders, but they were expensive—82 yuan each—and didn't include tapes. The shop assistant told him that tapes could be bought at the Xinhua Bookstore.
At the bookstore, he learned that a full set of junior middle school tapes cost two yuan per cassette, six cassettes in total. He calculated his money and realized he didn't have enough to buy a tape recorder. It looked like he'd have to wait until the next market day to earn more money.
When he returned to school and entered the classroom, Wang Yu told him that the homeroom teacher was looking for him. He hurried to the office and found Teacher Tan inside.
"Teacher Tan, you were looking for me?" Zhu Siqi asked politely.
"Oh, Zhu Siqi," Teacher Tan said, looking up from grading papers. "I wanted to ask how you're doing. You've been in class for over a day now—are you keeping up? If there's anything you don't understand, you can ask the subject teachers after class."
"Thank you, teacher. Everything else is fine. It's just English pronunciation—the material was taught earlier, so I haven't mastered it very well."
"Oh? Any other difficulties?"
"No, the rest is fine. I can keep up."
Teacher Tan had heard from a third-year teacher that Zhu Siqi had never attended school before. Hearing him say he could keep up made him doubtful.
"Really? If you can keep up, say so. If you can't, say so. The teacher won't blame you, but you must tell the truth."
Sensing the doubt, Zhu Siqi had an idea—one that might free him from homework misery.
"Really. I already have a foundation in Chinese, so that's not a problem. History and geography are mainly memorization, and since I used to memorize medical formulas, my memory is decent. If I read the earlier material a few times, I can memorize a whole chapter."
He didn't want to reveal too much, only attributing it to better-than-average memory.
"As for math, my father was a math teacher, so I've been interested since I was young. I can already understand the earlier sections of the textbook, and I believe it won't take long for me to catch up with the class."
"There's one more thing, Teacher Tan. Right now I want to focus on catching up with the class, so after going home I spend all my time reading. Could you speak with the subject teachers and exempt me from homework?"
"That won't do," Teacher Tan said firmly. "If you focus only on speed and don't consolidate knowledge, that's no good. For math especially—the more problems you do, the better you understand formulas and theorems. As for Chinese, geography, and history, I can talk to those teachers—but math is out of the question."
Reducing three-fifths of the workload was already good enough, so Zhu Siqi didn't push further.
"For English pronunciation, you can ask the class monitor for studies, the English class representative, or directly ask Teacher Wang."
"Understood. Thank you, teacher." Zhu Siqi felt genuinely happy at the teacher's concern. He had originally wanted to borrow next semester's math textbook, but worried it would arouse suspicion. Since he had seen full sets of textbooks at the Xinhua Bookstore, he decided to buy them himself and only ask teachers when necessary.
"You may go now," Teacher Tan said, returning to his work.
The afternoon Chinese class continued with classical texts. Teacher Dai explained very slowly, almost word by word. Even so, many students still didn't understand. Classical Chinese was difficult without broad knowledge; even clear explanations couldn't help if students had never encountered such language. Zhu Siqi, however, was different. Buddhist scriptures themselves were semi-classical, and combined with his mastery of the Four Books, Five Classics, and other texts, he understood classical Chinese naturally.
During the self-study period, he finished the math homework assigned that day. He no longer needed to do homework for the other subjects, which made things much easier.
After school, Zhu Siqi went to the Xinhua Bookstore and bought a full set of textbooks for the second semester of first year. Then he hurried back up the mountain. He needed to make medicine quickly that evening—those pills would have to stand in for the tape recorder for now.