11: Chapter 11: One Million Arrives! The Money Tactics Begin

On the morning of the third day, Fang Jiming was shaken awake by his phone.

The broken phone under his pillow was buzzing endlessly. He fished it out with his eyes closed, held it up to his face, and the white light of the screen stung his eyes, forcing him to squint several times before he could make out the content.

A bank notification.

"Your savings card ending in 8848 has received a deposit of 1,000,000.00 RMB. Balance: 1,113,700.00 RMB."

One million.

Fang Jiming stared at the string of numbers for five seconds. The first thought that popped into his head was that this thing really was depositing ten times the amount every day.

Ten thousand on the first day, one hundred thousand on the second, and one million on the third.

At this rate, he would have a stable daily income of one hundred million by the seventh day.

A sliver of light leaked through the gap in the curtains, and the oil pans of the breakfast stalls outside were already sizzling. The top right corner of his phone showed it was 6:42 AM.

He tucked the phone back under his pillow, rolled over, and stared at the crack in the ceiling of his rental apartment that had been there since last year, his mind turning to another matter.

Yesterday's attendance: 24 students.

Of the 38 students in the class, only 24 had shown up, and three of those were ones he had personally dragged out of internet cafes; whether they would actually return was still up in the air.

Teacher Wen Ruyan's words echoed in his ears again: Class 18 loses seven or eight students every year.

The System's red line was that if 12 students dropped out, he would explode on the spot and lose his life. Damn it, he didn't want to end up with money to spend but no life to spend it.

Fang Jiming sat up, his bare feet touching the cold concrete floor, and opened the System Panel on his phone.

"Current class registration: 38 students."

"Yesterday's attendance: 24 students."

"High-risk students for long-term truancy: 6 students."

"Students with >60% dropout risk assessment: 4 students."

He stared at that "4" for two seconds, closed the panel, and opened a food delivery app.

No, that wasn't right.

He exited the delivery app, opened his browser, and typed a line into the search bar.

Nanqiao City high-end private chef, delivery service, can deliver to schools.

The search results threw up a bunch of random ads. Fang Jiming flipped through two pages and clicked into the page of a private chef brand called Restaurant.

The main image on the homepage was an Australian M9 Wagyu beef steak with perfect marbling, accompanied by black truffles and matsutake mushrooms. The background was the kitchen of a Michelin-starred Restaurant, where a head chef in a white uniform was torching the surface of the meat, the fat sizzling and bubbling.

Fang Jiming scrolled down to check the menu and prices.

Set A: Australian M9 Wagyu with black truffle sauce, diced abalone with black pepper, handmade pasta, seasonal salad, dessert.

Price per person: 680 RMB.

Set B: Japanese A5 Kobe Wagyu shabu-shabu, served with handmade shrimp paste, mushroom broth base, handmade dessert.

Price per person: 1,280 RMB.

He did the math: 38 servings of Set A would total 25,840 RMB. He rounded it up to 30,000 RMB.

Fang Jiming dialed the order number on the page.

The phone was answered after two rings by a female voice, with that very professional kind of sweetness.

"Hello, this is the Restaurant private chef customization service. How can I help you?"

"I'd like to order 38 servings of Set A. Please have them delivered to Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School before 11:30 AM today. Can the delivery staff dress formally, maybe with white gloves? The more formal, the better. Is that possible?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

"Sir, are you sure you said thirty-eight servings?"

"Yes, thirty-eight. Not one less."

"Very well, sir. Could you please provide the specific delivery address? We need to confirm the route and temperature preservation plan."

"Inside Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School, Qiaonan Street, Nanqiao City. The first floor of the senior year teaching building, right at the classroom door. Call me when you get to the school gate, and I'll have the guard let you in."

There was another pause on the other end, presumably processing the combination of "high-end private chef delivery" and "high school classroom door."

"Sir, our standard service already includes white gloves and silver trays, so you can rest assured about that."

"Fine."

"38 servings of Set A total 25,840 RMB. Would you like to pay via WeChat or Alipay?"

"WeChat. Send me a payment code."

Thirty seconds later, the payment was complete.

Fang Jiming tossed his phone onto the bed and started putting on that wrinkled white short-sleeved shirt.

He crouched on the floor to tie his canvas shoes, the corners of his mouth slowly curling into a grin.

Fang Jiming: (￣ω￣)

It was his third day at No. 19 Middle School. Reasoning didn't work, the gaming bet only managed to drag back Zhao Dazhuang, and Teacher Wen Ruyan's "powering by love" bitter-struggle educational model had been going on for two years and hadn't gotten anywhere.

This bunch of students didn't respond to hard tactics or soft tactics.

Then he would try "hard dishes."

Before leaving, he took another look at his bank balance. Taking 30,000 RMB out of over a million to treat the whole class to a good meal was, proportionally, like a worker with a monthly salary of 3,700 RMB spending a little over a yuan to buy a colleague a bottle of mineral water.

It didn't hurt at all.

Of course, he also knew that a meal could only solve the first step of the problem: getting them willing to come.

Keeping them would depend on something else, but that was for later. For now, he just needed to get everyone together.

On the way to school on a shared bike, Fang Jiming made another call, this time to Qian Duoduo.

The phone rang six times before it was answered, and Qian Duoduo's muffled voice came through.

"Hello? Teacher Fang?"

"Are you awake?"

"Awake, awake. I'm eating breakfast."

In the background, his mother could be heard yelling at him not to drip oil on the sofa.

"What's your class WeChat group ID?"

"Huh? Teacher Fang, you want to join the group?"

"Yes."

"But everyone in that group only posts game links and memes. No one talks about studying."

"I didn't say I wanted to talk about studying."

Qian Duoduo gave him the group ID.

Fang Jiming hung up and requested to join the group.

The group was named "Class 18 · City-Wide Bottom-Rankers Alliance."

There were 34 members in the group; 4 students hadn't even joined the group.

After joining the group, Fang Jiming didn't say anything, nor did he change his nickname. He just lurked quietly, waiting for the "nuclear bomb" to drop at noon.

He wobbled into the school gate on his shared bike, and Old Zhang stuck his head out of the guard booth to take a look.

"Uncle Zhang, some vehicles might come in to deliver things at noon today. Could you please let them through for me?"

Old Zhang was pouring hot water into his enamel mug; hearing this, his hand slipped, and the hot water nearly splashed onto his radio.

"Delivering things again? We haven't even finished processing that 80,000 RMB chair from last time, and now you're delivering what?"

"Food."

"Food? You're not eating at the Cafeteria?"

"You call that stuff in the Cafeteria food?"

Old Zhang stood there holding his enamel mug, stunned for two seconds, only to realize he couldn't refute that statement.

Everyone in the school knew the level of the No. 19 Middle School Cafeteria: stir-fried cabbage stalks with cabbage leaves, braised pork with more bones than meat. The students privately called it the "pig sty" that even pigs wouldn't go to.

Old Zhang: (-_-;)

"Fine, I'll open the gate for you when the cars get here."