52: Chapter 55 The whole school is in an uproar, Teacher Fang, who exactly are you?

Monday morning, 6:40 AM.

On the concrete road at the entrance of Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School, students walked in twos and threes with schoolbags on their backs.

Li Wentao from Class 3 of Grade 11 was the first to notice something was off.

He slowed his pace as he passed the first-floor corridor.

He poked his head into the window of the classroom on the left.

Then, he froze completely.

"What the hell?"

He didn't even put down his schoolbag and pressed himself against the window.

The floor inside the classroom was brand new.

Light gray matte wood-grain tiles, so clean they could reflect a person's silhouette.

All the desks and chairs had been replaced with solid wood configurations identical to those in Class 18.

Every chair had a swivel adjustment and lumbar support.

The blackboard was gone.

In its original position, an 85-inch OLED smart interactive screen had been installed.

The factory protective film was still stuck on the aluminum alloy frame at the bottom.

Three rows of eye-protecting LED light tubes were neatly arranged on the ceiling.

The Daikin air conditioner in the corner was quietly glowing with a green standby light.

Li Wentao pressed his face against the glass and watched for a full ten seconds.

Then he turned and rushed toward the stairs, his voice cracking.

"Come look! Come look! Come look!"

By seven o'clock, the corridors of the entire teaching building were already crowded with people.

Every classroom entrance was surrounded by a circle of students.

Some were leaning against the windows taking pictures.

Some were pushing the doors open to go inside and touch the desks.

Others were sitting on the new chairs, spinning around.

A girl from Class 1 of Grade 11 crouched in front of a new desk, her fingers tracing the wood grain of the tabletop.

"This desk is fancier than the dining table at home."

The classmate next to her had already taken out her phone and snapped twenty photos.

"I posted it on WeChat Moments, and my mom asked if I transferred to Nanqiao No. 1 Middle School."

Li Wentao: (ꙨꙨ)

The noise in the hallways grew louder with every floor, exploding from the first floor all the way to the fifth.

The monitor of Class 15, Grade 12, stood at his class entrance.

Supporting himself with both hands on the doorframe, his mouth hung open for a long time, unable to close.

He looked back and saw seven or eight people had already rushed into the classroom.

Some were filming the air conditioner.

Some were researching how to turn on that OLED screen.

Some were bouncing on the chairs to feel the shock absorption.

"This thing is too comfortable; it's even better than the gaming chairs at the internet cafe!"

Zhao Dazhuang's voice came from the window of Class 18 on the fifth floor, full of energy.

"Why are you all so excited? We in Class 18 have been using them since last week. I'm already used to sitting in them!"

Someone downstairs looked up and shouted back.

"Zhao Dazhuang, shut up! What exactly is the background of Teacher Fang in your class?"

Zhao Dazhuang leaned on the windowsill, arms crossed over his chest, his expression filled with pride.

"Brother Fang's business, don't ask so much."

Zhao Dazhuang: (⌐■_■)

Qian Duoduo sat at his desk, crossing his legs.

He used his phone to record a video of the whole school going crazy.

The caption read, "Welcome to the most luxurious classroom in Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School, check it out."

Within three minutes, it had over two hundred likes.

The first comment in the comment section was from his dad.

"Son, did your school get acquired?"

Qian Duoduo replied with three words.

"No, it was donated."

His dad sent another one.

"Who donated it? How much money is this?"

Qian Duoduo thought about it.

He replayed the image of Fang Jiming getting out of the maybach last time in his mind.

He typed a line of text and then deleted it.

Finally, he only replied with three words: "Don't know."

Qian Duoduo: (ꐦ˘ω˘)

At 7:20 AM, the local Nanqiao headline account "Qiaonan News" pushed a message.

The title read: "The city's bottom-ranked high school gets a makeover overnight; 32 classrooms equipped to crush key high schools, the benefactor behind the scenes remains a mystery."

The main text included sixteen photos, taken from the first floor to the fifth.

Every detail of the classroom renovation was clearly captured by the students.

Over a thousand comments flooded in within half an hour.

At the very top was a comment from a local education blogger.

"Everyone here can open the official website of Nanqiao No. 1 Middle School to check their teaching equipment list."

"Their most expensive projector is 120,000 yuan per unit. I checked the official quote for this 85-inch Huawei OLED interactive screen at Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School; a single unit including installation is 146,000 yuan."

"Thirty-two classrooms, thirty-two units; the blackboards alone cost over four million."

The second half of the comment did an even bigger calculation.

"Adding in the solid wood desks, Daikin air conditioners, eye-protecting lights, thermal break aluminum windows, fresh air systems, and floor renovations."

"Conservatively estimated at two million per room, with thirty-two rooms plus public areas, that's at least sixty-five million."

"This amount of money, even the most expensive Nanqiao No. 1 Middle School might not be able to come up with at once, yet it was dumped into the bottom-ranked Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School."

"The amount of money is secondary; who exactly is throwing money at this school? Why?"

This comment was upvoted to the top, with over three hundred replies following it.

"Someone said earlier that it was donated by an overseas foundation, but what kind of foundation is this crazy? Throwing sixty-five million at a school with a college entrance rate of less than ten percent?"

"Isn't it said that the homeroom teacher of Class 18 pulled the strings? A newly graduated substitute teacher with a monthly salary of 3,700, and you're telling me he knows a benefactor who can shell out sixty-five million?"

"Either he's a hidden rich second generation slumming it for experience, or the money itself is problematic."

"Upstairs, stop with the conspiracy theories, okay? The procedures are all complete."

"Donation agreements, notarized filings, construction qualifications, fire safety inspections—everything is there."

"You can even look up the registration information for that foundation."

"So what if you check it? There are hundreds of thousands of shell companies registered in the BVI islands worldwide; who knows who is behind them."

"Regardless of who is behind it, the students are enjoying real benefits; isn't that better than anything else? Do those kids at Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School deserve to sit at broken desks for a lifetime?"

"That sounds nice, but educational resources are only useful when spent where they are needed most. If these devices were given to the top students at Nanqiao No. 1 Middle School, it could produce dozens more 985 university students. Given to the underachievers at Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School? Three years later the desks will still be new, and all the people will have run off to work."

"This last comment is truly disgusting."

When Teacher Wen Ruyan scrolled to this post in the office.

The force with which her fingers gripped her phone case turned her fingernails white.

She stared at the last comment for five seconds.

Then she turned the phone screen face down on the desk.

Teacher Wen Ruyan: (ꐦ°᷄⌓°᷅)

Physics teacher Old Liu walked back from the corridor carrying his thermos, poking his head to look at Teacher Wen Ruyan's expression.

"Teacher Wen, have you seen that post?"

Teacher Wen Ruyan didn't speak.

Old Liu sat down at his desk, placing the thermos on top of his lesson plan.

"To be honest, I've been teaching for thirty years and I've never seen anything like this."

He unscrewed the lid and blew on the surface of the goji berry water.

"Sixty-five million dumped into Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School."

"No government funding, no corporate naming rights."

"It all relied on a substitute teacher who has only been here for two weeks to pull the strings."

Zhang Huifang stretched her head over from the opposite side, pushing her glasses onto her forehead.

"Old Liu, just say it directly; what do you think Fang Jiming's identity is?"

Old Liu took a sip of water and shook his head.

"I won't guess blindly, but is there one thing you noticed?"

Zhang Huifang moved her chair half a step forward.

"What?"

Old Liu lowered his voice a little.

"That maybach at the school gate last Friday, the person who came to pick up Fang Jiming."

"Wearing a suit and tie, he bowed to Fang Jiming at a ninety-degree angle."

Zhang Huifang's mouth rounded.

Old Liu took another sip of water.

"The person driving a maybach bowed to him; you figure it out."

Zhang Huifang: (⊙ꇴ⊙)

The office was quiet for a few seconds.

Teacher Wen Ruyan turned her head to look at Old Liu, opened her mouth, and ultimately said nothing.

She flipped her phone over, unlocked it, and clicked into Fang Jiming's WeChat Moments.

The latest post was from three days ago.

A photo of a white electric scooter parked at the back gate of the school.

It was captioned, "Today's commuting tool."

Teacher Wen Ruyan stared at the photo for two seconds.

An electric scooter and a maybach.

A monthly salary of 3,700 and a donation of 65 million.

What exactly is this person hiding?

Teacher Wen Ruyan put her phone in the drawer and pulled out a stack of Chinese Language tutoring plans for Class 18 to continue annotating.

After the fountain pen tip drew three lines on the paper, it stopped.

She looked down and saw that there were no annotations on the paper at all; it was all written with the name Fang Jiming.

Teacher Wen Ruyan slammed the folder shut, and the temperature on her face shot up.

Teacher Wen Ruyan: (///ˊᗜˋ///)

At this moment, at the expressway entrance in the south of Nanqiao City.

Vice Principal Sun Yaozu sat in the back seat of his black Passat.

The light from his phone screen reflected on his sagging eye bags.

He read the post on "Qiaonan News" from beginning to end twice.

In the photos, every classroom was bright.

The solid wood tabletops reflected the light, and the OLED screens reflected the blue sky and white clouds outside the window.

It was completely different from the Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School he left last Friday.

His fingers slid across the screen.

He scrolled past those comments and shares from students who were excited to the point of distortion.

He scrolled past those spam messages on the school forum.

Things like "Teacher Fang is the eternal god," things like "Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School has turned things around."

His fingertip stopped on one comment.

"Teacher Fang has only been here for two weeks, and Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School has changed completely. What have the school leaders been doing for the past fourteen years?"

Vice Principal Sun Yaozu's temple twitched.

He locked his phone screen and threw it on the seat next to him.

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest, his fingers crossed on his stomach.

Fourteen years.

He had been running Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School for fourteen years.

How every maintenance fee was reported, how every personnel transfer was arranged.

How every cent of profit was distributed—all had been meticulously calculated.

And then a greenhorn came along with money from who knows where.

In two weeks, he had torn a hole in the order he had built for fourteen years.

He could tolerate it when two million was used to renovate one classroom.

When sixty-five million was used to renovate the whole school, he couldn't sleep anymore.

After this money came in, everyone would ask one question.

Where did the school's previous maintenance funds go?

Vice Principal Sun Yaozu opened his eyes, picked up his phone, and sent a message to Section Chief Xiao Kaihe.

"Has the audit list been submitted?"

Thirty seconds later, the reply came.

"Submitted. Director Su Nianwei's Supervisory Group will move in next Monday."

Vice Principal Sun Yaozu looked at this line of text and tapped his finger on the edge of the screen twice.

Next Monday.

Seven days left.

Seven days later, that iron-faced supervisor would bring the audit team into Nanqiao No. 19 Middle School.

To uncover every layer of wrapping on Fang Jiming's overseas funds.

By then, it wouldn't matter what kind of foundation it was, or how complete the procedures were.

As long as one layer of the capital chain from the BVI registration was dismantled.

This Fang Jiming would have to give everyone an explanation.

Vice Principal Sun Yaozu stuffed his phone back into his suit's inner pocket.

The corners of his mouth twitched—it couldn't be called a smile.

It was just an arc squeezed out by biting his back teeth.

"Fang Jiming, whether your money can withstand an audit, we will know next Monday."

Vice Principal Sun Yaozu: (ꐦ-ω-⁎)