Chapter 52: A Moral Education Class

My father could not read many characters, but he could recognize numbers at least. He glanced over my test papers and his expression eased slightly. “When are you going to make me proud? When your eldest sister and second sister were your age, they were not just scoring full marks, at the very least they were above 95. At least you still managed to get over 80, otherwise I would have beaten you to death.”

After saying that, my father shoved the papers back into my hands. I secretly let out a breath of relief. I had just barely scraped through this time.

But at that moment, someone walked out from the house. Who else could it be but Old Man Jiang?

“San Wa Er’s test paper? Let me take a look. What did he score?” My cheap master really did have sharp ears.

I had no choice. If he wanted to see it, how could I dare refuse? With the feeling of walking back toward the execution ground, I sighed inwardly and handed over the paper.

Old Man Jiang took my test paper, unfolded it casually, and his brows slowly furrowed.

At that moment, I became nervous and instinctively tried to distract him.

“Master, you are back?”

“I finished my work.” Old Man Jiang’s expression softened a little.

“Master, were the graves all relocated?”

“Mm…” he drawled, a faint smile appearing.

“Master, are you having dinner at my house tonight?”

“Yeah…” he replied cheerfully.

“Master…” I was about to continue asking.

My father interrupted impatiently from the side. “You damn kid, why do you have so many questions?”

He was clearly irritated. My father hated children who kept asking endless questions. Seeing me clinging to Old Man Jiang like that, he probably thought it was disrespectful.

“Heh, it is fine.” Old Man Jiang chuckled and collected the test paper, holding it in his hand without returning it to me. Then he stopped my father.

After that, he called both my father and me to sit around the stone table in the courtyard. My heart was pounding nonstop. I only wanted to get my test paper back. As for my father, he was completely confused. Was it not time to cook dinner? My mother had been resting these past couple of days, so dinner duty fell to him. Why was the extremely food loving Old Man Jiang pulling him here to sit and chat?

“San Wa Er…” Old Man Jiang dragged out my name.

“Yes…” I answered nervously.

“People make mistakes. Sometimes they like to play around and neglect serious matters. But being able to face your mistakes calmly is a good thing. Even better is being able to correct them. San Wa Er, tell me, what kind of person is the most hateful after making a mistake?”

My father immediately spoke up from the side, neck stiff. “That is obvious. People who refuse to admit their mistakes.”

He hated people who were wrong but still argued back.

“I… uh… well…” I stammered, palms sweating, a bad feeling rising in me.

“I think it is not that. The most hateful are those who, after making a mistake, try to avoid it, refuse to face it, and choose to deceive others. Especially boys. Honesty and uprightness are the most valuable virtues. People who deceive others are worse than petty villains,” Old Man Jiang said slowly.

“Right, right, I hate liars the most,” my father agreed.

Cold sweat poured down my back. I was already thinking about running.

But my cheap master seemed to see through my thoughts and suddenly grabbed my shoulder. “San Wa Er, do you think what Master said is right?”

“Yes, right. Even more correct than what the moral education teacher says,” I quickly replied. His hand felt like iron tongs. I could not move at all, let alone run. At this point, I could only flatter him a little. Maybe it would help me later. I was very self aware.

“Heh…” Old Man Jiang laughed and did not let go. Instead, he opened my test paper.

First, the math paper.

“13 plus 6 equals 16, hmm, not bad.”

“5 plus 7 equals 13, clever.”

As I listened to him reading, cold sweat poured down like rain. I actually did not know what was right or wrong. If I did, I would not have scored so low in the first place. The problem was, he was looking directly at all my wrong answers while reading them out loud.

All my cleverness in changing the scores was useless. I could not change all the crosses on the paper.

He set the math paper aside and picked up the Chinese paper.

“‘Plowing the fields at noon, sweat flows into the river.’ Heh heh heh…” He laughed in a way that made my heart tremble. I cursed inwardly. My teacher was too cruel. What was wrong with sweat flowing into a river? I clearly remembered there being some river in it.

“Fill in the blanks as shown, green and lush. Good, very obedient. And you wrote six identical ‘green and lush’ after it.”

At that point, he slammed the paper onto the table and grabbed me, pressing me down.

“Old Chen, bring me the bamboo strips.” Old Man Jiang said angrily.

My father had not even reacted yet. After all, he did not understand what the Chinese paper was saying. He could handle simple math, but he had not been paying close attention. He could not tell whether Old Man Jiang was praising me or not.

But since Old Man Jiang ordered it, how could he disobey? Before my father even reacted, the bamboo strips were already in Old Man Jiang’s hand.

Old Man Jiang pulled down my pants and struck my butt hard with a slap of the bamboo strip. “You really are something, daring to cheat!”

Smack. Smack.

The bamboo strips fell continuously, each strike evenly painful. I immediately howled. This burning pain was even worse than my father’s iron fist.

At first my father did not react, but when he heard I had cheated, his anger flared instantly. He fully trusted Old Man Jiang.

He rolled up his sleeves and was about to strike.

I nearly cried out in despair. This was double punishment.

But unexpectedly, Old Man Jiang held my father back with one hand while continuing to hit me with the bamboo strips. “No rush. This kid is hateful. I will finish disciplining him first. You can continue afterward. Master and father, we each handle our own discipline. He will not escape these fifty strikes.”

My father stood there, unable to vent his anger, but eventually accepted it.

I was the miserable one. I had just learned two terrible things. First, I would be hit fifty times. Second, after this round, another round was waiting for me. They say short pain is better than long pain, but this was unbearable.

I cried even harder. “Red Army soldiers are not afraid of hardship, not afraid of hardship, not afraid of…”

My father knew this was my habit. When I was beaten and could not escape, I would shout about Red Army soldiers to encourage myself. It often made him laugh in anger.

But Old Man Jiang did not move at all. He only said, “With behavior like this, you still have the nerve to talk about Red Army soldiers,” and the bamboo strikes became even more rhythmic.

My mother and my two sisters had already been alerted and came into the courtyard. Seeing the scene of me being beaten, they were stunned. My enthusiastic father immediately handed them the test paper.

“Master Jiang hit him after seeing this, said he cheated,” my father reported, still not fully understanding but eager to complain.

My mother could not make sense of it, but my two sisters were not fools. After looking for a while, they saw the problem. My straightforward eldest sister burst out laughing, while my second sister smiled quietly, revealing two beautiful dimples.

“Mom, San Wa Er deserves to be beaten. He changed his test scores. The mistakes on the paper do not match the grades,” my eldest sister said after laughing.

My second sister just smiled silently, probably finding it both annoying and funny.

“What? You damn kid, you changed the scores?” My father immediately got angry again and rushed forward to hit me, but remembering Old Man Jiang’s order, he forced himself to stop.