darknovel Chapter 92 Punishment
Chapter 92 Punishment
Chapter 92 Punishment
As dawn approached, twilight enveloped the surroundings. With a quarter of an hour remaining, most of the children were scattered in twos and threes, strolling, playing chess, and frolicking with each other.
Pu Caiyu sat in the lecture hall, staring blankly out the window.
A chubby hand suddenly patted his shoulder, startling him.
The chubby boy pulled his hand back and waved it in front of him: "What are you looking at so seriously?"
Caiyu rubbed her eyes and looked outside again. The faint black shadow that had been standing by the window was gone.
He shook his head: "I must have seen wrong. The juice my dad gave me just now made me a little dizzy."
"Don't faint yet, come with me to see those two newcomers." The chubby boy winked. "They've been sitting there ever since they arrived, without even eating."
"They came so suddenly, and the cook didn't cook for them. They must be hungry. Shall we go get them some snacks?"
The chubby boy pouted, "Ah, I can't bear to eat any myself, so why don't we let them sneak some from the kitchen? There's bound to be some left."
Caiyu said seriously, "No, the master said, 'Do not seek to be full, do not crave delicious food, eat at the right time, and do not be ashamed of eating bad food.'"
The fox pricked up its ears and repeated Caiyu's words to Shuai Shuai without missing a single one, adding at the end, "Did you hear that? Stop complaining about being hungry and focus on learning to read."
The little monkey listlessly flipped through the book, staring at the scribbles and looking on, feeling utterly overwhelmed. The sounds of laughter and playfulness drifted in from outside the window. The monkey looked up and cried, "I'm so hungry—"
"You just ate when you came out of the mountains."
"I'm still dizzy; it must be from drinking the old man's wine—"
The fox glanced at him and said, "You just don't want to read. Caiyu drank it too, and he's perfectly fine."
"Could you please stop mimicking the old wine seller's tone?"
"cannot."
The little monkey sighed with a bitter face, trying to fix its gaze on the book. It reached for its head, wanting to pluck a handful of fur, but its clothes completely blocked the view.
"Can I not wear clothes?"
"No, you were dressed perfectly fine in the valley. Now you're the most dressed of all the monkeys. Cheer up."
"But I can't even stretch my tail out now."
That is a problem. The fox thought for a while and then comforted you, "Just bear with it a little longer. Tomorrow I will go and find someone to make you an outer garment. Then you can stick your tail out, wrap it around your waist, and cover it with the outer garment. You'll be comfortable then."
"Don't you know I'm a monkey, sir?"
"But the other children don't know. Think about it, if a human child came to your Monkey Valley to learn how to brew wine, what would you think?"
"I want to go home, I don't want to study," the little monkey replied, seemingly unrelated to the question.
"No way," the fox said firmly. "I've already paid my tuition."
"Tree, tree what?"
The fox counted on its fingers: "A piece of cured meat, a jar of honey, a packet of dried fruit, and a gourd of wine. This is all for your education. It took the fox a lot of effort to gather this money. If you don't study, wouldn't it be a complete waste?"
The cured meat and preserved fruit were provided by the people of Taoxiang, the honey was obtained from the queen bee, and the wine was given by the wine master.
The little monkey was stunned, and after a long pause, it suddenly realized something was wrong: "You haven't been to school either, but you still have a statue, and people worship you."
"How come the fox has never read a book?" The fox pointed to the pages the monkey had opened, paused for a few moments, and then said loudly, "Jade that is not carved cannot become a useful object, and a person who does not learn cannot know righteousness—look, the book is telling you to read."
"That white ape mountain god must have never been to school."
"How do you know? How could it know so much without reading books? It's been through a lot in the world and is so smart, it would naturally take the initiative to understand people."
The little monkey stubbornly retorted, "Maybe it was born smart, just like you, fox."
That flattery was too forced; the fox wasn't buying it: "It must have read a lot of books to be so clever."
The little monkey frowned. It sensed something was off about the fox's logic, but couldn't quite put its finger on it. It stammered, "But—"
"Don't be silly, do you know more about the mountain god than the fox? Look!"
"But I can't even speak human language!"
In the end, the fox let the little monkey play in the yard; it was better to leave this naughty fellow to the teacher to teach.
It lay sprawled on the table, casually flipping through books, and learned some common characters such as sleep, eat, and play through the sound of instruction.
The hour of Xu (7-9 PM) arrived quickly, and the bell tolled softly. The children in the courtyard gradually returned home, lit oil lamps, and prepared to study at night.
According to the rules of this academy, this should be the time for students to study and memorize, but when Fox looked up, he saw the teacher walk in with a sullen face, followed by a dejected little figure.
She was wearing a flower wreath on her head; the broken ends of the flowers were slightly damp, clearly freshly picked. The flowers, still vibrant in late autumn, had obviously been carefully tended.
The fox had a bad feeling, and the surrounding chatter confirmed its suspicions.
"Those flowers, aren't they the ones that you go to see every day?"
"There were even some planted by the headmaster himself, but several of them were pinched off."
"when"
"Give me your hand." The man glanced at her, pulled out a bamboo clapper, and the room fell silent.
He hesitated and looked around, then finally timidly reached out his hand.
"Snap—"
The man swung the bamboo stick down without hesitation, and it struck his palm with a crisp sound.
"Huh?" The little monkey was taken aback; this didn't hurt as much as its mother's beating.
The fox closed its eyes, not out of pity for the monkey, but out of pity for the flowers. A few breaths later, it opened its eyes again, looked at the unfortunate sight of the fallen monkey, and burst out laughing.
The sound of the bamboo clappers stopped. All eyes in the room turned to the fox.
The gentleman walked over expressionlessly, stood with his hands behind his back, and said: "When you hear of someone's faults, you must tell them; when you see someone's faults, you must correct them; when you see someone virtuous, you should think of emulating them; when you see someone not virtuous, you should reflect on your own shortcomings."
"To secretly laugh at a classmate's mistake is dereliction of duty, immorality, and impoliteness."
"After you return today, copy the rules of this academy one hundred times."
The fox could no longer laugh.
The little monkey, no longer in pain, squeaked happily, only to see the man's gaze sweep over it with a chilling intensity.
Even after falling down, I couldn't laugh anymore.
The little monkey sat at the table with a worried look on its face, staring at the brush for a long time before finally stretching out its paw and grabbing the middle of the brush handle.
It plunged the pen tip into the ink, so deep that the entire pen tip was submerged. When it was lifted up, the ink flowed down the pen tip, spreading across the paper in a large swath.
"There's a problem with this."
The fox ignored him and didn't even reach out his hand; the writing brush in front of him floated up by itself and began to write.
He shook off the ink, moved to a different spot, and started writing again. He wrote extremely slowly, pausing after each stroke to compare it with the scribbles in the book, making sure they were exactly the same before continuing.
As the monkey wrote, his sleeve got stuck in the ink. He didn't notice and continued copying. The sleeve left long marks on the paper, obscuring the words he had painstakingly written.
"There's something wrong with these clothes too."
The fox ignored it and, taking advantage of the child's inattention, used its magic to snatch the brush from his hand and wrote alongside it.
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