Chapter 6: Encounter with Lin Xiaoyun

  Graduation season is always a bittersweet and joyful time. It's also the quietest time of year for Wuyi University Library, which can accommodate 6,000 people in its eight large self-study rooms. Gone are the scenes of students queuing up to grab seats and using bookmarks to reserve them. Although the occupancy rate is still high, after a lap around each room, there are always a few empty seats left, leaving a glimmer of hope for latecomers.

  Lu Yan was one of the latecomers, and it was almost noon at this time. The students who were in class had not yet finished their lessons, while those who did not have classes or skipped them were already rushing to the cafeteria to line up for lunch. There weren't many people in the study room. Lu Yan walked into the study room with his backpack on and found a seat by the aisle that didn't have any books on it, then sat down and began preparing for his studies.

  Lu Yan is a senior graduating from the School of Journalism at Wucun University. It's a bit laughable to say that in four years of college, Lu Yan has never been to the self-study room. Now that graduation is near, Lu Yan has come here to study. This "holy land" that is like heaven to countless Wucun University students is so unfamiliar to Lu Yan.

  Just as he sat down and hadn't even taken out his book yet, Lu Yan heard the whispers of several classmates at the next table.

  "Huh, isn't that your school's Lu Yan? Isn't he graduating this year? Why is he also coming to self-study?" The speaker was a girl with a sharp voice, and Lu Yan could feel her trying to lower her voice, but still being heard by him.

  "How do you also know Lu Yan?" another girl asked.

  "Who doesn't know Lu Yan, he's so cool. He's handsome, has good grades, and is popular in school, I've been at Wu Da for a year now, and all I hear is his name." The girl with the sharp voice said with a hint of admiration.

  "Hmph, it's all because he has a powerful father. Now that his father is in trouble, no one will back him up anymore, and he'll be just like us, coming out to study on his own." This time it was a boy's voice, with a hint of personal feelings in his words.

  "What? What happened at his home?" The girl continued to ask.

  "His dad is Lu Xiaodong—" The boy was about to say something else, but suddenly saw Lu Yan frowning at him, and immediately stopped talking, hurriedly poked the girl's arm, and lowered his head to pretend to read a book.

  Looking at the tense appearance of those classmates, Lu Yan didn't say anything else and turned his head to continue organizing his books. At this time, if someone familiar with him saw this, they would definitely be shocked, as this was completely not Lu Yan's personality. If it were in the past, upon hearing someone say something like that about himself, Lu Yan would absolutely not let it go easily. Even though he was in a library, Lu Yan would have definitely made a big commotion.

  At this time, Lu Yan, although he looked very calm on the surface, but his heart couldn't calm down for a long time. The boy's guess was not wrong, one of the reasons why Lu Yan came to self-study was indeed because his father had an accident, and this was also the most direct reason.

  The man and two women who were whispering at the next table have packed up their things and left the study room. When they passed by Lu Yan's side, the boy was obviously a little scared, and his walk didn't seem very natural, almost as if he had run out of the study room.

  That boy is a freshman in the School of Journalism at Wuhan University, and the name Lu Yan is like an evil tyrant to him. No wonder, Lu Yan was indeed notorious during his college days, although not without principle or bottom line, but fighting and brawling were really a common occurrence for him, and he also had the title of "Wuhan Little Overlord" on his head, and it's no surprise that he could intimidate a freshman with just his aura.

  Lu Yan tidied up his thoughts, wanting to calm himself down, but the words of that boy earlier were like a gadfly in his heart, especially when he mentioned his father's affairs, making him feel waves of discomfort.

  "Ding——"

  A ring broke into Lu Yan's thoughts, he raised his wrist to look at the watch, it was already 12 o'clock in the afternoon, and the previous ring was the sound of class dismissal from the teaching building. Lu Yan tidied up his thoughts, took a deep breath, and opened the civil service examination materials.

  The civil service exam coaching materials in his hand were bought by Lu Yan early this morning at the bookstore. After two days of consideration, Lu Yan decided to take the civil service examination for the Western Province and apply for the Western Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League. Zhang Hongguang told himself that the road of selecting and appointing students was already hopeless, and now Lu Yan was about to prove to him that he could still enter the Provincial Committee without relying on the selection and appointment of students.

  Lu Yan is a person who, once he decides to do something, becomes very focused. Soon, he was attracted by the "Administrative Comprehensive Ability Test" in front of him. The "Administrative Comprehensive Ability Test", abbreviated as "Xing Ce", is one of the compulsory subjects for civil service examinations in recent years, mainly testing knowledge accumulation and logical judgment as well as academic comprehensive ability, which are Lu Yan's strong points. Since childhood, Lu Yan has liked reading books and watching documentaries, and he studied liberal arts in high school, having a large amount of knowledge accumulation and rigorous logical reasoning ability, and the question type of "Xing Ce" is just to his taste.

  Time passed unknowingly, and the people in the study room came and went in shifts. Lu Yan sat here diligently reading his book, occasionally taking out a red pen to annotate, completely immersed in the fun brought by "行测". Unbeknownst to him, his body had already started to lean on the table.

  "Hey, can you move over a bit?" A pleasant female voice brought Lu Yan back to reality from his sea of questions. For some reason, the seat next to Lu Yan was already occupied by a girl wearing a white dress and ponytail.

  "Wow, what a beauty!" Lu Yan couldn't help but exclaim in his heart as he took a closer look at the girl's appearance. The woman in white beside him was indeed a top-notch beauty, and her looks were not inferior to Feng Manqing's. Moreover, she had an even more impressive temperament than Feng Manqing.

  At this time, Lu Yan, although he had experienced a series of setbacks brought about by his father's incident and was not in a good mood, the male nature of loving beauty remained unchanged. Seeing the beautiful woman, he couldn't help but evaluate her in his heart.

  "Oh, sorry about that. I didn't notice." Lu Yan said as he quickly withdrew his arm, feeling a bit embarrassed at being reminded by the beauty in this situation.

  When Lu Yan made way for her, the girl in white dress didn't say anything else. She glanced at Lu Yan's "Test of Courage" materials and lowered her head to continue reading.

  Seeing a beautiful woman being approached, Lu Yan originally wanted to say a few more words to her. Seeing that the other party didn't intend to respond to him, Lu Yan couldn't help but feel a little disappointed in his heart. Just as he was about to continue reading, he inadvertently glanced over and saw that the girl was also reading "Administrative Comprehensive Ability Test".

  Lu Yan was delighted and asked: "Are you also reviewing for the civil service exam?"

  The girl in the dress didn't even lift her head and softly said "uh-huh".

  Lu Yan didn't dare say anything else, pursed his lips and said nothing more, turned around to read a book instead.

  When a person is fully engaged, time always flies by quickly. The whole afternoon passed in the blink of an eye as Lu Yan wrote and drew. Outside the window, it had already darkened, but with the self-study room's daylight lamp on, it didn't feel too dim. Lu Yan stopped his busy work, preparing to go eat, turned his head for a glance, and saw that the girl in the dress was tidying up things on her desk. On her notebook, Lu Yan saw two lines of elegant writing: School of Mathematics and Statistics; Lin Xiaojun.

  "Lin Xiaoyun?" Lu Yan couldn't help but softly call out.

  "Uh-huh", the dress-clad girl responded with a murmur, turning her head to see that it was Lu Yan who had called out to her, and couldn't help but feel a little surprised.

  "Do you know me?"

  Lu Yan felt a little embarrassed, he didn't think he would use such an old-fashioned way to hit on a strange girl, but he also knew that Lin Xiaorou was indeed the name of this dress girl.

  "Hehe, you're from the Math Academy, right?" Lu Yan didn't answer Lin Xiaojun immediately, but instead continued to probe and ask.

  "Yes, I am from the Mathematics Department, how did you know? We don't seem to know each other?" Lin Xiaoyun was even more surprised.

  "Hey, I just saw that notebook of yours has a name on it," Lu Yan said, pointing to the notebook in Lin Xiaoqun's hand.

  "Oh." Lin Xiaoyun responded lightly again, looked at her notebook and didn't say anything else.

  "I see you're reading 'Administrative Examination', are you also reviewing for the civil service exam?" The conversation with the beauty finally exceeded three sentences, and Lu Yan seized the opportunity to find common language.

  "Nothing much has been going on lately, just taking a casual look." Lin Xiaoyun's simple response made Lu Yan feel a bit awkward for a moment.

  "By the way, I'm also preparing to review this year's civil service exam." Lu Yan originally planned that if Lin Xiaojun brought up the topic of the civil service exam, he would say that he was also studying for it. Since Lin Xiaojun didn't ask anything else, he had to speak up himself.

  "Oh, I see you're studying very seriously, good luck." Lin Xiaoyun had already packed up her bag and said as she picked it up and walked out.

  "Are you not coming tomorrow? I'll reserve a seat for you." Seeing Lin Xiaojun leave, Lu Yanjiu hastily added this sentence. After speaking, he felt his face burning and quickly added: "You're from the Department of Mathematics, I want to ask for your advice on some numerical relationship problems."

  Watching Lu Yan's embarrassed appearance, Lin Xiaojun secretly wanted to laugh, but she restrained herself. Beautiful women are always scarce resources, and in four years of university, she had already seen such a pickup line as nothing out of the ordinary. Since she really did have to come back tomorrow for self-study, she said to Lu Yan: "Alright then, I'll trouble you with that. Tomorrow will still be this study room." After speaking, she floated away lightly.

  As he watched Lin Xiaoyun's back disappear outside the self-study room, Lu Yan's scorching face cooled down a bit. He didn't know what was wrong with him today, blurting out words that hadn't gone through his brain in front of Lin Xiaoyun. This wasn't like him, Lu Yan, the top debater of the "Wu Cheng Cup" university debate competition, who had lost his composure time and again in front of Lin Xiaoyun, and was always on the defensive, completely losing his usual confidence and demeanor.

  "This is ridiculous." Lu Yan muttered to himself, starting to pack up the books on his desk. It had been a long time since he'd studied so diligently, and an entire afternoon of not leaving his seat made him feel a bit tired, but in his heart, he was already looking forward to tomorrow's arrival.