Chapter 161: Showdown At The Monthly Exam
Countless practical results from the 21st Century have long proven: Grasping at Straws has a 99% chance of only leading to defeat.
As the monthly exam time drew closer, Xiang Chuan’s expression switched between Mask of Pain and blank stupor with increasing frequency; even Liang Gong, who was practicing colored piping by referring to the video Xiang Chuan shared, worried whether their club president would have an accident if she continued like this. Only Ouyang Yating and Ainuo wore expressions of “I have no emotions” as they continued to grade Xiang Chuan’s horrific Chinese Homework and math homework from both sides.
—No way around it, after all, she was their own club president, and she was also working hard to unlock new ancient food. No matter how hopeless, they still had to help a little.
However, a serious attitude can be passed on to others. Influenced by the A Bite of China Club members, the students who usually liked to go to the A Bite of China Club Small Restaurant during afternoon rest time to enjoy afternoon tea no longer opened light screens on their dining tables showing exciting episodes of The Count of Monte Cristo or Don Quixote, but instead lecture notes compiled by teachers of various subjects, or online course explanations found on the Third Fleet network. If not for the space-time network being disconnected, some students even wanted to access course videos from the Second Fleet or Ninth Fleet.
Zhu Bingwen and the principal, sitting at the bar enjoying freshly squeezed juice made from seasonal fruit, looked at these students buried in their studies and both showed gratified and nostalgic smiles on their faces.
“Ancient Chinese questions…” The principal recalled something he overheard Xiang Chuan mention a couple of days ago, stroked his chin, and fell into thought.
“…Principal, I know what you’re thinking, but please don’t act impulsively.” Zhu Bingwen smiled wryly. It seemed that not only the students had jumping thoughts; their own principal was the same.
However, this was pretty good too—at least, not boring, right?
Just as Xiang Chuan felt the cakes in front of her all looked like function shapes, Nongda Affiliated High School finally ushered in the monthly exam delayed due to the school anniversary.
Perhaps to take care of Xiang Chuan’s emotions, for the first time, Class Eight Grade One did not gather together to compare answers like they usually did for big and small exams; after finishing, everyone silently left the classroom, either heading to the canteen or back to the dormitory.
“Why haven’t the class president and the others come here to freeload these past couple of days?”
On the afternoon after finishing the last subject, Xiang Chuan sat at the seat monopolized by her own club members, biting her straw curiously.
A Bite of China Club members three: …
“Cough, you… Club President, how did you do overall on this monthly exam?” Ainuo was uncharacteristically a bit nervous. After all, the childhood sweetheart and siblings around him were all top students; he never imagined he’d one day have to comfort a poor student.
“Hm? Pretty bad.” Xiang Chuan blinked her eyes. “You all know my grades anyway. Do you really expect me to turn into a top student overnight? Don’t— what if people suspect I got an illegal brain surgery? Modern law prohibits interfering with brain nerves unless for medical needs; otherwise, it’s a sentence of over a century up to five centuries of punishment. In modern times, that’s a serious crime. I just want to be a salted fish, not a criminal.”
Faced with Xiang Chuan scrambling to prove her innocence, the A Bite of China Club members three again: …
Facts proved that when the other party had sufficiently thick nerves, ordinary things couldn’t stimulate them at all.
“So you’re just giving up on the oven you’ve been obsessing over? I thought you were going to make this equipment our club’s next project.” Ainuo asked.
“Give up? No way.” Xiang Chuan pursed her lips. “I just figured it out. Rather than wasting time elsewhere, better to solve the problem at the root.”
“At the root?” The three exchanged glances. Was their club president planning to fiddle with something again?
“Heh heh, it’s just a mere oven, right? I can’t make an electric oven, but can’t I make a brick stove soil oven?”
Xiang Chuan showed a crooked-mouth dragon king smile on her face.
This was a blind spot she suddenly realized the day after her first exam. As a modern person, the ovens in her concept were all electric ovens or air fryers and such electrically driven equipment. But thinking carefully, shouldn’t the most classic oven in history be the medieval European style oven built with bricks and tiles? She checked the fleet network and found that the price of various soil products in modern times was the same as steel. All resources collected from surrounding planets or asteroid groups were uniformly processed into harmless resources. Although soil, this non-renewable resource, was almost useless in daily life, it still had great uses in agriculture, maintaining greening, and ecological reserves, just that aside from some research facilities and agriculture-related departments, few people bought it under personal name.
Can buy soil = can fire bricks = can make brick stove with soil bricks and tiles oneself!
Once she figured out this equation, Xiang Chuan was instantly liberated from the exams that had plunged her into high school PTSD memories several times. As for the bet with her father, Xiang Chuan could only apologize silently in her heart. She knew that although this bet was her father’s silent refusal to take the risk of making her an electric oven, seeing the hint of expectation in her father’s gaze toward her during dinner at home these past few days, even someone as heartless as her couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt.
Sigh… At worst, give the first baked bread to Father. Xiang Chuan silently atoned in her heart.
Xiang Chuan was lost in wild thoughts in her mind, but the three club members beside her were stunned.
Their club president was talking about an oven, right? The internally heating device prohibited for civilian use? Made with bricks and soil? And what were bricks and soil clods? But the word soil the three could understand—was it the “soil” they were thinking of? The soil used for farming and growing plants?
“Uh… soil?” Liang Gong gaped for a long time before squeezing out two words. But he was still doing better; Ouyang Yating and Ainuo were shocked speechless.
“Yeah, you’ve seen The Count of Monte Cristo and Don Quixote, right? The protagonists in these two books baked the bread they usually ate in ovens made with soil bricks.”
A Bite of China Club members three: “Ah?”
“Don’t get surprised yet. This thing needs high temperature-resistant bricks. Do you know where there’s a brick factory… or rather, where there’s a place that can process stone?”
Ainuo’s mouth twitched twice. Clearly dissatisfied with Xiang Chuan skipping the explanation steps, but seeing her already studying construction engineering with strange soil block information she had somehow prepared, as a member he could only raise his hand gloomily: “…I can contact a processing plant here, but yours—bricks? They’ve never done this thing before. If there are special requirements, we still need to coordinate with them.”
“As long as they can do it, what more bike… ah pfft, no fear of trouble.” Hearing Ainuo could find a way, Xiang Chuan’s eyes lit up immediately, nearly slipping out the wrong words.
“But even an oven couldn’t get approval. Club President, can your brick stove get the application?” Liang Gong worried.
“If it’s a complete copy of the ancient version, it’s actually quite iffy. After all, the old ones burned wood or charcoal, which seems inefficient now. But there are still plenty of external heating methods now. As long as the bricks’ heat resistance critical point is guaranteed, everything’s fine.”
“Uh, that’s not what I meant…” Liang Gong broke out in sweat.
“What Liang Gong means is, isn’t this thing like an oven, both internal heating equipment? Can the government approve the application?” Ainuo explained.
“Internal heating? Who said that?” Xiang Chuan blinked her eyes. “A brick stove needs external heating to achieve internal heat. If this counts as internal heating, then the soup pot and steamer basket in our kitchen would have been confiscated by the government long ago.”
“Then why not just use the pots in the kitchen? From your front-to-back explanation, what you want is an internally heating device without steam. The kitchen pots are also high temperature-resistant.” Ouyang Yating asked.
“But what I want to heat is the surface layer of the food.” Xiang Chuan blinked her eyes. “What would heating only the bottom be for, poached eggs or pan-fried buns?”
A Bite of China Club members three: …What are these again?
Xiang Chuan was impatient. She didn’t even care about her exam results that afternoon and dragged the three club members to help her organize the application for the brick stove.
That evening, Xiao Wang at the Third Fleet Information Turbulence Office still didn’t know that his work terminal had received an application that would spark debates across the Information Bureau, even the Security Bureau, Historical Research Institute, and Cultural Affairs Bureau.
