Chapter 1 A Huge Response

After the broadcast of the episode featuring the Chinese teenagers' match against Chelsea's youth team, it caused a huge response on the internet and in traditional media.

Because for everyone, this was a very novel event—a "temporary army" composed of Chinese players cobbled together actually defeated a Chelsea youth team that was going all out and not holding back!

Never mind that this was a u17-level youth team match, and not an adult team match either. When the Chinese Olympic team went to Europe for training at the beginning of last year, their performance wasn't exactly pretty.

They also had a match where the Olympic team's opponent was Chelsea, but this time it wasn't the youth team, but the reserve team.

As a result, the Olympic team lost 0:1.

The subsequent match against the Queens Park Rangers reserve team ended in a brawl.

The huge gap between English football and Chinese football made many people not expect that these Chinese teenagers would be able to defeat the Chelsea youth team 3:2.

Anyone who had seen this episode knew that the Chelsea youth team hadn't held back; this was a match and a victory with significant weight.

So such a victory was precious.

The day after the episode aired, in addition to the internet, traditional media also published reports about this episode.

The young players became stars.

Among them, He Ying, Zhou Yi, and Sun Pan were the three who received the most attention.

Because the victory in this match was directly related to these three.

He Ying scored three goals, completing a hat trick.

And all three goals were assisted by Zhou Yi.

After Zhou Yi was substituted off, the Chinese team adjusted their strategy and went on full defense. At this time, Sun Pan played a crucial role. If it weren't for his miraculous saves time and time again, the Chinese team might not have been able to secure this victory.

Under the spotlight, everyone discovered that, apart from He Ying, the other two had only taken up the sport halfway through their lives—Sun Pan was still a member of the Liaoning Province youth basketball team two years ago. Later, he left the basketball team and switched to football, playing as a goalkeeper. He had only been training for two years.

Zhou Yi, on the other hand, had never received any professional sports training, neither in football nor in basketball. He had always been a student player, from an amateur background.

A miracle created by an amateur player would naturally attract more attention and curiosity.

"How is this possible?"

This was many people's first reaction after learning about Zhou Yi's background.

Many people didn't believe that such a person could lead the team to defeat the Chelsea youth team.

The difficulty was comparable to the Chinese team winning the World Cup.

Some people even suspected that the production team said Zhou Yi was a student player perhaps just for publicity. According to the nature of reversals in everything in China, perhaps Zhou Yi had also received training in a professional team's youth academy, or even was still a member of a certain club's youth academy. It was just that the production team, for the sake of the show's effect, packaged him as an amateur player who had never received formal training, which was quite the gimmick.

Such an analysis seemed to make sense. Everyone believed that the production team was entirely capable of doing such a thing. The segments in singing reality shows where contestants competed to see who was more miserable had deeply disgusted the audience, naturally leading them to deeply distrust all reality shows.

Just as this voice gradually gained the upper hand and became mainstream, and even traditional media wrote articles questioning Zhou Yi's true identity, a post suddenly appeared in the "Green Field Inheritors" Tieba forum.

"Who says Zhou Yi isn't a student? Zhou Yi is my classmate!"

The post was written by someone who claimed to be Zhou Yi's classmate. In the post, he refuted the widespread speculation that Zhou Yi was not a student player, saying that Zhou Yi was a student in Class Three of Senior Year at Qingyang City First High School, and that he had known Zhou Yi since junior high school. Although they weren't in the same class at that time, they could always run into each other playing football on the playground.

This Zhou Yi's classmate said that Zhou Yi's football skills were very high, and he was a key player in the junior high school team, so he wasn't surprised at all that Zhou Yi was able to stand out from the national auditions.

Later, the two of them were assigned to the same class after entering high school.

In high school, Zhou Yi was still a key player on the school team.

Except he played as a forward, not a midfielder.

To increase persuasiveness, this netizen also posted a photo of him and Zhou Yi—a photo of all the classmates participating in the National Day chorus competition. He circled the person on the far right of the third row in red, telling everyone that this was Zhou Yi.

Upon closer inspection, it really did look a bit like Zhou Yi in the TV when he smiled, but there were too many people in the photo, and the photo's resolution wasn't very high. After zooming in, it became very blurry, so no one really knew if this was really written by Zhou Yi's classmate, or if it was all fabricated.

However, this post at least revealed a relatively important piece of information. That was that it mentioned the school Zhou Yi attended!

Previously, the official website of the "Green Field Inheritors" reality show mentioned in Zhou Yi's profile that he was a student, but it didn't say specifically where he went to school. The media contacted the reality show production team to verify, but the other party refused to answer on the grounds that they couldn't disclose the privacy of the participating players. They only issued a statement, proving that Zhou Yi was indeed a student, and that he had indeed not received professional training, and told everyone that the authenticity of the participating players in this event had been notarized by the national notary office, and there was absolutely no problem in terms of authenticity and validity.

Now, they finally had the name of the school Zhou Yi attended, so the remaining thing was very simple—was Zhou Yi a student at Qingyang First High School? Wouldn't they know by making a phone call to the school to verify?

***

Lin Xianrong, the old principal of Qingyang City First High School, had just arrived at his office. Not long after he sat down, there was a knock on the door.

It was Qian Yiren, the vice-principal, who was looking for him.

"Principal Lin, our school's admissions office has suddenly received a lot of media calls these past two days..."

"The media calling the admissions office?" Lin Xianrong found this a bit strange. "It's not the time for admissions now."

"That's right. And they're calling our admissions office to inquire about a student..."

"The media is calling our admissions office to inquire about a student?" Lin Xianrong felt that he shouldn't have senile dementia yet, but why did he find it difficult to understand the logical relationship in this matter for a while?

"The people in the admissions office initially thought it was a prank, so they ignored it. Later, they found that more and more people were calling to ask, and they weren't sure what to do, so they reported it to me."

"Why would they call the admissions office?"

"The people in the admissions office asked, and they said they found it on our school's website..."

"This..." Lin Xianrong didn't know what to say. After a moment of愣, he asked, "What's the name of the student they're looking for?"

"Zhou Yi. They said he's a student in Class Three of Senior Year at our school."

When Lin Xianrong heard this name, he frowned and tried hard to search for information about this name in his memory. But unfortunately, he couldn't find it.

He shook his head: "Never heard of him."

"I've never heard of him either. In addition, they also hope to be able to interview the school and teachers and students to understand if there is such a person as Zhou Yi..."

"How can that be allowed?" Lin Xianrong refused without hesitation. "What kind of place is the school? How can they just come and interview at will? Doesn't this affect normal teaching order?"

"Yes, yes, yes, Principal Lin, you're right. Then we should refuse them?"

"Yes." Lin Xianrong nodded, as the top leader of the school and a bigwig in the Qingyang education circle, he had such courage and confidence.

After Vice-Principal Qian Yiren left to carry out the order, Lin Xianrong sat at his desk, chanting Zhou Yi's name.

How could so many media outlets suddenly come to inquire about such a person?

He was very curious.

He didn't know if there really was a person named Zhou Yi in the school. After all, there were so many students in a high school, and he couldn't possibly remember the name of every student and match their names with their faces. He could only remember those very outstanding students.

Obviously, Zhou Yi shouldn't be the kind of very outstanding student with very good academic performance.

But was there really a student named Zhou Yi in the school? Was the media mistaken, or was there such a person?

Lin Xianrong wanted to figure out this problem...

He didn't know, and neither did the vice-principal, but he knew that someone should know.

***

Wang Shunquan, the Dean of Students, had just finished dealing with a case of student violation. After sending away the teacher and the student, he had only returned to his seat for a short time when there was a knock on the door.

"Please come in," he said.

Then the door was pushed open, and it was Principal Lin Xianrong who came in!

He quickly stood up, went around the desk, and greeted him: "Principal Lin, if you have something, you can just give me a call and I'll come to you, why bother you to..."

Lin Xianrong waved his hand: "Don't think that just because I'm retiring next year, I don't even have the strength to go around."

"How could that be, hey..." Wang Shunquan quickly waved his hand. "Principal Lin, you're in good health. I'm just afraid of delaying your work..."

"What work do I have? I basically don't manage any specific affairs now."

Lin Xianrong was a well-known figure in the Huaxi City education circle. In his own words, he hadn't done anything big in his life, he had only done one thing, and that was to teach and educate people.

From an ordinary teacher to a vice-principal and then a principal, he had indeed dedicated his life to the education cause.

The talents he had cultivated were like stars in the Milky Way. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he had students all over the world.

Among them were academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, business elites, political figures, and cultural celebrities... No matter how difficult these people were to approach in front of others, when they saw Lin Xianrong, they would all bow respectfully and call out "Teacher" respectfully.

When he came to Qingyang First High as vice-principal thirty-five years ago, Qingyang First High was just an ordinary middle school in Qingyang. Although it was called "First High School", it didn't mean that they were the number one middle school in Qingyang City.

At that time, Lin Xianrong, who was thirty-nine years old and serving as vice-principal, was determined to govern the school well, focusing on improving teaching quality and enforcing school discipline. With strict academic standards as his teaching philosophy, he led this then-unknown school step by step on a path of counterattack.

Now, thirty-five years have passed, and Lin Xianrong has been sitting in the principal's office of Qingyang First High for twenty-nine years. He should have retired at the age of sixty, but because of his importance to Qingyang First High was too great, the city and the province didn't want this national key high school to collapse because of a principal's retirement, so they rehired him and continued to serve as the principal of Qingyang First High.

Now seventy-four years old, Lin Xianrong has been rehired three times, once at sixty, once at sixty-five, and once at seventy.

But this time is likely to be Lin Xianrong's last time being rehired.

He has decided to completely retire from this position when he is seventy-five years old. The leaders of the city and the province still want to persuade him to continue, but Lin Xianrong's health is indeed not as good as before. He had a major surgery last year and rested for almost a year.

This situation also made those leaders who still wanted to persuade him unable to speak—Lin Xianrong had dedicated his life to the education of Qingyang City, and they couldn't possibly want him to dedicate it until he died, right?

However, everyone was very worried about whether Qingyang First High would fall from the clouds into the mortal world after Lin Xianrong left the position of principal of Qingyang First High.

Such worries were also normal. After all, for a long time of twenty-nine years, or even earlier, when Lin Xianrong began to serve as the vice-principal of Qingyang First High, his name was closely linked to this school.

Qingyang First High has what it is today entirely because of Lin Xianrong's efforts.

Where will Qingyang First High go after he's gone?

Everyone in the school, from top to bottom, only obeyed the old principal. Vice-Principal Qian Yiren was basically a mascot. Someone even secretly gave the vice-principal a homophonic nickname, calling him "the former one". Although he was still in office, he was no different from the former one who had been relieved of his duties—he had no influence.

However, Lin Xianrong had never shown any of these worries. Instead, taking advantage of the time he spent recuperating after the surgery, he basically withdrew from the daily management affairs of the school, leaving everything to the people below. He didn't even come to the school every day.

It seemed that he was really just waiting for the time to retire and live a carefree life.

However, as long as he didn't leave, his prestige in this school would remain for a day, and no one dared to neglect this old principal who had withdrawn from his daily work and was about to retire.

Wang Shunquan welcomed Lin Xianrong over, invited him to sit down, and then pulled up a chair to sit opposite the principal, respectfully asking, "Principal Lin, what can I do for you?"

"Actually, it's nothing." Lin Xianrong waved his hand. "I just came to ask about a person, a student."

"Principal Lin, just ask, as long as it's about students, I know everything!" Wang Shunquan wasn't boasting here. As the Dean of Students, he had to deal with students and teachers all day long.

"Well, do we have a student named Zhou Yi in our school?" Lin Xianrong asked, but he didn't expect Wang Shunquan's reaction to be very surprising.

"What trouble has he caused again?" After hearing Lin Xianrong's question, Wang Shunquan blurted out this rhetorical question almost reflexively!