If I don't have money to go to college, I can only go to slay the dragon.

"I thought you might be interested in this."

A yellow-covered file folder was pulled out from under the seat. Angers placed the file folder on his left hand and pushed it gently. The file folder crossed most of the seats, jumped across the short aisle in the middle and continued to slide. He stopped on Lin Nian's right side.

Lin Nian didn't look at it or answer it, "Don't tell me this is the secret party's advance backup of the document lost during the mission."

"Of course not. There is only one copy of that document and it has been destroyed during your mission. Facing enemies suspected of being the four monarchs, it is normal for a document to be destroyed. All missions must be completed before the Dragon King recovers. Give way, this is the hidden first iron rule that the executive department has not written on the iron seal." Angers said matter-of-factly.

Lin Nian did not respond, and Ange's attitude was a bit ambiguous, as if he didn't care about the "lost" document.

The records about Lin Xian in that document were not as clear as what Yelena told. They were just a few lost diaries, recording an unclear story. There were a lot of omissions and ambiguities. Even Lu Mingfei After reading those files with Chu Zihang, it is not necessarily possible to restore the story of what happened in the Siberian snowfields in 1991.

Even Lin Nian didn't completely believe the story told by Yelena. After all, the blonde girl had always been a little liar in his heart. However, the vague records in the diary did not worry that others could reveal too many secrets.

In the end, Lin Nian did not pick up the topic of the document. Instead, he chose to lower his head and look at what Angers had sent him. It was a file folder.

The file folder is an old-style dark yellow, and there are some traces of time on the hard shell. Even though it has been wiped away from all the dust, the precipitation of time is still left on it. The sunflower sticker in the upper right corner of the cover, There are black stains all over the corners where the cover is stuck.

Lin Nian looked at the sunflower sticker, and the disgusting feeling floated up along with the bubbles again, just like when he was passing by the pond of memories and was grabbed by a hand reaching out from the water, that feeling of clammy and tightness. It always makes people want to jump, scream and run away to the land.

That's not a very good memory, is it? Even if you think about it carefully, there are still many warm moments, but the victims who have walked out of the snow-capped mountains will never think that hugging each other in a cave to retain their body temperature is worthy of nostalgia.

But Lin Nian still opened the folder, and what he saw inside were the faces of children. The older ones were 15 or 6 years old, and the younger ones were only 4 or 5 years old. Under each cheek were their faces. Name, time of admission and some basic personal information.

"Are you familiar?" Angers asked, "Sunflower House, I like the name of the orphanage in China, unlike other places that always have the names of churches and individual philanthropists."

"So this file is in your hands." Lin Nian slowly turned over the yellow and brittle pages inside.

"Have you ever tried to find it when you went back?"

"It's hard not to look back after something like this happens."

"Are you familiar?" Angers asked again, "Can you still remember the past?"

Lin Nian did not answer immediately. He turned over the pages silently, looking at every photo and name. Ange did not rush, but quietly waited for the answer.

"This person." Lin Nian said, while his right finger slightly bent on the document.

"Is there something wrong with him?" Angers looked sideways, using his eyesight to clearly see the person in the photo.

It was a photo of a 7-year-old boy. In the photo, the boy had a slightly chubby face, thin lips, and a mole on his forehead. However, due to his age, he still looked naive.

"I had a lot of trouble with him."

"Why?"

"The reason was because he put it under his pillow. He lost the pocket money he earned as a handyman. He suspected that I had taken it and reported me to the teacher at the orphanage. Since there was no evidence, he let it go. After that, he kept insisting that I was the one who took it. The thief who took his pocket money pulled a group of boys into a small group to isolate me.

Lin Nian flipped through the files and pointed out the boys in the so-called small groups one by one. "He spit into my water glass and I found out."

"He poured water into my stall while I was using the toilet."

"He invited me to play basketball, and then he teamed up with others to hit me with a flagrant foul."

"He threw my pillow into the garbage burning place behind the orphanage."

There are so many treasures, even though they are not very good memories. Sure enough, sometimes having a good memory is not a good thing.

"It seems that your living environment when you were a child was not ideal, but all conflicts originated from a misunderstanding. Didn't you try to resolve this misunderstanding?"

"There is no option to 'explain' bullying among children, especially when there are no adults who carefully teach them. If everyone can sit down and reconcile when there is a conflict, then they will no longer be children."

"Do you hate them?"

"It's not hate, I just hate it, and I still hate it now." Lin Nian said, "In fact, bullying sometimes doesn't even need a specific reason. A girl in the class who is less than the standard appearance will be reduced to being bullied. The target of bullying, even if she is kind to others, even if everyone has no malice or dislike towards her from the bottom of their hearts. But if someone starts it, the subconscious conformity will make everyone subtly become a part of the bullying structure until the center is removed. There is no initiator, only a bad bullying environment.”

"Didn't you try to resist?" Angers folded his hands and leaned on the seat in front, looking at the hanging statue deep in the church bathed in the colorful windows.

"Not at first."

"Can't beat it?"

"I haven't resisted, so I don't know."

Angers paused for a moment. Anyone who heard about Lin Nian's past would pause like him, because no one would imagine that Lin Nian, that Lin Nian, had a period of cowardice and cowardice in the past.

After all, in the eyes of many people, Lin Nian, this kind of creature, should be born to be powerful. Even though he may be lonely, he is still lonely and powerful, and not the target of so-called orphanage bullying.

"Why don't you resist? It's not like your character?"

"I was afraid I would be kicked out of the orphanage for fighting."

"Are they really going to do this? I mean, throw them into society because of conflicts between ignorant children?" Angers looked a little surprised.

"No, they definitely won't do this. This has never been done in any orphanage - but the children don't know. They only know that the angry teacher and the dean threatened them like this when they acted stupidly." Lin Nian Turn your head and look elsewhere.

"If I were you, I would punch the mastermind hard in the face and warn him not to trouble me - in fact, I encountered the same thing when I was your age." Angers said in a tone of voice Said slowly, "You must fight back fiercely against this bad situation. The psychological shadow in your youth will affect the entire trajectory of your life."

"I didn't resist at that time, maybe because there was no one around me who could encourage me and say, 'If the sky falls, your dad will hold you up.'" Lin Young said in a low voice.

"But you still resisted in the end. Children who succumbed to bullying when they were young will not grow into boys like you." The principal said,

"What is that opportunity? Can't bear it anymore? Or have they crossed the line? When you are being suppressed and beaten, your blood forces you to no longer crawl on the ground like a rat or ant, but to explode in adversity. This is a clear understanding of many hybrids. The only way to go through your own process.”

“When I was begging on the street with my adoptive parents, I could always use a crowbar to beat away other bad boys who wanted to take away my harvest. Of course, at that time, I wouldn’t worry that fighting would bring me into trouble or get me into trouble. The trouble is that the pity of passers-by when I go home every night is no match to the pity of my adoptive father’s stick, and the only one I can rely on is myself.”

Angers did not shy away from the suffering he had suffered when he was young, and was even proud of it. An old man who has lived too long can look down upon everything, honor and shame.

"Sometimes people always seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. When they endure to the extreme, there will inevitably be an explosion. Without that explosion, it will inevitably lead to the end of annihilation, and you will not be where you are today. From a certain point of view, you and I are the same kind of people, so you become my favorite student." The old guy said, "So after telling me, you beat those brats to a pulp."

Angers waited patiently, but did not receive the answer he wanted for a long time.

After flipping through the file, Lin Nian closed the file folder and put it aside. He raised his head and stayed quiet for a while before answering him, "No, principal, I didn't."

Angers was silent. When he was young, he said, "Were you bullied and bullied until you left the orphanage?"

"No, they won't bully me anymore."

"what have you done."

"I did not do anything."

The boy said softly, "It is true that I don't have a father who can hold me up when the sky falls or hold me back when the earth sinks. But fortunately, I have a father who can beat up all the bad guys who bully me and hold me by the ears." Sister to the dean’s office.”

"She told me not to be afraid. If the sky fell, she would hold me up."

The old man suddenly paused, then raised his head silently, looking at the painted statue of the Virgin Mary on the wall, "But there has never been love without a reason in this world."

"No matter what the price of water is in the desert, it is still water, isn't it?" Lin Nian said, "I have read "The Beheaded Queen" and I know that there is a saying: All gifts have long been marked in the secret. The price is good, but at least until today, I haven’t paid anything for it.”

"What can be granted will always be repaid, it's just a matter of time." The principal said solemnly.

"Then repay it in my way." Lin Nian's voice was low and calm, "At that time, she kicked away the fat boy who was pressing on me, and told me that she would protect me and make me a big boy who can stand upright. But now I grew up."

The boy said: "I will tell her not to be afraid. Love does have a price, so even if the sky falls, I will be there to support her."

Quietness and silence.

A glimmer of enlightenment flashed in Ange's eyes, probably because he understood the reason why the individual 'Lin Nian' has grown up to this point.

All the flowers of the past have created the fruits of the present.

"It doesn't seem to be a big problem, and I understand your attitude." After half a minute, Ange nodded and stood up, walked over to Lin Nian and picked up the file, "For now, it's just your description. It seems that what we know is not very different from the past you have experienced."

"Has the college sent someone to investigate? Have you found the people I had contact with before?" Lin Nian asked calmly after adjusting his mood.

"After contacting you, all the children in these files are real, and you also have memories of interacting with them. This means that the past few years you lived in the orphanage 'happened' in reality." The principal continued After a pause, "But this only means that most of your memories are fine."

They finally told the true meaning of the archive document being taken out. Of course, they were not specifically discussing 'bullying' and 'Shadows of SNSD'. All the narrations about the past were all metaphors for thinking about the two. The really key question.

Which of Lin Nian's past memories had problems, when did the problems occur, and what were the reasons for the problems? This was the first question.

"Most of the memory is fine, but what about the other parts?" Lin Nian said calmly.

"That's a big problem." Angers looked at the file folder in his hand, "This is the manual record of the orphanage 'Sunflower House' ten years ago from the day you left the orphanage. This file It is not the original file, but a copy, purely manually written. The writer is a 70-year-old old worker at the orphanage. Because of his old age, he was worried about losing the important documents of the orphanage, so he had handled all the documents himself. Make a backup copy of all files.”

Lin Nian looked into Ange's eyes, and then nodded to show that he understood what the other party meant.

He saw many old friends in that file, those who were enemies, those who were kind, and strangers, but only two photos that should have appeared were not seen.

Photos of "Lin Nian" and "Lin Xian".

"Sometimes the backup is often more reliable than the officially used version." Angers gently stroked the hard case of the file with his right hand, "People who intended to modify some things in the past would only modify the things on the table, but would ignore some insignificant backups. .”

"You and your sister suddenly appeared in the orphanage, in that coastal city. No one knew where you came from, and there was no paper household registration to prove that you had really existed until you appeared in the orphanage. After staying in the hospital for decades, you officially have the 'traces' of your existence." Angers said slowly, "You need to know that critical point in time, so that you can know which of all your past memories are true. Which ones are false.”

"I think I really forgot a lot of things." Lin Nian closed his eyes. "What's interesting is that I have been proud of never forgetting anything since I was a child."

"You can't rush this kind of thing, take your time." Ange comforted with a calm face, "Lin Xian has turned a new page for the secret party. She is now a brand new person. We don't A known individual. We can’t even tell whether your memory loss and tampering problems are really caused by her.”

"Is this comfort?"

"You can take it as comfort, after all, we are all prepared."

I still remember that they made an agreement while looking at the photo of the girl on the coffee table in the beam of light from the skylight. Once there is a problem with the girl, there will be a private conversation like now, independent of the secret party and the card. The College of Sayre is a dialogue between students and teachers that belongs exclusively to Hilbert Jean Angers and Lin Nian.

"I actually don't care what the secret party guesses, and I don't care what I think. I will find her and ask her face to face the answers to the questions I want to know." Lin Nian looked at Angers.

"Then she might lie to you." Angers looked back at the young boy, "Just like last time."

"No, she won't lie to me." Lin Nian said firmly, "She might lie to me that she doesn't have a hard time outside, or she might lie to me that I don't have to worry about next month's rent in the rental house, but she will never lie to me in this kind of situation. Lie to me about things.”

"Why are you so sure?"

"Because if she would lie to me, she wouldn't run away." Lin Nian sighed softly.

"I hope the face-to-face moment won't be too late." Ange nodded, "Before that, I will help you withstand the pressure from the school board, whether it is the arrest and arrest of Lin Xian openly or covertly. It will be postponed indefinitely.”

"I don't think those idiots on the school board can catch her," Lin Nian said.

When she is indeed not an ordinary person.

"No matter what the school board's reaction is, I will help you deal with it. This is the 'agreement' between us." Ange looked at Lin Nian and said.

Lin Nian stared into Ange's eyes, and then nodded. As for the specific content of the agreement, neither of them elaborated at this moment, but what is clear is that it was during the last afternoon tea in the principal's office. They have finalized something like a 'contract' with each other.

A contract between students and teachers.

"I'm more worried about the Solomon Temple organization than the school board," Angers said. "They won't give up. The 'Utero' plan is of great significance to them."

"Don't worry about this." Lin Nian shook his head.

If the stories told by Elena are reliable, and one-third of them are true, then the people who should really worry are the people of the Solomon Temple, and Lin Xian should never be the prey that needs to be worried.

"Okay." Angers didn't mean to ask the reason at all, and continued, "Then the school board suddenly encountered the suspected four monarchs on the way to the special mission. Now the entire secret party is paying attention to this matter, waiting for you. After returning to the academy, submit the oral message and report in person, and then they will choose to individually interview all the specialists who participated in the mission to compare the intelligence you reported."

"Separate interrogation? Is this suspicion that there is an internal conspiracy between us?"

"Even the suspicion is a reasonable suspicion. After all, this mission is a secret among secrets. No more than one person knows the inside story, but in the end there is still a problem. The school board always needs an explanation - as far as the school board is concerned, More than half of the voices in the meeting believed that Lin Xian betrayed the secret party."

"They can indeed be so suspicious." Lin Nian was noncommittal. After all, Lin Xian chose to leave Kassel College at this time.

"So the entire secret party has deliberately put pressure on the orthodox side. No matter who leaked the information, it is suspected that the target of the leak is not only the Dragon Clan, but also the orthodox side, because according to your rough report, the scene There were already orthodox people appearing before the Dragon Clan appeared, not to mention that the person who appeared was the orthodox 'Yue'."

"A chain of suspicion has been formed." Lin Nian said, "This is a good thing. It means that no one can give a final conclusion for the time being, and subsequent actions are just constant testing."

"The Orthodox and Secret Party are currently in the honeymoon period of cooperation. The Equipment Department and the Dragon Biology Department are still in-depth research on the bronze and fire kings under the Yangtze River. The two parties are still far away from each other with this project. If something goes wrong this time, they will only use political means to compete with each other in private in exchange for benefits." the principal replied.

"The school board knows best what to do in this kind of thing. I don't understand politics." Lin Nian shook his head.

"After all, the Secret Party will have the upper hand in this matter. After all, this is the first time that the 'S' class and the 'Yue' really fought for the same benefit on the battlefield, and in the end it was the 'S' class that gained the upper hand. It's just a pity for some people. In the end, the intervention of the Dragon King forced the tit-for-tat into a seamless cooperation, which made it impossible to deepen this matter as a basis for discussion." Ange said with a low smile, "It gave the orthodox just the right excuse to take back the 'Moon Harvester'. This matter This incident made many people in the secret party feel unhappy.”

"The appearance of the Dragon King is not entirely a bad thing. At least he has temporarily suppressed many things. He is a huge flash point. As long as the storm appears, it can swallow up all influences." Lin Nian said, "Now The mixed-race world must be chaotic, right?”

Ange said: "No, the appearance of the Dragon King has been blocked by the orthodox and secret parties. Although there are many bounty hunters and hybrid forces in the coastal city until now, what they are looking for is just 'suspects'." Just traces of pure-blooded dragons."

"Has the list of the emergency team for the Dragon King been finalized?"

"No, after all, the statement that the Four Monarchs have long since awakened but have been hiding in human society is too shocking. Although this theory has long been hypothesized, until now, a large number of people are unwilling to admit this fact. They would rather believe it. What you met this time is a resurrected noble next-generation species."

"Can't I tell whether it's the second generation or the first generation?" Lin Nian sneered.

"It's not enough for you to distinguish clearly. You should know this." Angers said lightly, "You do have the record of killing the twins of the Bronze and Fire King, but many people think that your success and secret The party's help is inseparable, so those people have certain doubts and contempt for the power you really possess - they have their own traditional understanding of 'S'-class hybrids."

"Understandable." Lin Nian nodded. Even he himself did not think that after killing Norton and Constantine, he would be qualified to challenge the four monarchs. The title of the four monarchs is always heavier than when it is called out. Hundreds or even thousands of times, this is a fact that only those who have met them can understand.

"There is a big gap between the emergency response methods for the second-generation species and the first-generation species, but now a special investigation team has been established and is conducting surveys and sampling in the coastal city. Since the pure-blood dragon can hide for so long without being discovered, then we want to do it again Digging him out of human society is also a troublesome project and cannot be rushed."

Angers said,

"The real trouble that will befall you now is internal, that is, the questioning you will receive when you return to the academy."

"Or interrogation?" Lin Nian changed the principal's slightly euphemistic wording, "Should it still be handled by the execution department? Or should we wait for the CC1000 Express to arrive at the academy, get off the train, and then let the Owl Team directly take the train to the 'SS' All participants in level 1 missions will be handed over to the Interrogation Department?"

"It's not that excessive." Angers shook his head gently, "And the executive department is not to blame for the problems with the school board's special mission this time. Minister Schneider will also accept a temporary suspension for investigation. Waiting for him is not only the past ten years An inventory of all the work for the year was carried out, and there was also a rush to Portofino for an interrogation in front of the school board.”

"It sounds miserable."

"It's even worse than it sounds. The Executive Department has always been a sharp blade for the outside world, but when there is a problem with this sharp blade, the swordsman will never put down the hammer dropped during heavy forging." Angers said, "So I want to ask you about The People's Association is a special investigation team sent by the school board. This team is independent of the Cassel College system and directly obeys the school board. This means that in the college, they can even turn a deaf ear to what I say, and to a certain extent Under the circumstances, they can even override the principal's authority to investigate me."

"The organizational security committee of the secret party." Lin Nian looked subtle.

"To put it bluntly, it's no different from the KGB (KGB, the full name is the "National Security Council of the Soviet Union"). The school board has long been unhappy with me, so maybe this time they will find an excuse to 'beat' me." The old guy Shrugging, he didn't seem to care about the heavy hammer that was about to fall on his head.

"But we still have time to prepare properly." Lin Nian said thoughtfully, as if he understood something.

"One week." Ange said as he watched Lin Nian beaming. "Thanks to the workers' strike in Chicago, we had to stay in this city for a whole week."

Lin Nian looked at the old guy's beaming expression and roughly understood what role he played after this incident.

This week's buffer time is used to give confessions to them when they return from the coastal city. Perhaps the principal also needs this time to prepare for some voice issues within Cassel College to better fight against the upcoming school board meeting. The falling hammer.

But as Lin Nian said before, all gifts have their own price. There is no love without reason in this world.

There is a secret contract between Hilbert Jean Angers and Lin Nian that only they know each other. It is precisely because of the existence of this contract that they can exchange this. This is enough to make the school board furious, Information that can be called 'betrayal',

As long as the contract is still being fulfilled and Lin Nian and Ange's goals and original intentions have not changed, they will always be a dignified teacher and an unyielding student.

"Is a week too long? I'm worried that something will happen in the college during this time." Lin Nian asked.

"How long has it been since you had a good rest?" Angers suddenly asked.

Lin Nian didn't answer because the question meant nothing to him. There were enough bad things going on during this period, and there was no time to rest.

"You need to rest." Ange looked at Lin Nian and said, "In addition to giving you a buffer, these seven days are mainly to slow down your pace."

"I have more important things to do."

"The most important thing now is to rest and be obedient." Angers put his hand on his student's shoulder. "The real worry now is the investigation team in the college, not us. These seven days should be regarded as the last days of summer vacation. For seven days, the city of Chicago is very nice, and the cruise ships and gardens on Lake Michigan are also very beautiful. You can take your little girlfriend to go shopping and relax.”

Lin Nian was stunned for a moment and said nothing.

"Care more about the people around you who haven't left yet." Ange squeezed his shoulder lightly, "Keeping chasing the shadow of the people who have left will only make you find that you are further away from them by chance in the future. Far away, until both the past is in front of you and behind you. Compared with losing the past, losing the present is truly terrifying."

"I understand." Lin Nian lowered his head and replied.

"The suites at the 'Hyatt Regency Chicago' hotel are very nice, but they are a bit difficult to book during the peak season." Angers took back his hand and mentioned the thing he mentioned at the beginning again, but this time he even took it out of his pocket. A black room card was handed to Lin Nian, "But fortunately, I have booked the best room for you one day in advance. The top floor of the hotel building overlooks most of the Chicago River. You can go to his restaurant on the ground floor in the evening." Well, there are various types of wines. I personally recommend the 2009 Margaux dry red, which should be good for young people."

"Is 19 years old still not the legal drinking age in the United States?"

"It's up to you. You always need something to drink when you're with a girl on a good night. You can't drink Coke or sparkling water." After Angers finished speaking, he turned around and left, walking back from the aisle of the church, forcefully The sound of leather shoes getting farther and farther away.

"What about the principal? I'm staying in Chicago these seven days. Principal, what do you have to do?" Lin Nian asked without looking back.

"Young people do young things, and an old guy like me naturally has some old friends who need to meet and discuss some boring issues that only occur at senior gatherings." Angers' voice drifted further and further away, "If there are no surprises, I will wait for you at the academy in seven days, and I hope to meet a young man with a completely new mental outlook."

After the words drifted away, the footsteps also disappeared. Lin Nian turned to look and saw that Ange's figure had long since disappeared, but the 2,000-pound bronze door showed no sign of being pushed at all.

"Seven days...?" Lin Young leaned lightly on the backrest of the seat. At this moment, the twelve o'clock bell on the church dome rang, grand and long, echoing continuously in the empty church filled with colorful lights.

On the street beside Lake Michigan outside the church, the bustling flow of people did not stop due to the sound of the grand bell, but a mayfly in the black crowd suddenly stopped.

It was a boy. He looked up blankly at the church in the distance. The huge black bell swayed under the gothic spire that penetrated into the blue sky. He seemed to be inspired by some kind of inspiration and was lost in the sound of the bell. In my pupils, the white dove on the church flutters high.