Tang Shu found room 1703 in building 2. As soon as she entered, a girl with a round face was waving her chubby arms at her.
"Shushu, over here, over here, I saved you a spot!"
Cheng Ranran was truly round: a round head, round arms and legs exposed, not a single sharp angle to be found, even her large, dark eyes were round.
Paired with her well-proportioned body, she didn't look fat at all but rather gave off a very cute and soft vibe.
Tang Shu walked over, nodded at her, and sat down next to the empty seat. Out of professional habit, she noticed at a glance the dark circles under her eyes.
"Did you not sleep well last night?"
"Mm~~"
Cheng Ranran lay listlessly on the desk, her chin propped on her textbook, as if the person who had just jumped up to greet Tang Shu was not her.
"Shushu, don't care about the comments on Weibo. I've already scolded them on your behalf, don't be upset!"
After just one weekend without seeing her, her Shushu was not only less talkative but her expressions had also become much colder, surely due to the influence of those online comments!
Comments on Weibo?
Tang Shu took another glance at her friend with dark circles, pulled out her phone, opened the Weibo interface to her friends' feed, and after flipping through a few pages, she found the truth.
"So, you were still fighting with netizens at four in the morning?"
Cheng Ranran's Weibo account was easy to recognize, using the same profile picture as her WeChat, and almost every minute her comments appeared, spread out over several hundred messages—it was hard to imagine such a cute-looking girl could be so fierce in battle.
The ones drenched in verbal blood by her were the anti-fans attracted through public recognition by Tang Shu's agent.
Of course, this cute girl also got her fair share of verbal lashings from the anti-fans.
"Of course! Anyone who dares to insult my friend, I won't let them get away with it. They're all just keyboard warriors. wuli Shushu's acting is so good, some people are just blind!"
"..." If I remember correctly, you said yesterday that you were going to blacklist me for the rest of my life.
Such double standards.
Her cool gaze sweeping over a few messages, Tang Shu's lips curled slightly, her delicate face seemed to warm up a bit.
"You've already scolded them back for me, I'm not upset."
"Really?!"
"Really."
The soft, cute girl immediately burst into emotional tears, hugging Tang Shu's arm and shaking it, "Ah, all my efforts this morning weren't in vain, even skipping breakfast! Now, after filling my stomach, I'll fight those bitches another three hundred rounds!"
For Cheng Ranran, the only way to regain her energy was eating, and the next second she deftly took out a packet of biscuits from her bag and furiously got to work crunching them down.
The sound of her biting into the biscuits, not too loud or too soft, was enough for her friend and classmate sitting in front to hear.
"Hey Ran Bao, can you stop eating? The crunching sound is just like a hamster's. Military training finally helped you lose a few pounds, be careful you don't gain it back."
"What do you know, this is baby fat!"
"That's novel! Who still has baby fat at nearly 20? Are you developmentally delayed, or is your head filled with paste?"
"Developmentally delayed? Ouch, ouch, someone as flat as an airport has the nerve to say that?"
"...Damn it, Cheng Ranran, wait for me after school!"
"After all these years, still using the tricks from elementary school, sheesh~~~~"
"You..."
Tang Shu, who was focused on reading, caught every word of their bickering, her lips twitching.
Oh, grand master, warrior lady, your highness, old mother... in less than a day, someone's self-referential terms had changed countless times. If she hadn't made the effort to educate herself about internet culture, she might not have caught the meanings.
This carefree, teasing lifestyle didn't seem too bad, did it?
Out of the corner of her eye, Tang Shu spotted the figure of an old man with white hair at the temples outside the classroom, and she interjected to stop the squabbling.
"The professor's here, silence."
"Ah, it's Professor Yu!"
Cheng Ranran howled, shoving the biscuits back into her bag with record speed and opening her textbook to sit up straight and proper.
Tang Shu was puzzled, "Wasn't this supposed to be our very first class in freshman year?"
Why so nervous?
Nowadays, the relationship between teachers and students was supposed to be quite harmonious, without the threat of "rulers on the palm or being made to stand at the school gate."
At worst... not getting credit?
"Shushu, don't you do any pre-class homework?"
"I've read 'Herbology'."
In fact, Tang Shu, who was proficient in Poison Techniques, had flipped through and thoroughly digested the book in less than two hours. The modern herbology textbook was very similar to the medicinal knowledge passed down through the Tang Sect, some of it even less detailed.
In Tang Shu's eyes, this course wasn't even at an introductory level.
Nevertheless...
"Who told you to read the textbook? As a qualified freshman, you should first find out which professors are easy-going, which subjects are easy to pass, which campus heartthrobs... cough cough, I've said too much."
Cheng Ranran tried to look as if she dearly wished more for her, a tiny bit of biscuit crumbs still clinging to the corner of her mouth, puffing with her cheeks as she moved, adding an extra touch of cuteness to her sincere-looking facade.
As if the words "campus heartthrob" she had just uttered were an illusion.
"..."
After a two-second silence, Tang Shu, whose brain was working fast, decided to follow local customs, "Got it, this Professor Yu is strict with teaching, and the credits are hard to earn."
"It's more than just hard to earn, I heard that over half the students end up failing his class!"
Professor Yu from "Herbal Medicine Class" was known as the most demanding professor at the Medical University on the campus forum, a reputation that rang loudly to the point of "mentioning Yu and turning pale."
Cheng Ranran sat up stiffly, pen in hand, her round eyes fixed on the doorway.
"Tighten up, it's starting, he's coming!"
The next moment, a well-dressed elderly man walked into the classroom.
But when Tang Shu saw the old man, she raised her eyebrow slightly, with a trace of surprise in her eyes.
Him?!