F1: The Making of a Racing God

Chapter 11 The Troubles of a Young Racer

Gao Yang probably already had a plan in mind: when he got off the field, he would complain about Shu Long's rudeness and lack of discipline, just like last time. Maybe he could even win a new game console by crying and making a scene.

On the other hand, Li Zixu felt confused, thinking that his family was watching on stage today. Should he force his parents to continue supporting his expensive dream and hobby?

His family was actually quite well-off, but not to the point where he could afford to squander his wealth. He had given up too much of his life for his racing dream.

He couldn't bear to buy new shoes or clothes, nor could he bear to buy the hottest comics or toys. He would even save up for a new Beyblade that cost less than fifty yuan so he could spend it as he pleased.

When the school organized spring and autumn outings, all the students had the latest PSPs to play games online, but he had to borrow his homeroom teacher's phone even to make a phone call.

I still haven't mastered driving, and my grades are terrible. My family has had countless arguments over these things. Looking back now, was it all worth it?

In the world of racing, there may not be a way to make up for lack of talent. Without talent, there is no capital to invest in. Perhaps only a very small number of people have the right to persevere.

While Li Zixu was feeling lost and disappointed, Shu Long, the villainous second male lead who would definitely be the opposite of the inspirational male protagonist in other scripts, rushed into the competition for the award without even blinking an eye.

The top four were not even in the same league as the drivers behind them. By the time Shu Long broke through the encirclement of the slower cars, the fourth-place driver had already pulled ahead of him by about three seconds.

One undeniable fact is that there were less than five laps left in the race.

He pushed the panting race car beneath him to its limit, but in the end, Shulong only managed to seize the opportunity in the last two corners to get past the third and fourth place finishers who were fighting for the podium. At this point, he was still more than a second behind Xiao Baga in front of him.

Including the original third and fourth place finishers, all of them were drivers from the club who had participated in the National Karting Championship. Logically speaking, Shu Long should have enough reason to be proud of his performance. However, looking at the distance between him and the car in front of him, which was both within reach and yet out of reach, Shu Long could not feel happy at all.

It wasn't just a simple competitive spirit; he felt he possessed a secret advantage that no one else had, and excellence was the goal he should truly pursue, not just be satisfied with a few insignificant wins and losses.

In the struggle with the slower trains just now, he had too many pointless moments of impulsiveness, wasting too much time trying to gain a temporary position.

Shu Long, wearing a helmet and reluctant to remove his mask, didn't show any sign of frustration. Shu Xiong and Zhang Xin, on the other hand, seemed quite happy. However, the couple didn't even have time to let Shu Long collect the prize for third place before hurriedly pulling him away from the club.

The reason given was to hurry to catch the plane. The truth, only Shu's parents, who had been watching from the stands, knew just how much public outrage their son's behavior during the game had caused. If things got heated and arguments started, there would be endless trouble later.
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Go home, and then work day and night to finish your homework.

This is what our future racing legend will be doing every day for the next few days. Grandpa Shu, who hasn't seen his grandson in a long time, originally wanted to take Shu Long to watch Journey to the West on repeat as usual, but was turned away by Shu Long's "diligent" appearance.

Holding the three books of "Happy Summer Vacation" in his hands, Shulong, who originally thought he was quite happy, couldn't feel happy at all.
Math and English are relatively easy; you just need to fill in the numbers and letters according to the answers. But Chinese characters have so many strokes; copying just a few pages can wear down a lot of your fingers.

The key issue is that the Chinese language curriculum also includes a requirement to write at least thirty short diary entries of fifty characters each day, supposedly to lay the foundation for later composition classes. This is the most crucial part.

Shu Long simply followed Zhang Xin's bad idea and filled all the blanks with numbers from "one" to "ten" in turn. Whether it was reliable or not was another matter, but at least it made the book look like it had been done.

Fortunately, the pen wasn't entirely without solace. Thanks to the magical term "friction control," it's hard to imagine that someone could find joy in the scratching sound of the pen tip against the paper.
Based on Zhang Xin's experience as a seasoned student, teachers generally don't take summer assignments like this too seriously; they just give them a cursory glance. This way, Shu Long can have two days to focus on dealing with his short essay.

September 1st is a Saturday, and the school of geniuses came up with a brilliant idea: to have students register on August 27th, the Ghost Festival.

This not only allows students to get into the swing of things a week early, but also perfectly frees up September 1st so they can watch "The First Lesson of the New Semester" at home and write their reflections.

Whether you can see ghosts on the streets during Ghost Festival is hard to say, but the students in school with dark circles under their eyes from staying up late to finish their homework all look quite like ghosts.

It's called registration, but basically it's just going to school, handing in all the assignments you're supposed to submit, and then taking your new semester's textbooks home.

Shu Long arrived not late, but the classroom was already bustling with noise. The familiar smell of children mixed with the smell of wood and mops made him feel inexplicably uneasy.

Aside from the few books in his backpack filled with fabrications and charlatans, Shu Long felt a strange mix of familiarity and unfamiliarity among his classmates. Even though it had been almost sixty days since they last met, he couldn't understand why they could so quickly reconnect and find common ground.

Moreover, apart from him, everyone in the classroom seemed to have quietly grown taller during the summer vacation. Shu Long, who had hardly changed, felt particularly out of place.

Standing blankly at the classroom door, Shu Long felt his head buzzing. Although there were still many empty seats in the classroom, he felt as if there was no place for him here.

Who was I closest to last semester?

This is the true value of i-humans; even the "photographic memory" skill, which is almost 70% complete, can't save Shulong's currently malfunctioning brain.

"Hey, old tree, you're back?"

He was saved; it was "Elmwood Cutting" who had just returned from using the toilet.

Yu Mujie, who lives in the same villa area as Shu Long, has been Shu Long's good friend since kindergarten. Even their nicknames among their classmates are almost identical: two wooden stakes.

Yu Mujie led Shu Long to the most popular spot in the last corner of the classroom. He asked Shen Qian, who was lingering next to him, to move over and helped put Shu Long's backpack on the seat.

Unlike Shu Long, who is almost invisible in class, Yu Mujie, who has excellent academic performance, has a height of 1.6 meters, which is the envy of the entire second grade of elementary school, and is especially good at running and basketball.

Oh my god~
Do you know what this concept is?

With these several outstanding talents, Yu Mujie was undoubtedly the most popular student in the class. The large number of people gathered around his seat was a testament to this; both boys and girls in the class loved to hang out with him. Shu Long swore that more than half the girls in the school liked Yu Mujie; it seemed that wherever he went, unfamiliar girls would approach him to say hello.

He's only in second grade!
I really don't know what those girls were thinking, but unfortunately Yu Mujie's performance was exactly as his nickname suggested, completely ignoring all these signals.

As for the other tree stump, he was even less understanding. Shu Long, who was still completely clueless, didn't think Yu Mujie had anything to envy.

In fact, because teachers of all subjects usually show favoritism towards girls without mentioning the facts, Shu Long's biggest wish now is for the school to hold a fighting competition divided into male and female camps, so that he can take this opportunity to vent his pent-up resentment.

Let me state upfront that this has absolutely nothing to do with Dragon Ball, which he's been watching recently, and there's no question of it corrupting children!
It's just a dream now. On the contrary, Shu Long, who is only a little over 1.4 meters tall, is often the target of bullying and pranks by the girls.
"Where did you go during the holidays? I wanted to hang out with you but couldn't find you anywhere. I was even thinking of asking you if you wanted to sign up for a basketball hobby class with me."

"I guess you could say I'm taking an extracurricular class, like driving go-karts."

"Go-karts? Oh, you mean the kind you see at amusement parks? That looks like so much fun! Why didn't you invite me to join?"

"There was nothing I could do. My dad took me there, and we didn't even tell my grandpa."

I think I understand. Shu Long's father has some expensive and frivolous hobbies that are well-known in the neighborhood. Adults keep their distance from him, but the kids think he's cool. Yu Mujie has always envied Shu Long for having an unserious and funny dad, but in the eyes of the kids, the old man of the Shu family doesn't seem very easy to get along with.

After handing in all the homework, during the time waiting for the textbooks to be returned, Shu Long was gradually drawn into conversation by Yu Jie. Fortunately, he had a friend like Yu Mujie, because Shu Long was really bad at breaking the ice in interpersonal relationships.

Apart from Yu Mujie, Shu Long had no intention of telling anyone else about driving go-karts.

Just like most people's impression of Shu Xiong in this era, driving go-karts is seen by most people as a waste of time and simply playing around.

But things didn't go as planned. A week after school started, the whole class found out that Shu Long had been driving go-karts during the holidays.

It wasn't Yu Mujie who leaked the information, but their kind and approachable homeroom teacher.

A week passed peacefully, and even Shu Long himself had almost forgotten about the holiday homework, until he saw his homeroom teacher and Chinese teacher, Lao Wu, carrying a few copies of "Happy Summer Vacation" and a large composition exercise book into the classroom. Instantly realizing what was going on, Shu Long felt his heart sink.

"First of all, I want to commend most of the students in our class. Everyone has completed the homework assigned by the school in a high-quality and high-quantity manner. I especially want to commend Yu Mujie and Shen Qian. Their handwriting is very neat. As class monitors, they have set a very good example for the whole class. I will pass it around to the students in the first row in a while so that the whole class can take a look."

It's alright, it's just praise?

"Besides that, I have another special assignment here, Dragon Binding?"

With his heart finally at ease, the racing legend stood up from his seat, looking ashen-faced.

"I won't ask you why your daily diary entries are all about racing on the track. Could you please explain why I only see 'one, two, three, four' answers in your Chinese homework?"

It was clear that many students felt guilty about their summer assignments, and the tense atmosphere in the class instantly became cheerful. Even Ms. Wu, who usually had a serious expression, couldn't help but smile.

"Take it up here and take it down. I'll check with your parents later to confirm the situation."

Yes, even the teachers find these tasks assigned by the schools uninteresting. It's practically impossible to properly check all the summer homework carefully. They'd rather use that time to prepare for the new semester's courses.

However, it cannot be ruled out that some teachers might randomly check homework on a whim. After all, they need to send a signal to students that homework will indeed be checked. Otherwise, what if all the students become lazy and no one does their homework?
The spot checks targeted class monitors, academic representatives, and subject representatives who frequently make their presence known to teachers, as well as problem students whose grades are a headache and good students who are very suitable as role models.

Shu Long doesn't have any of those identities; he's just a simple unlucky guy.
just kidding.

At least in Teacher Wu's eyes, this smart, quiet, and cute student was quite likable. Whether it was teasing or showing concern, she would always unconsciously pay more attention to him.

After class, the two homework assignments that were used as model examples were completely ignored, while Shu Long's assignment was passed around and teased everywhere.

Even after he had answered the question time and time again, the students who surrounded him still asked him the same question tirelessly: "Did you really spend the entire summer vacation at the amusement park?"

[Even though it wasn't a whole summer vacation, I still played table tennis for at least half a month. Thank you!]

[Wait! Why am I explaining this?]

Shu Long is tired of constantly arguing the difference between a proper go-kart race and an amusement park ride. A small number of students who have played go-karts at least know what a go-kart is, but in most people's minds, it's just a ride that's pretty much the same as bumper cars.

Fortunately, most children only have a short attention span. Many people gathered around Shulong not because they were curious about go-karts, but simply because they thought it was interesting to see people gathered there. Basically, the next day, Shulong returned to its usual quiet and unremarkable routine.

perhaps?

Whether in class or during breaks, Shu Long always felt that the gazes that were usually focused on Yu Jie seemed to have quietly shifted to him.

I'm a little annoyed, but also a little smug.

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　　Niche themes are not easy to come by; young seedlings need nurturing. Thank you for your support!
　　(Finally some good news, I feel relieved)
　　
　
(End of this chapter)