Cangmang Asks the Way 1: Guardian of the Lamp

Returning home triumphantly from the city's youth martial arts and Sanda championship, Cang Tianci carefully wrapped the gold medal in an old handkerchief and placed it beside his pillow. After training at night, lying down with aches all over, he would sometimes reach out and touch the hard, bulging outline of his physique, a silent smile spreading across his face in the darkness. This was something he had earned himself, bought with sweat, bruises, and even blood from dark alleys—a real and tangible warmth.

He wrote home to report the good news. A reply arrived quickly, written by his second brother. The letter said that his father had pasted the county newspaper report of his victory onto the most prominent wall of the main room with rice paste, smoothing it out every day after work. His mother, on the other hand, had kept the letter close to her body for several days, sometimes stopping while tending the fire to murmur in the flames, "My precious son… he's made something of himself…"

Even when Wang Zhenkun met his father on the road, he surprisingly hummed in response.

This recognition, more than any applause, made Tianci feel that the gold medal had the power to transcend suffering.

Physical exhaustion and a lingering pain in his left rib forced him to temporarily temper his training. However, this physical constraint, in turn, opened a window for his mental leap. The "stillness" and "insight" he had gained in the ring did not dissipate with the end of the match, but rather quietly settled and integrated into his studies at Jixian Elementary School.

Sunlight streamed through the windows of Class 4-1, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. The homeroom teacher, Ms. Fang Wenhui, stood on the podium, her gaze gentle and wise, consistently attentive to the growth of each child.

The night in the dormitory of Jixian Sports School was dimly lit. Tianci lay hunched over a worn-out desk, not with a boxing manual spread out in front of him, but with a worn-out notebook of incorrect problems and a Xinhua Dictionary given to him by Teacher Fang. His posture still bore the stiffness left by training, but his eyes were as calm and focused as they were on the ring.

He no longer stubbornly grappled with difficult problems like he had when he first arrived. Teacher Sun's teachings on "growth mindset" had become internalized as his guiding principle. For each wrong answer, he no longer simply corrected the answer; instead, he dissected it like an opponent's moves, repeatedly analyzing where the gaps in his thinking were, and where the cracks appeared in his knowledge structure. He marked "conceptual confusion" in red, "mental block" in blue, and summarized "solutions for similar problem types" in black. This process, extremely tedious, carried a meticulous, ritualistic quality akin to combat training.

The same applies to learning Chinese. He still stutters, but the fear of reading aloud in public has been replaced by a stronger understanding—as Teacher Fang once said, words are another crutch for understanding the world and expressing one's inner self. When he practices against the wall, he no longer merely pursues fluency, but strives to feel the images and emotions behind the words. "Rustling" is the whisper of the mountain wind passing by his ears, and "hunched over" is his father's back soaked with sweat. That dictionary, turned from his frequent use until the pages are frayed, each word's definition and example sentence like a punch or kick, solidifying the foundation for his communication with the world.

Time slipped away quietly amidst the scratching of the pen and the turning of the pages. He didn't work himself to the bone; he simply transferred the "hard work" from the training field and the "ingenuity" from the ring to this small desk.

The exam hall was so quiet during the final exam that you could hear the soft scratching of pens on the exam paper. Facing the questions, Tianci's state of mind was strangely similar to that of someone standing in a boxing ring—completely focused, free from distractions. Understanding the questions was like observing an opponent's opening move; analyzing the conditions was like searching for gaps in their power and weaknesses in their balance; writing down the calculations was like delivering a precise and decisive blow. Those knowledge points that had been repeatedly scrutinized in his error notebook, those vocabulary and grammar points that had been carefully pondered late into the night, now acted like well-trained soldiers, orderly and methodically heading to their respective "battle positions" under the command of his mind.

He didn't perform exceptionally well; he simply made almost no mistakes. He consistently and completely presented the abilities he had honed and internalized over time within the allotted time.

On the day the results were announced, the sun was scorching. In front of the red list at Jixian Elementary School, a large crowd gathered, and the noise was deafening. As countless eyes habitually began searching for familiar names from the front, the three characters "Cang Tianci" suddenly and abruptly entered everyone's field of vision.

Chinese: 86 points!

Mathematics: 88 points!

Overall score: 10th in the class!

For top students who consistently rank at the top, this achievement might not be surprising. But for a boy who, just over a year ago, was struggling to pass and burdened with labels like "stutterer" and "country bumpkin," this was like a silent but powerful thunderclap that suddenly exploded over Class 1, Grade 4 of Jixian Elementary School!

A moment of stillness fell over the crowd, as if the air had been sucked away. Then, an even louder uproar erupted!

"Heavenly Gift, tenth place?"

"How is that possible? He was only in his early seventies in math last time!"

"86 in Chinese? He can barely speak properly!"

Shock, disbelief, and confusion... a range of emotions permeated the crowd.

Amidst the commotion, two pairs of gazes stood out. One belonged to class monitor Lin Ruoxi, who wore an elegant dress and possessed a refined and aloof air, like a secluded orchid in a valley. She looked at the name on the honor roll, a flicker of surprise crossing her clear eyes before she fell into thought, as if reassessing this usually quiet and even somewhat unremarkable sports school student.

The other question came from the class monitor, Song Wei. Song Wei was beautiful and cheerful. At that moment, she was pulling her deskmate along, pointing to the name "Cang Tianci" on the honor roll, her voice filled with astonishment: "My God, he jumped straight from the back to the top ten! That's incredible progress!"

During break, Tianci was deep in thought about a complex word problem when a clear voice rang out beside him: "Cang Tianci, your solution to this problem is quite unique!"

He looked up and saw Song Wei had somehow gotten close to him, her face filled with undisguised curiosity. "You used diagrams to solve equations? Our teacher never taught that!"

Tianci scratched his head a little embarrassedly: "I... I'm slow-witted... so I thought that drawing it out... might make it clearer."

"This is called combining numbers and shapes; it's a very clever approach." A cool voice came from the other side. Lin Ruoxi had also appeared there at some point. She didn't look at Tianci, but her gaze fell on his densely filled notebook of wrong answers. She said calmly, "It seems that the city gold medal isn't something you can get just by throwing punches." After saying that, she gracefully left.

Song Wei winked at Tianci and whispered, "Don't mind her, that's just how she is. But you're really amazing!"

At the awards ceremony, teacher Fang Wenhui handed Tianci the "Excellent Student" certificate and a prize—a brand-new copy of the *Chinese Idiom Dictionary*. Then, she scanned the audience, her voice not loud, but clearly carrying throughout:

"Classmates, Cang Tianci spent a year getting here from the passing grade. He is not a genius; he simply did two things: he refused to accept his fate and he never gave up."

She turned to Tianci, her gaze gentle:

"Tianci, you have shown us that true strength is not about winning against others, but about winning against yourself yesterday."

The applause, like long-awaited thunder in spring, suddenly erupted and lingered for a long time. The applause was filled with awe, admiration, and a burning passion.

Lin Wanqing clapped her hands vigorously, her cane pressed tightly against the table. Her pale face flushed with excitement, and her clear eyes filled with tears, yet shone with an incomparably bright light. She looked at the figure on the stage as if she were looking at a mountain that had suddenly risen from the ground.

In a corner of the crowd, Zhao Xiaohu kept his head bowed low, his nails digging almost into his palms. No one knew what he was thinking.

Holding the certificate and the heavy dictionary, Tianci stood in the center of a sea of ​​light and applause. He could clearly hear his heart pounding wildly. He couldn't help but clutch the certificate tightly to his chest, the firm touch repeatedly confirming the reality of the moment. In a daze, he seemed to see Wang Yaowu's twisted mockery and Zhao Xiaohu's cold gaze again, but these images receded like the tide under the solid affirmation in his arms, leaving only a dizzying sense of pleasure.

At night, he once again stroked the gold medal and the brand-new dictionary beside his pillow. Moonlight streamed in through the window, falling on the pillow. The two items lay side by side, one cold, the other heavy.

He stared for a long time without saying a word.

He didn't know if these things were enough to break through the road ahead.

He had no idea what awaited him ahead.