On Monday morning, Subway Line 2 was packed with commuters rushing to work. Rong Sui, carrying a backpack and cradling a kindergarten acceptance letter in his arms, managed to free one hand from his pocket with great difficulty to check the time on his phone.

It was 8:45 AM, exactly forty-five minutes before his scheduled reporting time.

The fast-moving subway slowly ground to a halt. The mechanical voice of the announcer echoed through the carriage, and the doors slid open to both sides in sync with the announcement. The crowd, packed together like sardines in a tin, instantly poured out. Rong Sui stepped aside to escape the rush, took a brief breath, and waited until the crowd had mostly dispersed before stepping out just before the subway doors closed.

Today was his first official day of work.

Rong Sui had attended university in his home province, majoring in Preschool Education at Hanzhong Normal University in H Province. Actually, his preferred major had originally been Chinese Language and Literature, but luck wasn’t on his side; he had been edged out by a mere three-point deficit and was subsequently reassigned to Preschool Education.

There were thirty-two students in his class, and with him included, there were only two males—making them rarer than giant pandas.

Fortunately, Rong Sui was a highly adaptable and pragmatic young man. He stayed focused and completed his studies, looking for a job as soon as he received his graduation certificate.

However, the current employment market was severe. A kindergarten teacher was considered a decent and respectable job, so graduates from both his major and other fields were trying to get a foot in the door, making the competition incredibly fierce.

To be fair, Rong Sui’s academic performance in his major wasn’t bad, and he even held some advantages in a teaching profession where women outnumbered men. Unfortunately, modern kindergartens placed immense value on all-around development—moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor skills. Consequently, teachers had to be all-rounders: singing, drawing, dancing, playing the piano… they had to be proficient in everything.

Rong Sui was completely bottlenecked by this exact hurdle.

After interviewing at several larger public kindergartens and being regrettably rejected, he had no choice but to lower his standards. He picked a kindergarten whose name he had never even heard of and submitted his resume.

The recruitment booth for the Mountain and Sea Kindergarten was tucked away in a corner of the job fair venue. Hardly anyone passed by, making it incredibly quiet and deserted. The person in charge of recruitment was a young male teacher who looked very delicate, though a bit bashful. When Rong Sui handed over his resume, the other man actually looked a bit flattered and overwhelmed.

After hastily glancing at the resume twice, the interviewer asked him when he could report for duty.

Rong Sui suspected the man hadn’t even read the resume clearly. However, the recruiter looked completely harmless, and when he checked the kindergarten’s official website, it did indeed appear to be a legitimate public kindergarten. Having been rejected for several days in a row, Rong Sui had developed a bit of a psychological trauma. It was rare to meet someone so straightforward, so thinking they might be in urgent need of staff, he checked the compensation package. The salary wasn’t high, but thankfully it included room and board, so he nodded and agreed.

Thus, they agreed that he would report to the kindergarten at 9:30 AM on Monday morning.

Exiting the subway, Rong Sui turned on his phone navigation. He followed the GPS, winding through twists and turns for quite a while before finally locating a somewhat secluded small road. On the wall to the right side of the road hung a iron sign with a blue background, displaying “No. 99 Qili Road” in white text.

Turning off the navigation, Rong Sui followed the road inside. He walked for about five minutes before finally spotting the kindergarten’s signpost.

This kindergarten was located in the Hancheng District. Hancheng was the old urban district of W City, positioned right next to the suburbs. After W City developed, old districts like Hancheng gradually became desolate. Furthermore, due to its proximity to the suburbs and surrounding rural towns, most of the migrant workers coming into the city gathered here. The population was large and chaotic, and the environment could hardly be called good.

From this, one could infer that the conditions of the Mountain and Sea Kindergarten built here couldn’t possibly be very good either. Before reaching his destination, Rong Sui had given himself plenty of psychological preparation, but when he saw the dilapidated main gate of the kindergarten and the completely empty guardroom, his mental state still crumbled a bit.

The kindergarten gates were tightly locked. Much of the black paint had peeled away, leaving visible patches of rust at the bottom. To the right was a crude guardroom connected to a small side door, which was wide open. Seeing no one around, Rong Sui had no choice but to walk in by himself.

Upon entering the gate, the first thing he saw was a two-story small white building, which was presumably the teaching building. It looked quite old; the white walls were dusty and gray, completely covered in ivy. On the left and right sides were a row of single-story houses, their walls painted lemon yellow. Red banners hung across them, bearing the slogan: “Develop Morally, Intellectually, Physically, Aesthetically, and Through Labor to Create an Advanced Kindergarten.”

Rong Sui thought to himself that compared to the actual state of the kindergarten, this banner slogan scored full marks for irony.

Although the kindergarten was run-down, the grounds were actually quite large. Rong Sui walked quite a distance inside without encountering a single person, lacking even someone to ask for directions.

Frowning, Rong Sui stopped in his tracks and scanned his surroundings, the sense of strangeness in his heart growing heavier.

It was just past nine in the morning, which should have been the liveliest time for parents to drop off their children for class. Yet, this kindergarten was dead silent. From the moment he walked in until now, he hadn’t seen a single soul.

Let alone parents or students, even his colleague Bai Tu, who had explicitly agreed to come and meet him, was nowhere to be seen.

Rong Sui’s mind began to churn with doubt. Standing under the shade of a tree, he sent a WeChat message to Bai Tu, letting him know he had arrived.

As soon as the message was sent, Bai Tu replied instantly, saying he had misremembered the reporting time and told him to wait a moment as he was coming over right away.

Only then did Rong Sui’s expanding imagination temporarily halt, preventing him from spiraling down the path of supernatural and superstitious theories.

After waiting for two minutes, Rong Sui spotted a silhouette sprinting toward him from afar. Looking at the build, it should be Bai Tu coming to meet him.

Rong Sui inwardly marveled; though Bai Tu looked small and thin, he ran incredibly fast, sweeping in front of him like a gust of wind. Blushing, Bai Tu apologized in a small voice, “I’m so sorry, I misremembered the time. You haven’t been waiting long, right?”

Rong Sui smiled and shook his head. “No, I just got here.” As he spoke, his gaze swept over the embarrassed, bowing Bai Tu, and he asked as if casually, “By the way, why haven’t I seen anyone else around the school? I couldn’t even find someone to ask for directions.”

Hearing this, Bai Tu hung his head even lower, looking profoundly guilty. His speech even began to stutter, “O-Our school… the conditions aren’t very good.”

Rong Sui didn’t understand his meaning at all. What did a school having poor conditions have to do with there being no people?

It wasn’t until he followed Bai Tu to the office and met the principal that he finally understood exactly what kind of “poor conditions” Bai Tu was referring to.

To put it simply, the kindergarten environment was too poor, and combined with terrible management, they currently had not only very few students but also no remaining teachers.

If Rong Sui took the job, he would be the sole classroom teacher here.

Rong Sui: “…………”

Managing to control his shocked expression with effort, Rong Sui looked at Bai Tu. “Doesn’t Teacher Bai teach classes?”

Bai Tu hung his head in shame again, speaking in a voice so quiet it was barely audible, “I am a childcare worker, and I handle a bit of administrative work on the side.”

Rong Sui: “…” Fine then.

Seeing that he had gone quiet, Bai Tu instantly grew nervous, terrified that Rong Sui would leave in a fit of anger. He hurriedly tried to pitch the school to him, stuttering, “A-Although our kindergarten’s conditions are average, it will definitely get better and better in the future!”

As he spoke, he secretly nudged the old principal, counting on the principal who was holding a teacup to help back him up. The old principal looked up blankly, set down his teacup, tilted his head, and placed a hand by his ear, shouting toward him, “Huh? Xiao Bai, what did you say? I didn’t hear you!”

Rong Sui: “………………”

Bai Tu’s face turned red all the way to his neck, so embarrassed he was on the verge of tears.

A hard-of-hearing old principal, a colleague who was as timid as a rabbit, and a completely dilapidated kindergarten—Rong Sui felt himself being pulled back and forth between emotion and reality.

Reason told him it was best to turn around and leave immediately. A broken kindergarten like this might well go bankrupt tomorrow; only a fool would stay here. But on the other hand, Bai Tu was staring at him expectantly with eyes turning red. Rong Sui felt that if he said he wanted to leave right now, Bai Tu might burst into tears right on the spot.

Letting out a deep sigh, Rong Sui decided to stay for at least one day, and after returning home, he would find a tactful excuse to resign from this godforsaken job.

“Where are the students? How can they have class without a teacher?” Rong Sui changed the subject.

Seeing that he didn’t immediately announce his departure, Bai Tu predictably cheered up and replied, “They are in the classroom doing self-study.” He then added tentatively, “Should I take you to see them?”

Since Rong Sui had no intention of staying long-term, he gave a noncommittal nod and went downstairs with him.

The principal’s office was on the second floor of the teaching building, while the first floor housed the student classrooms. Because there were so few students, several classrooms sat empty with doors and windows tightly shut.

Only the second classroom on the right side after coming downstairs had its door open. Bai Tu led Rong Sui toward it, murmuring, “Although our kindergarten has few children, every single one of them is incredibly cute and obedient, you will definitely li…” like them.

The latter half of his sentence failed to leave his mouth because the children he had just praised as cute and obedient were currently split into two factions, locked in a fierce brawl.

The tables and chairs in the classroom had been carelessly piled into two heaps, leaving a path in the middle where five children stood facing off in two separate groups.

A young boy with reddish-brown curly hair stood arrogantly atop a stack of tables, one hand on his hip while the other pointed across the room as he yelled, “Yin Zhuzhi, if you have the guts, come over here and let’s settle this one-on-one!” Below the table, another child was desperately stretching on his tiptoes to reach his leg, calling out softly, “Bi Fang, come down quickly.”

Opposite them stood three other children. The one standing at the very front was quite tall, with bangs so long they completely obscured one of his eyes. Hearing that Bi Fang was still refusing to back down, a cold sneer appeared on his tender face. “Hmph! If you can’t win a fight, you play dirty, you sore-loser bird!”

Bi Fang was instantly enraged, placing both hands on his hips as if wishing he could jump up and scream, “You’re the sore-loser bird!”

The tall child continued to sneer, “I’m not a bird.”

Bi Fang was so angry that his head of curly hair seemed to curl even tighter, yet he had no way to refute it and could only glare fiercely.

At this moment, the child who had just been pointed at and challenged jumped down from the table. He wore a somewhat faded, ill-fitting school uniform, and his hair hadn’t been cut in who knows how long—it reached past his shoulders, tied into a small ponytail at the back of his head with a rubber band. As he bounced, the ponytail swung along with him.

“You come down, and I’ll beat you until you submit.”

The child tilted his chin up, his round eyes narrowed. He actually looked quite handsome, but the moment he opened his mouth, he sounded even wilder than the little curly-haired boy.

“Let’s fight then!” Bi Fang rolled up his sleeves and was about to leap down, but midway through the air, a hand suddenly extended to scoop him up by the waist. Rong Sui beamed, rubbing his hand over the red curly hair. “Little friends are not allowed to fight.”

With someone suddenly interfering, Bi Fang blanked out for a moment. Once he reacted, he grew even more furious. “Is Grandfather Bi Fang’s head something you can just touch?!”

Immediately after, he sniffed the air with his nose. Terrified, he broke free from Rong Sui’s embrace, retreating to a safe distance to look at Rong Sui warily. “Where did this grand demon come from?!”

Rong Sui: “…………”

Bi Fang’s expression remained highly guarded, and he even reached out to pull the dazed Baize behind him, interrogating, “What did you come here for?”

Rong Sui did his best to project a gentle and amiable smile. “I am your new teacher, here to give you classes.”

Positioned further back, Yin Zhuzhi furrowed his brows, his voice sounding extremely impatient, “We just drove one away, why is another one coming?”

He narrowed his eyes, sizing Rong Sui up and down as if trying to peer right through his flesh to see what lay inside. Being stared at by a mere child like this gave Rong Sui a bit of goosebumps, and a profound sense of strangeness welled up in his heart. He smiled, brushing away the bizarre feeling, and stepped forward to pat Yin Zhuzhi on the head. “My surname is Rong, ‘Rong’ as in the flourishing and withering of plants. You can call me Teacher Rong from now on.”

“Hmph!” Beside him, Long Ya let out a cold sneer, shielding a thoroughly confused Wen Tun behind his back. His single exposed eye glared uncharitably at Rong Sui. “Stop putting on an act. Even if you are a grand demon, we aren’t afraid of you.”

Although the newcomer this time seemed harder to deal with than the previous ones, they weren’t about to show fear.

Rong Sui: “????”

His head was completely filled with questions. He looked bewilderedly at Bai Tu, hoping for an explanation. Have these kids lost their minds from watching too much Journey to the West?

Bai Tu shrunk behind him, peeking into the classroom with half his face exposed before quickly ducking back, explaining in a whisper, “Previously, there was a teacher with terrible character who secretly bullied Wen Tun and Baize, so the children are naturally quite guarded.” After speaking, perhaps worried that Rong Sui would form a bad impression, he immediately tried to salvage the situation: “But once that teacher was discovered, the principal fired him immediately! The characters of the teachers recruited afterward were all perfectly fine!”

So they were bullied by an unprincipled teacher in the past. Rong Sui understood a bit better now. Looking at the five messy little kids, his aversion diminished significantly, replaced instead by a strange sense of pity—especially toward the two smaller children being shielded at the back, who were clearly the two poor little things that had been bullied.

Looking at the three little cubs who had been cursing each other just a moment ago but were now standing on the exact same battle line, Rong Sui’s eyes crinkled with amusement. He squatted down to reintroduce himself, “My name is Rong Sui, and I am your new teacher.”

After speaking, he even extended his hand, wanting to shake hands with the little cubs as a gesture of friendship.

To his surprise, Wen Tun and Baize, who were hiding at the back, were so frightened that they fell flat on their bottoms. Baize scrambled on all fours to fling himself onto Bi Fang’s leg, pulling him backward. “Bi Fang, Bi Fang, let’s run quickly, we can’t beat this one.”

Wen Tun, who had been sitting on the floor dazed, also scrambled up. He pawed blindly at the air a few times before finally managing to grab the hem of Long Ya’s clothes. Shrinking behind him, he said in a panicked voice, “He smells so terrifyingly fierce QAQ!”

The smile on Rong Sui’s face froze entirely.

Behind him, Bai Tu was completely at a loss, looking too fearful to step forward.

Letting out an awkward cough, Rong Sui was just about to withdraw his hand when he saw a tiny, somewhat chilly hand grab his finger and shake it.

Yin Zhuzhi kept his slightly chubby face entirely rigid, staring at him coldly. “Don’t even think about harboring any wicked ideas.”

Bi Fang chimed in, “That’s right, otherwise we’ll beat you back into your original form!”

Rong Sui possessed excellent adaptability. By now, he had swiftly accepted the monster script the little cubs were playing out, nodding with a grin. “Understood, understood. With several Great Kings present, this humble servant wouldn’t dare act recklessly.”

Bi Fang let out a satisfied grunt, dragging the Baize attached to his leg along as he went to tidy up the tables.

The moment he moved, the other children followed suit. The five little cubs worked together to properly realign the tables and chairs they had thrown into complete disarray.

Only then did Bai Tu, who had been shrinking away too scared to make a sound, pat his chest and whisper, “See? They are still very cute.”

However, Rong Sui’s gaze landed squarely on Wen Tun. Wen Tun was quite chubby, a full head shorter than Long Ya next to him. He sported a bowl cut, and because his hair was getting a bit long, the bangs over his forehead were tied up into a tiny ponytail pointing straight toward the sky, perfectly exposing a full forehead and a pair of dark, pitch-black eyes.

Rong Sui had noticed something off just now. Although this child kept his eyes open, if one looked closely, they would realize his eyes lacked any luster or focus—he was blind.

Seeing him staring intently at Wen Tun, Bai Tu introduced him in a low voice, “That one is Wen Tun. He was born blind, but his nose is incredibly sharp. He doesn’t require special care usually; he has no trouble dressing or eating by himself.”

Rong Sui frowned slightly, thoroughly disagreeing with this statement. He thought to himself, how could a child so young being blind not pose any problems? However, seeing that Bai Tu took it completely for granted, he didn’t argue. Instead, he stepped forward to gently lift Wen Tun aside, straightened the table in front of him, and then lifted him back up to place him properly onto the chair.

When he was held by Rong Sui, Wen Tun was so terrified he didn’t dare move an inch. He was born blind, but his other senses were exceptionally acute. The moment Rong Sui approached, he felt himself entirely enveloped by an extraordinarily powerful and ferocious aura, so frightened that he temporarily stopped breathing.

Yet Rong Sui was completely oblivious to this, even going so far as to pat the little fat kid on the head in what he considered a highly gentle manner, speaking softly, “If you have any problems in the future, just call for the teacher.”

Wen Tun burst into tears on the spot.

He was already timid by nature, and despite being unable to see, he could feel that terrifyingly fierce aura every single second. The fear in his heart was magnified exponentially until he finally couldn’t hold it back any longer, bawling at the top of his lungs.