Carrying a Jurassic on me
Chapter 471 - 166: Learning Veterinary Medicine (Seeking Monthly Tickets!)_1

Chapter 471: Chapter 166: Learning Veterinary Medicine (Seeking Monthly Tickets!)_1

This year, right before Lantern Festival, a piece of news suddenly started spreading like wildfire across Sancha River Village, and it was quickly confirmed: the kid from the Yan household at the head of West Bridge was about to become Sudhana Kumāra!

Some people said this kid was being foolish again: They argued, he’s taking the colourful bills from his pocket to buy cattle for others to raise, promising to split the profits when they are sold. If that wasn’t a fool’s errand, then what was?

There was no shortage of such opinions, but everyone only mumbled them under their breath, while openly they said good things: Boss Yan, upon getting rich, didn’t forget about his fellow villagers. This act of his would earn the praises of every single person under the sky!

The news of this event spread quickly and widely. The reason was because Minister Pan from the militarisation department sent out a notice hurriedly - after a meal where he was scammed by Director Lin from the police station. In fact, he hadn’t even finished his meal before he started making arrangements to notify the rural militiamen.

There weren’t many actual soldiers in the militiamen crowd, most ex-servicemen stayed in town, having more-or-less stable jobs. The majority of the militiamen were rural folk, who other than the title, were no different from ordinary peasants. So becoming a militiaman did not elevate their status, nor did it provide any welfare, salary or additional income.

As the saying goes, poverty leads to short-sightedness; without money in hand, one lacks the courage.

Ordinary peasants were hardly left with any expendable income – their savings weren’t easily replenished, with the only so-called household appliances being torchlights. It was precisely because of their poverty that they were reluctant to take risks.

As for going out to work, not many people did for the time being, as most hadn’t even been to the county city, let alone anywhere a thousand miles away.

The scheme carried out by Yan Fei seemed like an unbelievable fairy tale to a lot of these farmers: A calf would cost several hundred yuan, feed it up and sell it later, split the profit and if the calf dies, no compensation would be needed. In their view, this simply seemed incredibly remarkable!

The expenses of raising cattle, such as the cost of feed and labour, didn’t matter much to the people during this period. In the time of agricultural leisure, idle hands were never lacking in each village. When it was busy, everyone from the elderly who could still walk to school children from nearby villages all knew how to pick up a sickle and cut grass.

So, what was Yan Fei, the source of this big news, doing?

He was attending his classes in school.

Early in the morning, Miss Xu Xiaoyan was notified to return home due to some family matters.

After escorting her home, he found himself only two hundred meters away from the school. Considering that everyone was back in class after the holiday, it didn’t seem appropriate for him not to attend. Besides, he was planning on taking the High School Entrance Examination this semester, so how could he not attend classes?

As always, his textbooks were retrieved by his deskmates, Jiao Bing and Yang Qian. All he needed to do was to show up.

At the start of the semester, teachers were lenient with these naughty children who had just finished their holiday, and the content of each class wasn’t too much. They primarily explained the papers from the final exams of the last semester.

Since Yan Fei never attended any exams, his scores were naturally zero. There was an abundance of blank test papers prepared by teachers which they would provide him whenever they saw this regular absentee come to class.

Despite being faced with an empty test paper, Yan Fei showed no embarrassment. The more serious teachers were disappointed in him - he had already become wealthy from the cattle farm, yet he didn’t think of pursuing knowledge, not even taking his exams!

During the morning, there was Chemistry, and the teacher was a young man who admired him. The teacher handed him the test papers with a smile.

Students didn’t care whether you were a nouveau riche or not! Each time Yan Fei went ahead to receive the examination papers, there would be snickers from below. Some naughty children even gave him a thumbs-up in admiration - not because they admired his wealth from raising cattle, but because they admired him for not having to take the exams!

Before the smiling teacher could begin the class, he said, "Don’t take it lightly as the scores of Chemistry are low in the High School Entrance Examination. Every subject has its uses, this is something our classmate Yan Fei should be familiar with. The fermented fodder he uses for his cattle, including the silage fodder that he might use in the future, could be something worthy for everyone to learn about. At a glance, it seems easy – just grounding the fodder and sealing it – but it actually involves knowledge in chemistry and biology."

The teacher was young, thus more exposed to new ideas. In fact, he was not a local and, based on his attire, it seems that he had never fed cattle before, but his knowledge was indeed wide.

Upon hearing what the teacher had said, the students couldn’t help but laugh.

From the students’ perspective, apart from occasionally interesting experiments, what they learnt in Chemistry was rather dull, they couldn’t make heads or tails of most of the content. Bringing the task of cattle raising and their knowledge together felt ridiculous to them.

The teacher did not laugh. He only continued after the students had finished laughing, " You guys think that these things are useless because you’ve studied too little. The more you study, the more you’ll find knowledge useful. Even after entering university, there’s Agricultural University, no matter what it is, be it farming or raising cattle, there’s always academia involved. Why can some people yield a thousand catties per acreland when farming? Why are there so many cattle farms in comparison to Yan Fei’s? If you think about it, you’ll understand."

After saying this, there were fewer students laughing.

Taking advantage of the momentum, the teacher added, "I taught less Chemistry last semester. I didn’t see Yan Fei twice for the whole semester..."

The students were silenced for a while, but soon someone couldn’t help but laugh quietly: Wasn’t this just a way to say Yan Fei seldom came to class?

However, they heard the teacher continue, "Don’t laugh. I’m not referring to the number of times he attended my class, but to make a point - having knowledge is definitely useful. You all might think that Yan Fei never studied as he hardly attended class. I don’t see it that way; I dare to say that he must have gained a lot of professional cattle-raising knowledge. I don’t know if you believe that?"

Everyone began to question, not understanding why the teacher was so certain.

Even Yan Fei was puzzled; how could the teacher know all of this?

Seeing everyone was perplexed, the teacher nodded with satisfaction, "Don’t ask me how I know, I’m just guessing!"

Everyone laughed; you’re just guessing and yet you sound so sure?

The teacher swiftly changed the topic, "Because I’ve never believed that someone is born knowing everything. Anyone who excels at something, aside from being lucky, must have put in sweat and effort that others don’t realize! If you don’t believe me, let student Yan Fei share some thoughts?"

This teacher usually got along well with the students— youthful, handsome, knowledgeable, and friendly. Regardless of gender, academic performance or how well they behaved in class, even the underperforming students had no ill will towards him.

Seeing him speak like this, some students immediately started to tease, "Yan Fei, say something..."

A girl’s voice, particularly clear, chimed in, "Stand up and share, Yan Fei!"

The classmates started to make more noise, isn’t this the pretty and top-performing student, Yang Yang?

After all, they were innocent students, even their jeering carried no ill intentions, at most they were just finding it fun.

If it were in the past, Yan Fei would just keep his head down and play dumb. But having spent over a year interacting with people from all walks of life, he felt compelled to break his silence when he saw everyone acting like this.

Seeing Yan Fei stand up, someone even started clapping enthusiastically, which was quite lively.

After the applause died down, Yan Fei smilingly said, "Since the class monitor has invited me to speak, I must oblige!"

Everyone paused for a moment before bursting into laughter, leaving Yan Fei baffled. His two deskmates leaned over and whispered to him amid their suppressed laughter, "Now she is the group secretary!"

Yan Fei’s face color didn’t change at all, "Oh, I should reflect on myself for missing class and not knowing that the class monitor had become the group secretary. That’s my mistake!"

After another round of laughter, Yan Fei continued, "I’ve really been studying, you must believe me! Before I started raising cattle, I observed the vet station daily to learn how they treated cattle. Everyone at the vet station can vouch for that; there’s no one there that I don’t know."

Yan Fei was very serious about it. Even though he didn’t like attending classes, he still felt the need to motivate others to do so. What if everyone stopped going to school in future? Who would he ask to help him when he needed someone educated? And never mind that; if his herd of cows grew larger, there wouldn’t be enough vets to go around!

Hearing him speak about learning from the vets, everyone started laughing again.

"Don’t laugh, everyone!" He told everyone while he himself was grinning, "I trained under the vets at first. Now I’ve hired a vet to work at my ranch. After he gets off his regular job, he comes to check my cattle and keep them disease-free. I pay him two hundred yuan per month."

The moment he talked about the two hundred yuan salary, all the whispering and giggling students suddenly fell silent.

After all, reality speaks louder than words—middle school tuition fees were merely a bit over a hundred yuan a year!

"I also study!" Seeing everyone stop laughing, Yan Fei gestured, "I went to the Provincial City to study. I’ve written a huge amount of information at the library in the Agricultural University. All of it is about raising cattle. The shelves in that library are as many as dozens of our classrooms combined and it has several floors full of books. When you guys go to college, you can go see the vast number of books there, they are endless."

"Oh yes, you all know I sell alcohol as well, right? I know a lot of you have drunk the alcohol I sell. Some of you even secretly bought it yourselves. The medicinal wine recipe I used is something I learned from the Traditional Chinese Medicine Library in the Provincial City. Additionally, not only am I learning about cattle raising, all of those working on my ranch are also learning. Quite a few of you know that everyone works at my place, even reform-through-labor convicts who have committed murder. They’re all studying now, I’m not lying."

"So, what the teacher said is correct, knowledge is definitely useful! Look, even a vet—what many people might scoff at—is valuable labor. I’ve hired a vet who, aside from his regular job, just strolls around at the ranch for a while. Even doing just that, he earns two hundred yuan a month. And that’s aside from the secure job he has at the vet station. If you guys don’t believe me, you should all study to become vets. Once you graduate and get assigned back here, I will hire you too. You don’t have to quit your day jobs and it will be two hundred yuan a month."

His words were more effective than the daily preaching by teachers about contributing to the Four Modernizations; some students began asking, "Is that true or false?"

Yan Fei was quite surprised. Usually, the good students were all high and proud, and the poor students were already planning to return home and farm. Were there really some planning on becoming vets?

However, that would be a good thing, the more the merrier. If there was an influx of vets in the field, even the government might not have enough positions for them. Then we could employ some professionals at the ranch to keep an eye on the cattle twenty-four hours a day.

Therefore, Yan Fei’s reply sounded a bit resolute, "Absolutely! I can’t promise for all, but for our class, anyone who studies to become a vet and returns here, I will offer you the job!"

(Vote for monthly tickets, please! It’s the first day of March, plea for monthly tickets!!)