Transmigration: The Little Chef Calls The Shots
Chapter 662 - 067 Snowfall_2

Chapter 662: 067 Snowfall_2

However, now was not the time to think about these things, as the snowstorm was fierce and chill wind was biting; it indeed wasn’t suitable to stand outside any longer.

"Miss Lin, let’s take shelter inside the house."

Although there were still many excited children playing noisily in the yard, Old Mr. Cheng and some children who were afraid of cold had already gone inside.

Lin Yuan tightened her cloak around her and nodded. Even though she was not cold with Xia Zheng’s cloak, she hadn’t yet entered the schoolhouse today; she had to at least see what it looked like inside.

Lin Yi coughed and closely followed behind Lin Yuan into the room.

Lin Yuan turned around and looked at him strangely. This fellow, when at Lin family’s valley, even if it was raining heavily, never bothered to wear a bamboo hat when going out. Why had he astonishingly decided to follow her inside today? Could it be that he was not afraid of the rain but was afraid of snow?

Lin Yi directly ignored the glance from someone, held his head high, and entered the house. If it weren’t to prevent someone from straying off the path, he would not have entered the house at all! What was a little snow? He recalled times when they, on their missions, had to lie in ambush in the snow for two hours.

The schoolhouse was actually not small, and since Old Mr. Cheng lived there, what Lin Yuan walked into was his room. The room was very simple; against the wall was a bed, which was really just several broken adobe bricks supporting a worn-out door panel. The two quilts on the bed were quite thin, so much so that at first glance, it looked like only one quilt.

Lin Yuan bit her lip, unable to bear looking at the old cotton quilts any longer, and turned her head to look at the other end of the room. There were more items on this side: two old desks with brushes, ink, paper, and inkstones neatly arranged on them, along with seven or eight books, which were also worn and their pages yellowed. Yet not a single book had any curled pages or corners folded.

At this moment, an open book lay in front of the desk, along with a bundle of papers.

Lin Yuan walked over to see that the first sheet of paper was neatly written with half a page of characters, the handwriting clear and the strokes vigorous and strong. It was an unfinished article of "The Learning," encouraging people to study diligently. Next to the paper, there were several sheets that had already been written on; she looked through them, and all were copies of "The Learning."

Lin Yuan raised an eyebrow and, considering the state of Ma Junying’s attire she had seen earlier, she understood. No wonder Shopkeeper Liu mentioned that Old Mr. Cheng supported the schoolhouse entirely on his own—without money to buy books, he copied them himself for the children to read. These sheets in front of her were probably the "textbooks" that Ma Junying helped Old Mr. Cheng to copy.

She knew that Old Mr. Cheng was in difficult circumstances, but she had not imagined that it had come to the point where he even had to write out textbooks himself.

Old Mr. Cheng was sitting at the doorway with a few children huddled around him, listening to him recite poems about snowfall, word by word; their earnest and eager appearance deeply moved Lin Yuan.

However, since there was no stove lit indoors, the temperature wasn’t much higher, only a little more sheltered from the wind and snow compared to the outside. Lin Yuan bit her lip, feeling both pity and sympathy for the nearly sixty-year-old teacher.

"Miss Lin, let’s go see the classroom," Ma Junying, noticing Lin Yuan’s discomfort with the squalor of Old Mr. Cheng’s room, invited her with a smile to visit the room where the children had their lessons.

"Alright," Lin Yuan tightened her cloak, following Ma Junying to the room next door while mentally planning to ask Shopkeeper Liu to send some coal, along with blankets and mattresses, as soon as she returned.

Lost in these thoughts, Lin Yuan unconsciously entered the classroom. Had it not been for Ma Junying guiding her, she might have thought she had entered the wrong place.

No wonder Lin Yuan was astonished; compared to Old Mr. Cheng’s living quarters, the classroom was like heaven and earth. It was not only larger and brighter but also much better furnished. Desks and books were present, and in the center of the room stood a stove with some unburnt coals inside. However, as there were no students in the room at the time, the stove was not lit.

"This..." Lin Yuan, seeing the coals in the stove, was puzzled. If there was a coal stove, why not light it? She remembered that Old Mr. Cheng was shivering in the next room.

Seeing Lin Yuan’s bewilderment, Ma Junying shook his head with a smile, "Miss Lin, are you wondering why the teacher doesn’t move the coal stove into his own room? Ah, the old teacher has been frugal all his life. For his students, he would spare nothing, but when it comes to himself, not to mention a few pieces of coal, he wouldn’t even waste a piece of paper."