Dragon Raja: I practiced Naruto ninjutsu next to Lu Mingfei.

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Zhou Xinqing glanced at her score and inwardly rejected it. This score clearly showed that she hadn't studied hard enough; she couldn't even get into a third-tier university.

In the end, Zhou Xinqing still gave Ma Qianyan a chance, sponsored her for another year, and wrote her a letter hoping that she would study hard and leave the mountains.

But Zhou Xinqing couldn't help but complain in her letter: "Your score is really bad. Your total score isn't even as high as my humanities score..."

But those words were the trigger for Ma Qianyan's inner grievances.

It's that time of year again for the college entrance examination, and Ma Qianyan's results are still unsatisfactory, scoring only a little over 200 points.

Chapter 357 The Gap Between People

Because Ma Qianyan failed to get into university, Zhou Xinqing stopped supporting her. However, Ma Qianyan wrote to her repeatedly, hoping to be given another chance to repeat a year.

Although Zhou Xinqing is not short of money, it's really a bit unreasonable that you only scored a little over 200 points in both of your college entrance exams.

Even if she only got into a third-tier university, Zhou Xinqing would accept it. But with a score of just over 200, she could only get into a private junior college at best, so it would be better not to go at all.

In the end, Ma Qianyan did not continue her studies, but instead came to Shanghai from the mountains, hoping that Zhou Xinqing could help her find a job.

She came to Shanghai as if she were fleeing a disaster. It was very sudden, and when she arrived, she only had a backpack with some everyday clothes and less than fifty yuan left besides the money for her train ticket.

Fortunately, she had kept Zhou Xinqing's contact information and used the public phone in the convenience store to call Zhou Xinqing.

Otherwise, she might end up homeless.

Zhou Xinqing felt sorry for her and happened to see that the milk tea shop at the school was hiring, so she suggested that she go for an interview.

The staff at the milk tea shop don't need much education; as long as they are quick and can make milk tea according to the recipe, that's enough. Ma Qianyan quickly became familiar with the work at the milk tea shop, except that the cash register was a bit difficult for her, and it took her more than a month to barely learn how to use it.

But she successfully passed the probation period and got the job.

Seeing that she was quite pitiful when she first arrived in Shanghai, Zhou Xinqing gave her another three thousand yuan so that she could find a place to stay.

The money was a gift to her; I didn't expect her to pay it back.

To be honest, from Gu Ran's perspective as an outsider, Zhou Xinqing has already done more than enough for Ma Qianyan.

Instead of being grateful, Ma Qianyan's jealousy was aroused.

What grudges exist between Zhou Xinqing and Ma Qianyan?

Why did she throw Ma Qianyan off the building after she awakened?

It all started with Ma Qianyan.

Ma Qianyan comes from a feudal rural family. She has two younger brothers, and her parents favored boys over girls, giving all the good things to her brothers.

In this patriarchal feudal family, all the money was controlled by the father and mother.

The money Zhou Xinqing sent her was originally intended for her to stay at school and attend boarding school, since the junior high school was in the town, more than ten miles away from the mountains.

However, her parents kept most of the money, giving it to her two younger brothers and themselves, and only using it to pay for Ma Qianyan's textbooks.

Junior high school is compulsory education, so tuition is free, but accommodation and other miscellaneous fees are charged as usual. Moreover, going to town is far from home, and the cost of three meals a day also requires a lot of money.

Ma Qianyan didn't have the courage to rebel against her parents, so she had no choice but to work in town or collect scraps to save money for school.

Junior high school was alright. Ma Qianyan did part-time jobs in her spare time, which was enough to make ends meet. After all, it was a small town in the mountains, and things weren't expensive.

However, high school is not compulsory education, so tuition fees still apply. Moreover, there are only high schools in the county town, which is farther from home, and living expenses suddenly increase.

So she didn't have enough money.

To earn enough for her tuition, she had to spend even more time working in the county town.

But high school is the most crucial stage of learning, and every minute and second is precious. If Ma Qianyan works more and doesn't get enough rest, it will definitely affect her studies.

Moreover, she focused all her attention on how to make and save money, and had very little interest in studying.

As a result, she often dozed off in class, couldn't concentrate, and her grades plummeted.

During regular study time, I am unable to concentrate and learn anything.

But she couldn't stop going to school, because if she gave up her studies, her parents would arrange a marriage for her and force her to marry someone else.

There's a custom there where women don't have the right to choose their own partners. Their parents arrange blind dates for them. Once the two sides meet, if the man agrees, the marriage is done, and she has to get married.

During her first year of high school, she went home for winter break and overheard her parents talking. It seemed they were going to marry her off to a man in his forties who owned a pastoral area and was willing to pay 20,000 yuan to marry her.

Twenty thousand yuan was a huge sum of money for rural areas in Northwest China in 2008, especially in impoverished areas, where it was equivalent to nearly ten years' annual income.

Ma Qianyan was educated, after all, and she felt incredibly sad whenever she thought that her life was worth only 20,000 yuan.

In the second semester of her junior year of high school, she hoped that her parents could keep some of the money Zhou Xinqing had given her so that she could focus on her studies.

But her parents refused, saying that since she was doing so poorly in school, she should just come back and get married.

But Ma Qianyan refused to go to her family, so she gritted her teeth and persevered.

Her grades weren't outstanding, so she couldn't apply for school scholarships and had to rely on herself for everything.

However, this kind of life of working and studying at the same time was too difficult, and Ma Qianyan simply couldn't handle it.

So she failed her first college entrance exam.

When the results came out, Ma Qianyan was really upset. She wrote a letter to Zhou Xinqing to report her results, hoping to get some comfort from her.

Unexpectedly, Zhou Xinqing complained that her grades were too bad... Her total score was not even as high as her own humanities score.

Ma Qianyan felt very wronged. If she had the chance to calm down and study properly, things wouldn't have come to this.

She returned home dejectedly. When her parents asked about her grades, she told them the truth, thinking that she would just let them make a few sarcastic remarks.

But her parents not only mocked her, but also verbally abused her and even beat her with a rattan cane!

After listening to her parents for a long time while being whipped, Ma Qianyan finally understood what they meant: they were upset that she hadn't gotten into university, and Zhou Xinqing would no longer donate money to her.

In other words, the money is gone!

Her parents only cared about money, so they didn't stop her from going to school because they had money!

But now that they have no money, they criticize her with disappointment, saying that she doesn't study hard, isn't ambitious, and doesn't cherish the hard-won opportunity to learn...

Having parents like these is truly the worst luck imaginable!

Ma Qianyan felt wronged, but having always been submissive since childhood, she had no intention of rebelling against her parents.

Her parents then brought up the idea of ​​marrying her off again and arranged blind dates for her, but Ma Qianyan didn't want to get married yet. She knew that her parents would definitely look for older men for money.

Because only older men have money and are willing to marry women from rural mountain areas.

So she pleaded desperately, hoping to repeat a year of high school, and wrote to Zhou Xinqing, asking her to give her another chance to repeat the year.

Later, Zhou Xinqing wrote to her agreeing to her request to repeat a year of high school and even sent her the money.

After her parents received the money, they stopped arranging blind dates for her.

However, her parents still didn't give her enough money for expenses, so repeating a year of high school would only be a repeat of the same mistake.

That year, she didn't even need to wait for the results to come out before she already knew that her score was not ideal.

So when she walked out of the examination room, she made a decision: she took the money she had earned from her part-time job, bought a train ticket, and headed to the bustling city of Shanghai.

Her parents had never left the mountains and didn't know what the outside world was like, so she was certain that as long as she went far enough, her parents wouldn't be able to find her.

Leaving was her best choice and her best form of resistance.

However, she had never been to a big city and didn't know what life was like there. Fortunately, with Zhou Xinqing's help, she found a job and rented a house.

It was during her time living in Shanghai that she learned what the glitz and glamour of the city meant, and she also increasingly realized that the gap between people was actually greater than the gap between people and dogs.

In her first month of receiving her salary, Ma Qianyan treated Zhou Xinqing to a meal at the university cafeteria to repay her kindness. She loved eating at the university cafeteria the most, as it was a hundred times better than the cafeteria in her high school.

She believes the best food in the world is from the university cafeteria.

Zhou Xinqing arrived as promised and happily shared a meal with her, consisting of one meat dish and one vegetable dish from the cafeteria.

Later, Zhou Xinqing treated Ma Qianyan to a buffet, not a fancy one, just a 388 RMB barbecue buffet for lunch.

But 388 yuan is equivalent to Ma Qianyan's food expenses for almost two weeks.

Ma Qianyan ate until she was stuffed and had to lean against the wall to leave. Zhou Xinqing said there was no need to eat so much and that she could invite her to eat there again next time if she liked it.

At that moment, Ma Qianyan felt a pang of sadness. It turned out that for rich people, a buffet was just an ordinary lunch, while only those without money would stagger in and out of a buffet.

Zhou Xinqing often came to the milk tea shop to treat her classmates to milk tea, actually to support the owner's business and make the owner treat Ma Qianyan better.

Ma Qianyan didn't know what Zhou Xinqing meant. She only knew that Zhou Xinqing came seven or eight times a month, and each time she treated the whole class to drinks. The total amount of money she spent was enough for half a month's salary.

She's been in Shanghai for so long, and she's only ever been willing to treat Zhou Xinqing to one lunch.

On another occasion, Zhou Xinqing was writing her thesis on her laptop at a bubble tea shop when Ma Qianyan accidentally knocked over the bubble tea. The spilled bubble tea seeped into the motherboard of the laptop, causing it to break.

Ma Qianyan apologized repeatedly. She had been working for a few months and had some money. She thought that since she had made a mistake, she should make amends, so she planned to pay Zhou Xinqing money.

Zhou Xinqing repeatedly said no, it wasn't much money.

But Ma Qianyan insisted, and then a boy next to Zhou Xinqing said, "This laptop costs more than 20,000 yuan, you can't afford to pay for it."

Although Zhou Xinqing tried to smooth things over, saying that she was just thinking of replacing her computer anyway and didn't need to pay for it, and that it would be better if it broke.

But the words "you can't afford to pay for it" still made Ma Qianyan feel a huge sense of loss.

As time went by, she lived in a big city for a while, and the more she saw, the more she realized how huge the gap was.

For example, Zhou Xinqing often buys the latest shoe models, some of which cost more than 10,000 yuan a pair, and she wears a different pair of shoes every week.

Chapter 358 Jealousy changes people beyond recognition

Ma Qianyan only had two pairs of shoes, both bought from a street stall for ten yuan a pair. Even then, she still had to bargain to see if she could get a pair of socks for free.

Ma Qianyan spent over 300 yuan to buy a down jacket for the first time. She happily wore it for many days and found it to be very light and warm, much more comfortable than the heavy cotton-padded jackets she used to wear in the mountains.

Then she saw that Zhou Xinqing was also wearing a down jacket. The quality of that down jacket was obviously expensive, a world apart from her down jacket which cost several hundred yuan.

She cautiously asked about the price and found out that the down jacket actually cost 16,000 yuan!

That down jacket was indeed warm. The outside temperature was 3 degrees Celsius, and Zhou Xinqing was only wearing a sleeveless vest under the down jacket, with the zipper open to let out air.

Underneath her down jacket, Ma Qianyan wore a sweater and a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt, and had to zip it up completely to stay warm indoors.

The huge gap between the rich and the poor fueled Ma Qianyan's growing jealousy; she felt the world was very unfair.

As the English Renaissance philosopher Francis Bacon said: Jealousy always comes from comparing oneself with others; without comparison, there is no jealousy.