My era, 1979!

Chapter 145 Defenders of Beautiful Love

The next day, some grandson told Su Manshu that Xu Chengjun had gone to the dance.

The situation is somewhat urgent.

Early in the morning, Xu Chengjun saw the autumn wind making the corner of Su Manshu's scarf sway gently.

Seeing Xu Chengjun approaching from a distance, she frowned and asked, "Xu Chengjun, besides the sycamore leaves, is there anything else on your coat? Like a strand of some girl's hair?"

Xu Chengjun smelled the sour odor as soon as he got close, and cold sweat poured down his back.

The wind is blowing!

He quickly smiled and handed over his hand, which was hidden behind his back. It was a crumpled paper package containing two orange candies.

"It only has some Teresa Teng songs on it, nothing else. You said the orange candy from the Shanghai Food Factory was delicious, so I spent ages haggling with the lady at the East China Normal University convenience store yesterday before I finally bought a pack."

Fortunately, I had made some small preparations in advance.

Su Manshu picked up a piece of candy, took her hand, and deliberately drawled, "Just two candies? I've been waiting for you downstairs for almost half an hour, my feet are numb with cold."
My feet are numb, but what's most important is that my heart is cold!
"If I'd known you were going to watch others ballroom dancing, I would have gone to watch you dance too, right?"

"My fault, my fault."

Xu Chengjun quickly pulled the girl into his arms, their faces touching.

"I should have put you in my coat and brought you with me, so you wouldn't be stuck here in the wind. I only glanced at the ballroom dancing, but I didn't actually dance! No girl is as pretty as my Manshu!"

Su Manshu rolled her eyes and moved aside: "I heard you even learned slow waltz from someone? Did that girl teach you step by step?"

"Cheng Yongxin is stupid. I watched him for a couple of seconds. He doesn't need anyone to teach him."

Xu Chengjun looked up and saw a smile hidden in her eyes. He teased her on purpose, "But if you're willing, next time you train with me, if I step on your foot, you can pinch my arm, how about that?"

Su Manshu couldn't hold back this time. She unwrapped the candy and stuffed half of it into his mouth, the sweet orange flavor spreading: "Who wants to practice with you? If Zhou Haibo sees this, he'll probably start yelling again."

I just... I'm afraid that if you watch others having fun dancing, you'll forget that I'm still waiting for you.

How could I forget?

With a candy in his mouth, Xu Chengjun's voice was muffled but earnest. "When I heard Teresa Teng singing 'Tian Mi Mi' over there, my first thought was, 'This is the song! You sing it so well!'"

Su Manshu ate the remaining half of the candy herself, then reached out and touched his wind-blown hair: "At least you still have some conscience."

Next time you go to a place like this, you'd better tell me in advance, otherwise I'll tell Auntie that you're not going back to your dorm at night and are just wandering around outside.

"Yes, madam!"

"What are you doing! This is embarrassing!"

Xu Chengjun stood up, wrapped her hand in his palm, and walked towards the dormitory. "In the future, try to take Teacher Su with you wherever you go, so that my teacher won't be left alone in her room and get jealous."

"What nonsense! Who's jealous?"

Su Manshu pinched him lightly, but didn't let go. "I just think that if you want to dance ballroom dance, you can just dance with me."

Xu Chengjun smiled and pulled her closer to him: "I know, from now on, I'll only dance my slow waltz with Su Manshu. If I step on the wrong foot, you can punish me however you want, okay?"

Su Manshu leaned on his arm, her voice softening: "That's more like it. By the way, I'll bring you brown sugar porridge tomorrow morning, so don't skip breakfast again."

"You're practically obsessed with making the inaugural issue!"

"I will definitely eat it."

Xu Chengjun looked down and saw that the tips of her ears were red. He couldn't help but lean over and smell them. "The scent of soap on your scarf is much better than the perfume at the ball."

Su Manshu pushed him away, but moved even closer to him: "You're so sweet-talking. Hurry up and go, the hand warmer is getting cold."

Xu Chengjun turned his head to the side and let out a long sigh of relief.

Damn, I passed.
-
The kerosene lamp in Su Manshu's dormitory shone with a warm yellow light. Qi Yueru sat on the edge of the bed, her ears perked up.

In that hour or so, she heard Su Manshu talk about so many things: from the first time she greeted him at the Chinese Department's archives, to how she secretly brought him hot water when he stayed up all night revising his manuscript, to how the two of them squatted downstairs in the library talking about the supply and demand model in "Principles of Economics," and even the detail that Xu Chengjun wrote the word "return" in extra large when he copied the lyrics of "Waiting for You to Return to Beixiang" for her.

As Su Manshu's best friend, Qi Yueru increasingly envies her friend's love story.

She wants to be a defender of beautiful love!
"Alright, that's enough. Let's go to the library, Yue Ru!"

"Oh my god. I'm not going to be a third wheel!"

"Are you afraid of being a third wheel?!"

"Not afraid!"

library.

The door hinges creaked.

Xu Chengjun poked his head in, holding an enamel mug filled with brown sugar ginger tea he had just gotten from the cafeteria: "Manshu, I just heard from Lin Yimin that you got cold while squatting in the library this afternoon, so I brought you some hot tea."

He handed over the jar and poured a cup of hot water for Qi Yueru as well, testing the temperature before touching the rim. "Yueru, have some too, it's windy tonight."

Su Manshu took the ginger tea and looked up at Xu Chengjun, her almond-shaped eyes filled with deep affection.

Qi Yueru, holding a cup of hot water, couldn't help but interject, "Chengjun, you have no idea, Manshu was still arguing with me this afternoon about her paper on 'dual-track pricing'."

I was worried about choosing an angle that was too biased, but you just said, "I'll believe whichever you choose." Isn't that spoiling you too much?

Don't let her current name, Cheng Jun, fool you. When Qi Yueru first met her, she was so nervous: "Comrade Xu, Teacher?"

Xu Chengjun smiled, moved closer to Su Manshu, and softened his voice: "How serious she is when she does economic analysis?"

Last time he talked to me about 'marginal utility,' he even calculated the details of exchanging food coupons clearly. Why worry about whether it's biased or not?

As soon as she finished speaking, Su Manshu lowered her head and took a sip of ginger tea, but did not refute it. She just quietly nudged Xu Chengjun's arm with her elbow: "You're so good at talking."

The sweetness in her voice made the air seem to smell of brown sugar.

Qi Yueru, holding her water glass, was caught off guard by the sudden display of affection. She thought to herself, "Don't ask anymore, or I'll get sick of it," but her curiosity got the better of her.

Su Manshu is the daughter of a Fudan University professor. She grew up surrounded by books. Xu Chengjun was a sent-down youth who came back from Fengyang. When Su Manshu mentioned Xu Chengjun to her family, she also heard Su Manshu say that Professor Su was initially worried about whether "two boys from the countryside could have a future together."

When Xu Chengjun first published "The Fitting Mirror," some people outside said, "What good stuff can a sent-down youth write?" But he did it!
Not only did "The Fitting Mirror" become a huge hit, but "Red Silk" also took the headline in the inaugural issue of "Qingming" magazine, and even Mr. Mao Dun wrote a preface for it, which gave Su Manshu's persistence a solid foundation.

Oh God, can I have a boyfriend like Xu Chengjun too?

I don't have that ability!

Having that kind of face is good enough!

She looked at the two people in front of her.

Xu Chengjun was helping Su Manshu straighten the loose threads on her scarf, while Su Manshu held a sip of ginger tea to his lips so he could have a taste.

The sycamore leaves outside the window rustled in the wind, and the light from the kerosene lamp fell on them, making their shadows almost touching.

Qi Yueru's mind was filled with the thought: "A single encounter in the golden autumn breeze and jade dew surpasses countless meetings in the mortal world."

"A curtain of dreams under the moonlit night, ten miles of tender feelings in the spring breeze."

"A delicate die inlaid with red beans, does he know the depth of my longing for him?"

She thought to herself: Isn't this referring to Xu Chengjun and Su Manshu?
For a moment, the girl was also stunned.

My mind has already started to fill in the blanks: true beauty often exists in fleeting encounters, spiritual connections, or the sedimentation of time.

They are like mirrors, reflecting the purest and most moving parts of human emotions, and can still evoke resonance across time and space.

So beautiful!
I used to think of Su Manshu as the "iceberg genius" of the Economics Department and Xu Chengjun as the "great writer" of the Chinese Department.

I only found out today that they also struggle with choosing a thesis topic, run all over the cafeteria to get hot drinks for each other when the other is cold, and keep each other's little things in mind.

Qi Yueru secretly glanced at Su Manshu and saw that when she smiled, there was a shallow dimple on her cheek. Where was the usual "aloof" look?

Once a woman starts to imagine things, she can't stop. At this moment, in Qi Yueru's eyes, Xu Chengjun's gesture of handing over ginger tea, Su Manshu's reddened ears, and the way the two of them were whispering together were all signs of "beautiful love," more moving than any love poem she had ever read.

She quietly tossed the sweet potato peels in her hand into the wastebasket, secretly resolving that if anyone ever said Xu Chengjun and Su Manshu were not a good match, she would be the first to stand up and refute them.

Qi Yueru is definitely shipping this couple!

Xu Chengjun looked at Qi Yueru with a puzzled expression: Why does this girl seem to be... fired up?
-
When Xu Chengjun woke up in the morning, it was time for him to go to Zhu Dongrun to report on his achievements, as was his routine.

He was carrying a cloth bag.

Inside were Fengyang red bean cakes that he had specially bought, and Biluochun tea that he had picked out at a tea shop on Nanjing East Road. There were still some tea hairs stuck to the paper package.

I knocked on the door twice and heard the familiar scratching sound of a pen gliding across paper from inside.

Pushing open the door, I saw Mr. Zhu sitting in a rattan chair, with a thread-bound copy of "The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons" open in front of him, and a wolf-hair brush in his hand, the tip of which hovered over the annotation column without falling.

On the table, in the rough porcelain teacup, old white tea was still emitting wisps of steam. Next to it were several pages of a Song Dynasty essay with inscriptions that Xu Chengjun had sent last time, with red circles drawn all over the margins.

"Sir, I've come to report to you on the progress made recently."

Xu Chengjun placed the cloth bag on the table and poured hot water into the teacup. “After ‘Red Silk’ published the inaugural issue’s headline in ‘Qingming’, the NJ Military Region sent a letter saying they wanted to invite me to the troops for a field trip and also wanted to reprint it in the ‘People’s Frontline’ newspaper; all three papers have recently been published, as you know.”

Old Zhu put down his pen, picked up the manuscript, flipped through two pages, and paused at the section on "Huang Tingjian's Lost Postscripts": "You checked those lost articles in the Huang family genealogy very carefully, even more thoroughly than when I asked Chen Shangjun to check them last time."

It's a good thing the military region invited you to do some field research. Hearing real stories from the front lines is much better than you staying cooped up in your dorm and pondering things aimlessly.

Just then, a hearty laugh suddenly came from outside the courtyard gate, and Jia Zhifang pushed in a bicycle.

"Old Zhu, I heard you praising someone! Has Xu Chengjun come up with something new again?"

He stepped through the door and went straight to the table, grabbing a small bean cake and stuffing it into his mouth, chewing with a smile on his face: "Fengyang cakes are still the most fragrant, more flavorful than the old white tea your family drinks every day."

As he spoke, he picked up Xu Chengjun's manuscript, glanced at it, and laughed, "Oh, they've even unearthed lost Song Dynasty inscriptions? Wang Shuizhao was just telling me yesterday, saying, 'That kid Xu Chengjun has even dug up the rare manuscripts from the Seikatang Collection.'"
"Old Zhu, did you secretly give him the key to the rare book room?"

Old Zhu glanced at him sideways, moved the teacup closer to the table, as if afraid he would drop crumbs into it: "He asked someone to find his family genealogy from his hometown in Anhui, it has nothing to do with me."

"But you, you made a student cry while you were talking about 'scar literature,' and you still have the nerve to come here and freeload off me?"

"I was just telling the students the truth!"

Jia Zhifang retorted stubbornly, then turned to Xu Chengjun and patted him on the shoulder, "I've read your article 'Red Silk,' the part about Huang Siyuan carving wooden combs is well written! It's much better than some of the articles about war."

Old Zhu always tells me not to talk to you too much, afraid I'll turn you into a 'critic.' Tell me, do I look like such an unreliable person?"

Xu Chengjun suppressed a laugh and was about to speak when he saw Old Zhu pick up his teacup, take a sip, and slowly add, "Last time you argued with someone about 'modernist literature,' you even smashed your teacup. You still have the nerve to say it's reliable?"

"That's because I was excited!"

Jia Zhifang waved her hand anxiously, then grabbed a small bean cake. "Xu Chengjun, you be the judge. I said, 'Literature requires daring to speak the truth,' but Lao Zhu insists, 'One must first establish a solid foundation.' Who is right?"

How could I possibly lie about your affairs?

I think I'll have to leave!

Before Xu Chengjun could speak, Old Zhu interrupted, "What you're saying is 'unfounded truth.' Chengjun, you should first solidify your foundation in classical literature so that your modern stories won't feel unrealistic."
"Someone like you, needing to consult historical materials three times before daring to write your memoirs?"

Jia Zhifang was taken aback, but reluctant to put down the pancake in her hand, she could only mutter, "I'm just being meticulous! Unlike you, who protects your students like you're her own offspring."

Watching the two old men bickering like children, Xu Chengjun took the opportunity to gather some ideas for "The Mailbox of Hope" and said, "Sir, Mr. Jia, I added a detail about Li Changcun writing a reply with his frostbitten fingers to the 'Hope' section of 'Harvest' magazine."

It draws on what you previously mentioned about the "down-to-earth atmosphere in Song Dynasty literati inscriptions," and also incorporates some stories I heard from the military.

"That makes sense!"

Jia Zhifang immediately interrupted, "That's how it has to be written! Don't be like Old Zhu, always burying yourself in old papers; it's better to get more involved in everyday life!"

Old Zhu glared at him: "What is hidden in the piles of old papers is the cultural heritage. Without the cultural heritage, even the warmth of everyday life is empty."

Seeing that the two were about to argue again, Xu Chengjun quickly handed a cup of hot tea to Jia Zhifang: "Mr. Jia, please try this Biluochun tea. It's a brand new tea that I just bought, and it's fresher and more vibrant than aged white tea."
"Sir, I've found a photocopy of the Song Dynasty woodblock print edition of 'Collected Works of Mr. Huang of Yuzhang,' which you asked me to proofread last time. I'll bring it to you this afternoon."

Jia Zhifang took a sip of tea before finally stopping talking. Before leaving, she couldn't help but argue with Old Zhu: "Next time Xu Chengjun gives a report, I have to come and listen too. Don't always be the only good student!"

Old Zhu waved his hand, a hint of helpless amusement in his voice: "You should finish writing your book, 'Inside and Outside Prison,' first!"

(End of this chapter)