168. Crash the place. Do you dare?

"That reason is way too ridiculous, isn't it?"

The two boys in the back row began whispering to each other again. On the stage, Gao Legao, Ma Yunan, and Mo Xiaoxin looked so furious their noses were practically out of joint. Several other students, who had originally intended to let the matter rest and try harder next time, were provoked into genuine anger by Han Guanglin’s pretext for elimination. The two sides started arguing right then and there.

Chen Ruowen put down her phone with a bored expression and turned to the boy sitting behind her who had been acting as her live commentator the whole time.

"Since you know so much about the Literary and Art Department, why did you even bother coming to the auditions?"

"None of your bu—"

The boy was about to snap "none of your damn business," but when he looked up, he found a familiar, stunningly beautiful face magnified right in front of him. The impatience on his face instantly melted into a blank stare.

"Y-Y-You... Chen Ruowen!!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

Chen Ruowen covered her ears, utterly speechless.

What is wrong with these people? Every time they see her, they have to yell at the top of their lungs. Didn't she know her own name was Chen Ruowen? Did these people really need to remind her so loudly every single time they laid eyes on her?

The roar was so loud that it drew the attention of the two quarreling factions on stage, plunging the room into an eerie silence.

Chen Ruowen cast a cool nod toward Mo Xiaoxin and the others on stage, who were staring at her with wide-mouthed surprise, then stood up and left.

...

Inside a café named "Wutong Rain" near Nanda University, a dozen or so young men and women were gathered around a single table, some sitting and some standing. Judging by the empty seats surrounding them, the café had been entirely booked out by this group.

"...I've asked plenty of students who signed up, and it's all the same. Except for a beauty from the School of Foreign Languages and a magician from the School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, everyone else either somehow got into the Literary and Art Department or got cut just like us, and the reasons they gave were all ridiculously absurd!"

Mo Xiaoxin clenched her fists, looking thoroughly aggrieved. Beside her, Ma Yunan and Gao Legao nodded repeatedly in agreement, boiling with indignation.

Chen Ruowen turned her gaze toward Marko and his companion, who had acted as her free narrators back in the audition room, and raised her eyebrows in a silent query.

Marko nodded. "It's like this every year. When the semester first started, I heard about it from the senior members of the Guitar Club. It's an old tradition."

"Don't the faculty care?"

"Why would the teachers bother with this? After all, it's just a student activity, and picking the acts isn't a big deal."

Chen Ruowen looked at the two of them with a puzzled expression.

"Since you guys knew about this all along, why did you still come to the auditions?"

Mo Xiaoxin pouted. "It's worth 0.2 GPA points..."

Marko scratched his head. "Yeah, 0.2 GPA points!"

Chen Ruowen: ……-_-||

Actually, the people in the Literary and Art Department weren't completely foolish. For instance, if the welcome gala required fifteen acts, the student union itself would probably arrange six or seven of them, the university arts troupe would take two slots, and another two would be pulled from the open auditions. If there were any performances that were particularly stunning, they might secure two slots, and only the remainder would be copied from the freshmen.

Every year, there were only two or three identical acts, and scattered among the rest, they weren't very noticeable. The plagiarized freshmen simply had to swallow their bitter pill in silence.

As for Mo Xiaoxin, Marko, and the others who had caught wind of the scheme, what they were competing for were precisely those two slots reserved for truly stunning performances.

As to why they were unwilling to join the student union... well, that remained unknown.

Mo Xiaoxin sighed again, cupping her chin in her hands and resting her elbows on the table.

"Actually, it wouldn't bother me that much if I just didn't get chosen, but the reasons he gave made me so furious! Xiao Gao worked so hard on that script, only to have it torn to shreds by Welcome to the Department like that."

"Bang!"

Ma Yunan slammed his fist onto the table, giving the others a violent start.

"No, I can't swallow this anger. I have to go and wreck their welcome gala. How can they do this? How can Nanda allow something like this to happen?"

Whether it was Ma Yunan or anyone else sitting at the table, they had all grown up hearing tales of Nanda's prestigious reputation. They viewed the university as their dream institution and had dreamed of getting in. Yet, who could have imagined that right at the start of the semester, they would run into student union corruption? Their hearts ached terribly.

"It's the student union bunch who are rotten, it has nothing to do with Nanda itself," Mo Xiaoxin corrected fairly. "Probably very few of the other students even know about this, let alone the teachers."

"T-Then I still can't swallow this!" Ma Yunan said bitterly. "I'm... I'm going to find our counselor and tell him everything!"

Mo Xiaoxin's eyes lit up. "Right! Tell the counselor and let the teachers uphold justice!"

Guo Jingyuan, Gao Legao, and a few others nodded continuously upon hearing this, but Marko only curled his lip in silent disdain.

These people were still accustomed to being obedient little goody-goodies since childhood. Even when they rebelled, it was the rebellion of good kids—their very first thought when encountering trouble was still to go tell the teacher...

"You're not elementary school students anymore; all you know how to do when trouble hits is run to the teacher."

Chen Ruowen shook her head in utter disapproval. She lifted her gaze from her phone screen and slid a newly received video over to Ma Yunan and the others.

The video clearly showed the judges from the earlier talent selections. One of them held up their phone to show something to the others, said something along the lines of "rehearse according to this," and then the group dispersed to practice something.

Because the audio quality of the video wasn't great, Ma Yunan and the others couldn't quite make sense of it at first, but as it progressed, the footage started looking more and more familiar.

"They copied our act?!"

Xiao Gao was the first to realize what was happening. In his fury, he grabbed the phone and started scrubbing the video back and forth.

"This is the part where we disguise ourselves as men to enter the capital, this is the part where the examination results are posted, and here is where the identity is exposed... They actually copied our routine? This is going too far!"

"Let me see, let me see."

Ma Yunan, Mo Xiaoxin, and the others snatched the phone back, taking turns holding it, their expressions growing darker the longer they watched.

"I'm going to die of anger!" Mo Xiaoxin roared. "Han Guanglin trashed our act like it was worthless, only to secretly record the whole thing and take it back to plagiarize it?! I am definitely going to report them to the university!"

Marko curled his lip again and said with seasoned cynicism, "What good will reporting do? You don't have any evidence proving you wrote that play. For all you know, Welcome to the Department might turn it around and accuse you of plagiarism."

"Are we just supposed to let them bully us then? So many people in the audition room saw our performance, I'll go find them to vouch for us!"

Seeing that Mo Xiaoxin was losing her patience and preparing to storm out to find people, Chen Ruowen finally spoke up to stop her.

"Come back."

Chen Ruowen reclaimed her phone and slipped it into her pocket.

"I said it before: don't always think about running to the teachers. That's a trick for elementary schoolers. Adults should solve problems like adults."

The group surrounding the table all wore identical expressions of incomprehension.

Chen Ruowen curved her lips into a smile, her eyes flashing with a gleam that anyone familiar with her temper would immediately recognize as a sign of impending chaos.

"Let's crash their party. Dares? Or not?"

Mo Xiaoxin and the others froze, exchanging bewildered glances.

"C-Crash their party? How do we crash it?"