Yang Mingyu's question, like a giant rock sinking into the deep sea, caused no ripples, yet it suddenly doubled the pressure at the bottom of the ocean.
The entire Grade One, Class 14, was like an oil painting with the pause button pressed.
On every youthful face, an identical expression of shock and bewilderment was frozen.
No one dared to answer.
Or rather, no one knew how to answer.
Questions? They had too many questions in their minds, so many that they were about to burst their young heads.
Who was this teacher? How did he know which stock Wang Hao's father was going to buy? How could he accurately predict how many pages the ink would spill on? And how did he peek into Zhao Min's deepest secrets?
Was he a god? A devil? Or... a complete lunatic?
These questions churned in everyone's minds, yet not a single one dared to break free from the confines of their throats and become a tangible sound.
Because Yang Mingyu's calm yet sharp eyes seemed to have already seen through everything.
Any question, in front of him, seemed foolish and superfluous.
This suffocating silence lasted for nearly half a minute.
Finally, a rough voice, like a stubborn rock, broke through the icy surface of this dead silence.
"Teacher!"
All eyes in the class turned in unison to the source of the voice—Zhang Wei, the tall and muscular sports student, sitting in the back row of the classroom.
While the entire class was caught in a double mental and psychological onslaught, the relatively simple-minded Zhang Wei became the first to break free from that eerie aura.
His nerves, strengthened by physical training, evidently had a higher 'damage reduction' ability against this kind of psychological warfare.
He scratched his buzz cut, a simple, honest confusion on his face, and asked in a muffled voice, "You... are you speaking in riddles here? What does... what does 'spoiler' mean?"
This question voiced what everyone was thinking.
The term "spoiler" was not as common in 2002 as it would be in later years, but in context, the students could roughly guess its meaning.
But precisely because they guessed it, they found it even more absurd and unbelievable.
Everyone's gaze shifted from Zhang Wei and refocused on Yang Mingyu at the podium, awaiting his answer.
Faced with Zhang Wei's question, Yang Mingyu not only didn't get angry, but a hint of approval even appeared in his eyes.
Good, someone finally dared to speak.
A stagnant pool cannot raise big fish.
He didn't need a flock of frightened sheep, but a pack of tamed wolves.
"Good question."
Yang Mingyu's tone remained calm; he didn't answer directly, but instead asked, "You all like watching movies and reading novels, right?"
The students didn't understand why, but they still subconsciously nodded.
"Then think about it," Yang Mingyu's voice carried a kind of persuasive magic, "if your life is a movie with an already written script, and each of you is the protagonist of this movie.
Every word you say, every action you take each day, is following the script's setting, step by step, towards that already destined ending."
This metaphor, novel and intuitive, instantly captured everyone's attention.
Even Zhao Min, whose nerves had been tightly strung, involuntarily perked up her ears.
Yang Mingyu extended his finger and gently pointed at a few students in the front row.
"For example, you," he pointed to a boy who was secretly yawning, "your script might be sleeping in class, fooling around after class, drifting through three years aimlessly, ultimately not even getting into a vocational college, going to a construction site to carry bricks in your early twenties, exposed to sun and rain, doing the hardest and most tiring work, and being riddled with injuries before you're thirty."
The drowsiness on the boy's face instantly vanished, replaced by a trace of shame at being exposed and a subtle fear.
Yang Mingyu's gaze then turned to Liu Lili, the girl who had been applying lip gloss earlier.
"And you, your script might be spending every day only thinking about dressing up and puppy love, neglecting your studies, eventually being deceived by a smooth-talking hooligan, marrying early after high school, and in the daily grind of life and endless family conflicts, slowly exhausting your youth, looking like a forty-year-old aunt at twenty-five."
Liu Lili's face instantly turned pale, and she subconsciously touched her cheek, her eyes filled with terror.
Yang Mingyu's voice echoed in the silent classroom, devoid of any emotion, yet like a precise scalpel, it dissected cruel and highly probable futures one by one.
"I have read most of your scripts," he said slowly, surveying the class, "To be honest, the ending... is terrible.
Very terrible.
It's a complete tragedy, or rather, a bad movie so mediocre it makes you want to fast-forward."
The air in the classroom seemed to drop several degrees again.
An emotion called "despair" began to spread among the students.
Many of them had, in fact, vaguely thought about their future, but it was only a vague, distant imagination.
They had never, until today, had it revealed to them so starkly and brutally.
Wang Hao, who had been silent, now had dry lips.
He couldn't help but wonder, what about my script? What is my ending?
He subconsciously looked at Yang Mingyu, his eyes filled with both longing and fear.
Yang Mingyu caught his gaze, and also caught the emotional changes of everyone in the class.
He knew the time was right.
"And I," he changed his tone, his voice suddenly becoming high-pitched and powerful, "the purpose of my existence as a 'spoiler' is not to mock your terrible scripts, and certainly not to enjoy watching you head towards a tragic ending."
"I am here to help you."
"To help you... rewrite the script!"
The four words "rewrite the script" exploded like a thunderclap in the stagnant hearts of every student!
If the previous "prophecies" and "spoilers" had brought them fear and despair, then these four words were like a dazzling light forcibly torn open in a pitch-black, airtight room!
Everyone suddenly looked up, staring in disbelief at the teacher on the podium who seemed to radiate light.
Even Lin Tian in the corner, whose eyes were always a bit dim from staying up late playing games, suddenly sparkled with a sharp gleam.
His brain, trained by countless game plots and strategy logic, instantly grasped the core of this sentence—"rewrite."
This was a word full of variables and infinite possibilities.
"Your life scripts are currently just first drafts," Yang Mingyu's voice was full of captivating power, "The direction of the script, the fate of the characters, the ending of the story... all can be changed!"
"Then... how do we change it?" a slightly bolder girl asked in a trembling, mosquito-like voice.
"With the pen in your own hands."
Yang Mingyu picked up a piece of chalk from the podium and held it high, like a scepter.
"This pen, its name is 'effort,' its name is 'knowledge,' its name is 'choice'!"
His gaze once again fell on Wang Hao.
"Wang Hao, I can now spoil two completely different storylines for you."