Chapter 217: Cooking Class

After the lively get-together, Nan Zhi went to the village elementary school that afternoon.

Before she left, Qi Pei’er came specifically to pick her and Nan Yi up—

Qi Pei’er: “Be careful! Are you cold? Are you thirsty? Are you tired?”

Qi Zhang: “Auntie Zhizhi, lean on me! I’ll be your cane!”

Nan Yi: “Mama, let me!”

On the receiving end of this excessive enthusiasm, Nan Zhi didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“I’m not that fragile. I’m almost fully recovered.”

After finally managing to refuse their over-the-top help, she arrived at the school only to face a new round of concern—

Teacher Zhang: “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have let you help in the cafeteria that day. You must have exhausted yourself!”

Teacher Xiao Lin: “Teacher Nan, you’ve lost so much weight! You have to eat more these next few days to get your strength back!”

Old Wu Teacher: “I have some medicinal herbs here for warding off the cold. You can brew them into a tea. Want me to give you some?”

And there were also the students who, upon hearing she was back, made a special trip to the office to visit her…

The live broadcast camera followed her the whole time, and such a genuine scene naturally moved countless viewers:

[I’d bet anything Nan Zhi is a great person! Otherwise, so many people wouldn’t like her!]

[That’s right. Nothing’s ever absolute, but you can usually judge a person’s character by how the people around them act. That’s why I believe Nan Zhi is definitely a kind and warm person!]

[Waaaah, my eyes are peeing! The kids’ affection for Nan Zhi is just so pure!]

[Subtly throwing shade at a certain someone…]

[Why bring the ‘young miss’ into this? Can’t some people just naturally lack charisma? Maybe these teachers and students are just acting? I refuse to believe they could have such a deep bond after just one day!]

[Oh, yeah, right, right, they’re all paid extras, happy now? Aren’t you haters tired of screaming ‘paid extras’ since the first episode? Haven’t you been proven wrong enough times?]

[LOL, do you think we netizens are blind? You think we can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake? If these kids could act this well, they should just be fast-tracked to the Oscars!]

[A child’s world is just so simple and beautiful! Watching them laugh and cry, I feel like I’ve gone back to a time before I became such a venomous shrew…]

…

If even the audience was moved, how could Nan Zhi not be?

Nan Zhi blinked, a wave of warmth washing over her.

Her gaze swept over every face in sight, and a genuine smile involuntarily graced her lips:

“Thank you all for your concern, but I’m really okay now.”

A month ago, that might not have been the case.

But now, her body’s underlying constitution was a world apart from what it used to be.

While she couldn’t claim to be so healthy and strong as to be immune to all illnesses, at least her recovery speed was no different from an ordinary person’s.

Everyone looked at her complexion. Seeing her snow-white skin, jet-black hair, and a face as radiant as a spring dawn, they knew Nan Zhi was telling the truth and finally dispersed, relieved.

Teacher Zhang had too much to handle and hurried back to the principal’s office.

Just then, the bell for the first afternoon class rang.

Teacher Xiao Lin headed to the classroom, remembering to take Nan Yi and Qi Zhang with her.

Although Nan Yi was reluctant to leave, waving to his mother nonstop as he turned, he had still made a lot of progress and no longer resisted the idea of going to school.

This made Nan Zhi wonder, ‘Could it be that my illness made him grow up so quickly?’

For some reason, she felt a pang of bittersweetness.

‘Parents are probably always like this—’

‘Always hoping to be needed by their children, yet also afraid of not being needed.’

Nan Zhi quickly composed herself and decided to find something else to do.

By now, Xiao Lin, Old Wu, and Qi Pei’er had all gone to teach their classes.

Because of her illness, Teacher Zhang had assumed Nan Zhi wouldn’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest, so she hadn’t scheduled any classes for her this afternoon.

So, Nan Zhi made a special trip to the principal’s office to talk to Teacher Zhang about getting her afternoon classes back on the schedule.

Though it was called the principal’s office, the room was actually small and quite plain.

The desk was piled high with all sorts of books and paper documents, with a conference table in the middle.

So the principal’s office occasionally doubled as a conference room, a reception room, and so on.

When Nan Zhi arrived, Teacher Zhang was sitting behind the desk, lost in thought about something.

Suddenly hearing a KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK, Teacher Zhang looked up blankly:

“Who… Teacher Nan? What are you doing here? Didn’t I just tell you to get more rest?”

Nan Zhi smiled.

“Well, I’d just be sitting around idly anyway, so I thought I’d find something to do.”

Her gaze inadvertently fell on the desk, where she noticed a lot of materials spread out in front of Teacher Zhang.

“Teacher Zhang, what’s all this?”

Teacher Zhang gave a wry smile.

“In recent years, hasn’t the country been promoting the enrichment of children’s curriculum to improve their overall skills? I was thinking of adding a new experiential course, like painting or calligraphy. But our teachers don’t know much about those subjects, so I was wondering if I could find some instructional videos online…”

The result? Teacher Zhang’s bitter smile said it all.

There was certainly no shortage of instructional courses online, but the quality was wildly inconsistent.

Besides, there’s a world of difference between learning with a teacher’s guidance and without it!

Teacher Zhang was even considering whether she should study for a while first and then teach the children herself.

Just then, Teacher Zhang remembered Nan Zhi standing before her and asked, full of hope:

“Teacher Nan, you’re a Yan University student…”

Nan Zhi raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“Me?”

Teacher Zhang looked at Nan Zhi expectantly, hoping she would give a surprisingly positive answer.

Unfortunately, although Nan Zhi had the experience of crossing over to an ancient world—the Otherworld—she had poured all her energy into perfecting her culinary skills.

Calligraphy and painting might sound like essential skills for a transmigrator, but they were meaningless in a world centered around Food.

And for Nan Zhi, rather than spending time on such things, it was better to spend a few more hours in the kitchen to finish the plotline sooner and go home.

Therefore, her calligraphy and painting skills had barely progressed beyond the beginner level, nowhere near good enough to teach others.

Nan Zhi apologetically declined.

Teacher Zhang sighed with regret.

Nan Zhi thought for a moment.

“Besides painting and calligraphy, have you considered other courses?”

“Hm?”

“Like cooking, for instance.”

Teacher Zhang’s eyes widened further in confusion.

“Cooking… making food? You can offer a class for that?”

Nan Zhi then told her about news she had seen online. Some elementary schools in the cities were intentionally offering cooking classes or holding culinary competitions. The goal was to implement practical labor education for the children, using labor to promote intelligence.

Even Nan Yi’s kindergarten had similar classes as part of its tactile education program.

In addition, there were also winter and summer camps that let children experience pastry-making.

They didn’t have to deal with open flames, and it could improve the children’s tasting abilities. The daily tasks mainly consisted of eating and drinking, making it relatively relaxed overall. That’s why these Food-themed winter and summer camps were incredibly popular—you could never get a spot normally; parents had to line up in advance to make reservations!