After sitting down, the group listened with great interest to the discussion taking place not far away.
As they listened, Hong Meiling nudged Flandre on the shoulder. "If I'm not mistaken, they're holding an academic lecture, right?"
"If you aren't mistaken, then you definitely aren't mistaken," Flandre said, her expression deadpan and serious.
"Get lost, 'nonsense literature' isn't trendy anymore, seriously," Meiling sighed. "Tell me, what is the point of these people running out to this godforsaken place in the middle of winter just to attend a lecture?"
Hong Meiling genuinely couldn't fathom their train of thought. After all, the outdoor temperature was hovering around seven or eight degrees below zero. Although the three of them possessed special constitutions that felt zero physical discomfort sitting on the bench, she could clearly see the ordinary students shivering in their heavy coats. They were so cold their teeth were practically chattering, yet they still sat there rigid. Was attending a literature lecture really more important than avoiding frostbite?
"Hmm, maybe it's to earn course credits?" Flandre pondered, thoughtfully rubbing her chin.
Judging by their scarves and bags, these students were clearly from Lungmen University. There were really only two reasons why university students would endure biting sub-zero winds in the middle of winter to sit outdoors: either they were completing a mandatory internship requirement, or they were desperately scraping together course credits. Otherwise, Flandre found it hard to imagine why anyone would voluntarily stay out here.
Hearing her explanation, Meiling was even more speechless. "Are course credits really that important?"
"To you and me, they're worthless, but to students who are short on credits, they really are more important than life itself," Flandre remarked with a look of quiet nostalgia.
Of course, those weren't her own personal memories from Gensokyo, but rather vivid fragments from the merged soul memories deep within her. In those uploaded memories, a student had lived like a stressed beast of burden just to secure enough credits to graduate. Consequently, Flandre felt a wave of genuine sympathy for the freezing youth in front of her.
At that moment, the subtle whispering between the two drew the attention of the professor standing at the podium.
From their attire and youthful appearance, it was obvious they weren't his enrolled students. Furthermore, their hushed conversation was kept very quiet and wasn't actually disrupting anyone around them. Yet, the professor was still visibly irritated.
In his eyes, Flandre and Hong Meiling's relaxed demeanor was a clear provocation—a complete lack of respect for his academic authority. After all, he was lecturing until his throat was parched; he had already graciously allowed these random onlookers to sit at the back, yet they were still whispering, which clearly implied they felt his lecture lacked appeal.
Flustered by the perceived slight, the professor reached out and pointed a finger directly at Flandre. "That little girl back there! If you don't want to listen to the lecture, please go play somewhere else. Don't disturb the students who are actually trying to learn."
Flandre tilted her head, pointing to herself in disbelief. "Me? Disturbing others?"
Flandre was completely speechless. She was sitting at the very back row of the outdoor audience, so how could she possibly disturb the students sitting far ahead of her? This old scholar was clearly picking a fight out of thin air.
"Yes, you!" the professor declared firmly, adjusting his spectacles.
"Well then, Professor, I'd like to ask: who exactly did I disturb?" Flandre felt that while she possessed a very easygoing temper these days, she couldn't just be publicly slandered without cause.
The professor glanced around, expecting his students to back him up, only to find the entire crowd looking back at him with completely blank expressions. Not a single student possessed the quick wit—or the desire—to stand up and join his verbal attack, which left him feeling acutely embarrassed.
"Regardless of who you disturbed, I feel your attitude is disruptive, and that is more than enough," the professor asserted, puffing out his chest. "This is an official university extension classroom, not a playground for you to play house. If you want to play house, please find another spot."
Hearing his arrogant declaration, Flandre burst out laughing. Humans laugh when they are driven past the point of speechlessness, and ancient youkai operate the exact same way. Flandre was currently beyond speechless.
"I'm playing house? Aren't you the one playing house?" Flandre stood up on the bench, pointing right back at him as her voice echoed across the quiet garden. "I've been sitting here listening for twenty minutes, and all you've done is repeat how magnificent these winter plum blossoms are and how they ought to be described in classical literature. But every single word out of your mouth is just regurgitating other scholars' analysis! You're literally reading straight from a script compiled from published textbooks! Why don't you offer a single original insight of your own, or write a single line of poetry about these plum blossoms that actually belongs to you? As long as it's half decent, I'll turn around and walk away immediately!"
"How dare you claim my lecture is mere book-copying!" The professor's face flushed a deep, furious red, standing out vividly against the white winter backdrop of the Plum Garden.
Without breaking a sweat, Flandre rattled off the exact titles of four academic textbooks, continuing coldly: "If we took your lecture transcript from just now and ran it through a basic plagiarism check against those four references, I'm afraid the content that actually originated from your own head would be less than five percent! I have to say, for a university literature instructor who can't even bother to paraphrase his source material, where do you get the nerve to act so grand? I didn't say a word earlier because using standard textbook material to teach basic concepts is completely understandable. But now that you want to claim this lecture as your own brilliant output, I might let it slide, but would the original authors of those books agree?"
Flandre's sharp, precise breakdown caused the professor's face to turn from bright red to pale white in an instant.
He knew with horrifying clarity that the little girl was one hundred percent correct. Everything he had spouted over the past hour had been lifted directly from standard curriculum guides. Just as she noted, when teaching baseline course requirements, sticking to established text was standard practice—and entirely defensible. But during the heat of their petty argument, he had let his ego speak without thinking and walked right into her logical trap. It was already far too late to retract his words.
His finger trembled violently as he pointed at her. "What a sharp-tongued, arrogant little girl..."
"Never mind whether my tongue is sharp or not, why don't you prove your own academic level first?" Flandre pressed her advantage, taking a step forward.
Beside her, Hong Meiling reached out and gently nudged Flandre's arm, whispering under her breath: "You know, right now you look exactly like those arrogant little villains in low-budget web novels who go around stirring up petty trouble."
"Is it really that similar?!" Flandre froze, a look of sudden panic crossing her face. Being a formidable villain was one thing, but sounding like a disposable, low-tier henchman was unacceptable—wouldn't that destroy all her natural cool factor?
"It really is remarkably similar," Koishi added from the side, deadpan as she twisted the psychological knife.
"Gah!" Flandre gasped in genuine horror. "Doesn't that mean if this guy actually gets embarrassed, goes home, and somehow writes a world-renowned masterpiece out of sheer spite, I'll end up as the generic villain who gets recorded in his biography and repeatedly mocked by history posthumously?!"
"Mm-hmm!"
"Then maybe I should just silence him right now!" Flandre declared, her eyes flashing crimson as she began rolling up her sleeves with alarming resolve. "If I take him out before he gets the chance to write that masterpiece, then at absolute worst we just get wanted for a localized murder, and our infamy only lasts a few decades instead of being mocked forever in history books!"
Meiling immediately grabbed Flandre's arms, sweating bullets as she held the little vampire back. "You can't go committing murder in broad daylight over a lecture! We've only just settled down in our nice villa in Lungmen! If you start blasting people here, we're going to have to go back to drifting around Terra like vagrants!"
Lungmen was fantastic—it had familiar delicious food and felt comfortably like it was hometown. Meiling was utterly unwilling to give all that up over a petty academic argument.
"Just beat him silly then!" Koishi suggested brightly, pulling out a heavy, knobby wooden stick from beneath her coat with a terrifying grin.
Meiling's eyes nearly popped out of her sockets at the sight of the weapon. That wasn't a stick—it looked like a spiked bludgeon! One solid hit from that monstrosity and the professor wouldn't be "silly," he'd be reduced to a fine red paste on the snow! Where would there be any chance of him surviving?!
"Wait, wait, wait! Setting aside whether an ordinary human could even survive a single blow from that thing!" Meiling pointed frantically at the dozens of Lungmen University students who had turned around to stare at them in utter shock. "Look! Every single one of them is staring right at us!"