The Scumbag Alpha's Plan to Save the Female Lead - Chapter 14

Chapter 14

“There is no such thing as fate.” Zhi Qiu had said this countless times.

She firmly believed that a person’s destiny was in their own hands, no matter how painful that belief was.

If anyone in this world truly claimed to have peeked into destiny, it was surely a self-deceiving lie made by the void.

Zhi Qiu was a staunch materialist.

Heaven, however, always seemed to delight in crushing human arrogance. It wanted the talented to resent their gifts, the mediocre to lament their ordinariness, and those who lived grounded in reality to witness the world’s bizarre and scientifically inexplicable wonders, completely shattering the materialist’s faith.

The heavens seemed to be playing a joke on her.

Zhi Qiu’s hand, holding the pencil, was trembling. She desperately searched her mind for an image that could represent utopia, yet no matter how hard she tried, only a single curse surfaced in her mind.

It kept calling out in her ear, calling out: “This is the only answer. Just draw one stroke, just one stroke.”

One hour’s time.

The theme of utopia.

No restriction on subject matter.

Zhi Qiu felt as if she were in another dimension, where time did not correspond to her original world.

A day in her original world was 24 hours, but the world she was currently in was more like a pirated plug-in running at one hundred times speed.

If described more vividly with numbers and people:

When a newborn in the other world reached one year old, a child born at the same time in this world had already become a centenarian.

Utopia was not a simple concept, but it wasn’t overly difficult for students genuinely studying art. Ruan Ye finished her work in less than half an hour.

The A4 paper featured a grand, powerful painting. Like the author’s petite body, it seemed to harbor a power capable of destroying the world.

The image was set against the backdrop of many star systems in the universe, with the Blue Star being the most unremarkable celestial body among them. A ragged, disheveled girl was on the verge of death. She was struggling to overcome gravity, desperately fleeing in the opposite direction. In her struggle, she grasped a gentle lily. The lily had no thorns, yet her hand was half-clenched, half-loose. The painting was composed of two main colors, contrasting each other, just like the melancholy of the girl, afraid of harming the lily’s roots and daring not to grip tightly, constantly battling the fear of letting go and utterly perishing.

No matter the era, a painting always hid a person’s deepest self and their deepest fears.

Students confidently submitted their work one after another.

Leichlin’s beautiful blue eyes slowly lost their smile. Her feedback transitioned from gently suggesting students make revisions to directly having the teaching assistants usher those who failed to satisfy her out of the classroom.

Coming and going, the huge lecture hall transformed from being packed to almost empty. The scratching sound of pencils on paper became crystal clear, making the two people in the last row particularly noticeable.

The girl with the fairer skin seemed seriously ill. Her fragility manifested through her internal organs onto her calm face. As if frozen in place, she had maintained the same posture since receiving the test paper, never once putting pen to paper.

The other was completely different. Her nimble fingers moved constantly across the paper. In just over ten minutes, she outlined the painting’s prototype. As time passed, the muse of inspiration seemed to favor the girl’s mind. One stunning and meticulous detail after another filled the entire composition until a perfect painting was born from her pencil.

Leichlin was drawn over.

Grand paintings are often prone to being empty. The works she had just seen were so disappointing that she tried hard to lower her expectations for this one.

But when her weathered eyes truly rested on the painting, she was overcome with shock.

It was grand yet not empty; meticulous yet not entangled in trivial details—precisely so.

A born painter.

Nimble hands, delicate emotions, and a sensitive mind were gifts bestowed solely upon her by God.

“My God!” Leichlin’s wrist, holding the painting, was trembling. The intricate jewelry on her wrist clinked clearly, singing of the owner’s excitement.

The designer, known for her overweening arrogance in the design world, happily grasped the Eastern girl’s hand, excitedly speaking in her mother tongue: “You are a born painter, a treasure that should be seen by the whole world.”

The blue-eyed woman’s grip was strong. Perhaps due to her over-excitement, Ruan Ye felt a little pain when she was held, but the other party was a respected figure in the art world, and she couldn’t dismiss the kindness.

A hint of difficulty flashed across Ruan Ye’s fair, rosy face, which was then replaced by her usual heartwarming smile.

Seeing the girl’s confusion, Leichlin realized that the people of this country didn’t understand her mother tongue. Just as she held the girl’s slender wrist and wanted to say more, a pair of strong hands pried her fingers open one by one.

Leichlin looked up, her eagle-like blue eyes sharply scrutinizing the girl who had been spacing out since entering the room.

If judged by appearance alone, Leichlin might have mistaken her for an Omega, but she was quickly forced to let go of the hand of the genius painter she had just discovered.

Zhi Qiu, having recovered her wits, shielded Ruan Ye behind her. She looked at the renowned designer with a distant tone: “Speak properly.”

“Both students’ paintings are excellent. We will move to an art studio after the exam. I hope the experience I’ve accumulated over the years can give some inspiration to the talented artists of China.” Seeing the girl’s reddened wrist, Leichlin also realized she had been too excited, but given her status as a visiting professor, she couldn’t apologize directly. She found an excuse to keep both of them.

She took out a transparent parchment bag, carefully collected both their paintings, placing the just-dried watercolor painting on top of all the others, and observed it closely.

Leichlin returned to the podium to deal with the other students’ paintings, and the back row became quiet again.

The girl standing with her back to the sunlight pursed her lips and finally couldn’t help but nudge the person in the wheelchair, asking, “Why?”

Why?

Why so sad?

She didn’t finish her sentence, and Zhi Qiu didn’t understand her meaning.

Zhi Qiu wanted to rub Ruan Ye’s wrist, but after only two rubs, she found the fair, slender wrist seemed even redder. She let go in annoyance and joked, “Painting is so difficult. Not only do your fingers suffer, but your wrist has to endure the torment. If you become a famous artist in the future, I don’t know how much suffering like today you’ll have to go through. Truly a happy trouble.”

God’s gift to a painter is often a punishment, because a sensitive heart can never be as straightforward as ordinary people.

Ruan Ye, through the girl’s facade of being fine, saw the sadness within, a sadness that seemed impossible to interfere with from the outside, the helplessness after a struggle.

She actually wanted to ask:

What is the utopia in your heart?

What exactly were you trying to draw just now?

Support The Scumbag Alpha’s Plan to Save the Female Lead