Chapter Eighty-Seven: The Million-Club!

When the plane landed, several buses from Clear Water First High were already waiting at the airport entrance.

Once all the teachers and students had boarded, the convoy drove straight back to school.

By the time they arrived, evening study hall was already over, and everyone returned to their dormitories.

The basketball team was immediately swarmed by onlookers from every dormitory block. Everyone wanted to see what a championship ring looked like.

Lin Nan was no exception, though since the start of the term he had spent very little time in the dorm, basically only showering and sleeping. The rest of his time had been spent with basketball, so he was not especially close with his roommates.

Still, by sophomore year he would have to choose between the liberal arts and sciences, and the dormitory arrangement would change then as well.

Even though there would be no more night training on the court, Lin Nan was used to rising early and going to bed early. After washing up, he climbed into bed and slept.

The next day, Principal Zheng Zemin also returned from the capital, beaming with pride.

Clear Water First High would henceforth develop along the lines of a basketball school, and construction would officially begin during the summer break.

The Teachings website and the Huaxia Basketball League would send people to assist with the work and allocate funds to build a professional basketball training facility on the campus of Clear Water First High, complete with locker rooms, showers, and more.

After this National High School Basketball League, Clear Water First High had truly become famous across the country.

Unlike the other three teams in the Final Four, Yangcheng High, Dongshan High, and Jiangyuan High were already something like basketball schools, and all were quite well known locally.

Clear Water First High, however, was only an ordinary key high school at the county level, yet it had risen above the crowd and taken the championship.

What an honor that was!

Many graduating middle school students nearby who loved basketball were now setting Clear Water First High as their target for the high school entrance exam, hoping to join this champion school, meet Lin Nan and Zhao Zhongshi, the two championship players, improve their own basketball skills, and win the title again with them.

Some even hoped to take the path of professional basketball in the future.

So Clear Water First High was fully capable of transforming into a basketball-oriented school, and it would not lack students.

Principal Zheng Zemin also hoped to see such a transformation, after all, he himself loved basketball deeply.

Gathering young people who loved the game and cultivating them from an early age was immensely important to the development of Chinese basketball.

The second National High School Basketball League would also be held in early September.

By then, there would not be so many schools participating. Only the 128 high school teams from each region that had performed outstandingly in the first edition would be selected.

The league schedule would be shortened, and the matches would also become more exciting.

The battle for the championship was bound to grow even fiercer.

And the championship team of the first National High School Basketball League, Clear Water First High, also received cash rewards from above.

The school awarded five thousand yuan, the county ten thousand, the city twenty thousand, and the province thirty thousand.

Altogether that came to sixty-five thousand yuan. Divided equally among the fifteen players on the basketball team, each person received a little over forty-three hundred yuan. Coach Gorilla did not take any.

In those days, that was already a very large sum for a high school student.

Moreover, this was the first bonus the students of Clear Water First High had ever received apart from scholarships.

In the past, even the provincial top scorer on the college entrance exam would at most receive a city-level reward.

But now Clear Water First High’s basketball team had won a national championship, and under the structure of the league, one could say they had brought honor to the entire southern region.

It was hardly surprising that the province issued a reward as well.

At the same time, the endorsement negotiations between Lin Nan and Nike had also concluded.

Because Lin Nan had made it clear that he would not take part in the second National High School League and would also not pursue a professional basketball career in the future, the final contract was as follows:

One year of endorsement time, with an endorsement fee of one million yuan. During that period, Lin Nan would only need to spare a little time to shoot a few hours of promotional photos.

Nike’s people truly could not understand why Lin Nan would not take the professional path. With his present ability, he was already at the pinnacle among his peers in Chinese basketball.

And his popularity was unquestionably number one.

Lin Nan had an excellent chance of leading Clear Water First High to a three-peat, of winning supreme honor before the age of eighteen, and then going on to play in the CUBA or the NCAA without any problem at all.

In the future, he might even have a real shot at the NBA. To exaggerate a little, he could even become the next Iverson.

Many NCAA scouts who had watched Lin Nan’s game footage were already on their way to China.

But theirs was destined to be a fruitless journey.

Lin Lang did not bother explaining much to Nike’s people. He simply said that Lin Nan had his own things he wanted to do, that he did not want to spend his whole life playing basketball, or to devote all his youth to it.

Nike’s people still could not understand.

In the end, Lin Lang simply revealed his identity as the CEO of the Three in One Company, and Nike’s people were instantly at a loss for words.

Fine. You’re the big boss; do as you please.

They all knew that the Three in One Company, which had only emerged a year ago, had already spread across all of China through its core product, Teachings.

With the uniquely Chinese idea of master and disciple, combined with a permanently free model, Teachings had entered every household.

Everyone knew that Wan Cong was the company’s major shareholder, which was why Three in One had not yet taken in any financing.

Its valuation in the outside world kept rising, yet Three in One seemed to have no intention of going public.

It was said that this was a decision made by the other mysterious major shareholder behind the scenes, and Wan Cong did not oppose it either.

Publicly, it had always been Wan Cong and Li Zecheng; no one knew who the true boss was behind the epoch-making product known as Teachings.

Now Nike’s people knew: it was the father of the first National High School Basketball League champion in China, the most popular player of them all.

Very well, Nike’s people stopped trying to persuade him. After all, someone like Lin Lang would never harm his own child. Clearly, Lin Nan’s life had already been planned out long ago.

Perhaps Lin Nan would become a future tycoon in business. Who could say?

So in the end, Nike offered Lin Nan one million yuan for the endorsement.

It could have been even more, but he simply looked down on the money.

What they did not realize, however, was that none of this had much to do with Lin Lang.

It had all been Lin Nan’s own decision.

Once he learned that there were still many children in the world, including in China, who had no food to eat, no school to attend, and no clothes to wear, he began to think differently about the plan for his life.

And after he discovered that Teachings, that truly conscientious product, had actually been created by his father, he felt as if an idea in his mind was about to burst forth at any moment.

But it was still missing that final spark of inspiration.

So lately at school, during breaks, self-study periods, and English class, Lin Nan had been constantly reading books outside the syllabus.

All of them were borrowed from Si Dong.

Lin Nan knew that reading more could enrich his mind and broaden his horizons; perhaps one day inspiration would come.

It was just that most of Si Dong’s books were stories or essays like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The former Lin Nan read with great interest, while the latter left him completely baffled.

They seemed to have nothing to do with his inspiration at all.

It made Lin Nan distracted during this period, unable to concentrate in class, his mind constantly occupied by such directionless thoughts.

As a result, he scored only 145 on a math exam worth 150, which earned him a small reprimand from his homeroom teacher and math teacher, Yu Xianglin.

In the past, Lin Nan usually scored 148 or 150.

Then one day, Lin Nan saw a magazine, and it completely ignited the most important inspiration of his life, and also the greatest.

April was the season when peonies bloomed, and also the final two months before the college entrance exam, when seniors were facing their April mock tests.

Of course, that had little to do with Lin Nan, who was only a freshman in high school at the time, and there were no peonies on the campus of Clear Water First High.

Still, from the window seat in his classroom, Lin Nan could smell the fragrance of peach blossoms.

It was enough to refresh the spirit.

That day, Lin Nan, sitting in the classroom, skillfully received a magazine passed to him from the boy in the back row.

This was an agreement naturally formed within Class Eight of Grade One, a secret pact known only among the students.

Because not everyone could play on a phone during self-study, many classmates would buy books or magazines from bookstores outside school and read them in their spare time.

The understanding in Class Eight of Grade One was that whoever bought a book would pass it around after reading it, so everyone could read the whole class’s books, a kind of shared resource.

What Lin Nan received that day was a business and lifestyle magazine, full of all kinds of content.

The first few pages were covered with pictures and descriptions of luxury cars. Lin Nan thought the cars looked pretty good, but pictures alone did not stir him much.

One page mentioned a luxury car club, saying that only those who owned a certain kind of car and met various requirements regarding assets and the like could join.

At that, Lin Nan felt as if some thought in his mind was about to leap out, but it did not quite emerge, and he failed to catch it.

So he could only keep flipping through.

Then, in the later pages, he saw a Mensa club.

The club had been founded in 1946. The way to join was to solve problems and undergo an intelligence test, and the standard for membership was an IQ of 148.

The questions tested areas such as attention, observation, logic, imagination, and memory.

Its members came from all over the world.

Lin Nan found this very interesting and thought, This club must be full of highly intelligent people. I wonder if my own IQ is high enough.

Just as he was wondering what kind of questions the Mensa club might ask, the word club suddenly appeared in Lin Nan’s mind and kept expanding.

Then the philosophy behind the Teachings website created by his father also surfaced in his thoughts.

As the two slowly came together, a grand and challenging idea burst forth from Lin Nan’s mind:

Could he create a club whose membership standard was reaching a certain level in a particular field, with the standard defined by how much money one had earned in that field?

For example, Lin Nan himself had already earned one million yuan from basketball, which counted as meeting the requirement.

What made Lin Nan’s idea so remarkable was that he intended to take that one million yuan and personally use it for charity.

In other words, everyone in the club would have to donate at least one million yuan of their earnings to charity.

And what connected it to Teachings was that the club would have a ranking system.

Specifically: level one meant earning one million yuan in some field and donating all of it to charity.

Level two meant earning another one million yuan in another field and again donating it to charity.

And so on. That would be the sole standard for advancing in the club.

What Lin Nan imagined was spending one year training in basketball, earning a million, making a donation, then spending another year or several years learning something else, earning another million, and continuing to donate.

Wouldn’t that make his life full of challenge and brilliance?

And through his own actions, he would tell every disciple on Teachings one truth: persistence leads to success!

Lin Nan nearly went mad with admiration for his own heaven-defying idea.

Once such a club came into being, there would surely be many successful people around the world eager to challenge it, each wanting to see how far they could rise over the course of their lives.

And every step of their advancement would be a blessing to the world’s suffering people.

In his heart, Lin Nan praised his own genius-like idea: using the strength of the world to help those who were less fortunate.

And that great club would be called: the Million Club.