Chapter 658 — A Heated Quarrel

"Very well, Director Wang. This matter I leave to you, to communicate with the students' parents. Take care not to inflame the conflict, and do all you can to preserve the school's reputation!" Ding Binggong instructed Wang Zhifeng.

"Yes, Principal Ding. I'll get right to it!" Wang Zhifeng nodded, and at once began telephoning people at the school to compile the files on the comatose students...

Before long, the parents who had received the news came rushing to the hospital, and the entrance of the emergency room was thrown into chaos in an instant. Some parents could still ask after their children in a reasonable tone, but others started shouting the moment they arrived: "What's happened to my child? She was perfectly well when we sent her to your school, so how did she end up in a coma? What have you done?"

"If anything happens to my child, I'll tear your school down!"

"Who's the principal here? How do you people run this school? My child went there, so why is she in a coma?"

"Everyone, please stop shouting. This is a hospital, and your children are all inside the emergency room. If you keep up this racket, what's to become of the doctors' work?" Ding Binggong and Wang Zhifeng said helplessly, gazing at the clamoring parents.

"So you do know our children are in the emergency room? What sort of principal are you? Our students fell into comas at your school. What were you people thinking? What have you been paid for all this time?" A middle-aged woman jabbed a finger at Ding Binggong and began to curse him.

"That's right. Have our children been subjected to some injustice? Were they beaten into a coma by corporal punishment? We want the truth!" Another parent took up the shout.

"The truth! The truth! The truth! We want the truth!" The other parents joined in the cry as well; if there was to be a scene, then let them make it together. For the sake of their children, these parents were not afraid to fight the school to the bitter end.

Gu Pengzhan frowned. Seeing that the mood was turning ugly, he had no choice but to walk over himself. He raised a hand in a gesture of calm toward the parents who were whipping each other into fury, one cutting in after another: "Everyone, be quiet and listen to me for a moment. I am Gu Pengzhan, chairman of the Pengzhan Group..."

"So you're the chairman, are you? And you want us to be quiet? How are we supposed to be quiet? It isn't your child lying in there — of course you're not anxious!" Before Gu Pengzhan could finish, the same middle-aged woman cut him off.

"Exactly. You're the chairman, a man of such consequence, and your children are all little princesses and young masters. Our children aren't up to that; they can't even attend school without fainting!" another parent said with a sneer.

"Though I am the chairman of the Pengzhan Group and a director of the school, my heart is in truth in the same place as yours. I too am anxious and praying for the children inside!" Gu Pengzhan said. "As parents, the one thing we ought to do now is wait here for the doctors' results, not shout and make a scene. That does the children no good whatsoever!"

"It's easy for you to talk, standing there without a care! It isn't your child, so naturally you're not worried!" The middle-aged woman was plainly a thorn in anyone's side, and hers were the sharpest words of all. "Worried? You're worried that your school's good name will be damaged, more like!"

"That's right, you're worried about the school's reputation, aren't you?" the other parents chimed in.

"You've all misunderstood. As I said, I am the same as you, standing here in the capacity of a parent too!" Gu Pengzhan shook his head. "Because my daughter, Gu Mengyao, is one of the comatose students. I am worried about my daughter as well. And as for the corporal punishment you speak of, that is pure nonsense. Do you imagine Principal Ding Binggong could still be standing here talking to you if he had beaten my daughter? He would have been dismissed and sent home long ago!"

Gu Pengzhan's words left every parent stunned. None of them had ever imagined that Gu Pengzhan's own daughter was among the comatose students, and the suspicions they had entertained before now truly could not stand. Unless a teacher or a principal had grown a leopard's gall and wanted to be done with their job at the school, no one would dare to inflict corporal punishment on the director's daughter.

And the middle-aged woman who had shouted the loudest of all a moment before now fell silent as well, a little ashamed of herself. It seemed she really had wronged him. The chairman's own daughter lay there in a coma; what right did she have to accuse him? They were all merely parents sick with worry over their children.

"So the only thing we can do now is wait for the doctors' results! If it truly is the school's responsibility, then the school will certainly not shirk it; and even if it is not the school's responsibility, the school will still do everything in its power to treat the children, and the school will bear the medical expenses in full!" Gu Pengzhan went on.

Hearing this, those furious parents fell silent. Gu Pengzhan spoke sound sense, and they had no way to refute it. Better to wait for the doctors' results first.

Time slipped away, second by second, and Gu Pengzhan and the students' parents waited anxiously for the doctors' verdict. But the light over the emergency room never went out, which meant the rescue was still underway; more than twenty students, after all, were not a matter that could be settled in a moment or two.

Suddenly there came a hurried clatter of footsteps and a hubbub of voices, and several people who looked like reporters came rushing up, shouldering cameras and microphones! Some of them had been bought off by Li Cihua, and others were friends brought along by those who had been bought. The purpose of their coming was this: they had received a news tip that twenty-eight comatose students had been admitted to the hospital. This was big news, and so even those who had not been bought off were glad enough to come and poke their noses in.

"Hello, I'm Can Lang, a reporter for the XX Daily. I've heard that a most vicious case of mass fainting among students has occurred at No. 1 High School. Are all of you the parents of the students involved?" This fellow was one of the reporters Li Cihua had bought, and the leader of this particular interview party. He had once run with the underworld, but one day, while out swaggering, he was thrashed by a special forces soldier, and after that he could no longer make his way in those circles. So he pulled a few strings and became a reporter for a small street tabloid.

It had to be said that this Can Lang was a vicious sort: from his very first words he sharpened the conflict and branded the affair a vicious mass incident.

Gu Pengzhan frowned, at a loss as to how these reporters had turned up, or from where they had gotten their information. The parents had already been calmed; no one was making a scene any longer, and it was hardly likely that they had telephoned the reporters. And before the reporters arrived at the hospital, when the parents had not yet even understood the situation and were sick with fear for their children's safety, they would have been even less likely to call reporters in.

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