In a beautiful forest, there lived many small animals. There was a rabbit among them. It ran extremely fast and often showed off its speed in front of other small animals. There was also a tortoise. It crawled very slowly, but it was very persevering. One day, the rabbit laughed at the tortoise and said, "You crawl so slowly, while I run so fast. You can never beat me." Hearing this, the tortoise was not angry. It just said slowly, "That's not necessarily true. We can have a race." The rabbit thought it was a joke, but still agreed to the race.
The race began. The rabbit rushed out like an arrow leaving the bow. It ran so fast that it left the tortoise far behind in no time. The rabbit looked back and couldn't even see the tortoise's shadow. The rabbit thought, "The tortoise crawls so slowly. I can take a break first. It won't be too late to run again when it is almost catching up." So, the rabbit lay down under a big tree and soon fell asleep.
As for the tortoise, although it crawled slowly, it didn't stop for a moment. It crawled towards the finish line step by step. Although it knew it was slow, it always thought in its heart that as long as it persisted, it might win. It crawled across the grassland and over the small hillside. Although sweat kept sliding down its shell, its eyes were always firm.
The rabbit was still sleeping soundly under the big tree. It was having a sweet dream, dreaming that it had won the race and other small animals were cheering for it. It was completely unaware that the tortoise was slowly approaching the finish line.
The tortoise was getting closer and closer to the finish line. It still maintained its speed and crawled forward unhurriedly. When the small animals saw that the tortoise was almost at the finish line, they all began to cheer for the tortoise.
Finally, the tortoise reached the finish line. At this moment, the rabbit was awakened by the cheers. It opened its eyes and saw that the tortoise was already standing on the finish line. The rabbit was very regretful. It realized that it should not have underestimated its opponent because of pride, and it should not have been lazy and slept during the race. The tortoise won the race through its perseverance, and all the small animals cheered for the tortoise's victory.
