Chapter 48 I Can Tell You Responsibly

Li Ye saw Hao Jian, Jin Peng, and Wang Jianqiang off, closed the door of the small warehouse, and dragged out a makeshift wooden blackboard.

This was something Li Ye had instructed Jin Peng to make—a wooden frame fitted with a two-square-meter board. It was crude, but it got the job done.

"Is everyone full? Now that you're full, listen to me for a moment."

"Full, full, I'm about to burst, hee hee hee."

"What do you want to say, Li Ye? If you're regretting this and want us to pay more for the meals, we absolutely won't, hey hey."

"Hahahaha~"

The girls giggled. Looking at the serious Li Ye, they all found it quite amusing.

Li Ye almost got derailed by the girls, but this time he had to be strict.

*Tap, tap, tap~*

Li Ye held a small stick and struck the blackboard firmly.

"Let me explain something first. Today, we were clearly in the right, and Xia Yue and the others were in the wrong. But why did I bring you all out of the school?"

"........."

The girls stopped laughing. They looked at Li Ye in surprise, deeply puzzled.

*[Wasn't it to eat private meals?]*

*[Wasn't it to avoid sticking together with Xia Yue and that bunch?]*

Waving his little stick, Li Ye said darkly, "Actually, you all should know that I, Li Ye, am not someone to be trifled with. Even though Xia Yue has been the class monitor for several years and has some small tricks and influence up her sleeve..."

"I can tell you responsibly that if I were to use my family's connections to teach Xia Yue a lesson and get her disciplined, it wouldn't be hard at all."

"Or, if I played dirty political games like Xia Yue to force her to drop out and get lost, that wouldn't be impossible either."

"But I didn't. Do you know why?"

Li Ye tapped the blackboard and commanded in a deep voice, "Everyone, be serious."

*Swish~*

Including Wen Leyu, all seven teenagers and girls sat up straight in unison.

"Because I do not want to stay in that cesspool."

Li Ye asked Li Dayong, Fu Yingjie, and Jiang Xiaoyan, "You three used to be in Repeat Class One. What did you think of Repeat Class One back then?

"Wasn't it the stronghold of top students? The hope of No. 2 High School? The cradle of future college students?"

"And didn't the top students in Class One look down on Repeat Class Two and Class Three as burdens to County No. 2 High School, wishing all the teachers in the school would only teach Class One?"

Li Dayong smiled foolishly without speaking, while Fu Yingjie pressed his lips together in an awkward smile.

As for Jiang Xiaoyan, she lowered her head and murmured like a mosquito, "I didn't... they were just talking nonsense."

Yet deep down, all three of them knew that the students in Repeat Class One—especially those in the top thirty—truly looked down on Class Two and Class Three.

They were the elite class. The fifty students inside came from various township and county middle schools across the entire county.

Class One students consistently occupied the top forty spots in school rankings. Whenever a student from Class Two or Class Three was transferred up, the Class One students would disdainfully say, "Don't drag down the class average."

Even so, students in Repeat Class Two and Class Three still broke their heads trying to get into Class One.

Because the school's teachers cared the most about Class One students, pouring seventy to eighty percent of their energy into them.

The elite class of County No. 2 High School might not compare to the elite class of County No. 1 High School, but it was far, far superior to many township middle schools outside the county town.

Every high school student in Qingshui County knew that only by entering the elite repeat classes of County No. 1 High School or County No. 2 High School did one have a better chance of leaping over the dragon gate and entering college.

Students from other township schools, and even those from Repeat Class Two and Class Three, were mostly just running alongside as participants.

"You don't need to deny it," Li Ye said indifferently. "The standard of Class One is indeed slightly higher than Class Two and Class Three. But compared to right here..."

Li Ye waved his little stick vaguely, sweeping a circle around the tiny warehouse, which was only ten or twenty square meters in size.

"Class One is just a stinking cesspool. Stepping in it will only dirty yourself."

"........."

Both Jiang Xiaoyan and Fu Yingjie were somewhat dumbfounded. They felt that Li Ye standing there right now looked somewhat like... a charlatan.

*[Charlatans are always this handsome...]*

Yet the more astonishing part was yet to come.

Li Ye tapped the blackboard again, lifting his chin. "I can tell you responsibly:"

"This small room of ours is the preparatory class for college students in Qingshui County, year '82."

"As long as you join our small group, next year... you will definitely pass the college entrance examination."

"Whoa~"

All six students gasped in shock.

Even Li Dayong felt that his older brother's mouth was open a bit too wide; he might just sprain his tongue.

Brother, do you know how many college students Qingshui County passed last year?

Even counting vocational and technical colleges, there weren't seven.

All seven of them going to college? No, counting you, Li Ye, that makes eight.

The head of the county education bureau wouldn't even talk like this in his dreams.

However, eating someone's food makes one soft-spoken. The lingering fragrance of pork ribs stewed with radishes hadn't even faded from their throats yet, so how could they stick out their tongues at Li Ye and make funny faces?

Moreover, Li Ye standing there right now exuded a strong sense of confidence and an intense oppressive aura—the kind of feeling where whatever he said made you feel compelled to believe it.

Li Ye was indeed confident.

In his past life, when he had nothing to do, he would browse online forums, where the topic "Modern Gaokao vs. 1970s/1980s Gaokao" was always hot.

And among the mainstream opinions, there were two that had been practically verified.

The first opinion involved a group of elite college students from the late 1970s and early 1980s testing themselves against modern high school exam questions alongside their own teenage children.

The result, of course, was not very pretty. They were completely at a loss for many types of questions.

However, these old college students who had already attained important official positions were certain of one thing: given just a year to familiarize themselves, they wouldn't dare claim a top-tier 985 university, but they were confident they could reach a 211 institution.

Why?

Because of sheer intelligence.

These people had fought their way into the top 1% out of a pool with a 4% admission rate back then. No matter how simple the questions were at the time, it didn't change the fact that they were absolute high-IQ monsters.

Even so, these high-IQ individuals, when blindly challenging modern high school students head-on, would be beaten into a flurry of panic by bricks and bludgeons.

As for the second opinion, it involved modern high school students turning back to take the Gaokao papers of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

To give an example, the final hurdle math question in the 1977 exam was simply proving the Pythagorean theorem.

In the following years up to the early 1980s, the difficulty of the Gaokao increased slightly, but overall, it felt roughly equivalent to the difficulty of modern junior high school entrance exams.

Yet even at that level of difficulty, it could stump a massive crowd; as long as one passed, one could go to college.

Therefore, Li Ye believed his true competitors in the Gaokao were never people like Xia Yue or the County No. 1 High School elite class, but rather those high-IQ freaks.

After all, there were always some beasts in human skin that made life feel utterly hopeless.

Fortunately, it was already 1981.

A veteran professor at Tsinghua University in later generations once said that after teaching students for so many years, the cohort of 1977 possessed the highest quality.

Because even with the educational gap, those freaks were like gold in the sand, impossible to keep buried.

In 1977, despite the simple test questions, countless accumulated freaks burst forth because of the long period of suppression beforehand, turning it into a genuine dance of demons.

After the initial two years of the Gaokao, those accumulated high-IQ talents had finally all tested their way out in one go.

Otherwise, with Li Ye's mediocre abilities in his past life, even with the biological hard drive in his mind helping him cheat, he wouldn't have had the guts to arrogantly... aim his sword at Tsinghua and Peking University.

Yet Li Ye had confidence, while the others did not.

"Ahem—Li Ye... what you said, I feel... isn't quite right."

Hu Mann had served as a class monitor for a long time, after all. Facing Li Ye, whose aura was fully unleashed, she could barely manage to argue a few points.

She kindly advised Li Ye, "Although we must be full of confidence in the future, we shouldn't... become arrogant and overrate ourselves."

"It doesn't matter how we brag... or talk among ourselves here, but if Xia Yue and the others happen to overhear, heaven knows what a huge joke it will become..."

"Why would they overhear? Are you going to tell them?"

Li Ye pointed at the door of the small warehouse and said very seriously, "I'm warning you, everything that happens in this room, and anything you see here, not a single word or sentence is to be carried outside."

First, Li Ye tossed a stack of hand-cut white paper to Hu Mann and the others, then turned around, picked up a piece of chalk, and began writing questions on the small blackboard.

As he wrote, he instructed, "Starting today, you will complete two to three practice test papers every single day, continuously, until the Gaokao."

"Ah? Two or three papers a day?"

"How is that possible? Li Ye, do you mean... you're going to write the papers for us?"

"No way, right? Teachers might not even be able to put together one paper a week..."

Although everyone acknowledged that Li Ye studied well and was great at explaining problems, nobody believed he could produce three papers every single day.

Writing test questions wasn't just copying them. School teachers wrung their brains dry trying to create a new set of questions noticeably different from previous ones, consuming countless brain cells in the process.

In the current Repeat Class One, comprehensive subject tests were held once every half-month. The task of producing a set of questions every half-month had already forced Teacher Luo and the others to give it their all.

It was only because Teacher Ke had lent a hand recently that Teacher Luo and the others finally got a chance to catch their breath.

Now, an eighteen-or-nineteen-year-old Li Ye was going to churn out three sets of papers every day, all the way until the Gaokao?

Wouldn't that mean apart from attending classes during the day, all other time would be spent doing test papers?

Where on earth would you get the papers? Even Beijing doesn't have that many test papers!

Still, if it really came to that... just thinking about it was exhilarating!

The students chattered excitedly, harboring lingering skepticism mixed with a faint sense of thrill.

Wen Leyu slowly turned her head. Her cool gaze swept across the flock of "little sparrows," and she rebuked them without any emotional warmth, "Can you all be quiet? Those who believe in Li Ye can stay; those who don't can leave."

"........."

Not a force to be messed with. The little mute rarely spoke, but once she opened her mouth, it was bound to be extraordinary.

If she really whispered to Li Ye and got herself kicked out, then forget about three test papers a day—even the one-cent hearty meals would be gone!

As everyone's thoughts flew wildly, Li Ye had already filled the entire small blackboard with his sloppy handwriting, barely legible.

Turning back around, Li Ye looked at his dazed classmates and said with deep dissatisfaction, "What are you all staring at in a daze? Why aren't you copying the questions quickly? Are you waiting for me to mimeograph them for you?"

"Oh, oh."

The students scrambled in a flurry, hastily copying down the questions.

Once they finally finished copying, Li Ye wiped the board clean with a wave of his hand and began writing the second board of test questions.

The students hurried to follow along.

By the time they reached the third board, seeing that Li Ye showed no intention of stopping whatsoever, the doubts in the hearts of Hu Mann and the others finally began to loosen.

"Perhaps Li Ye... can really pull this off."