Chapter 51 What Kinds of Disgraceful Students Are These

County No. 2 High School attached far more importance to the late-1981 final exams than Li Ye had anticipated.

Not only did County No. 1 and No. 2 High Schools jointly compile the test papers, but the proctors were also drawn from both schools, and the exam venues were swapped.

The repeating class from County No. 2 High School went to take the exams in the classrooms of County No. 1 High School, while the students from County No. 1 came over to County No. 2.

Even the test papers were printed collectively, then sealed in bags and opened right on the spot during the class.

Rumors had it that this was a "clever proposal" put forward by a teacher from County No. 1.

Because in previous years, students from both No. 1 and No. 2 schools had underperformed due to psychological factors, striving to simulate the solemn atmosphere of the national college entrance examination was believed to help strengthen the students' psychological resilience.

It was only because it was too troublesome that they didn't go as far as mixing up the classes and arranging single-person desks in individual rows like the actual college entrance exam.

Li Ye wasn't sure how much use this setup would be, but the psychological adjustment ability of students nowadays was indeed quite ordinary.

As soon as the test papers were handed out, Li Ye noticed beads of sweat on the foreheads of several classmates, and the fountain pens in their hands were trembling slightly.

[Such pure children, none of them have been beaten down by society yet! Back in my day, I could endure twenty-three consecutive losses in a row while my fingers stayed as steady as an old dog.]

Li Ye smoothed out the test paper, his fountain pen gliding across the paper as precise trajectories of thought intersected into the correct answers. He exuded a composure and calm worthy of an old—bah!

The first subject tested today was mathematics. The free-point questions in the beginning didn't require Li Ye to tax his brain at all, and he finished them in a daze.

Just as he turned to the second page of the test paper, the proctor on the podium walked down, making his way along the aisle and coming to a stop right behind Li Ye.

Li Ye glanced back at him, then lowered his head to continue working on the problems without the slightest intention of acknowledging him.

After an interval of more than two months, Li Ye hadn't expected to run into Director Yao from County No. 1 High School once again.

...

Director Yao was the primary coordinator for this county-wide joint examination. Logically speaking, he should have remained in the office presiding over the big picture, but instead, he had gotten personally involved and taken on the role of a proctor.

When assigning the examination rooms, Director Yao had "coincidentally" been assigned to the fast track of County No. 2 High School—Repeating Class One.

Upon seeing Li Ye, Director Yao was somewhat surprised as well.

He had some impression of Li Ye's academic performance, which fell short of the standard for regular repeating students at County No. 1.

If someone of Li Ye's caliber could gain admission into the repeating fast class at County No. 2 High School, the overall academic standard of County No. 2 left much to be desired.

As the exam commenced, Director Yao's sharp, eagle-like gaze swept back and forth across the students of Class One time and again.

Director Yao's presence today was not merely to crack down on cheating, but also to scout out the top academic talents of County No. 2.

His method of scouting was quite simple: each subject's exam consisted of three pages of test papers, and whoever finished the first page first would become his prime target of observation.

[Is it that fellow named Jin Shengli? Or the one named Xia Yue?]

Director Yao had done his homework beforehand. There were students at County No. 1 who knew Xia Yue and Jin Shengli, so both of them were on the shortlist of students Director Yao had marked.

Yet no matter how much he guessed, he never would have imagined that Li Ye, this "underachieving student," would be the very first to finish the first page of the test paper, and at a shockingly fast speed.

Director Yao was a mathematics teacher himself, and he knew the difficulty of these problems all too well.

[At this speed, even copying wouldn't be this fast, right? Is it that he didn't know how to do them and left them all blank?]

Unable to suppress the doubt gnawing at him, Director Yao strode up behind Li Ye.

To his astonishment, he found that Li Ye was already blazing through the second page of the test paper at a mind-boggling speed.

Even if someone were copying straight from an answer key, it wouldn't be much faster than this.

Director Yao's first reaction was that the test questions had been leaked.

Yet he immediately dismissed the notion.

It was merely a final exam, not the national college entrance examination; who would be foolish enough to go to the trouble of stealing the test questions?

It wasn't worth it.

[Could it be that my judgment was off, and this kid is a prodigy?]

Standing behind Li Ye, Director Yao watched as he filled in answer after answer and solved problem after problem.

Correct, correct, and *damn it*, still correct.

Seeing that Li Ye was about to finish the second page of the test paper, Director Yao was suddenly overcome with intense regret.

[This kid—he wouldn't happen to score a perfect mark, would he? How on earth did I manage to turn away a student like this?]

Yet the very next moment, the fountain pen that had been gliding so smoothly across the paper came to a halt.

Then, Li Ye flipped the first page back over and began staring fixedly at the easy points at the top.

Looking left, looking right, looking front, looking back.

After reviewing the first page, he looked back over the second page.

Baffled and bewildered, Director Yao finally couldn't help but ask, "Instead of making the best use of your time to take the test, what are you looking at?"

Li Ye replied indifferently, "I'm checking my answers."

Director Yao was taken aback, and through clenched teeth, he said, "There are so many major problems left undone at the back, what answers are you checking?"

Li Ye answered in a split second, "I don't know how to do the ones at the back."

"............"

Darkness swam before Director Yao's eyes, and he almost spewed a mouthful of bitter bile right onto Li Ye.

[If you don't know how to do them, then you don't know how to do them! Why answer with such a righteous and self-assured attitude?]

Fuming with anger, Director Yao shook his head and walked away, but a short while later, he returned.

Because Wen Leyu had become the second person in the entire class to reach the second page of the test paper.

Observing Wen Leyu's answers, Director Yao began to take things seriously as well; this girl's standard was top-tier even if placed within County No. 1 High School.

However, when it came to the major problem-solving section at the end, Director Yao found himself unable to follow her work.

Wen Leyu hadn't simply left things as "don't know how to do," but she had been scribbling and sketching on her scratch paper like some chaotic ghost talismans.

After a long while, Director Yao finally began to understand.

These ghost talismans were the numbers and symbols Wen Leyu used to assist herself in mental calculations.

Wen Leyu hadn't laid out any formal equations on her scratch paper at all. Whatever she could calculate mentally, she refused to commit to paper. For a problem requiring four or five distinct steps to solve, she might only write down half of one.

Yet the final answers she arrived at were all correct.

"Ahem~"

Li Ye gave a light cough, and Wen Leyu immediately followed suit, halting her pen and beginning to check her preceding answers.

Anxious, Director Yao blurted out, "This female classmate, you haven't finished yet!"

With chilling coldness, Wen Leyu spat out three words: "Don't know how."

Director Yao: ".........."

[What kind of freaks and oddities has County No. 2 High School managed to take in?]

Compared to the "don't know how" attitude of Li Ye and Wen Leyu, many students inside the examination room truly "did not know how."

The questions on this exam were exceptionally difficult.

Even Xia Yue and Jin Shengli were struggling immensely to get through them, let alone those students whose academic foundations were already mediocre to begin with.

However, the members of the eight-person close-knit circle were relatively more at ease.

Hu Mann, Li Dayong, and the others didn't possess the extraordinary capabilities of Li Ye and Wen Leyu, but they could answer seven or eight out of ten memory-based recall questions. As for the major problems at the end, they either knew how to solve them or, after a bit of pondering, managed to find the correct line of reasoning.

Yet apart from Jiang Xiaoyan, all of them limited their calculations to their scratch paper, either leaving the major problems at the back entirely blank or scribbling randomly on the official test sheets.

The art of score-control was making its initial, subtle display.

...

Stealing a glance to the side, Jiang Xiaoyan turned her head to look at Jin Shengli on her front left.

Seeing that he was already working on the third-to-last major problem, she couldn't help but let out a breath of relief, swiftly copying the steps and answers from her scratch paper onto the fourth-to-last problem on her exam sheet.

Ever since Li Ye had explained the importance of "controlling one's scores" that day, Jiang Xiaoyan was the only one who had defiantly raised her hand, declaring her intention to break into the top ten.

At that time, she had kept her head lowered, bracing herself for a tongue-lashing from Li Ye.

Yet Li Ye had merely gazed at Jiang Xiaoyan for a long moment before readily agreeing, simply instructing her to be mindful of her margins when the time came, avoid overscoring, and preferably just barely squeeze into the top ten.

Jiang Xiaoyan had been deeply moved, grateful that Li Ye hadn't interrogated her and had left her a shred of dignity.

In truth, Jiang Xiaoyan's journey as a repeating student had been fraught with hardship. Her paternal grandparents had strongly opposed her continuing to retake the year.

Because the expenses for a repeating student amounted to over a hundred yuan a year—fifty or sixty yuan for a single semester.

"A mere girl, why waste this foolish money? In the end, won't she just end up married off to someone else's family?"

Her father was an honest, submissive man who wouldn't even let out a fart if you kicked him eight times. Had her grandmother not been fierce and formidable—even managing to borrow thirty yuan from her maternal grandmother's family—Jiang Xiaoyan wouldn't even have gathered enough for her enrollment fees.

Yet that thirty-yuan external debt remained a thorn in the side of a family that scraped a living straight out of the dirt.

The last time she went home to carry back grain, her grandfather had delivered an ultimatum to Jiang Xiaoyan:

"If you can't break into the top ten of the entire school this semester, don't go to school next year. Save that money so Huzi can retake his exams next year."

Jiang Xiaoyan had cried for an entire night, setting off with a load of grain on her back before dawn the next day.

Huzi was her younger brother. He had already spent two years repeating junior high and couldn't even pass the entrance exam for senior high. Why let him repeat indefinitely while refusing to support her, a high school student?

Was it simply because Huzi was born with a pair of legs between his legs?

Had it been two months ago, Jiang Xiaoyan wouldn't have dared to harbor any delusions about the top ten; her grades usually barely managed to scrape into the top twenty.

Yet by that time, she had already entered Li Ye's small circle, and watching her grades steadily climb gave her the confidence to keep going.

This was precisely one of the primary reasons Jiang Xiaoyan had consistently stood by Li Ye during the recent conflicts.

What Li Ye gave her, no one else could provide.

Because what he offered was the freedom to shape her own destiny.

Therefore, Jiang Xiaoyan had made up her mind this time to strictly execute Li Ye's commands. By making sure every single subject scored just slightly lower than Jin Shengli's, she should comfortably secure a spot somewhere between fifth and tenth place.

The only problem was that while she could see which questions Jin Shengli hadn't done yet, she couldn't be certain whether he was actually getting them right, leaving her heart fluttering with anxiety.

[If only I could see a little more clearly.]

Jiang Xiaoyan stretched her neck out once more, only to hear an angry rebuke ring out.

"Keep your eyes on your own paper! Let there be a next time and I will treat it as cheating."

Panicking, Jiang Xiaoyan hurriedly pulled her head back.