Chapter 56: Total Pervert

Around 8:10 AM, the two proctors arrived.

To everyone's surprise, they were the director of academic affairs and Mr. Luo, the head teacher of Class 206, a science-track class.

Noticing the students staring at them, Mr. Luo joked, "We are swapping tracks for proctoring today, so you all better behave. Don't let me catch any of you cheating, or your scholarships are gone."

Li Heng walked into the classroom with the rest of the students and took his seat at number 5 in the first row.

The front rows were arranged according to academic rankings, occupied in order by Xiao Feng, Song Yu, Luo Zhijie, and Mai Sui.

In Liu Li's words: Damn! It's a textbook case of the female-strong-male-weak phenomenon; girls took up three of the top five spots.

As he was getting his stationery ready, his fountain pen accidentally slipped and hit the floor tip-first. When he picked it up to inspect it, the nib was split right down the middle.

What kind of inauspicious omen was this?

Li Heng's heart ached fiercely. This pen wasn't cheap—it cost two yuan a piece. He had only bought it on a sudden impulse, gritting his teeth to follow the trend, and had to tighten his belt and live on steamed buns and salted vegetables for half a month as a result.

Sighing, he tapped Mai Sui on the back with his finger and asked her:

"Comrade Mai Sui, do you have a spare pen? Mine broke."

Mai Sui spotted the tragic-looking fountain pen on his desk at a glance and asked with a soft smile, "Didn't you bring a backup?"

Li Heng replied, "I have a ballpoint pen, but it's not great; the refill scratches the paper when writing."

Mai Sui smiled brightly, turned around, and laid all her pens out in a neat row on his desk. "I brought four. Pick whichever one feels most comfortable for you."

Her pens were of the relatively expensive kind.

Li Heng casually picked up a black fountain pen and immediately felt it was much nicer to use than his own. "This one's it. Thanks!"

Mai Sui nodded and turned back around.

Following this minor disturbance, the Chinese literature exam papers had already been distributed.

The tests were mimeographed by the school itself; the font was in running script, printed very darkly, and carried a strong scent of fresh printer's ink.

Li Heng scanned the paper quickly and was pleasantly surprised to find that his accumulated knowledge from two lifetimes was holding up quite well. He knew the poetry, the classical prose, and even the essay prompt didn't seem too difficult.

His confidence instantly surged.

Reality matched his estimates; aside from a few questions he wasn't entirely certain about, he felt great as he worked his way through. By the time he breezed through the 800-word essay, he still felt somewhat unsatisfied.

Given two and a half hours for the exam, he knocked it out in barely over a hundred minutes.

He spent about twenty minutes reviewing his work, and used the remaining half an hour to rest his head on his desk and sleep.

The paper was completely filled out anyway; making more alterations and erasures would only hurt his neatness score, so he might as well take a comfortable nap.

Mr. Luo, stationed at the front of the classroom, took in every detail of his state. He deliberately walked over, tapped the back of Li Heng's head, and woke him up:

"Li Heng, this is a scholarship exam, don't treat it like a game.

If you manage to win the grand scholarship, your mother will be able to do half a year less farmwork.

Aren't Chinese and English your weakest subjects? Pay attention! Even Xiao Feng is already meticulously reviewing her paper for the second time."

Mr. Luo had been his mathematics teacher in the first year of high school and his former head teacher as well; he had always harbored lingering resentment over Li Heng's choice to pursue the liberal arts track.

Knowing the man meant well, Li Heng raised his head, forced a smile onto his face, and went through the motions of checking his work a second time.

The half hour flashed by, and Li Heng stepped out of the classroom with the others, feeling a great sense of relief.

He muttered silently to himself that the biggest roadblock, Chinese literature, had been cleared, bringing him one step closer to his goal.

There wasn't much to discuss regarding the Chinese exam. As top students in the first testing hall, as long as they didn't leave blanks, everyone generally felt okay about it.

Besides, even a mediocre student could scribble enough nonsense to fill up a Chinese paper; massive blank spaces were practically nonexistent.

However, the mathematics test that followed was an entirely different story. The previous relaxed atmosphere vanished, replaced by a suffocating tension and dead silence.

There was simply no help for it; the problems were damnably difficult!

Perversely hard! They were practically on par with competition problems.

Even in the elite-packed first testing hall, many examinees wore expressions of masked agony.

Chen Lijun was among the first batch. At that moment, her face was flushed red from excessive tension, making her look as though she had been drinking alcohol.

Misery seemed contagious; slowly, most of the examinees began scratching their heads and pulling at their hair, their pens suspended mid-air for long stretches without touching the paper.

Zou Aiming was the same, and so was Liu Li...

Even the fiercely competitive Liu Yecang failed to escape this doom, staring blankly and foolishly at the final three major problems while an intense wave of panic washed over him! Yet he simply had no idea where to start.

Having tried numerous times without being able to solve a single one of the final three complex problems, a panicked Liu Yecang looked toward his greatest rival, Li Heng.

It would have been better if he hadn't looked; one glance and he almost spat blood in faintness!

He saw that Li Heng had been burying his head in his work, and was already leisurely tackling the second-to-last problem.

Even more terrifyingly, Li Heng's test paper was completely filled, leaving not a single blank spot.

Mr. Luo also happened to drift behind Li Heng's seat at some point, stretching his neck out to watch him solve the problems with intense concentration.

Noticing that the atmosphere throughout the classroom had grown somewhat oppressive and chaotic, Mr. Luo deliberately offered some earnest advice:

"The problems are difficult, and if you don't know how to solve them, carefully review the earlier sections and avoid being flustered.

There are certain students who have already started working on the final problem. If you don't settle your minds, you'll drop dozens of points on this single subject alone, so weigh that carefully yourselves."

"Absolute freak!"

Scarcely had Mr. Luo's voice trailed off when someone in the examination room muttered under their breath amidst the chaos.

Hearing those three words, nobody laughed; the bitterness in everyone's hearts was simply too deep for laughter.

At the same time, everyone knew who that insult was aimed at!

Because by now, all the students had stopped writing, including the four renowned academic titans, who had all ground to a halt at the second-to-last major problem.

The final major problem was indeed difficult—so difficult that even Li Heng had to rack his brains for a full ten minutes before finding the proper thread to begin writing.

Watching him sketch on his scratch paper and lay out his formulas, Mr. Luo, who taught mathematics himself, felt a wave of relief wash over him.

Once the correct direction was found, the rest was easy. In less than five minutes, Li Heng had filled in the final major problem as well.

The answer was $pm 2$.

Seeing the $pm$ sign, Mr. Luo frowned slightly, but kept silent and walked away toward the front of the classroom.

Simultaneously, he called out loudly, "There are only 20 minutes left. Everyone check your student ID numbers, names, classes, and seat numbers. Make sure nothing is left blank or filled out incorrectly."

Having finished verifying his ID and name, Li Heng spent twenty minutes carefully reviewing all the problems, screwed the cap back onto his pen, and stretched lazily.

"Clang, clang, clang... clang, clang, clang..."

As the old, final exam bell rang, Li Heng stood up and, urged on by the proctors, followed the crowd toward the classroom door.

Just as he was about to reach the exit, Mr. Luo suddenly said to him, "Li Heng, for a top student, you still managed to mess up the final step of the answer."

Li Heng paused in surprise. "Which problem?"

Mr. Luo replied, "It was obviously just a 2, why did you calculate it as plus or minus 2?"

Li Heng quickly filtered the final major problem through his memory, then let out a yawn and said, "Teacher, if the answer is supposed to be 2, you'll have to take it up with the teacher who wrote the test—they left out a necessary given condition."

Seeing Li Heng step out of the classroom, Mr. Luo immediately retrieved his test paper and began checking it right there over the desk.

After collecting the papers, the director of academic affairs asked, "Old Luo, didn't you guys make this test a bit too hard? I noticed the last two problems were left blank on many papers."

"No, this kid finished them."

"Li Heng? Roughly what score do you think he'll get?"

Mr. Luo didn't answer immediately. After thoroughly double-checking the final problem, he slapped his forehead and said, "He actually did miss a limiting condition. I was carving the wax stencil until the middle of the night the night before last and was too exhausted to notice."

The director leaned over. "So his answer was correct?"

"Hmph, let's just chalk it up to beginner's luck."

With that, Mr. Luo said with lingering reluctance, "He really shouldn't have chosen the liberal arts track. If he were in sciences, he might have had a shot at Tsinghua or Peking University."

The director shook his head. "Hard to say; Li Heng's Chinese and English are still a bit lacking."