Chapter 40: The Hardest College Entrance Exam in History

"Listen up, everyone. Pay attention. This problem is a very basic series-parallel circuit question. It’s an easy one, but you must be careful; carelessness is a common affliction among science students.

You spend ages grinding away at difficult problems, and it’s one thing to get those wrong, but to miss a question like this? Isn't that a crying shame?

The college entrance exam is about your total score. Every point carries the same weight. Don't think you're impressive just because you solved a hard problem—people only care about your final score, not whether you mastered the difficult ones!

You have two hours in the exam hall. Check your work carefully. Try your best to avoid the extra-credit questions; they don't count toward your total score anyway. You’re better off using that time to double-check your answers than wasting it on those!"

Xu Wenhua held a table leg, using it to point at a diagram drawn on the blackboard. The wooden leg struck the board with a sharp *thwack, thwack, thwack!* The students in the class listened with great intensity.

Halfway through reviewing the test paper, the bell rang. Xu Wenhua finished going over the multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank sections before finally dismissing the class.

Yang Xingwu looked at the new test paper, flipping through it to get a sense of what physics exams were like in this era. Some questions were simple—basic series-parallel circuits, drawing connection diagrams, or sketching ammeters, voltmeters, switches, and resistors. This was all junior high school material!

However, some things were quite absurd. For instance, nuclear reaction formulas—he hadn't even heard of this in high school, and they required balancing equations. Wasn't that a chemistry topic? He took advantage of the ten-minute break to knock out two small problems.

Before long, the bell rang, and class resumed. With the college entrance exam approaching, most recent review sessions were focused on plugging gaps in knowledge. Teachers were writing their own questions, printing tests, and lecturing—a routine playing out across the entire grade level.

During the break, Yang Xingwu ran to the teachers' office to collect the practice papers from the past month for every subject. The busy schedule of studying continued until the evening bell finally signaled the end of the day.

After dinner, Yang Xingwu took a stroll around the campus to clear his head before heading back to the classroom to tackle more problems. Looking at the shoulder-high stack of books and the mountain of test papers on his desk, he felt as if he had returned to the days of endless drills. As a "small-town test-taker," how could he survive without drilling?

He placed his enamel mug on the windowsill and pulled out a biology paper to warm up. After all, it’s best to start with the easy tasks! He finished the paper and checked his answers against the key. Not bad—he’d scored over forty points, so he hadn't embarrassed the original owner of his body. Genetics was a key focus in biology and appeared on the exam every year. There were no truly difficult problems in biology, just questions designed to be wordy, convoluted, and filled with traps to confuse and filter out candidates.

Just as Yang Xingwu was lost in the joy of solving problems, he felt someone poke him.

He looked up to see Liu Jianjun watching him.

"Jianjun, what’s up?"

"Are you busy? I have a question for you!"

"Not busy. What is it? Let me take a look—though I can't guarantee I'll know it!"

"It’s not hard for you. If you don't know it, then probably no one in the class will!"

Liu Jianjun produced his math paper and pointed to the second-to-last question. "It’s this one. I’ve been calculating for ages, but I can't seem to get it right. Can you help me?"

Yang Xingwu took the paper. It was a classic hyperbola problem—somewhat difficult and involving indeterminate points. There were three parts: the first was simple, asking for a coordinate, and carried the least points; the second was moderately difficult; the third was a "moving target" problem, involving dynamic points common in the entrance exams. It was complex, typically combining functional equations with hyperbolas and various optimization problems.

Yang Xingwu studied it for a long time while Liu Jianjun pulled up a stool and waited patiently.

"Which part are you asking about? I see you solved the first one!"

"The second part. The math teacher said we should try to get it, but I haven't been able to solve it after trying for so long."

Upon hearing this, Yang Xingwu thought for a moment, then pulled out a sheet of scratch paper and began to calculate. Watching Yang Xingwu’s fluid sketching and problem-solving, Liu Jianjun recalled their conversation at the staff quarters and nodded—he was as brilliant as ever.

"Look here, use this coordinate system and mark the coordinates from the first part..."

"Oh, I see! I didn't think it would be that simple. Xingwu, you're amazing! Do you know how to do the third part?"

"No, ask the math teacher tomorrow!"

Liu Jianjun didn't suspect a thing and immediately took his paper and left. Yang Xingwu picked up his ballpoint pen and began writing and drawing again. A few minutes later, he arrived at the result.

"Not bad. My fundamentals haven't rusted."

For a man who was a math teacher himself, this was merely basic training. He had only claimed not to know the third part to maintain the original owner's persona of being an eighty-point student. Lost in thought, he unconsciously spun his pen, but because his technique was poor, it dropped to the floor with a clatter.

Yang Xingwu startled and quickly crouched to pick it up. Suddenly, a flash of inspiration struck him.

1984? 2003?

Two generations, the same hurdle!

"Hiss," he thought, the heavens had really looked out for him! This was incredible. As a high school math teacher, even though he hadn't led many graduating classes, he had studied the history of entrance exam policies and classic problem types extensively.

Looking back at the forty-plus years of the college entrance exam since its resumption, the 1984 exam was known as the most difficult in history. The reason? The math portion that year had left countless candidates in ruins. Every single problem was essentially an Olympiad-level question, leaving many students traumatized. The national average score for math that year was a mere 26 out of 120. In the capital, the average was only 17, while in Jiangsu Province, it reached 32—though, naturally, the highest score in the country also came from that province.

The consequence was a public rebuke from an authoritative academic journal. After that year, the exam-setting committee went quiet for 19 years, only to strike again in 2003, delivering another crushing blow to students. Many parents had fallen in the 1984 exam, and their children had fallen in 2003—two generations stumbling in the same spot!

The admission cut-off scores that year were incredibly low; 560 points were enough to get into top-tier schools like Peking University or Tsinghua University.

Yang Xingwu knew this because he was a math teacher. Normally, one only needed to study the previous five years of exams, but because those two years were so unique, his colleagues often joked about whether three generations would end up falling in the same place.

Thinking of this, Yang Xingwu grew excited. He no longer worried about being replaced by an impostor. In the face of the "hardest exam in history," if he showed up with a perfect score in math, anyone who tried to touch his spot would be finished. After all, given the scrutiny from authoritative media, if someone scored a perfect 100, the exam committee would be forced to declare that their questions were fine. If students failed, it was because their level wasn't high enough—why could someone else get a perfect score while you only got a dozen points?

With this, Yang Xingwu could provide himself with the strongest possible insurance. This year’s entrance exam was his best opportunity to enter a top university!