Chapter 56: Dead Pervert

Around 8:10, the two invigilators arrived.

They turned out to be the vice-principal and Mr. Luo, homeroom teacher of Science Class 206.

Seeing everyone staring at him, Mr. Luo joked, “If we’re swapping arts and science invigilation duties, you’d better follow the rules—don’t let me catch you cheating, or your scholarship’s gone.”

Li Heng followed the others into the classroom and took seat number five in the first row.

The seats in front were ranked by academic performance: Xiao Feng, Song Yu, Luo Zhijie, and Mai Sui.

According to Liu Li: Fuck! Typical yin overpowering yang—three of the top five are girls.

While preparing exam tools, his fountain pen slipped straight to the floor; when he picked it up, the nib was split open.

What kind of bad omen is this?

Li Heng was heartbroken—this pen wasn’t cheap; it cost two yuan each. He’d bought it on a whim, sacrificing meals for half a month just to afford it—eating nothing but buns and pickled vegetables.

He sighed, tapped the back of Mai Sui’s seat with his finger, and asked:

“Mai Sui, got an extra pen? Mine’s broken.”

Mai Sui immediately spotted his ruined fountain pen and asked softly, “Don’t you have a spare?”

Li Heng said, “I’ve got a ballpoint, but it’s useless—the ink smears the paper.”

Mai Sui smiled sweetly, turned around, and laid out all her pens in a row on the desk. “I brought four—pick whichever feels best.”

Her pens were expensive.

Even the plain black one Li Heng grabbed felt far superior to his own. “This one’s fine, thanks!”

Mai Sui nodded and turned back around.

By then, the first exam paper—Chinese—had already been distributed.

The test was printed by the school, written in cursive script, dark and heavy with thick ink smell.

Li Heng scanned the paper quickly and was pleased to find his accumulated knowledge from two lifetimes still held up—he knew poetry and prose, classical Chinese, and the essay didn’t seem hard at all.

He felt confident now.

As expected, aside from a few uncertain questions, he worked smoothly through the rest; when he finished the 800-word essay, he still felt like writing more.

He completed the entire two-and-a-half-hour exam in just over a hundred minutes.

He spent twenty minutes checking, then spent the remaining half-hour lying on his desk asleep.

The paper was already full; further scribbling would only hurt his presentation score. Better to sleep than stress.

Mr. Luo, at the front of the room, noticed his state, walked over, and tapped his head to wake him:

“Li Heng, this is a scholarship exam—don’t treat it like a joke.

If you win the top prize, your mother can cut six months of farm work.

Your Chinese and English are your weakest subjects—pay attention! Even Xiao Feng is checking her paper for the second time.”

Mr. Luo had been Li Heng’s math teacher and homeroom teacher in first year, and still resented his choice to study arts.

Knowing the man meant well, Li Heng lifted his head, forced a smile, and began pretending to check his answers again.

Half an hour passed in a flash; Li Heng exhaled in relief as he followed the others out of the classroom.

He silently thought: the biggest obstacle—Chinese—was behind him; he was one step closer to his goal.

There was nothing to discuss about Chinese; as a top student in the first exam hall, as long as no question was left blank, the feeling was generally okay.

Besides, even weak students could scribble enough to fill the paper—no one left much empty space.

But the upcoming math exam was entirely different. The relaxed atmosphere vanished, replaced by suffocating tension, absolute silence.

There was no way around it—the questions were fucking hard!

Insanely hard—like competition-level problems.

Even in the first exam hall, packed with top students, many wore expressions of agony.

Chen Lijun was among the first. Her face flushed red from tension, as if she’d drunk too much wine.

Pain seemed contagious; slowly, most students began scratching their heads, pencils hovering in midair, frozen for long minutes.

Zou Ai Ming was the same; Liu Li too…

Even fiercely competitive Liu Yejiang couldn’t escape misfortune—he stared blankly at the last three big questions, frantic but utterly stuck.

After trying repeatedly and failing all three, Liu Yejiang nervously glanced at his biggest rival: Li Heng.

He shouldn’t have looked.

Li Heng was still focused on his paper, already halfway through the second-to-last question.

Worse—his entire paper was filled, not a single blank space left.

Mr. Luo had somehow slipped behind Li Heng’s seat, leaning over to watch him solve the problem.

Seeing the room’s oppressive, chaotic atmosphere, Mr. Luo spoke solemnly:

“The questions are hard—if you can’t solve them, carefully review your earlier answers. Don’t panic.

Some students are already on the final question—if you don’t calm down, you’ll lose dozens of points on this subject alone. Think carefully.”

“Dead pervert!”

As Mr. Luo finished speaking, someone in the exam hall muttered those three words amid the chaos.

No one laughed. Everyone was too miserable to smile.

But everyone knew exactly who they were cursing.

Because every student had stopped writing—including the four famous top scholars—all stuck on the second-to-last big question.

The final question was truly difficult—even Li Heng had spent ten full minutes thinking before finding the right path to begin.

Watching him sketch, calculate, even Mr. Luo, a math teacher himself, let out a quiet breath of relief.

Once the direction was clear, it took less than five minutes for Li Heng to fill the entire final question.

The answer was ±2.

Seeing the ±, Mr. Luo frowned but said nothing, then slowly stepped away toward the front of the room.

He called out loudly: “Twenty minutes left—check your student ID, name, class, and seat number. Don’t miss or miswrite anything.”

After verifying his ID and name, Li Heng spent the remaining twenty minutes carefully reviewing every question. Finally, he capped his pen and stretched out comfortably.

“Ding dong… ding dong…”

As the old final bell rang, Li Heng stood up and, under the invigilators’ urging, followed the others toward the classroom door.

Just before reaching the exit, Mr. Luo suddenly said: “Li Heng, you’re supposed to be a top student—how did you mess up the final answer?”

Li Heng paused. “Which question?”

Mr. Luo said, “It’s clearly 2. Why did you write ±2?”

Li Heng quickly reviewed the final question in his mind, then yawned: “Teacher, if the answer is 2, you need to talk to the person who wrote this question—they left out a given condition.”

Watching Li Heng leave the room, Mr. Luo immediately retrieved his test paper and began checking it on the desk.

After collecting all papers, the vice-principal said: “Luo, you guys made this exam way too hard—I saw the last two questions completely blank.”

“No, this kid finished them.”

“Li Heng? How many points do you think he got?”

Mr. Luo didn’t answer. After carefully checking the final question twice, he slapped his forehead: “Damn, we missed a constraint condition. I was up all night carving the wax paper—too tired to notice.”

The vice-principal leaned over. “So his answer’s correct?”

“Yeah. He got lucky.”

Mr. Luo sighed, still bitter: “He shouldn’t have chosen arts. If he’d gone science, he might’ve had a shot at Tsinghua or Peking University.”

The vice-principal shook his head: “Still unlikely—his Chinese and English are still weak.”

…

(End of Chapter)