Chapter 1574: A Peer Review That Ended in a Brawl

Northern Sector One, Territory Three, 11:30 a. m.

Zhang San, the assistant proctor for the evolved wolves' final exam, sat by the fireplace, doing his best to empty his mind, and watched the row of brain-evolved wolves squatting on the floor beside their desks, pressing their test papers down with one front paw while slipping the other front paw into the professional pen Xia Qing had made for them, answering the exam in earnest.

The evolved Blue Star really was nothing like before. When a one-year-old human had just learned to walk, a one-year-old evolved wolf could already solve third-grade math problems…

Confirming that Old Four was stumped by the comprehensive math question Zhang Song had set and had fallen into deep thought, proctor Zhang San really wanted to take out his phone and snap a photo with the examinees.

Leaving no visual record of such a precious moment in history would be a tremendous loss to the study of Blue Star's evolutionary history.

But reason reminded him he couldn't do that, because allowing him to sit in the corner was already the limit that extremely cautious old wolf of the southern wolf pack would tolerate. If he pulled out his phone, he would very likely be kicked out of the exam hall.

"Alright, time's up, the written exam is over, everyone put your pens down."

After chief proctor Xia Qing, standing in front of the row of examinees, announced the end of the exam and noticed one examinee wasn't obeying, she gently called it out, "Tilt-head, time's up, you can't write anymore."

Tilt-head, who hadn't finished writing, flicked its ears, pretended not to hear, and kept writing.

After Old Four let out an authoritative growl, the little fellow finally put down its pen and whined softly in complaint. Seeing this, Zhang San couldn't help getting excited.

Sensing Zhang San's magnetic field fluctuating violently, Old Four immediately flashed into position to shield the four little wolves it had brought, fixing Zhang San with a pair of grey-white eyes. The southern wolf pack's little wolves instantly took their places behind Old Four, spreading into formation ready to fight.

Although Zhang San was the human who had operated on it, Old Four did not fully trust him.

Xia Qing flashed to stand in front of her idol and commanded with authority, "Brother San, you stay calm, don't overthink it. Old Four, Broken-face, Little Blackie, Tilt-head, Black-nose, you lot get back to your seats."

After the wolf pack retreated to the desks, Xia Qing saw Tilt-head wanting to write on the test paper again, so she gently comforted it, "There are too many strokes in the characters that need to be written on today's test paper. Tilt-head wants to write every character beautifully, so it's a bit slow. It's alright, you can keep writing in a bit. After you finish, if every answer is correct, I'll reward you with a green-light egg too, okay?"

Tilt-head immediately stopped whining, but Little Wolf Brother, who wrote quickly and neatly, got upset and started whining; after Xia Qing soothed Little Wolf Brother's mood, Little Wolf Sister grew impatient, turned around and whined at Broken-back Wolf, saying she wanted to return to the territory; hearing Little Wolf Sister wanted to return to the territory, Black-nose ran to Old Four again to say it wanted to go back too, this place was full of unfamiliar scents and it didn't want to stay here…

Xia Qing calmly soothed every wolf and began organizing the peer review. She paired Little Wolf Brother with Broken-face, Little Wolf Sister with Little Blackie, and Tilt-head with Black-nose, had them exchange papers, and begin marking right and wrong, scoring, then telling each other which questions they'd gotten wrong.

Once finished, every little wolf would get delicious food.

The little fellows had never played this game before, found it very interesting, and one after another slipped their paws into the pen holders, tightened the straps with their teeth, and began marking papers according to the answers on the TV screen.

Old Four of course teamed up with Broken-back Wolf; these two had the fastest learning progress, and their test papers were different from the little wolves'. Their answer key wasn't on the big TV screen, but on Xia Qing's laptop screen.

Once the peer review began, the first to voice an opinion was Broken-back Wolf.

It pointed at the paper with its pen tip and looked sternly at Old Four beside it. Old Four ignored it, still glanced up at the answer, and drew a checkmark on Broken-back Wolf's paper.

Seeing Old Four ignoring it, Broken-back Wolf looked at Xia Qing and found her bending over watching Little Blackie and Little Wolf Sister, with no time to come over and evaluate. So Broken-back Wolf turned to look at Zhang San again.

Today's adoption of this evaluation method was precisely to observe how wolves from different packs communicated new knowledge to each other, so Zhang San also pretended not to understand and sat without moving.

Broken-back Wolf thought for a few seconds, picked up its pen and wrote a standard Chinese character beneath Old Four's scrawled one, nudged Old Four to look, whined repeatedly, its tone very stern.

Old Four glanced at it, disinterestedly looked away, and kept marking the paper.

Broken-back Wolf whined unhappily in a low voice and drew x after x on Old Four's paper.

Likewise, Little Wolf Brother also disdained Broken-face's non-standard handwriting and drew x's on Broken-face's paper.

Broken-face saw it had clearly gotten the answer right, yet Little Wolf Brother had drawn an x, bared its fangs and growled; the provoked Little Wolf Brother also bared its fangs.

Seeing the two wolves about to bite each other, Xia Qing reminded them, "Little Wolf Brother, Broken-face, finish looking at the papers before you fight."

Broken-face scratched a few strokes on the paper, then flung the pen away and went to bite Little Wolf Brother.

Little Wolf Sister, whose mind had never really been on the paper in the first place, saw them fighting and instantly flung her pen away to dash over and join in.

Old Four and Broken-back Wolf both didn't interfere with the little wolves' scuffle, but Xia Qing couldn't just leave it, "Broken-face, Little Wolf Brother, you two go outside to fight, Little Wolf Sister come back and look at the paper."

Little Wolf Sister pretended not to hear and ran out after them. Black-nose and Little Blackie's attention was also drawn away by their fighting companions; they scribbled a few random strokes on their papers and ran out too.

Tilt-head also stopped looking at Black-nose's paper, pulled its own paper back, and kept writing stroke by stroke.

After finishing drawing x's on Old Four's paper, Broken-back Wolf also ran outside. Xia Qing instructed, "Broken-back, keep an eye on them, don't let them make too much noise and alert the nearby humans."

After instructing Broken-back Wolf and confirming the wolves outside were only play-fighting, Xia Qing collected the other wolves' papers and handed them to her idol, then walked over to Tilt-head, who was earnestly writing big characters, and praised, "Tilt-head, your handwriting is very standard, really great."

Tilt-head was indeed not the most brain-evolved of these six wolves, but it was the most earnest, and the most steady. Xia Qing glanced at her idol, who was rapidly flipping through the papers, and really wanted to ask him if he appreciated Tilt-head's type.

After Old Four finished looking at Broken-back Wolf's paper, calculated the score and wrote it in the box, it walked over to Tilt-head and nuzzled its head. Tilt-head cooed and acted cute twice, then nudged its own paper over beside Old Four and kept writing earnestly.

After Tilt-head also finished writing, Xia Qing quickly checked its paper, confirmed it had gotten two addition and subtraction problems wrong and written eight characters incorrectly, so she couldn't reward it with an egg. But Xia Qing didn't disappoint the little fellow either; after praising its earnest attitude toward learning, she gave it a bowl of freeze-dried food soaked in spinach juice, and the little fellow buried its head and ate very happily.

The little wolves' paper scores were marked by Zhang San: Little Wolf Brother 92, Broken-face 90, Little Blackie 90, Black-nose 78, Tilt-head 71 (the score after making up the work), Little Wolf Sister 21.

The reason Little Wolf Sister only got 21 was that it only did the arithmetic problems; the questions that required writing characters it found too troublesome and didn't do a single one.

The scores of the two students in the senior-year group:

Broken-back Wolf 100 (marked by Old Four).

Old Four had two scores: a 0 given by Broken-back Wolf, and a 100 given by Zhang San.

In this peer review, not a single wolf completed all the tasks Xia Qing had assigned, but Zhang San observed how wolves communicated with each other—assessment objective, achieved.

The practical test after the written exam couldn't be held, because the little wolves got addicted to fighting, climbed over Territory Three's wall and went into the Evolution Forest to brawl. Later on, Old Four and Broken-back Wolf also joined the fight.

Who won and who lost between those two?

Broken-back Wolf told Xia Qing it had won; Broken-face said Broken-back Wolf had hidden up a tree and wouldn't come down, so Old Four had won.