002 Begin Demonization
The experience bar faded away, leaving Li Zheng bewildered.
He rubbed his eyes.
Had he been studying too hard, and his brain was malfunctioning?
Maybe he should go to the hospital for a checkup.
"Ahem."
A light cough broke Li Zheng's reverie.
Lin Yujing puffed her cheeks, jabbed her pen at her test paper, and said, "Mm."
Li Zheng sighed lightly.
An encounter between experts was an opportunity not to be missed.
He decided to finish the test first, then go to the hospital.
He picked up his pen, stretching his fingers on both sides.
The pen cap dropped onto the desk, the pen tip emerged.
He looked at Lin Yujing and nodded solemnly.
Lin Yujing's lips curled slightly as she tightened her ponytail and turned back to her test.
Li Zheng glanced at the wall clock.
It was 4:15 p.m.
The standard exam time was 120 minutes. If the difficulty was moderate, he would finish in 80 minutes and use the remaining time to check his answers.
Lin Yujing, however, usually finished in about 50 minutes, disappearing like a cat and reappearing at the next exam, as if she could scent the opening of a can.
The time she left behind was Li Zheng's only chance to win.
He had to be absolutely meticulous, recalculating multiple times to fight for that slim opportunity.
Li Zheng immersed himself in the exam, clearing all distractions from his mind.
Only one thought flashed through his mind—
Bring on the questions!
A series of multiple-choice questions of varying lengths immediately came into view.
The elegant question stems quickly diluted his surprise at the system binding.
In just a moment, he had entered the problem-solving state, his mind extraordinarily clear.
He even found himself reading the next question while writing the answer to the current one.
This test paper was handwritten and photocopied, Hu Chunmei's impromptu handiwork.
Its difficulty was slightly easier than the monthly exam, and more than 70% of the questions were similar to those in the monthly exam.
Interestingly, Teacher Hu had been analyzing the monthly exam paper throughout the entire class earlier.
So, as long as they listened carefully, even students who usually scored over 80 could easily score over 100 on this paper.
It seemed that Teacher Hu wasn't trying to make things difficult for everyone by leaving them to do this test; she just wanted to consolidate their knowledge.
And perhaps to encourage those who paid attention in class but didn't perform well in exams.
Although Teacher Hu's words were sometimes inappropriate, she never skimped on doing things that benefited the students.
As the difficulty of the questions increased sharply, Li Zheng gradually entered a state of forgetting himself.
Exams passed as swiftly as fleeting moments.
Immersed in the sea of questions, time always flew by quickly.
Unknowingly, Li Zheng had finished answering.
But he didn't feel the usual fatigue that came after a big exam.
Instead, his hands were itching like crazy.
He even felt a bit unsatisfied.
Those charming equations had just started to tantalize him, yet he already had to put the pen down.
Frustrating.
Unsatisfying.
Agonizing.
Even more agonizing was that there were three questions he didn't know how to do at all.
By this calculation, he could score at most 130 points.
That was the limit for ordinary people.
After 120 points, every extra point was exponentially harder to earn.
It was hard to imagine what realm Lin Yujing lived in.
By now, she had probably already finished, he thought.
He couldn't help but glance at Lin Yujing.
Lin Yujing's profile was flushed, light sweat seeping through her clothes.
Sometimes the pen tip flowed, sometimes she bit her lip in light worry.
Li Zheng had never seen her so engrossed.
She was even sweating.
From a distance, he could even sense the rise and fall of her breathing.
A woman engrossed in studying was sexier than he had imagined.
Stop, focus shifted.
Don't think too much while studying.
Quick, stabilize your mindset.
"A true scholar says, learning cannot cease."
"Blue, taken from indigo..."
"..."
After reciting "Exhortation to Study" twice in his mind, Li Zheng barely managed to stabilize himself.
Lin Yujing couldn't be slower than him on answering questions.
She must have finished long ago and was now verifying her answers.
Thinking of this, Li Zheng sighed.
Now, his only chance to win was gone. She wouldn't make even the slightest mistake.
No one could surpass a verfication-focused Lin Yujing.
She had killed the final suspense of the competition.
Li Zheng glanced at the wall clock.
It was already 4:23 p.m.
He had spent a full eight minutes on this set of questions.
Eight minutes...
Eight minutes?
Even copying couldn't be this fast, could it?
Li Zheng couldn't help but sneak a look around at his classmates.
Most of them were focused on the top left corner of their test papers, the multiple-choice section.
Liu Xin, it seemed, had drool running down to the calculation questions.
Then he looked back at Lin Yujing.
It was a bit far; he had to put in some effort.
He stared at her.
Hmm, she was working on the bottom left section, the fill-in-the-blank questions.
Maybe because he stared too hard, Lin Yujing suddenly arched her back and warily turned her head.
She saw Li Zheng's round, bloodshot eyes.
"Hehehe..." she sneered disdainfully.
Then she turned back around, covering her paper completely, not letting Li Zheng catch even a glimpse.
Li Zheng clearly saw the contempt in her eyes for cheaters.
Lin Yujing didn't realize that this glance had touched a man's most sensitive nerve.
Being seen as a cheater was the greatest insult to Li Zheng and a total denial of his integrity.
He was furious.
A sincere person with ambition.
He was just looking to see how far she'd gotten, who needed her answers?
Damn it...
Just this once.
He wanted to win.
Whatever, hurry up and check.
Two minutes later.
He finished checking and corrected one mistake.
Check again.
This time it took him less than a minute, and he found no mistakes.
As for those three difficult questions, he still had no clue.
At this moment, Li Zheng only cared about winning or losing and had no interest in figuring out why he was so fast.
At the current level, he should be able to secure 130 points.
But Lin Yujing was aiming for 150 this time.
Thinking of her victorious face mocking him as a cheater, Li Zheng felt nauseous.
He focused all his energy on solving those three difficult problems.
In less than two minutes, he had filled the scratch paper with notes.
Yet, thinking without learning leads to peril.
He hadn't thoroughly understood the key points, and trying to solve the problems blindly would only lead him further astray.
Looking at the messy scratch paper, Li Zheng realized those 20 points couldn't be earned solely by last-minute effort.
Was this the unbridgeable gap between ordinary people and geniuses?
Li Zheng refused to accept it.
Whoosh!
He suddenly raised his hand.
Teacher Hu, who was preparing lesson plans at the podium, was startled by the sudden motion.
She looked at the eager Li Zheng and quickly waved her hand: "Go ahead, don't forget to bring paper."
Li Zheng, however, asked, "Teacher Hu, I have some questions I don't know how to solve. May I open my book to check?"
"Of course," Teacher Hu nodded. "The same goes for the rest of you. If you can't solve a problem, you can look up formulas or your homework. The key is to grasp the concept. But don't expect to find the answers; these questions were made up on the spot."
With permission granted, Li Zheng quickly opened his math textbook.
All the key points were in the textbook.
If he still didn't understand something, it meant he hadn't thoroughly digested the material.
All the questions he couldn't solve were geometry problems.
More specifically, relations between lines and planes, and circles and equations.
Li Zheng calmed himself down, diligently, and methodically delved into the geometry section.
He didn't skip a single formula or example.
Additionally, he reviewed all the related workbooks and study aids.
This was much more mentally taxing than solving the test, taking him more than 20 minutes.
When he put down the last workbook, he felt like the whole world was composed of geometric shapes.
As for those three questions.
They seemed like a joke now.
In fact, while he was studying, those questions were always on his mind.
Every key point, he'd mentally apply it to those questions.
By now, he had come up with three or four solutions.
Regarding geometry, which used to be his weak point, he had never felt this clear-headed.
Now, this was what learning really was!
In just one minute, he confidently wrote down the steps for solving the three difficult problems.
After verifying, he put down his pen.
What a relief!
Li Zheng felt a breakthrough, a liberation.
The joy of learning had occurred occasionally before, but it was fleeting and hard to capture.
But today, his thoughts surged like a tsunami, washing away all the previously rigid knowledge points.
Unknowingly, he felt as if he was standing on the crest of the waves.
Was there an end to learning?
He didn't know.
He would understand after crossing it once.
Li Zheng picked up his test paper and laughed heartily.
"Hahaha!"
He forgot he was still in the classroom.
His classmates stared at him, feeling like Li Zheng showed signs of demonization.