g returned to technical talk.Su Can thought he had just arrived here, but out loud said, "I’m afraid if I show everything at once it would make you guys look bad, so I temporarily concealed my strengt...Chapter Nineteen: Slash Through as Easily as Cutting Melons and Cabbages
In the afternoon, it was Chinese language class. Su Cun slashed through his way to the essay topic, correcting pinyin along the way. The reading comprehension for the 1998 middle school entrance exam was Zhu Ziqing's "Spring," with themes of "anticipating spring," "welcoming spring," and "depicting spring." Reading it gave Su Cun a sense of enjoyment, but the questions themselves were rather shallow and easy to answer.
The essay prompt was somewhat unique: "Give Me One Day's Time." The mere 600-character limit made Su Cun feel as though he was being teased. Compared to the thousands or tens of thousands of words required for reports in his later life, the word count demanded here seemed like a light tickle.
Su Cun believed that his writing maturity might surpass those of his peers, but facing such a topic, what exactly should he write Having grown accustomed to verbose compositions in his later years, truthfully speaking, it was somewhat challenging to be required to write something concise within 600 characters.
Su Cun had an idea and retrieved many fragments and scenes from the memory database in his mind. Picking up a pen, he hesitated again. Would writing this way have any impact on the present path Nevertheless, there seemed to be no other choice; Su Cun finally picked up his fountain pen and began scribbling on the test paper.
This time around, Su Cun handed in his exam rather late, nearly an hour and forty minutes into the exam. He turned in his paper right before the last twenty-minute bell rang. When he submitted it, the proctor Xiao Rihua couldn't help but look at him twice. Seeing how quickly the boy had finished his math test this morning, he now took more than usual to turn in his Chinese language paper, submitting it almost as soon as Shen Lu did. However, many students began turning in their exams after that, so Xiao Rihua didn’t open Su Cun's試卷檢視他究竟答得如何。不過看他寫語文這番架勢，彷彿憋著大便一樣寫出一篇六百字的文章，估計也是一個德智體美勞並不優秀的傢夥。
When Su Cun left the examination room, he naturally did not know what Xiao Rihua was thinking. He was still pondering whether his essay was right or wrong.
The first day of exams passed quickly. Adhering to everyone's principle of not discussing answers and reviewing problems after the exam, Su Cun turned on the news broadcast when he got home, even watching some local Shanghai news. Today’s focus in Shanghai news was their middle school entrance examination, filming parents eagerly waiting outside school gates, a sight quite impressive.
His parents didn’t disturb the quiet Su Cun who was watching the news. To them, his recent performance was highly surprising; he watched the news broadcast attentively, nothing like the son interested in Hong Kong and Taiwanese kung fu shows. This unfamiliarity felt surreal to Su Cun's parents but also strangely heartwarming.
Su Cen's heart was in turmoil. In 1998, the Yangtze River, which is the largest river of the People's Republic of China, experienced severe flooding due to natural causes, causing major flood damage along its banks. This was the second significant flood disaster since the founding of New China, with the first one occurring over forty years ago. However, this disaster caused even more severe economic losses than before.
From his memory, Xiahai City wasn't directly affected by this because it didn't lie within the Yangtze River basin. Nevertheless, continuous heavy rain and breaches in upstream riverbanks led to water accumulation half a meter deep in some low-lying areas of the city. This caused considerable property damage to the residents of Xiahai City, submerging several commercial street ground-floor shops and an equipment room. It was rumored that for three days during this period, all communication networks throughout the entire city were cut off.
These incidents didn't have much impact on Su Cen at the time, but one night when he walked home with his parents through a flooded district, where water reached up to half his waist, left him with an unforgettable memory. This incident occurred around late 1998.
The current news broadcast reported widespread rainfall in the Yangtze River basin for June, with some experts expressing concerns. The experts of this era were quite different from pseudo-experts of Su Cen's future time; most had genuine expertise and appeared modestly dressed on TV, clearly academics. Therefore, these heavy rains in June garnered attention from several experts.
Su Cen didn't know the exact timing when the flood would occur, but there were no disaster reports so far, indicating that it hadn't yet happened. He certainly couldn't announce such a catastrophic event; people would only think he was insane if he did.
Whether this impending disaster could be prevented now depended on whether his essay received confirmation of its validity.
The next day's exam began with English in the morning and continued with physics and chemistry in the afternoon.
The recorded dialogue for the oral section was heavily colloquial, which might pose a challenge to everyone. However, for Su Cen, it was almost like listening to something he already understood. This wasn't because his grasp of English was exceptionally good—after all, even in his future time, he hadn't passed the CET-4 exam at a third-tier university; however, his level of CET-3 proficiency sufficed for basic exchanges such as greeting people or asking directions on a bus.
Reading comprehension and writing an essay welcoming foreign friends to visit Xiahai City were not difficult for him either.
As he went on, Su Cen became increasingly proficient. The bespectacled girl beside him got up, revealing her graceful figure, and left without looking back; Su Cen followed after her to hand in his test paper. When they walked out of the examination hall, the square was even quieter than before—only those who were strong would dare to leave at this time.
Afternoon: Comprehensive Science Test.
For Su Cen, who could handle internal practice exercises with ease, these questions, though full of traps, did not hinder his ability to identify and address gaps in his knowledge. By the time the bell rang for him to hand in his paper after half an hour, he was still tackling the last question.
Three minutes later, he finished answering all the questions, filled out the optical mark recognition card, did a quick check, and was done with everything.
The exam had been going on for exactly forty minutes.
No one else had handed in their papers yet.
Su Cen found himself bored stiff. He didn't want to sit around for another forty minutes or so, and thus he put away his pencil and eraser, packed up all the stationery into a bag, and suddenly stood up.
The bespectacled girl who was working on the chemistry questions next to him turned her head to look at him.
Xiao Rihua, whose dozing off had been caused by the oppressive atmosphere in the room, looked at Su Cen blankly.
The students from the First High School who were among the top performers in this exam room couldn't help but look at Su Cen with astonishment. The difficulty level of this test was quite high, but they didn’t find it impossible to complete within forty minutes; however, did he really finish all the questions that quickly!
When leaving the examination room, Su Cen finally understood what "complete silence" felt like.
In every classroom were full of test-takers who were frantically writing for their future. On the surface, everything seemed calm and quiet; however, in reality, it was a fiercely competitive environment.
But all this seemed to have nothing to do with him. Su Cen went through the corridor towards the stairs and left. As he passed by an exam room, two people inside looked at him in disbelief. One of them was Dong Qingyun, the vice-class monitor from Third High School, who couldn’t figure out how Su Cen could finish his test so early. Did he give up
The other person was Tang Wu. Watching Su Cen walk along the corridor and disappear past a window, her thoughts were similar to Dong Qingyun's, leaving her somewhat disappointed as she returned to writing.
For the last half day, it was a combined test of liberal arts subjects: history and politics — areas where Su Cen wasn’t particularly strong.
When entering the exam room, everyone looked at Su Cen with odd expressions. Twenty minutes after he submitted his papers yesterday, someone else finally finished their paper; however, this person was still the top student from First High School in that examination room, in Xiao Rihua’s eyes, Su Cen seemed to be a hopeless underachiever who had given up on himself. After all, even the top-notch students from Tsinghua and Peking Universities didn’t dare to act so casually.
As expected, when it came to politics and history, Su Cen was still one of the first ones to submit his papers. Xiao Rihua couldn't help but glance at Su Cen’s answers; they were unevenly distributed and sparsely filled out compared to those of the top students. Many questions had fewer answers than usual, leading him to let out a slight snort, further confirming his suspicions that Third High School was only this level.!Moreover, this was the first time Chen Lingshan had ever decided to say such words to a man. Yet, this guy seemed oblivious to her intentions, making her feel resentful.Thinking about Su Cen's coldne...