"Trying to hide it only makes it more obvious—no, that's a derogatory phrase. Anyway, they were way too unprofessional." Song He said.
"Exactly. If they'd grouped similar questions together, honestly, you wouldn't have noticed anything. But they deliberately scattered one type of question at fixed intervals, spreading them out evenly." Xiang Xiaotong smiled. "The moment I pointed it out, the examiner's expression changed. He probably thought I was young but smart enough, so he let me go back and take the test."
"You got a perfect score?" Song He guessed casually.
"No, I only barely passed. I was still young back then, so I wasn't that amazing." Xiang Xiaotong said, "So I stayed at the Military Scientific Research Base during summer vacation and worked with them on the programs for Photoelectric Drones. They provided room and board and paid me a base salary of sixty thousand yuan for the summer. Then I made some genuinely useful minor improvements and received another one hundred sixty thousand yuan in bonuses. I earned two hundred twenty thousand yuan in less than two months. That was the first pot of gold in my life."
"Oh, right. You've been to the place where I worked too. It was Ruoqiang Base." Xiang Xiaotong said, "The place where you developed Explosives Diatom. I even met You Deyi there and had a brief interaction with him."
"Oh?" Song He was curious. "You Deyi worked on drones too?"
"No. He was working on Explosives at the time. He heard that a middle-school girl had been accepted and came looking for me with the intention of taking me as a student. He gave me a short test he'd written by hand, then conducted a simple interview during lunch in the cafeteria." Xiang Xiaotong smiled. "In the end, he decided not