However, the task description required both. If he ranked 101st and made the Honor Roll, he probably would not be able to complete the task at all.
He might even improve too much this time. If he ranked 100th next time, he would not be able to make the Improvement Ranking instead.
If that happened, there was still a way to handle it. If he failed to make the top hundred, he could just tell Xue Jian that he was dissatisfied with his score and did not want to make the Improvement Ranking like this. He could ask him to remove his name from the list and wait until he made the top hundred before putting him on it.
When the time came, he could simply stretch out the time span shown for his improvement.
Xue Jian probably would not refuse.
If he did, Lin Li would give Xue Jian a Merit Banner, modeled after the photo Xue Jian had shown him back then. Xue Jian would definitely panic.
With that settled, the only question left was how exactly he was supposed to break into the top hundred.
What position would be most suitable?
For someone like him, who had consistently ranked in the four hundreds, suddenly breaking into the top hundred would have been nearly impossible for the old Lin Li, both in theory and in practice.
The top hundred was basically occupied by students in the Olympiad classes recruited in advance, as well as little internal geniuses like Chen Yuying from each Parallel Class. It was entirely possible for someone to rank first in their class yet only place twentieth or thirtieth in the grade.
The top students in his class already had very good grades among the Parallel Classes, but in last semester's final exams, there had