Zhao Xiaobai's Invitation

Under the shocked gazes of his classmates, Chen Zhao stood up, handed in his paper, and walked out of the exam hall.

So refreshing!

Finished in half an hour, with an hour and a half left to play!

Chen Zhao walked deliberately slowly, casting a casual glance into the other exam halls as he passed. All the students were still hunched over their narrow desks, their faces flushed red from the pressure of the test papers. Seeing Chen Zhao walk past the window in his school uniform, many students were stunned, confused by the situation. Most of them didn't even consider that Chen Zhao had finished early; after all, it was only thirty minutes in, and most people hadn't even finished the multiple-choice questions yet!

Chen Zhao couldn't return to his classroom, as people were still taking exams inside. Thinking about it, he had the Chinese exam in the afternoon, and his essay writing was still quite poor. Chen Zhao headed to the school reading room, intending to borrow a couple of essay collections to look over.

The middle-aged woman in charge of the reading room was snoring at the desk by the entrance. Chen Zhao didn't disturb her, slipping inside silently. He found a copy of "One Hundred Perfect Scores for the College Entrance Exam" on the shelf and sat down at a small table by the window to start reading.

Chen Zhao now possessed a super-strong memory; anything he read carefully once was etched into his mind as if carved by a knife, impossible to forget in the short term.

This essay book looked good, and Chen Zhao began to read it in detail.

One essay.

Two essays.

Five essays.

Ten essays.

An hour passed, and he had finished the entire book, storing every bit of it perfectly in his mind. Chen Zhao felt he should be able to handle the Chinese exam in the afternoon. The perfect-score essays in this book covered a very wide range, and many themes could be adapted. For instance, if the book had an essay on the theme of "labor," and the exam asked for a theme of "diligence," he could just make a few minor adjustments. Even if the essay topic in the afternoon was too obscure, he could still pick good sentences and paragraphs from what he had memorized to fill the word count to a thousand, and the score likely wouldn't be too low.

After all, for a subject like Chinese, one couldn't aim for a perfect score. Out of one hundred and fifty points, Chen Zhao felt that scoring one hundred and thirty or forty would be barely acceptable. He would continue to study Chinese after the exam and talk about perfect scores during the joint mock exams and the actual college entrance exam.

After finishing the essay book, there was still half an hour left before the exam ended.

Chen Zhao felt a bit tired, so he got up and headed to the small lake on campus, wanting to take a walk and relax.

Just as he reached the lakeside, Chen Zhao realized he wasn't the only one there.

A figure in a long white dress was squatting by the emerald green water, a ponytail swaying, her features delicate and pretty, her entire form bathed in the sunlight filtering through the willow trees.

The back view looked very familiar. Chen Zhao walked over and discovered it was none other than the school's second-ranked student, Zhao Xiaobai.

"Oh, why are you out? Finished the exam?" Zhao Xiaobai looked up at Chen Zhao, somewhat surprised.

"Finished," Chen Zhao nodded. "What are you doing?"

"Feeding the turtles," Zhao Xiaobai said, continuing to look down at the lake water.

She was indeed feeding the turtles, holding a two-yuan small bread roll from the school canteen, tearing it into tiny pieces and tossing them into the water. Several palm-sized turtles were floating on the surface, stretching their necks to bite at the breadcrumbs.

"Why feed the turtles? Are you fattening them up to make soup later?" Chen Zhao asked. "I know hen and turtle soup is delicious."

Zhao Xiaobai suddenly stood up and stomped hard on Chen Zhao's foot.

Chen Zhao let out a howl of pain.

"It's not for turtle soup! I'm just feeding them!" Zhao Xiaobai was furious. She treated these little turtles like treasures; to think someone would want to catch them for soup? Simply abominable!

"I was just saying! The little turtles are so cute, I definitely wouldn't make soup out of them!" Chen Zhao quickly conceded.

Zhao Xiaobai squatted back down and continued tearing up the bread to feed the turtles.

Chen Zhao felt that feeding turtles was too boring. Although Zhao Xiaobai was beautiful and kind, the two of them weren't close and had nothing to talk about. So, he decided to leave.

Before he could even turn around, Zhao Xiaobai spoke again:

"Chen Zhao, for the last big question in math, what result did you get for the very last part?"

Chen Zhao was stunned. Was this the legendary "comparing answers"?

Chen Zhao hadn't compared answers with classmates for a long time because every time an exam ended, two groups of top students in the class would argue fiercely over whether the first fill-in-the-blank question was "6" or "8," while Chen Zhao would find that he had written 1030. It was completely off-base. Realizing he was wrong to such an extent, comparing answers was just asking for trouble, so whenever people in class compared answers, he would lie on his desk and play dead, covering his ears and shutting out the world.

But now, having leaped into the ranks of the top students, comparing answers seemed to have become a tense, exciting, and participatory activity.

"The result I calculated was 681," Chen Zhao said.

Zhao Xiaobai suddenly threw the entire piece of bread in her hand away, and the turtles immediately scrambled and fought over it.

"It's over, I calculated it wrong," Zhao Xiaobai said, looking very dejected.

"It's not necessarily you who got it wrong," Chen Zhao comforted her. "My math is terrible; maybe I'm the one who got it wrong."

Unexpectedly, Zhao Xiaobai shook her head and said something that took Chen Zhao by surprise: "I know your level is higher than mine. It's highly probable that I'm the one who's wrong."

Chen Zhao scratched his head, feeling a bit flattered. He hadn't expected the school's second-ranked student to hold him in such high regard.

"Your class's math representative was my classmate for nine years in elementary and middle school. She told me about the two problems the principal gave you. I tried them, and it took me twenty minutes and half an hour respectively to solve them," Zhao Xiaobai explained, seemingly noticing Chen Zhao's surprise. "But you solved them instantly, so your math must be stronger. And much stronger than mine."

Chen Zhao immediately understood. So, Zhao Xiaobai had done the problems the principal gave him; that made sense.

"Why have you been deliberately failing exams for three years?" Zhao Xiaobai stood up and looked at Chen Zhao with curiosity. "It's clear you have the ability, but you deliberately do poorly on exams. Why do you do that?"

Chen Zhao thought for a moment and decided to show off a little.

"To temper my character," Chen Zhao said earnestly.

"Temper your character?" Zhao Xiaobai was full of bewilderment.

"Humility leads to progress, while pride leads to falling behind. Failure is the mother of success. Adversity drives one to strive for strength," Chen Zhao spouted chicken soup, going on at length. "I want to be someone who is not arrogant in victory and not discouraged in defeat. Victory is easy, but failure is too rare for me. So I deliberately do poorly on exams to taste the feeling of constant failure. I use this to polish my character and remind myself to keep learning."

Zhao Xiaobai was dumbfounded: "Impressive!"

"I've saved a few math problems in my error notebook that I can't solve; could you teach me how to do them?" Zhao Xiaobai asked suddenly.

Chen Zhao was stunned. The second-ranked student in the entire school wanted him to explain problems?

"I can, but I'm not sure I'll know how to solve them," Chen Zhao nodded.

"Let's go to that milk tea shop by the school gate after school; I'll bring my error notebook," Zhao Xiaobai suggested.

"Sure." Chen Zhao nodded. The milk tea shop by the school gate also sold fried chicken and burgers. Going there for lunch wouldn't be bad either. Explaining the problems to Zhao Xiaobai would just be a small favor, anyway.