Lin Yi looked toward the sound.
The Mianchang No. 1 High School examinees were all sprawled over their seats, turning back to look at the people from Class 8 of Jiangcheng No. 2 High School as if they were monkeys.
Under the effect of the All-Knowing Eye, Lin Yi saw their levels with perfect clarity.
Most of them were Level 20.
A smaller number had reached Level 21.
A few particularly impressive ones had even reached Level 23.
Lin Yi suddenly recalled something he had learned in his Great Xia humanities and geography class.
Looking across all of Great Xia, Dongjiang Province ranked among the nation's leading provinces in both education and economic strength.
Several cities, including Tianhai, Lishui, and Xiling, were Level 2 Base Cities.
However, Dongjiang Province's educational and economic resources were distributed extremely unevenly.
Regions rich in resources and educational opportunities were basically concentrated in Level 2 and Level 3 Base Cities.
Among the remaining Level 4 Base Cities, the standards of infrastructure and education already varied widely.
By the time one got to a highly marginalized Level 5 Base City like Jiangcheng, things were even more dismal.
That was also why Lin Yi had found that some of his classmates were as low as level 12.
Meanwhile, among these examinees from Mianchang, a Level 3 Base City, even the lowest level was already 19.
In terms of average level...
Putting himself in their shoes, Lin Yi found it rather novel that people seated at the back of the carriage could be shocked by someone at Level 20.
Hearing the ridicule from the Mianchang No. 1 High School examinees,
everyone in Class 8 of Jiangcheng No. 2 High School fell silent.
It was not exactly inferiority.
But the gap in actual strength made them feel somewhat embarrassed.
The most embarrassed person, of course, was Zhang Shan.
He had been the cause of all this fuss in the first place.
Seeing the Class 8 students remain silent,
the Mianchang No. 1 High School students only became more excessive.
The nearest student grinned mischievously. "Hey, you Jiangcheng hicks, I'm Level 20 too. Does that make me a big shot where you come from?"
"Want to come kneel and lick my boots too?"
"Hahaha!"
"What the hell are you? I'm Level 21. Come lick my boots instead! Hahaha!"
Zhang Shan's face turned bright red from their taunts.
Anger surged through him.
He desperately wanted to rush over and settle things with those people in a real fight.
But Lin Yi placed a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.
"We're under surveillance now. Did you forget what the teacher said? Mind the rules!"
"If we cause trouble here, we'll be disqualified from the exam!"
Lin Yi did not care about their mockery.
To him,
it was like a pack of wildcats bragging before a tiger about how superb their hunting skills were.
They were not even on the same level. Lin Yi did not feel angry in the slightest.
Their attempts to provoke an interaction received no response.
Gradually, those people lost interest as well.
They returned to their own groups and resumed their separate conversations.
The three-hour special train journey passed quickly.
When the arrival announcement sounded, Lin Yi opened his sleepy eyes and stretched.
During the latter half of those three hours, perhaps because his classmates had all been silenced by the humiliation and even Zhang Shan had gotten heated, he had slept wonderfully.
After getting off the train, they found rows of shuttle buses for examinees already waiting outside the station.
Following the assigned numbers and order, Lin Yi and the others from Class 8 boarded a shuttle bus.
They headed straight for the exam venue.
Along the way, Lin Yi discovered that Tianhai City, the provincial capital of Dongjiang Province, was truly prosperous beyond measure.
Since transmigrating to this world, where Blue Star's territory had expanded dozens or even hundreds of times over, Lin Yi had never left Jiangcheng.
The farthest he had gone was Canglan City, which neighbored Jiangcheng.
But Jiangcheng was a Level 5 Base City, while Canglan was only a quasi-Level 4 Base City, so there was not much difference between them.
They could be called fellow sufferers.
Only after arriving in Tianhai
did Lin Yi realize that the construction of prosperous Great Xia cities in this world did not lose in the slightest to Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou from his previous life.
It even surpassed them in some ways.
The infrastructure was extremely comprehensive, and the city's greenery was exceptionally well maintained.
But accordingly—
both the scale of high-end residential developments and their housing prices were terrifyingly high.
All along the route, the departments responsible for Tianhai City's traffic and roads gave the shuttle buses green lights all the way.
To accommodate all the students from across Dongjiang Province arriving for this National College Entrance Examination, Tianhai City had opened a total of twenty-two exam halls.
Even with so many exam halls diverting the crowds, when the shuttle bus carrying Lin Yi arrived at its destination,
he still witnessed an incomparably spectacular sight.
Whether by coincidence or not, Lin Yi's assigned venue was Exam Hall No. 1.
After countless shuttle buses parked in the lot, all the examinees got off, lined up in order, and headed to the enormous plaza outside Exam Hall No. 1, where they found the entire plaza packed with people.
This time, there were no exam escorts. Everyone was an examinee.
One exam hall alone likely held forty to fifty thousand examinees!
Once Lin Yi's batch of shuttle buses had arrived,
the examinees for Exam Hall No. 1 were basically all in place.
An announcement sounded outside the exam hall—
"Attention, all examinees!!"
"The 3024 National College Entrance Examination for Class User Higher Education Institutions is about to begin!"
"This is Dongjiang Province's Exam Hall No. 1. Please line up properly and pass through the first Smart Gate outside the exam hall in order!"
"After passing through the gate, the sensor above it will automatically identify your class and level, then assign a label."
"This exam will provide corresponding difficulty options based on each examinee's level range."
"The higher the difficulty, the higher the score you can earn after passing each round of testing."
"Examinees within the level 1 to level 15 range will receive a White Label and may only choose Easy Difficulty."
"Examinees within the level 16 to level 20 range will receive a Green Label and may choose Easy or Normal Difficulty."
"Examinees within the Level 21 to Level 23 range will receive a Blue Label and may choose Normal or Hard Difficulty."
"Examinees within the Level 24 to Level 25 range will receive a Purple Label and may choose Normal, Hard, or Extreme Difficulty."
"Examinees above Level 25 will receive a Golden Label and may choose Normal, Hard, Extreme, or Nightmare Difficulty!"
It seemed the exam details Zhang Shan's father had revealed earlier had not been wrong.
Sure enough, difficulty brackets would be used to screen examinees in advance.
If your level was not high enough, you could not choose a higher difficulty.
Naturally, you would not be able to earn more points.
Then in this exam, your ranking would naturally fall behind those who chose higher difficulties and still cleared the tests.
What a brutal grind...
No wonder the teachers and the media alike had acted so fired up during the class awakening.
In an environment where everyone was crazily competing, anyone who did not push themselves hard would indeed fall far too far behind.
As the entry procedures continued,
large numbers of examinees lined up and passed through the gates.
Lin Yi also saw the Class 8 examinees walking ahead of him.
Take Zhang Shan, that big lug, for example.
After passing through the gate, the words Jiangcheng, indicating his place of origin, first appeared above his head.
They were followed by a Warhammer icon and a white star mark.
Afterward, all examinees like him who received White Labels were directed by assistant examiners inside the venue to their corresponding exam entrances.
After so many years of college entrance exams, the procedure had become incredibly intelligent and seamless.
If the sorting had been done manually, who knew how much time it would have taken.
"Tsk, tsk, so white and green. Hahaha!"
A burst of laughter rang out.
Lin Yi saw the group from Mianchang No. 1 High School again.
They had now passed through the gates.
Most of them had blue star marks above their heads.
The few with purple star marks looked at Zhang Shan and the others as if they were livestock.
Lin Yi looked at the gate before him, a faint smile curling across his lips.
It was time to give the tens of thousands of people in this exam hall a little Golden Label shock!
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