The first class was math. Their homeroom teacher walked in carrying the exam papers and a grade sheet.
"Take out your math papers. We'll go over the remaining questions." Deng Qin got straight to the point and spent the entire period explaining them.
Shen Baili checked her answers. She had done well in math: a perfect score.
She had performed as usual on the first two exams, but illness had affected the last two. Her ranking would fall.
She had expected it, so when she received the grade sheet, the result came as no surprise.
"Shen Baili ranked eighth in the class and eleventh in the school."
"The class monitor is amazing! She had a high fever and still got perfect scores in math and English!"
"That's my goddess!"
"If she hadn't been sick, my goddess would definitely have come first!"
Amid the praise, the system's mechanical voice rang out with startling clarity.
"Beep, beep, beep!"
"The Energy Bar has dropped by 2%. Total energy: 65%."
A-Deng couldn't believe it. "The energy can actually go down?!"
Shen Baili had considered the possibility. My ranking fell, so the energy dropped.
Is it a warning? Or... a reminder?
Eleventh in the school was a curious position.
The Threshold ### A setback could turn out to be a blessing.
Falling short on the exams because she was sick hadn't made things worse. Instead, it had confirmed some of Shen Baili's suspicions.
One threshold of her obsession with studying lay at eleventh place.
But why eleventh?
Shen Baili looked for an answer.
As a prestigious key school known nationwide, Haicheng No. 1 High School's commitment to education showed not only in its teachers and facilities, but also in the concrete incentives it offered students.
The school had established various reward programs.
Students in