When no one knew the rules, getting familiar with them ahead of time gave you an edge.
In a sense, it really wasn't cheating. It was more like using an information gap to your advantage—like a university professor's child who could use their parents' laboratory from an early age to produce cutting-edge papers fit for Nature or Science, while a student from the countryside who had studied their way into university might still be agonizing over which electives offered the easiest high grades.
Their plans for the future were like those of a dwarf at the bottom of a well and a dwarf standing on a mountaintop. The difference in perspective was enormous from the start, and once they left school, that gap would widen exponentially.
Of course, someone with tact might say it all came down to freedom of choice and didn't count as cheating. Someone less tactful might flip the table and rage at the unfairness of the world.
But that was how the world worked.
Some people knew one set of things, and others knew another. The exchange born of those gaps in knowledge drove society forward.
Zhu Si hadn't thought that deeply about it.
She had become lost in a mirror as a child and grown up in the strange, dazzling world of the Dreamlands. Her way of thinking still held some of a child's innocence and purity, and she drew a firm line between good and bad.
So when she realized Colma seemed to want to cheat through her, her expression soured.
"Sorry,"
The First University Dream Analysis lecturer raised her chin slightly, pride in her voice. "Whether it's within the rules or not, I won't help you cheat."
"I told you, it isn't cheating." The North District Great Sage resisted the urge to roll