June 7. Clear skies, temperatures of 28-33°C.
To everyone else, this might have been just an ordinary Saturday in June.
But for all the graduating senior year three students, this would be the most important day of their twelve years of schooling.
The Gaokao had arrived!
Countless mornings and late nights bent over desks, countless rustles of pen tips across paper, all converged at this moment into one grand journey.
Everyone understood that this exam would not define their entire lives, but it would send each of them toward a different horizon, sending those who had once sat side by side in the same classroom off toward their own mountains and seas.
Chen Shi'an did not know what state his classmates were in right now. Perhaps they were sleepless, or perhaps they were anxious...
He, however, had gone to bed quite early last night and slept quite well.
Even on such a special day, Chen Shi'an still got up at five in the morning, called over Lazy Cat, who neither had to study nor take exams and could increase cultivation simply by eating, and went out for a ride on his bicycle.
In his imagination, it always felt as though the entire world should hold its breath for this exam.
The second hand ticked forward, one beat of the heart louder than the next, as though every question held the fate of the future, every stroke of the pen decided the course of a life.
But once he stepped out onto the streets, he discovered that traffic still streamed along the roads, vendors called out as usual, breakfast shops steamed, delivery vehicles hurried past, and the midsummer cicadas still sang beneath the same sunlight. The busy city had not paused for even a moment because of the Gaokao.
Against the