Perfect score after perfect score

120 points was a perfect score!

Those who understood looked stunned, while those who hadn't hurriedly dug at their ears.

Teacher Lu chuckled twice, deftly retrieved the paper from Hu Yanshan, and said, "I'm going to take another look at this paper."

"The score must be wrong." Hu Yanshan craned his neck, still trying to look at the paper, but caught only a string of check marks.

It definitely wasn't 12 points.

Teacher Lu didn't answer. He rolled up the paper and beckoned to Yang Rui. "Yang Rui, come outside with me for a moment."

"There's a problem, right? Isn't there? Haha... there's a problem, isn't there?" Hu Yanshan was actually a little dumbfounded too, and could only cover it with laughter.

With his reputation at stake, Yang Rui stood without hesitation and countered, "What problem?"

Without even turning his head, Hu Yanshan scoffed. "You copied, obviously. What else could it be?"

"Who did I copy from?" Yang Rui's voice was calm and full of confidence.

Hu Yanshan faltered. Right-the highest scorer in the class, Li Xuegong, had scored 82, nowhere near 120.

He instinctively glanced at Teacher Lu, then suddenly shouted as though he'd figured it out, "He copied the answer key, didn't he?"

"Is the answer key as detailed as my paper, Teacher Lu?" Yang Rui had taken care to write out every step when answering the questions, and now it was paying off.

Teacher Lu nodded silently. The answer keys he had prepared for many of the questions contained only the final result. Since he had set the questions himself and would also grade the long-answer questions himself, he naturally knew all the steps by heart and hadn't needed to prepare detailed solutions.

Yang Rui's question was precisely what he couldn't explain.

Hu Yanshan was confused. "What does nodding mean? Is it that detailed or not?"

"It's not that detailed." Teacher Lu felt rather helpless with these two students. On the other hand, he also wanted to hear what Yang Rui had to say.

Hu Yanshan immediately ran out of arguments, and even the look he gave Yang Rui changed.

Had he stolen the test paper, found someone to solve it, and memorized the answers? Surely a mere mock exam wasn't worth doing all that.

Unable to figure out the key to it, he could only keep asking, "Then tell us what happened. You couldn't have just scored full marks out of nowhere."

"Something clicked for me. Is that not allowed?" Yang Rui curled his lip, shutting down the question with a single sentence.

Just as he had considered before the exam, scoring full marks required no explanation at all. Others could think whatever they liked. In any case, even their most outlandish guesses would be far from the truth.

The broad, burly Xu Jing snorted with laughter, setting off a string of laughs.

In an instant, the dreary classroom became rather cheerful.

Hu Yanshan's face went from red to white, then from white to ashen.

It had to be said that young people in the eighties were still thin-skinned, even the "young master" whose father headed the power supply office.

He gritted his teeth, ran back to his seat, took out a thin exercise book, turned to the last page, and handed it to Yang Rui. "If you can solve this problem, I'll join your study group."

"Pretty confident, aren't you?" Yang Rui clicked his tongue twice, taking the exercise book from him as he said with a smile, "What makes you think applying to my study group means you'll definitely get in?"

"If you can't solve it, admit you cheated." Hu Yanshan spent plenty of time out on the streets and was well practiced at goading people.

Yang Rui smiled, studied the problem for a while, then picked up a piece of chalk and began writing on the cement blackboard.

It was a comprehensive function problem that tested both parity and periodicity and required appropriate transformations of the function. The last part in particular came down to luck without enough accumulated practice: whether one could transform it into the required function.

Problems like this were about as difficult as college entrance exam mathematics got-and that meant the college entrance exams of later years. Put one on an early-eighties exam paper, and it would probably have left mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

However, Yang Rui had spent years immersed in college entrance exam tutoring and knew the relevant concepts inside out. After a little thought, he effortlessly wrote down the transformation.

Then, seemingly without needing to think, Yang Rui wrote the solution on the blackboard step by step.

He had produced a perfect paper to awe everyone, and he certainly didn't mind strengthening the students' admiration now.

This was a fine opportunity to build his study group's reputation.

Hu Yanshan stared at the familiar-looking equations, dumbstruck.

This problem came from an internal examination paper at Hedong Normal University. It was an experimental new type of question, currently still used by the university to assess its graduating students.

In other words, it was a high-school-level question used to test new teachers, so its difficulty had naturally been raised again and again.

After getting this internal examination paper from an old friend of his father's, Hu Yanshan had treated it like a secret martial arts manual, taking it out from time to time to puzzle over it alongside the answers, as though solving it himself would greatly advance his abilities.

After several months of intermittent study, Hu Yanshan had, unsurprisingly, figured nothing out. He found that perfectly normal, though. After all, these were university questions for testing new teachers...

But now, watching Yang Rui scribble away as though doing basic arithmetic, he felt out of sorts.

"It must be wrong." Hu Yanshan involuntarily pulled out another notebook and checked it against the blackboard step by step.

He actually remembered most of the solution process; he just needed to make sure.

Hu Yanshan checked very carefully, practically going through it symbol by symbol.

The first line was correct.

The second line was correct.

The third line wasn't in the answer key, which gave Hu Yanshan a lift.

But the fourth line seemed to be correct again.

He kept checking line by line, feeling only that Yang Rui's solution had a few extra steps and seemed more detailed.

This was actually a habit Yang Rui had developed after becoming a tutor. Some seemingly simple steps might be precisely what a student didn't understand, so writing out a few extra steps might resolve a question that had troubled a student for a long time.

On the other hand, Yang Rui also encouraged students to write out more steps, just as other teachers often advocated.

Skipping steps might be easy and look impressive, but often a single careless slip would cost even more points. Writing out extra steps was like buying insurance: it couldn't earn you more points, but it could limit your losses.

In a major examination taken by millions, buying insurance was definitely a wise choice, more important than looking cool.

Once the scores of an important examination came out, nobody cared about the process of answering the questions, only how high the scores were.

"Is it right?" Yang Rui stopped writing and asked Hu Yanshan.

With an "Ah," Hu Yanshan lowered the little notebook containing the answers, then didn't know what to say.

Smiling, Yang Rui tossed the exercise book containing the problem onto the lectern and watched Hu Yanshan without a word.

If he had to rank his most embarrassing moments, this would have made Hu Yanshan's top three, second only to soiling his pants in public in elementary school.

Teacher Lu picked up the exercise book from the lectern, turned to the back and studied it for a while, then compared it with the solution on the blackboard and fell silent too.

"Such a huge change." Only the students in the front rows could hear him.

"So my answer is correct?" Yang Rui asked with a smile.

Teacher Lu gave a slight nod. "Correct."

"So something really did click for me." Yang Rui turned to face the class, placed one hand on his chest, and bowed thirty degrees. Smiling, he said, "You're all welcome to join my study group and develop study methods that suit you. Oh, and my study group requires a written application now. Just talking won't do."

When he had said this before, many students had scoffed.

But after his astonishing score, everyone's view of his study group had changed.

Someone called out on the spot, "What do we write in the application?"

"Just say why you want to join the study group, what you plan to do after joining, how much discipline you're willing to accept, and finally, what you'd want to do if you went to university, and what you'd do after graduating." Yang Rui didn't keep this from Teacher Lu. The school was only so big; he couldn't avoid him anyway. Besides, there was nothing shady about the study group. He could carry out his plan openly and still achieve his aim.

The students launched into heated discussion.

After staring at the blackboard for a while, Xu Jing also asked, "Liu Shan, do you want to join that study group? It looks like it might help."

"Ah... I don't know." Liu Shan was a little flustered. For some inexplicable reason, the image of Yang Rui's slight bow just now resurfaced in her mind, and she couldn't help comparing it with various scenes from films.

Satisfied, Yang Rui returned to his seat, calm and confident.

During the second lesson, Teacher Lu returned the paper to Yang Rui and began going over the questions without comment.

Since Yang Rui wasn't saying anything, he decided to observe him for a few days first.

Everyone was observing Yang Rui, who remained as composed as ever.

It wasn't until the third lesson, when the physics teacher came in and handed Yang Rui another paper marked one hundred, that another round of discussion broke out.

Yang Rui used a similar process to address the physics teacher's questions.

Then...

The fourth lesson, English, allowed everyone to breathe a slight sigh of relief.

Although Yang Rui's score of 87 put him firmly at the top of the class, at least it wasn't a perfect score.

At last, this freed the students in the repeaters' class from their boundless sense of unreality, and they discussed it thoroughly over lunch.

By the afternoon, people had already begun asking for more details.

Even Hu Yanshan had become indecisive.

Getting into university was a temptation that seeped into their very bones, and Yang Rui's performance had unquestionably intensified that temptation.

Hu Yanshan didn't know how serious Yang Rui had been about not letting him join his study group, but he really didn't want to invite a rebuff.

"He's only good at physics and math. It's nothing special." Deliberately ignoring the less-than-perfect English score, Hu Yanshan kept repeating this to himself.

Until the chemistry teacher walked in.