A surprise? More like a nasty shock!

A surprise? More like a nasty shock!

It really was the same routine, the same lines as in his previous life.

Li Yi ignored him completely, leaving Zhou Xuanze waiting anxiously.

"Brother Xuanze, has Li Yi replied?" Lu Junjia asked quietly. "Could it be... he did badly and doesn't dare let you check his results?"

"No." Even Zhou Xuanze lacked confidence as he said it. Li Yi had been acting far too strangely these past few days. He was injured, yet Li Yi hadn't come to visit him even once!

"Then let's wait a little longer."

Unwilling to give up, Zhou Xuanze clutched his phone and kept messaging him.

[Baby, I'm hurt. Why haven't you come to see me? My whole body hurts so much.]

[Baby Li Yi, I shouldn't have ignored your advice. I know now that you only told me not to go because you wanted what was best for me, but I misunderstood you. I know I was wrong now. Will you come see me?]

[I really just wanted to make checking your Gaokao results feel special. If you did well, we could celebrate together. If you didn't, I'd prepare a surprise just for you. Okay?]

His messages sank like stones into the sea, without a single reply.

By the end, Zhou Xuanze was getting angry.

"What's going on? Is his phone dead?"

"I don't know either. He isn't replying to my messages, either." Lu Junjia had also sent a WeChat message offering to help check his score, but Li Yi hadn't replied.

"Let's wait a little longer. Maybe he hasn't seen them." Zhou Xuanze comforted himself.

He simply refused to believe that Li Yi would have a change of heart.

The best proof was that Li Yi had specifically come to warn him not to compete before the race!

His words might have been unpleasant, but he had indeed come to try to stop him.

That was enough to prove that Li Yi still had feelings for him!

They waited all the way until the day university applications opened.

Both Zhou Xuanze and Lu Junjia grew anxious.

"Li Yi hasn't mentioned anything about the Gaokao these past few days. When the family asks what score he got, he won't say. He won't say which university he wants to apply to, either," Lu Junjia said. "Could he really have done terribly?"

"If he really did terribly, it wouldn't matter," Zhou Xuanze said. "But after the Gaokao, he told me he'd done very well, and that scoring over 600 would be easy."

Zhou Xuanze was getting irritated. If Li Yi really had done well, got into a prestigious university, and met more powerful, influential people, it would become difficult for him to control Li Yi anymore.

"No, we can't let him choose a good university. Let's go find him now!" Zhou Xuanze threw back the covers and prepared to get out of bed.

"Brother Xuanze, watch your leg!" Lu Junjia hurried to support him. "Your leg hasn't fully recovered yet. You can't just walk around. I'll go back and find him."

Just then, Zhou Xuanze's phone suddenly chimed.

Lu Junjia picked it up and saw a message from Li Yi.

[I got 550 on the Gaokao. I messed up. Although I barely cleared the undergraduate cutoff, I don't know which university to apply to. Can you help me choose?]

"Brother Xuanze, Li Yi messed up! He only just cleared the undergraduate cutoff!" Lu Junjia looked delighted.

"Really?" Zhou Xuanze took the phone with a smile. Seeing the score on the screen and imagining Li Yi on the other end, clutching his phone with a worried, dejected expression, he felt his chance had come.

[Baby, don't be upset. Although you didn't get the score you wanted, you still cleared the undergraduate cutoff. I'll help you carefully choose a good university.]

[I'm really upset. I worked hard for so long for this Gaokao.

But now this is all I scored. I don't want to see anything about the Gaokao right now.

Choose a university for me. My exam admission number is 0102733487876783.

Just tell me on the last day of applications, so I know which university I've chosen.

Make sure it's at the very last moment on the last day. I'm afraid that if I see it beforehand, I won't be able to stop myself from changing my choices.]

"Brother Xuanze, Li Yi actually sent his exam admission number!

Let's fill in his choices for him now!" Lu Junjia stood as he spoke. "I'll go get a computer!"

"Wait." Zhou Xuanze caught Lu Junjia's hand and said cautiously, "Don't fill anything in yet. He might be testing us!

The choices can be changed. If we fill in a university for him now,

and he logs in and sees it, won't he realize what we're after?

Once he's on his guard, I'm afraid it'll be hard to trick him over the old man's inheritance.

Wait a little longer!

Let's wait until the last day and see how he reacts!"

"You really do think things through, Brother Xuanze." Lu Junjia sat back in his chair. "Then we'll wait until the last day and put down some random university for him."

"Yes."

Compared with Zhou Xuanze and Lu Junjia, Li Yi was quite relaxed.

His Gaokao score was the same as in his previous life. Although he wasn't the top scorer, he was at least among Beicheng's top five. In his previous life, many people had lamented his choice of university.

This time, he wouldn't waste such a high score again. Beiqing University, artificial intelligence.

With one final click, his choices were locked!

Now no one could tamper with his Gaokao application again!

He had deliberately acted dejected these past few days. No matter who asked about his Gaokao score, he hadn't told them.

The Lu family had never cared about his grades anyway.

In his first year of high school, he had ranked first in the entire school and run happily to tell Qiao Xinyue, only for Lu Junjia to secretly tell her behind his back that he had cheated.

Qiao Xinyue believed it and beat him with a ruler.

After that, he learned to control his scores, keeping his grades in the middle of his class every time.

So the Lu family had always thought his grades were average.

The exam admission number he gave Zhou Xuanze differed from his own by just one digit. He had deliberately sent those misleading messages so Zhou Xuanze and Lu Junjia wouldn't be able to tell what was true and what was false.

He had put down the orphanage as the delivery address for his university admission letter, and the home address he had filled in at school was also the orphanage. Back then, he hadn't used the Lu family's address because he wanted to leave himself a way out.

Now he actually felt that he had shown quite a bit of foresight back then.

His phone had been ringing constantly these past few days with all sorts of recruitment calls, but he hadn't answered any of them. Those who went looking for him using the address at school all thought he was an orphan, and left after a brief conversation with the director.

Not a single member of the Lu family knew his actual situation.

Now everything was settled. All he had to do was wait for his university admission letter.

-Beep beep.

His phone chimed. Li Yi opened WeChat and saw, to his surprise, a message from Shi Yan.

[University applications open today, right? Which university did you choose?]

[Beiqing University, artificial intelligence.]

[Not bad. It's a field riding a wave of growth.]

[Mr. Shi, I remember you went to Beiqing too, right?]

[Yes. I took artificial intelligence as an elective back then, so you could call me your senior in the same field.]

[Oh~ No wonder one of your subsidiaries specializes in artificial intelligence. Yingjun must be the most impressive robot your company has, right?]

[I helped build Yingjun. I designed his programming myself. He's the only one of his kind in the world.]

[No wonder he has so much personality! So he was your creation.]

[...]