Late spring, early summer.
The weather had begun to grow sweltering.
In the classroom of Class 6, Year 3, at Lingzhou City No. 1 High School, a middle-aged man wearing glasses held the results of the city's third mock exam.
These mock exam results were crucial. They could almost determine their scores on the college entrance exam twenty days later!
Every student watched the teacher nervously!
"Chu Ruoxi, a total of 710 points, first in the school!"
"Wow!"
The students exclaimed in surprise and envy!
"Zhang Sanfeng, a total of 673 points. Liu Yihang..."
"Jiang Fan, 300 points, dead last in the school!"
Hearing Jiang Fan's score, the entire class burst into laughter, and quite a few students began talking.
"Jiang Fan probably works harder than anyone in our class, but he comes dead last every time. Even our class's 'Sleeping King' scores higher than him. A brain really is a wonderful thing to have!"
"Exactly! Out of 750 points, he only got 300. Our school is a key high school, after all. He's a disgrace to us!"
"..."
Hearing their comments, the teacher at the podium shook his head helplessly. Jiang Fan, however, curled his lips into a smile as a voice sounded in his mind!
"Ding: The test subject has completed the eighth score-control exam. Complete the final exam to activate the Technology System. Upon failure, the system will automatically disappear."
That was right. Jiang Fan was someone who had been reborn, returning to the year he was seventeen and in his second year of high school, in a parallel world!
An unactivated Technology System had also appeared in his mind.
In his previous life, Jiang Fan had been a scientific researcher. From the system's introduction, he learned that it contained the science and technology his planet would develop within the next 500 years.
As a researcher, he knew very well what obtaining those technologies would mean!
But to possess the system, he had to complete its trial mission.
At first glance, the mission looked simple, but its actual requirements were extremely stringent!
The mission was to complete nine consecutive exams during high school, scoring exactly 300 points in total each time, to activate the system.
Many students would say, wasn't scoring 300 points on an exam easy?
Scoring over 300 was indeed easy. But scoring exactly 300 every time, not one point more or less, nine times in a row, with any total other than 300 forcing the count to restart-the difficulty spoke for itself.
Having been a top science student in his previous life, Jiang Fan thought it would pose no difficulty whatsoever. Yet he had still overestimated his abilities!
At first, his total exam scores would always be one or two points too high, or one or two points too low.
Only after fighting day and night to review every topic in the high school curriculum did he gradually stabilize his total at 300 points!
Now he had scored 300 points eight times in a row. Just one more, and he could activate the Technology System.
He could hardly help feeling excited now.
With twenty days left until the college entrance exam, there was still one more exam before then, and it would be his last chance.
But Jiang Fan's excitement lasted less than a minute before he heard the homeroom teacher speak from the podium!
"With twenty days remaining until the college entrance exam, the municipal education bureau has decided that the exam scheduled for ten days from now... is canceled..."
Jiang Fan's smile froze. He stood rooted to the spot in a daze, taking several full minutes to react.
He could not accept this fact. The system had put him through an entire year of torment, reading and studying day and night.
Just one more exam, and he could successfully activate the system. Yet now the teacher was telling him that the final exam had been canceled!
No one could accept that!
Bang!
Jiang Fan shot to his feet in agitation, knocking his stool over.
"The exam... you can't cancel the exam!"
His hands trembled as he shouted at the homeroom teacher. He was so agitated that he was even panting a little as he spoke.
Caught off guard by Jiang Fan's sudden actions, the teacher froze, then said mockingly.
"What? With your score of 300, do you need another exam to prove your IQ?"
The students burst into laughter, looking at him as though he were an idiot.
Yet Jiang Fan had already begun muttering incoherently!
"The education bureau... how can they... go back on their word? No, there has to be an exam."
The teacher and students all stared at Jiang Fan strangely.
"Jiang Fan, what's gotten into you? You're dead last in the school. Who are you to have a say?"
Jiang Fan's heart was filled with unwillingness. Just one more exam would activate the system, and that system contained the next 500 years of science and technology.
Five hundred years of science and technology!
For a researcher, that meant he could develop all kinds of technologies ahead of their time.
Jiang Fan believed that as long as he obtained the system, he could absolutely advance the science and technology of the entire Dragon Country, and even the world, single-handedly.
At present, Dragon Country was constrained by Beautiful Country at every turn in high technology. As a patriotic researcher, Jiang Fan wanted to break free of this predicament.
He had once imagined leading Dragon Country's researchers after activating the system, developing super chips, controlled nuclear fusion, mechas, aircraft carriers, spaceships, or even more advanced space elevators and time machines...
Yet all of this would be destroyed by an exam the education bureau had suddenly scrapped. He could not accept it.
Seeing Jiang Fan's tightly furrowed brows and bloodshot eyes, the homeroom teacher lost his temper too and shouted.
"Jiang Fan, sit down!"
Jiang Fan roared as though he had gone mad.
"Your decision... will destroy... all of Dragon Country's science and technology, and leave... leave Dragon Country forever at Beautiful Country's mercy..."
The student sitting beside Jiang Fan edged away in fear.
Everyone thought Jiang Fan had gone mad.
He could not accept that, despite a year of frenzied studying, he still placed last every time!
Anyone who studied so desperately every day, only to see their scores still fail to improve, would probably break down inside.
The students looked at him with pity and sighed helplessly!
The homeroom teacher hurried to call Jiang Fan's parents as well.
After venting, Jiang Fan saw his classmates looking at him strangely. Knowing he could no longer change this reality, he could only sit back down in a daze.
Chu Ruoxi turned around and looked at this boy who worked a hundred times harder than she did. She always felt there was something different about him.
She had always been curious about Jiang Fan. He never interacted with any of his classmates or listened to the teachers' lessons, only reading his own books!
Once, Chu Ruoxi had secretly retrieved a math exam paper Jiang Fan had completed from the trash. The long-answer questions had no working shown, only answers.
After working through them herself, she discovered that every answer to the long-answer questions was correct.
Even the final bonus question was answered without a single error.
That had made her start paying attention to Jiang Fan.
Jiang Fan's parents soon arrived at school and took him home.
When he left, his eyes were vacant, as though he truly had gone mad.
In truth, only he knew that it was because hope had vanished from his heart.
In his previous life, Jiang Fan had spent five years researching nanomaterials after graduating. The country invested three billion a year, but because of numerous technological limitations, they had made no major breakthroughs!
So he knew very well that developing a new technology required enormous amounts of manpower, material resources, and money.
If he possessed the Technology System, all of that would change!