BTO CH22.1

Linjiang Sixth High’s monthly exams were notoriously brutal. Strictly mirroring the rules of the college entrance exam, they required students to rotate testing rooms based on their ranks from the previous exam. Electronic devices, including phones, were heavily policed and strictly forbidden from entering the testing halls.

Meng Guowei used the “monthly exam” as a threat, and with that single shout, the classroom fell instantly silent.

The issue of the Study God’s account being hacked was temporarily put to rest.

Shao Zhan feigned sleep at his desk next to him. One arm acted as a pillow beneath his head, while the other was stretched forward, hanging loosely over the edge of the desk. The hoodie was loose; with the hood pulled up, only a few stray locks of hair were visible, shielding slightly elongated brows that arched into a sharp, piercing angle.

Even with his eyes shut tight, the guy exuded an inexplicable, intimidating aura.

He was faking sleep because, right before the break, Xu Sheng had practically shoved his head down onto the desk, declaring: “You either get out or put your head down. I never read books during break.”

The two had long ago thrown up the smokescreen of “turning over a new leaf to study hard.” Xu Sheng’s move was largely a cover-up for the sheer awkwardness of the impending public execution.

To his surprise, Shao Zhan didn’t argue.

Though his head was down, Shao Zhan’s mood was far from calm.

He didn’t even know what possessed him to show up for this morning self-study. By the time he snapped out of his daze, he was already standing outside Class 7’s back window, rapping his knuckles against the glass.

With every word Xu Sheng uttered—even the millisecond pauses when he caught his breath—Shao Zhan’s heart felt like it was going on strike. Thankfully, after a massive gulp of air, Xu Sheng had finally found a viable angle to spin the story.

“Alright,” once the crowd witnessing the execution had dispersed, the tension drained from Xu Sheng’s body. Leaning back, he finally managed to pull himself out of that suffocating grip. “I saved your face. You can wake up now.”

A person truly never knows their own potential until they’re pushed to the absolute brink.

If Meng Guowei hadn’t shown up, he would have had to keep roasting himself.

With five minutes left in the break, he would have had to roast himself for a solid five minutes… Scolding oneself with such vigor was truly a rare life experience.

Shao Zhan’s fingers twitched. Tilting his head up, he pulled the hood down. As he lifted his face, Xu Sheng realized the guy was actually smiling. Well, “smiling” wasn’t quite accurate, as it was barely perceptible—only the very tips of his brows lifting a fraction of an inch.

Shao Zhan delivered his verdict: “You cursed yourself pretty ruthlessly.”

Having recovered from that clutch, limit-testing maneuver, Xu Sheng’s mood lightened: “You’re actually laughing?”

“But you weren’t wrong,” Shao Zhan sat up straight, taking the opening. “It was all the truth.”

The others had no idea about the reality behind that speech; aside from Xu Sheng, Shao Zhan was the sole keeper of the truth.

The nerve-racking tension was one thing; Xu Sheng’s speech being unintentionally hilarious was another.

Xu Sheng wanted to tell him to screw off, but ended up laughing himself before he could. Changing the subject, he asked, “If I hadn’t managed to spin that just now, what were you planning to do?”

Shao Zhan flipped open a textbook: “I was planning to see which method of suicide you’d choose.”

“If you really wanted to watch me off myself,” Xu Sheng might be academically hopeless, but he read situations well. “You wouldn’t have knocked on that back window.”

Shao Zhan didn’t say a word.

“Could you smile a bit more often? Walking around with that face, people who don’t know better would think I owe you money,” Xu Sheng said.

Shao Zhan: “Has anyone ever told you that you’re extremely annoying?”

“Actually, you look pretty good when you smile,” Xu Sheng realized that sounded weird and quickly corrected himself: “I mean, that face of mine.”

Shao Zhan finally reacted, his eyelids lifting slightly: “Those peach-blossom, breathtakingly mesmerizing eyes?”

Xu Sheng: “…Fuck.”

After dropping the curse, Xu Sheng couldn’t hold back a laugh either.

His brain must have been crushed in a doorframe for him to let his competitive drive blind him into writing that godawful essay.

Xu Sheng realized that Shao Zhan actually wasn’t that hard to get along with. Aside from constantly wearing an ice-cold face and acting aloof, everything else was fairly tolerable. The fact that he was still sitting here breathing fresh classroom air was the best proof of that.

As the morning passed, the “Study God got hacked” explanation quickly swept across the entire school. However, when it comes to rumors, once a massive crowd chooses to believe something, even if the actual hacker materialized right in front of them, they’d still choose to turn a blind eye.

The school producers on Tieba had spent the entire night feasting on premium shipping material. A significant number of them remained fiercely convinced that Zhan-Wu-Bu-Sheng was absolutely real.

Floor 6989: Do you guys actually believe that? Regardless, I feel like things are definitely not that simple.

Floor 6990: +1 to the above. I don’t think it’s that simple either.

Floor 6991: Where’s the girl from yesterday’s thread who saw the school tyrant at the convenience store? Come out and retell the convenience store love story between the Study God and the school tyrant. We need a recap to solidify the key knowledge points!

Floor 6992: I’m here, I’m here! That day, my friend and I stayed behind for cleaning duty. It was a romantic, unbelievable evening. I pushed open the door to the convenience store, and the school tyrant looked like he had just finished a fight—the corner of his mouth was split. He looked freezing cold, sitting in the corner of the dining area…

This was what it meant to jump into the Yellow River and still not wash yourself clean.

This was what it meant to roast yourself to a crisp for absolutely nothing.

Xu Sheng had spent the entire night analyzing PR crisis case studies, completely missing the one crucial aftermath of any celebrity PR disaster: the rock-solid, unshakeable conviction of the peanut gallery. You have the right to deny it to the death, but we have the right to disbelieve you to the grave!

Fortunately, neither Xu Sheng nor Shao Zhan paid any further attention to the fallout.

Xu Sheng committed the final golden rule of PR cases to memory: Time erodes everything.

Taking advantage of the lunch break, Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan quickly swapped their dorm rooms. With the term having just started, neither had much stuff, making the move straightforward.

“Wait a second.” Just as Xu Sheng was about to leave, Shao Zhan called out to him.

Xu Sheng paused at the door: “Did I leave something behind? Oh, right, if you don’t want that poster on the wall, you can just rip it down.”

Setting down what he was holding, Shao Zhan unclasped the key hanging around his neck and handed it over: “This.” Pinching the thin black cord, he added: “Forgot to give this to you earlier.”

Calling that key a decorative accessory was a blatant stretch. It was obviously strung up casually with a cheap black string. Xu Sheng hadn’t brought it up, and Shao Zhan hadn’t asked.

“Ah,” Xu Sheng blinked, “this.”

Gripping the key in his palm, Xu Sheng finally realized what had felt off this whole time—his neck had felt uncharacteristically bare.

Carrying the key back, Xu Sheng tossed his thin quilt onto Shao Zhan’s bed and surveyed this “new dorm room.”

Once his things were unpacked, he sank into the chair, stretching his long legs out to rest them on the desk. Tilting his head all the way back, the entire dorm room reflected upside-down in his eyes.

Too many things had happened lately, so many that he hadn’t had a second to think about anything else.

Just figuring out how to survive each day was difficult enough.

The key looked like it could open Pandora’s box, its cold metallic surface refracting slivers of light and shadow.

Trailing that shadow came a woman’s suppressed voice: “Are you dead set on angering me to death?!”

“From the time you were little until now, I have never demanded anything from you.”

“I did my best to give you the highest quality of life. I only wish for you to be safe, smooth-sailing, and secure a stable job in the future. Whatever you want to do in your free time, I don’t stop you. If you have hobbies, I support them.”

“…”

The rest of the words were a blur to Xu Sheng. The woman’s voice—not quite hysterical, but strained with heavily repressed emotion—blended with the belated spring thunderstorm.

BOOM!

All Xu Sheng remembered was the rain outside the window seeming to fall harder and harder, a torrential downpour smashing against the glass and sending ripples across the panes.

The thin black string tangled around Xu Sheng’s fingertips. Staring at it, his gaze eventually drifted to the hand that didn’t belong to him. Shao Zhan’s hands were truly exceptional… prominent knuckles, cold pale skin, and long, slender fingers.

Winding the string back around his fingers, he pulled open the desk drawer and tossed the key inside.

Before Meng Guowei stepped into the classroom, Chinese Class Rep Shen Wenhao led the class in reciting ancient poetry: “Classmates, please turn your textbooks to page thirty-five. Let us read this poem with profound emotion.”

Shen Wenhao was truly a remarkable character. Rumor had it he wrote novels in his spare time, and in his very first week on the job, he had set up a reading corner in the back of the classroom.

Meng Guowei walked in two minutes late. Upon entering, he picked up right where he had left off that morning, whipping the students into shape: “Never mind the monthly exams—soon you’ll realize the college entrance exam isn’t as far away as you think! It’ll be right in front of your eyes, and by the time you finally decide to study hard, it’ll be too late—”

Down below, Shen Wenhao felt a surge of poetic inspiration and chimed in: “Human life between heaven and earth is like a white steed flashing past a crevice; it is but a fleeting moment.”

Hou Jun clapped vigorously: “Not bad, Wenhao! That was a brilliant line!”

Shen Wenhao: “…I didn’t write that.”

“Enough messing around, you two,” Meng Guowei handed a stack of graded pop-quiz worksheets to Shen Wenhao. “Pass these out. We’ll start this period by reviewing yesterday’s quiz.”

The distributed worksheets were the ones completed in class the day before.

After finishing the quiz last period, Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan had simply swapped papers before handing them in.

Xu Sheng wasn’t worried that anything could go wrong with this paper. Bored out of his mind, he casually flipped through the extracurricular reading section at the back of the Chinese textbook, picking out narrative essays to read like short stories. He failed to notice that when Meng Guowei finished handing out the papers, he had held two back.

Until the next moment, when Meng Guowei announced: “Shao Zhan, Xu Sheng, stand up.”

Xu Sheng hadn’t been in the classroom for long. Busy swapping dorms during the lunch break, he hadn’t managed to catch a nap, leaving him a bit groggy. Instinctively, he shot a glance at Shao Zhan and asked in a low voice before standing up sluggishly, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Shao Zhan replied. “What did you do this time?”

Xu Sheng combed through his memory. He was certain that worksheet had been foolproof: “I didn’t do anything. Did I write the wrong name?”

Minor details like writing a name rarely left a deep impression. He was so thoroughly immersed in the mindset of being Shao Zhan that he might have accidentally scribbled Shao Zhan’s name in the name slot out of habit.

Xu Sheng added: “But that shouldn’t be possible.”

Fortunately, Xu Sheng hadn’t made that rookie mistake. Holding both their papers, Meng Guowei walked to the back row. First, he patted Xu Sheng’s shoulder with the warmth of a spring breeze: “Shao Zhan, you did exceptionally well on this in-class quiz. Especially the final question—you were the only one in the entire class to get it right. I wanted to specifically commend you.”

So he was here to praise an outstanding student.

Both Xu Sheng and Shao Zhan breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Yet in the very next second, Meng Guowei turned to Shao Zhan, his tone shifting abruptly. Utterly exasperated by a student failing to meet his expectations, he said: “Xu Sheng, look at yourself. You sit next to Shao Zhan all day, and he hasn’t rubbed off on you in the slightest!”

Shao Zhan: “…”

Furious, Meng Guowei slapped the worksheet down: “Look at the answer you wrote! This was the simplest question—practically handing out free points! The entire class got it right, and you were the only one who messed it up!”

The free-point question wasn’t even what angered Meng Guowei the most: “You even know who Hamlet is! Let me ask you: what on earth were you thinking?!”

What Hamlet?Shakespeare wasn’t mentioned a single time from the beginning to the end of this worksheet. Where did Hamlet come from?

Shao Zhan hadn’t paid attention to what Xu Sheng had scribbled while slumped over his desk, spinning his pen and squinting his eyes through the last Chinese period.

Only when the worksheet was slapped squarely onto his desk did Shao Zhan lower his eyes and skim it quickly. What he saw was an answer sheet featuring highly innovative problem-solving logic, taking an unorthodox path for virtually every single question.

Question: Interpret the meaning of the underlined sentence in the text.Answer: There are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people.

Meng Guowei’s focus drifted for two seconds as he muttered, “…Though your handwriting is a bit neater than before.” Snapping back to his stern demeanor, he continued, “That’s not important. Come, let’s talk about your thought process. I ask you for the meaning of the underlined sentence, and what do you write? We really need to have a talk. I genuinely don’t understand what goes on in your head.”

“—Other people take exams to score points. Are you trying to anger the grader to death?!”

Staring at the word “Hamlet,” Shao Zhan plunged into an instantaneous silence: “…”

Forced to take the blame, Shao Zhan’s brainwaves synchronized perfectly with Meng Guowei’s in that moment, as the exact same question surfaced in his mind: What on earth was Xu Sheng thinking?

Xu Sheng didn’t dare look at the expression currently plastered on Shao Zhan’s face. Having received Meng Guowei’s praise, he had already sat back down.

This was the first time he had ever been the recipient of such fervent commendation from Meng Guowei, and it felt incredibly weird.

Though his back did feel a bit cold.

“What did he write?” Burning with curiosity, Hou Jun craned his neck across two rows to peek in their direction. “Did anyone see? Share it with the class.”

Driven by curiosity, Xu Sheng’s front desk mate sneakily stole a glance. Consequently, that legendary, god-tier answer was passed all the way from Group 1 to Group 4.

Hou Jun marveled: “A true prodigy.”

“Hamlet,” Tan Kai offered his sincere admiration. “I yield. I genuinely yield.”

It was clear Meng Guowei wouldn’t resume class until he heard “Xu Sheng” explain himself. He was absolutely resolute and uncommonly persistent: “Speak. Let’s hear what you have to say.”

Shao Zhan’s hair was still slightly ruffled from having his hood up earlier. Reaching out to a spot where Meng Guowei couldn’t see, he pinched the back of Xu Sheng’s neck to vent his frustration, as if silently saying: You’re dead meat after class.

Xu Sheng instantly felt even colder.

Withdrawing his hand, Shao Zhan channeled Xu Sheng’s answer. Adopting Xu Sheng’s baseline Chinese proficiency to perform a secondary reading comprehension of Hamlet, he stated: “I believe this sentence… can be interpreted differently by every single person.”

Meng Guowei: “And that’s why you answered like this?! On an exam, there is only one standard answer!”

Shao Zhan found himself grasping Xu Sheng’s thought process with increasing accuracy. In that moment, it was as if Xu Sheng’s voice was in his head, answering for him: “The standard answer is dead, but people are alive.”

“…”

When had the class ever witnessed an answer so obscenely badass? It shattered their understanding built over years of schooling.

Hou Jun: “Fucking epic!” Tan Kai: “Absolutely fucking epic!”

The outcome of this answer was that “Xu Sheng’s” image not only stood tall in his classmates’ minds, but he himself stood tall for the entire period. Leaving a parting remark of “Stand and listen for the rest of this class,” Meng Guowei finally began reviewing the quiz: “Let’s look at question one…”

Once Meng Guowei turned his back, Shao Zhan’s face was cold enough to freeze water: “What were you thinking with that question?”

Face buried in his desk, Xu Sheng laughed into his arms. Not daring to laugh too loudly, he stifled it for a moment before replying, “Actually, your analysis was pretty much spot-on. But the most important reason… was simply that I didn’t know the answer.”

If I can’t read it, naturally I can’t comprehend it.

Shao Zhan’s understanding of the creature known as a slacker deepened another level.

Next period was English. The English teacher also stopped by Class 7 holding her thermos before the bell rang, announcing from the doorway: “The monthly exams are coming up! While we continue learning new material, don’t forget to review what we’ve already covered.”

Under the repeated emphasis of every subject teacher, the looming presence of the monthly exams was steadily amplified. Exams were the ultimate tool for evaluating learning outcomes; not just Meng Guowei, but all the teachers placed immense importance on this test.

The first time Xu Sheng heard Meng Guowei mention it, it hadn’t felt real; he had treated it as just another tactic to keep them from slacking off. It wasn’t until the subject teachers actually started reviewing old material—“Let’s prep for the monthly exams. I’ll summarize the key concepts for you”—that the reality of the monthly exams smashed into his and Shao Zhan’s field of vision with unstoppable force.

“I heard our monthly exams this time are super strict,” Hou Jun sighed while doing homework before class. “I overheard it in Old Meng’s office. Four invigilators per testing room! How insane is that?”

“I heard that too. They say the difficulty is way higher than previous exams, packed with comprehensive problems. This isn’t a monthly exam; it’s basically tracking like a midterm!”

The pen slipped from Xu Sheng’s fingers.

Shao Zhan misfired a skill in his game and was instantly slashed to death by an opponent’s combo.

Neither of them had genuinely considered having to take the monthly exams in this state. Every night before bed, they thought: Five days, ten days, fifteen days… fifteen days at most. We should swap back eventually.

Over the weekend, the first thing Xu Sheng did upon opening his eyes every morning was jump out of bed to check the mirror.

Who would have thought that with the monthly exams practically on their doorstep, they still hadn’t swapped back?!

Who could have possibly predicted this?

Xu Sheng stared blankly, picturing a testing room with four invigilators. Linjiang Sixth High sorted testing rooms by academic rank. He would be sitting in Testing Room 1, Row 1, Seat 1.

He would have to write Shao Zhan’s name in the candidate slot… and answer the paper in the identity of the Exam God. Just picturing it, Xu Sheng broke out in a cold sweat.

The mere thought of that scenario was enough to drive Xu Sheng insane.

Shao Zhan wasn’t faring any better. With Xu Sheng’s Hamlet-style approach to answering questions, forcing him to take the exam as Xu Sheng in the dead-last testing room sounded worse than solving extra Olympiad math problems.