Epiphanies of Rebirth (重生之豁然)

Chapter 2

The crowd of onlookers dispersed in a hurry as if the farce just now had never happened. A Student Committee member entered the classroom holding a stack of test papers and began to distribute them. The director of Moral Education Office stood on the dais and watched the students, his expression imposing. Lin Jingzhe felt the man's eyes stopped on his face for a long moment.

He didn't raise his head. He accepted the test papers that were handed to him and scanned the somewhat immature handwriting: the full score in Language and Mathematics was 120 marks, he got 86 and 90 respectively. The full score for each of the rest of the subjects was 100 marks, and he hovered at the pa.s.sing line in nearly all of them. English was the most tragic and the only one he failed—he got a pitiful 47 marks.

Lin Jingzhe did remember he had been in a daze for a period of time after his grandfather's death, but he didn't understand exactly how out of it he was until just now.

Jiang Run's results were quite good—the nearby students whispered that he entered the top five in the cla.s.s. Still, if Lin Jingzhe's memory didn't fail him, his cousin was able to get into Qunnan University only because he obtained the school's official admission spot.

This wasn't surprising. Although Public High School No. 1 was called the best high school in Liyun Town, the town itself was but a hard-to-notice dot on Qunnan Province's map, with a poor allocation of educational resources. What's more, Lin Jingzhe remembered that this year, the college entrance examination had been unified for the whole country. It was later regarded as the most difficult one in history. Due to the relatively backward curriculum, the students of Public High School No. 1 were no compet.i.tion for their outstanding rivals from bigger cities.

There were many people who failed the college entrance examination and chose to retake it next year—that was the deepest impression Lin Jingzhe had of it.

He picked up the English test and read it leisurely. He was proficient in that language as he used to often travel abroad for job training in his previous life. Lamentably, even some of the test questions were wrong.

As for the science subjects—Lin Jingzhe said goodbye to high school many years ago and to tell the truth, he'd long forgotten most of what he'd learned. However, he had strong foundations and did finish his studies, so getting better exam results wouldn't be difficult.

Judging from the mock exam questions, no one in Public High School No. 1 suspected how nightmarish this year's college entrance examination would be.

Lin Jingzhe pondered all the underhanded means and little tricks the Cla.s.s 1 teacher, Li Yurong, employed to get more teaching achievements in her name, and really wanted to tell her to stop messing around.

He bowed his head and concentrated on reading the exam questions, then wrote the new answers on the test paper, in accordance with his current knowledge. It made him look earnest and eager to learn. The director opened his mouth, meaning to call him out first, but seeing reviewing so seriously, he couldn't bear to. The boy's only family member pa.s.sed away recently, and he was looking a lot thinner—the director's heart wasn't that hard.

As such, when the director spoke, the name he called changed. "Gao Sheng, come with me. Where is Zhou Haitang? Is he absent?"

Oh, that's right. Lin Jingzhe suddenly remembered that not long before the college entrance exam, Zhou Haitang came into contact with the so-called "mafia" of Liyun Town. Then, he started to skip cla.s.ses more and more often.

There were so many things he needed to remember and pay attention to. He put down his pen, clasped his hands, and leaned back in his seat. With no expression on his face, he watched Gao Sheng, who didn't know what's was going to happen, follow the director out of the cla.s.sroom.