At ten o'clock in the evening, Jiang Ye took the elevator upstairs.
116th floor.
Dormitory number one.
"Knock, knock, knock." Jiang Ye paused, "Knock!"
The door opened, and Yue Qilan, wearing pink pajamas, stared at him with wide eyes.
Jiang Ye pulled out a stack of papers, stuffed them into her arms, and turned to leave.
"Hey, hey, hey! Why are you leaving?" Yue Qilan poked her head out.
"Delivery arrived, why would the delivery person stay?" Jiang Ye waved without looking back and entered the elevator.
...
The next day, the examination hall.
The classroom was unusually full, with each desk spaced two and a half meters apart, the candidates like isolated islands.
There were a total of four invigilators, standing at the four corners of the classroom, like the Four Heavenly Kings.
The bell rang, and the papers were distributed.
The exam was an hour and a half long, with a moderate number of questions, twenty short-answer questions.
The bell rang again, and the invigilator at the front nodded, "Begin answering!"
The candidates picked up their pens in unison, and the sound of writing crackled.
The writing sound lasted less than half a minute before stopping.
Everyone had written their names and student IDs and was bewildered. They didn't know how to answer the short-answer questions and couldn't understand the questions at all!
A student by the window fiercely bit his pen.
Several students in the corner were shaking their legs frantically, as if leg-shaking could grant wisdom.
The students in the front row had flushed faces, looking as if they were drunk. They had already looked at more than ten short-answer questions and had no clue for any of them.
In the entire classroom, only two desks were making the crackling sound of writing.
Yue Qilan sat in the middle, and Jiang Ye sat in the back.
Both were writing with intense focus, their hands moving at lightning speed, as if their pens were flying.
The surrounding classmates looked at the two of them with envy, their expressions conveying something like, "Awesome," "What kind of divine classmates, they actually know how to do it," "So frustrating, the desks are too far to copy."
Jiang Ye was in a great mood. The teacher hadn't lied to him; the exam papers were all the original questions, and even the order of the questions hadn't changed.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour.
"Teacher, I'm submitting my paper!" a female voice called out.
The entire class turned to look. Yue Qilan proudly raised her hand, looking down on the whole class.
Her paper was filled with about eighty percent of the questions, with a few left blank. She answered exactly as many questions as Jiang Ye had given her, not writing a single word more, being very honest.
The teacher came to collect the paper, and Yue Qilan got up and left, her steps extremely cool.
Various whispers from the corners:
"Holy crap, she answered almost everything, what kind of a monster..."
"This girl doesn't listen in class every day, I've been watching her, how can she possibly know all of it..."
"This knowledge just won't stick..."
"Monster!"
Jiang Ye continued writing, still needing to answer the last question.
He closed his pen cap with a "click."
A full page, filled with standard answers from the textbook. It wasn't just excellent; it was perfect!
Jiang Ye didn't submit his paper immediately. Instead, he turned to observe his classmates.
They were all slumped over, either resting their heads on their desks in despair or craning their necks to copy from their neighbors. However, their neighbors were often doing the same, with many students staring blankly at each other.
The vast majority of the papers were blank, or had only a few sentences written on them.
The short-answer questions on this paper were very professional. They weren't the kind of questions where you could guess a lot even if you didn't know the answer. If you didn't know, you couldn't write a single word because you couldn't even understand the questions.
Jiang Ye knew he was safe.
He raised his hand, "Teacher, I'm submitting my paper!"
Another uproar ensued, and Jiang Ye handed in his paper and left.
He retrieved his phone from the phone bag by the classroom door. Unlocking it, he saw that only half the time had passed.
Jiang Ye didn't idle. He went straight to the restroom, found a stall, locked the door, and opened the photos of the questions he had taken on his phone to review for the next subject.
Three subjects were tested in the morning.
The situation in each exam was identical: Yue Qilan submitted her paper first, Jiang Ye submitted his later, and the students stared at their papers in despair, like Bodhidharma meditating against a wall.
He ate lunch and continued with the afternoon exams.
After the first exam in the afternoon, Jiang Ye went to the restroom to review again.
He silently recited to himself.
As he was reviewing, more people entered the restroom. Some were smoking by the urinals, while others entered the stalls with splashing sounds.
"If this continues, we're doomed. We've been testing all morning, and I've written less than three hundred words on my paper."
"I've been writing song lyrics on my paper, half a page. I wonder if the teacher will give me points."
"Don't worry, we don't know the answers, and neither does anyone else. Who comes here to study? We're on a public expense tour to Yong Ye Star."
"Hey, that's right. There are two gods in our exam hall, a man and a woman, who submit their papers full of writing! From the looks of it, they'll get full marks!"
"One is named Jiang Ye, and the other is Yue Qilan. They're unbelievably good. It seems like they know how to do every paper."
Jiang Ye paused when he heard his name and pricked up his ears to eavesdrop.
"Listen everyone, I've thought of a plan."
"Copy?"
"Great minds think alike! Don't those two gods know how to do every question? Let's copy from them. First, copy from the person next to them, then spread outwards. This way, the whole class can write something and avoid failing with blank papers."
"The key is to contact the people sitting next to them. We're too far away and can't see the papers at all. Is anyone here sitting next to Jiang Ye or Yue Qilan?"
"Me, me, me! I'm to the right of that girl. I can see the right half of her paper. She writes very large, so I can copy a few questions. I've copied some in the previous exams."
"Wow, your eyesight is good. I'm sitting to Jiang Ye's left, and I can't see anything, too far."
"I'm to Jiang Ye's right, and I can see a bit too."
"Let's also contact the female students and see if they have any ideas. Women can hold up half the sky. If we copy the questions, we can all write them together."
Jiang Ye, who was about to leave, stopped. He hid in the stall with great interest, listening silently.
The few students outside plotted their cheating plan for a long time.
After listening enough, Jiang Ye sent a message to Yue Qilan on his phone.
Jiang Ye: "The students in the exam hall want to copy our papers."
Yue Qilan: "Mmm, I know."
Jiang Ye: "How do you know?"
Yue Qilan: "I'm reviewing in a restroom stall. Someone outside was talking, saying the boys in the class want to collude with them to cheat."
Jiang Ye almost burst out laughing. What a coincidence.
Jiang Ye: "Should we let them copy?"
Yue Qilan: "Of course not! Cheating is so shameful! I despise cheaters the most! We can't encourage this unhealthy trend! The social atmosphere deteriorates because of people like them!"
Jiang Ye's forehead was covered in black lines. He thought to himself, aren't we the biggest cheaters? They just want to stretch their necks to see a question, such a pure and primitive method of cheating. We even got the original exam papers in advance!
Simple cheating couldn't describe it; it was like rewriting the game rules! Reading the strategy guide before the game even launched!
Jiang Ye: "Then, in the next exam, let's wait forty-five minutes after the start before we start writing, and use scratch paper to cover our writing."
Yue Qilan sent an OK gesture.