Chapter 133: How Wonderful It Is to Be Young!

The second day of the college entrance examination and the days that followed remained dominated by Ye Chao.

The heavy lifting event was a matter of course. In the subsequent long jump, he emerged from his transformable mecha wearing only a basic pilot’s suit, supplemented by bionic elastic shoes and an electromagnetic catapult. He ultimately achieved a distance of 16.5 meters, securing 17 out of the 20 available points. If he had really wanted to, he could have scored the full 100—by manipulating the mecha to deploy a trampoline or something similar at the final moment—but that would have been too much of a cheat.

Even so, this sparked a new round of debates among the monitoring committee. The rules limited contestants to using only one "Kindle weapon," but faced with such a complex contraption—one that could be assembled and disassembled at will—how exactly should "one" be defined? Indivisible? But one could argue that a space heater, a blower, or an electric fan could all be taken apart. Must the function be singular? A space heater can warm people, fruit, and socks; a blower can move air and pump water; an electric fan can create a breeze and be used as a weapon... what truly has a single function? Even a condom can be used to protect a phone while diving, inflated as a life buoy, or filled with water as a magnifying lens to start a fire in the wilderness.

A technical definition was impossible to formulate. In the end, the "Mediterranean" (a bald official) had to resort to various overt and covert excuses—"provoking the examiners," "disregard for the law," "the dignity that must not be profaned," and "orders that cannot be disobeyed"—and even enlisted the help of interviewers from the "Big Four" to barely scrape together a majority vote to impose further restrictions on Ye Chao.

However, this decision met with opposition from the Jiangcheng authorities. The Mediterranean official couldn't even fathom how he had lost; it seemed as though a few words had been passed around, and the front he had painstakingly assembled simply crumbled. Moreover, several people began eyeing him with a strange look. Had he not just gone bald, he might have suspected those looks meant he was courting death. Ha, how could that be?

In any case, after the long jump came the mental concentration test, where he scored a perfect 25. The subsequent mental acuity test was less impressive, yielding only 10 out of 25 points, while the three-star average was 20. Ye Chao was not just physically sluggish; his mind was the same. However, in the ultra-long-range projectile test, he went 10 for 10, scoring another perfect 30.

Although he wasn't particularly skilled at firearms, which required quickly regaining one's sights and maintaining fluid movement, ultra-long-range projectile throwing was different. It was easy for a mecha to maintain consistent force for every throw; the rest was simply a matter of calculating wind speed and direction. Thus, with a steady and methodical approach, he remained at the top of the leaderboard.

Even more magically, the monitoring committee’s targeted behavior seemed to act as a fame-buff. Over the next few days, his popularity surged miraculously. At first, the people of Jiangcheng only knew his name—that there was a unique candidate named Ye Chao. Later, his supporters grew by the day, and his name was quickly celebrated across the city, becoming the focus of gossip on every street corner. Wherever he went for his exams, that area would become exceptionally lively and boisterous, filled with middle-aged and elderly women who treated him like a young idol. They interpreted his lack of expression as effort, his off-key singing as personality, his plastic surgery as handsomeness, and his scandals as talent. Everything he did was met with screams and cheers.

Alpha Ji, who was also surprised by this, concluded: "Although his emotional intelligence is low, Ye Chao seems... quite suited to be an internet celebrity. Even if he isn't handsome, he unexpectedly knows how to attract eyeballs!"

Regardless, Ye Chao was a hit. His lecture videos became popular as well, with high replay rates. The holographic access helmets, endorsed by his master—the "Imaginary Number" bigwig—enjoyed a second wind after their previous successful sales. It was said that many clever families were planning to, or had already begun, purchasing holographic helmets in bulk to open internet cafes. However, since the helmets had previously been supplied exclusively to students, and those students had performed so impressively, almost no one was willing to sell theirs. Scalpers waved checks worth thousands, yet they couldn't acquire a single one. After all, trendy gadgets were just for fun, but the holographic helmets were tied to their future destiny.

The "Imaginary Space" app was buzzing with constant notifications. There were star-struck fans, people wanting to buy helmets, others seeking academic advice, female students inexplicably inviting him to study sessions, and those curious about how he inscribed his massive Kindle weapon or how he made it appear and vanish into thin air.

Ye Chao created an algorithm to filter them: he ignored the fan mail and politely declined all purchase requests, claiming that as an apprentice, he had no authority to intervene in helmet sales. The truth was that the previous massive orders were still unfinished, and Alpha Ji was so exhausted she was constantly going on strike; there was no time to make new ones. Furthermore, after several rounds of scavenging, the inventory in Jiangcheng had been virtually wiped out. It was rumored that even the military was being forced to organize personnel to sweep the outskirts, as there was truly no stock left in the city.

As for those asking for academic help or study dates, he added them all into a new feature of the holographic helmet: a group chat. He assigned homework, provided corrections, and held group Q&A sessions to save time. Unexpectedly, even though the college entrance exams were over, quite a few people actually participated.

This situation of one person standing above the rest—exciting for a day, shocking for two, but by the fifth or sixth day, it was beginning to induce aesthetic fatigue. After all, even the most comfortable position becomes tiresome, and even the most beautiful goddess has her mundane moments. Ye Chao’s momentum was suddenly checked on the sixth day of the exams.

The emotions of the hundreds of thousands of spectators in Jiangcheng instantly returned to a peak of excitement and anticipation, because on this day, the liberal arts scores were released.

Usually, it was Ye Chao who had to chase after others to close the gap in liberal arts, though lately, it had been a day for him to maintain his lead and pull away from the pack. No one expected that at the most critical moment of the college entrance exam, after holding the top spot in Jiangcheng for eleven consecutive exams over three years, the honor would no longer belong to him.

His total score remained at the top of the leaderboard, but Xu Tiange had closed the gap by three points. It wasn't that he had failed; his performance was as steady as ever. He scored 60 in Chinese, getting everything right except for the essay, for which he only received 15 points, for a total score of 485—decent enough, as he hadn't strayed too far from the prompt. But Xu Tiange was even better. She scored a high of 72 in Chinese, lost 4 points in math, 3 in programming, 2 in physics, and achieved full marks in all other subjects, winning by a margin of three points!

At this point, the students of No. 3 High finally understood why this genius, who had topped the rankings eleven times in a row, had suddenly vanished during the last month: she had gone into seclusion for a month and managed to bring her eight liberal arts subjects up to a level nearly identical to Ye Chao’s!

Yet, this wasn't the only reason for the excitement of the Jiangcheng audience. The more important reason was... that morning, when the camera focused on her, the tall girl with the forever-high ponytail issued a wager in front of all of Jiangcheng:

"Ye Chao, I said I would definitely beat you in the college entrance exam!"

"Do you dare... to make a bet with me?"

"If I win, you enroll in the university I choose; if you win, I enroll in the university you choose!"

"Oh, oh, oh..." The exclamation from two hundred thousand people, plus their pets, was truly earth-shattering!