Chapter 47: You Should Withdraw from the Exam

At six in the morning, roused by the blaring loudspeakers in the street, Ye Chao woke up on the dot.

He struggled to push aside Gun Gun, who, true to form, had ignored his bed and was sprawled half-asleep atop the toilet. After brushing his teeth, washing his face, and having breakfast, Ye Chao felt ready to face the day.

The breakfast had been brought over the night before by Fang Ju, whose father was in charge of logistics at No. 3 High School—a trivial matter for him but a huge help to Ye Chao, as it saved him from jostling through the school cafeteria in the morning rush.

Gun Gun’s peculiar habit of dozing off on the toilet earned a perfect score from Alpha Ji, so Ye Chao pocketed a cool fifty points by association.

Then Ye Chao began his studies.

He had two books stacked before him. The top was a newly unwrapped library copy, its pages turned two or three times a second; beneath it lay “Complex Variables and Their Applications,” the text Ye Chao was earnestly studying.

He flicked through the top book, eyes fixed on the text below, as if he were a student sneakily reading a web novel before the Cataclysm.

Such focus! Such diligence! Such a relentless race against time!

Although Ye Chao already knew that Alpha Ji couldn’t teach him signal processing, it didn’t bother him at all—after all, he’d been self-studying for over a decade and was well used to it by now.

Besides, Alpha Ji’s insights were hardly useless.

Because apart from understanding the theory, no one could make the leap from abstract mathematical and physical formulas to the elusive, shifting world of electromagnetic signals more intuitively than Alpha Ji. In fact, her explanations could be said to be tailor-made tutorials for Ye Chao himself.

Everything was so serene, so harmonious.

Even Gun Gun, who had changed positions in his sleep, offered no complaint.

Only Calculation Ji voiced her dissatisfaction: “Ugh, I’m so bored, so annoyed—no shows to binge, no pandas to watch! Is this really a life for a person, er, a program?”

She howled and rolled in circles.

With every roll, Ye Chao’s favorability dropped by one.

But on closer inspection, the rolling wasn’t linked to her mood, but rather to Ye Chao’s page-turning. With each page, his favorability dropped by one—two or three points per second, one or two hundred per minute, and so on…

Still, Ye Chao quashed her with his usual retort.

“Don’t forget, you still owe me twelve lessons and a task every day. Do you plan to pay off your debt with classes, or with chores?”

“With...with lessons, I guess?”

“Good, that works. I have to be at school by eight, so let’s have a full lesson until seven-thirty. Tonight, you can do the chore.”

“What? There’s something tonight too?” Alpha Ji wailed like a naughty child given extra homework.

[Ye Chao favorability -44]

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“Only twenty-nine days left until the college entrance exam!”

At 7:40, Ye Chao, accompanied by the loudly protesting Alpha Ji—who insisted she didn’t want to go to school, only to watch pandas—arrived at No. 3 High School, perched atop the Central Ring.

He hadn’t even entered when the bold banner hanging at the gate radiated a pressure as intense as the summer heat.

There was a month to go until the exam.

All regular classes had been suspended; students had entered self-study. Any questions were to be addressed individually with teachers—no one knew why this was the policy, but rumor had it that it was a secret to scoring high.

Still, “self-study” was hardly solitary. The training grounds buzzed with activity.

Thanks to the Kyushu Grand Alliance’s “Initiative to Prevent Civilizational Regression,” the Cloud State Union’s Education Act required eight minor subjects—Chinese, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Programming, History, and Geography—to be tested, and their scores counted, though the weighting was flexible.

At present, the main subjects totaled 1,100 points, while the eight minor subjects together were worth only 500.

This was why, despite near-perfect scores in all minor subjects except Chinese, Ye Chao could never beat Xu Tiange.

Even as students now knew that 500 of the main subject points were for teamwork, environmental adaptation, logistics, intelligence gathering, data analysis, tactical planning, etc.—already assessed during internships—there were still 600 points left, dwarfing the minor subjects’ total.

Moreover, those 600 points were all for physical tests and combat—disciplines wherein hard work guaranteed improvement, unlike the luck-based, almost mystical liberal arts.

Thus, the training field was ablaze with energy, sweat pouring as students pushed themselves.

Some trained their fitness alone, others sparred in pairs.

The training ground, not small by any means, was packed to the brim, with even lower grades suspending outdoor classes.

As Ye Chao strolled by, the atmosphere shifted.

“Hey, did you hear? That guy got a perfect score on his internship yesterday—including the 20 extra points…”

“He always gets over 470 in minor subjects…”

“That puts him at 1,000 points…”

What did 1,000 points mean?

Basically, it was equivalent to the pre-Cataclysm cut-off for admission to top-tier universities—apart from the top four schools, you could get in anywhere.

And the 600 points for martial disciplines hadn’t even been tested yet!

It was as if only four of the six subjects in the college entrance exam had been taken, yet the top-tier threshold had already been crossed. Even if you skipped the last two, you’d still have a place at a good school.

As long as you showed up for the exams, even failing, the elite universities would still be choosing from among the likes of you.

Before the Cataclysm, everyone would have been envious, perhaps a little jealous, but not full of resentment—it was simply the gulf between the gifted and the average, and there was no point in hating.

But in the aftermath, people’s thoughts became more complicated.

Why? If your main subjects are terrible, and you’re coasting on minor subjects, you can still get into the top four universities?

Yesterday, during the internship, everyone else was running around frantically, exhausted like online novelists, and you just strolled at the back, making idle remarks, yet you got a perfect score?

Is there any justice left? Any rule of law? Could anything be more unfair?

Maybe not everyone felt this way at first, but with some quietly fanning the flames, the sentiment spread.

Not that everyone was swayed, but given Ye Chao’s reputation as a loner, few were willing to stick their necks out for him at such a time.

So, as Ye Chao traversed the long passage into the teaching building, the mood on the training ground shifted from a faint ripple to a raging storm, faster even than the weather in the post-apocalyptic world.

By the end, Ye Chao found himself unable to move forward, surrounded by a crowd of students.

“Ye Chao, you should just drop out of the exam!”

“Everyone knows how bad you are in the main subjects. If you end up the top scorer, what will outsiders think? That you scraped through on minor subjects alone?”

“You’d bring shame not just on yourself, but on all of No. 3 High!”

At the forefront, Wang Zhi stood tall and righteous, speaking as though he represented everyone.

“That’s right, Wang Zhi has a point. You’ll make our school a laughingstock.”

“You might even drag the whole of Jiangcheng down with you…”

“Withdraw from the exam!”

“Yeah, drop out!”

As the crowd’s protests grew louder, Wang Zhi seemed to swell with importance, towering and broad-shouldered, the very picture of a leader.

This was what it meant to seize on the main conflict, to unite the majority. Among all the minor subjects, only politics should never have been cut.