Chapter 98

Before long, the next day arrived, and the weekly exam began.

In 1996, a two-day weekend system had already been implemented, with Saturday and Sunday being days off for the first and second-year high school students. This allowed the graduating class to use their classrooms for exams.

Since this was not a major formal exam, the weekly exam was not conducted as strictly as the college entrance exam. The five subjects were tested as follows: two in the morning, two in the afternoon, and one in the evening. Thus, all exams could be completed in one day. On Sunday, the teachers worked overtime to grade the papers, and by Monday noon, the results were posted.

The schedule was indeed tight.

This teaching pace was absolutely hellish.

The teachers worked very hard, and the students were thoroughly exhausted.

However, this model rapidly improved the college entrance exam admission rate at Heyang No. 1 High School. By 1997, the rate of students qualifying for key universities had increased by over 30 percentage points compared to 1996, and the rate for general undergraduate programs had increased by over 50 percentage points, establishing a decade-long period of glory for Heyang No. 1 High School.

The teachers in the graduating and repeat classes accepted such high-intensity work arrangements because the exam allowances were quite good. There were fees for grading papers, invigilating exams, and even for compiling the results. All these added up to a substantial amount of money. For the sake of the money, no teacher complained, and they were all highly motivated.

For this week's exam, Xiao Fei stayed in his own classroom.

Half of the class had to be split up and sent to other classrooms for the exam.

Xiao Fei glanced around and noticed that Xu Fengjuan had not left, and Wang Fei was still in his seat. Before the first exam, Wang Fei turned his head, smiled at Xiao Fei, and made a fist, giving him a thumbs-up.

Almost two decades later, Xiao Fei found himself sitting in the exam room again, and he felt a bit nervous.

He took a deep breath, adjusted his emotions, and began checking his exam supplies.

The teacher invigilating the exam was Huang Wenfeng. There were only a few teachers in the repeat class, so it was impossible to meet the standard of having two invigilators per exam room.

The exam papers were about to be distributed.

When Huang Wenfeng handed the paper to Xiao Fei, he smiled and said, "Do your best, don't be nervous, and try to perform at your best! I believe in you!" The usually arrogant Huang Wenfeng now seemed as friendly as a next-door brother.

"Thank you, Teacher Huang."

After Huang Wenfeng turned away, Xiao Fei opened the paper and quickly scanned it. He realized that it was a Hubei Huanggang exam paper, which he already knew by heart.

This posed no challenge at all.

He worked through the paper at a leisurely pace, but even so, he finished all the questions except the essay in just over half an hour.

Since he aimed to make a stunning impression, he did not hide his abilities or intentionally make mistakes to conceal his true level. He needed to perform well this time to gain more freedom from the school.

The essay topic was "Encounter."

From the topic, it was clear that the exam was testing narrative writing skills.

Xiao Fei thought for a moment and began writing. He used simple and concise sentences to describe a scenario where his future self and his present self met due to a temporal anomaly. This was, in fact, a description of his current situation.

With his current level of mental agility, writing an 800-word essay took him only about half an hour.

Thus, in a two-and-a-half-hour exam, he completed the paper in just over an hour.

Xiao Fei did not immediately submit his paper.

There was no need to draw attention to himself.

He put down his pen and began thinking about his next writing project.

He did not plan to publish another long literary work anytime soon, at least not until "The Fish That Walks on Land" was published in the special issue of "Harvest" for long novels.

However, he had already decided what to write about.

The reason he had not started writing yet was that he wanted to slowly digest the classic and transform it into his current writing style.

Xiao Fei sat in the exam room for an hour, thinking, and only submitted his paper when others began to do so.

"How did the Chinese exam go?" Wang Fei approached him outside the exam room, offering him a cigarette.

Xiao Fei took the cigarette and lit it with Wang Fei's lighter, saying, "It went well, the paper was quite smooth to work through."

"Oh, that's good, that's good." Wang Fei patted Xiao Fei's shoulder and said no more. He just wanted to gauge Xiao Fei's performance.

The grueling exams continued, but the teachers, like tightly wound clocks, had already started grading the papers as soon as the exams were over.

Grading nearly 200 papers in a short time was a significant task.

Fortunately, most of the questions were multiple-choice, so the grading process was relatively quick.

Li Tangqiu had a habit of grading the papers of his top students first, to keep track of their performance changes in real-time.

This time, Li Tangqiu followed his usual routine.

There were two repeat classes for liberal arts, Wenyi 1 and Wenyi 2, with a total of over 180 students. In Li Tangqiu's mind, there were only about 6 or 7 top students, most of whom were in Wenyi 1.

However, this time, he included Xiao Fei.

Li Tangqiu pulled out the papers of the top students, placed them in front of him, rubbed his hands, and picked up a red pen. He deliberately placed Xiao Fei's paper last.

After grading the other papers, the highest score was Zhu Xiling's, who scored 121 points. This was already a high score for Chinese. The other top students scored over 100 points, but they did not meet Li Tangqiu's expectations.

Li Tangqiu took a deep breath and picked up Xiao Fei's paper.

Based on Xiao Fei's two surprising performances in English and math in just one day, it was clear that he had made significant progress in those subjects. Would he also surprise him in Chinese, which Li Tangqiu taught?

Xiao Fei's Chinese scores in his senior year were already excellent, with a broad knowledge base and well-written essays, consistently ranking him at the top of his class.

However, he had performed poorly in the college entrance exam, scoring only 603 points, which converted to about 80 points in the original scoring system. Li Tangqiu believed this was due to the high difficulty of the Chinese exam that year.

Li Tangqiu, full of anticipation, began grading Xiao Fei's paper.

All the multiple-choice questions were correct. The modern literature comprehension was also perfect. The ancient literature comprehension was still perfect. Xiao Fei's answers to the objective questions were all spot-on, and Li Tangqiu's breathing quickened.

Had he made a mistake while grading?

All the questions except the essay were correct, meaning Xiao Fei could be given 90 points. This was a rare occurrence in Chinese exams.

Li Tangqiu double-checked, and he found that his grading was correct; all the answers were indeed correct.

It seemed that Xiao Fei had performed well this time.

He then began grading Xiao Fei's essay.

The essay was worth 60 points, a significant portion of the total score. Scoring high in the essay was not easy. Since it was a narrative writing test, as long as the students were not particularly poor, they would not go off-topic. It was difficult to score high and even harder to create a significant gap in scores.

As Li Tangqiu read Xiao Fei's essay, he was quickly drawn in by the unique ideas. The essay described a story of his future self meeting his present self.

The writing was concise and precise, with a sense of stream of consciousness and symbolism, provoking deep thought.

This essay was well-written!

Li Tangqiu applauded.

He picked up his pen to write "60" on the paper but hesitated, thinking it would be better to be strict. A perfect score in Chinese would be quite a sensation, but it might lead people to question the strictness of his grading. So, he decided to give 52 points.

The score of 142 was quickly written in red ink on the score sheet.