Under the scorching sun, her upturned face showed a mix of terror and ferocity, with blood streaming from her scalp mingling with the tears in her eyes. Despite the blazing sun, a chill ran through the players.
The teacher, however, passed by calmly, as if she saw nothing.
One player couldn’t help but ask, “Teacher, that girl...”
“Oh, her.” The teacher seemed to just notice her and turned to look, appearing completely normal. “She’s studying, trying hard to memorize the exam points.”
“Students at Qingyi High School are all very diligent and hardworking. This way, they don’t let down the school’s hard efforts and vast investments.”
The teacher turned back to the players, showing a gentle yet creepy smile. “Students, you must also study hard.”
It was summer, and trees shaded the school path. The scorching sunlight leaked through the gaps in the sycamore leaves, casting broken shadows on his face, making him look ghostly.
All the players were stunned.
“After all, for you, academic performance is everything,” the teacher smiled and continued leading them towards the teaching building. “If you have good grades, parents and teachers will fulfill all your needs. If not, ah...”
The players perked up, wanting to know what happens if their grades were poor.
But the teacher, after prolonging the “ah,” just smiled and said nothing.
This made the players even more uneasy.
They turned back to look at the girl, who was now surrounded by a few classmates.
“Qian Yating, you can’t even remember ‘persuade’!”
“What is wrong with you? The mock exams are just around the corner!”
The girl frantically grabbed her hair. “No, no! I didn’t forget, I remembered it, what, what pr...”
“Ahhhh!” She screamed in terror, jumping up and repeatedly banging her head against the tree. “P, p... I am...”
Seeing the students on the road walking while memorizing words and formulas, the players gradually got infected by the atmosphere and started feeling anxious as well.
At this moment, a young man in a school uniform peeked at the teacher’s face. “What happens if we get bad grades? You haven’t finished telling us.”
“...”
Was this something you could ask?
Maybe it’s not impossible.
As expected from a top student.
The teacher looked at Ning Su. Ning Su blinked and said, “I have very good grades.”
The teacher immediately smiled. “If you get bad grades, there will be some negative consequences. But you have such good grades, you don’t need to worry. Just study well.”
“Of course I know there will be negative consequences. Can you be more specific?” Ning Su continued to ask.
Teacher: “You will find out soon enough.”
Ning Su said earnestly, “This sole focus on grades is wrong. You need to pay attention to the overall development of students’ moral, intellectual, physical, and artistic aspects. Otherwise, it could lead to psychological problems.”
“…”
The teacher laughed. “Don’t worry, our school has seven psychological counselors. They are all very professional and excellent psychologists. In this area, no hospital in the city can compare to us.”
“…”
This made him even more worried.
What kind of serious school had so many top-notch psychological counselors?
“Ding-ling-ling—”
The school’s preparatory bell rang, and many students started running towards their classrooms.
The teacher said, “There’s no time to assign you to different classes now, so I’ll take you to the examination room for the test first.”
The examination rooms had already been assigned, all of which were large, tiered classrooms. The one hundred players were split between two classrooms.
Having to take a test as soon as they entered the instance was unbearable for the players.
However, none of them dared to show their discomfort, nor even dared to breathe heavily, as the atmosphere in the examination room was more tense and oppressive than on campus.
Each examination room had ten vigilant invigilators, and four instructors armed with electric batons.
Once everyone had arrived, the chief invigilator said, “The placement test is about to begin. If anyone needs to use the restroom, do it now. No restroom breaks are allowed during the exam. Cheating and any behavior that disrupts the order of the examination room are strictly prohibited.”
Ning Su looked around. There were fifty players in their classroom, and each one looked serious.
The Human Pupa Master frowned deeply.
She had smoked, skipped classes, and fought in high school but never studied well. The pitiful amount of high school knowledge she had acquired had long been forgotten by the time she graduated.
The Gu Witch stared at the exam admission ticket just pasted on the desk, lost in thought.
Ning Su knew he had entered the game during high school, but wasn’t sure which grade he was in at the time.
Ling Xiao was lightly twirling a black pen between his index and middle fingers, with his thumb pressed on the freshly handed-out scratch paper.
Ning Su wondered if this Flower God knew anything about trigonometric functions.
“......”
“Ring!—”
The invigilator said, “Please get ready, the exam is starting!”
As soon as the test papers were handed out, the sound of writing and the flipping of papers filled the classroom.
Almost everyone was racing against time to answer the questions, creating a tense atmosphere throughout the examination room.
Ning Su glanced through the test paper and found it surprisingly easy, not as difficult as he had imagined.
It was unclear whether this was to lower the difficulty of catching up with the study progress or to fit the “memory” aspect of the instance, but all the players were placed in a liberal arts class.
Compared to science, liberal arts required more memorization.
The good news was that if this was the difficulty level, it wouldn’t be impossible to score 600 points in two months.
Unless they had entered the instance only a few days ago and were already third-year high school students, most players would have long forgotten their high school knowledge.
However, they had the ability to understand and learn. Taking an exam with this level of liberal arts knowledge, plus a subject in mathematics, scoring 600 points in two months was difficult but not impossible.
The difficulty of a level-six exam was largely distributed in other areas.
Ning Su was answering questions while thinking.
The first exam was Chinese. He answered the questions very quickly. When he finished one side of the test paper, he suddenly felt the desk shaking.
The pen made a mark on the answer sheet. Ning Su turned to look at the person beside him.
It was a boy wearing thick glasses, and he was trembling.
Beads of sweat were dripping from his forehead, falling onto the test paper, smudging his black ink.
He was biting his pale lips tightly, yet intermittent sobs still escaped.
Ning Su glanced at his answer sheet.
He had already answered many questions, and he had done quite well, but he was stuck on a very simple classical poetry fill-in-the-blank question.
A famous classical poem that was required to be memorized in all versions of the textbook, with the first line needing the second line to complete it.
After doing so well on the previous questions, he got stuck on this one.
Generally, candidates with a good mentality, when encountering a difficult question, whether it was simple or hard, familiar or unfamiliar, should not dwell on it and should immediately move on to the next questions.
The boy panicked for a while, and he did start looking at the following questions.
Ning Su was very sure of this.
Because the boy turned over the test paper and began looking at the questions on the back.
But the more he looked, the more anxious he became, and the more violently the desk shook.
Large droplets of water fell on the test paper, and the black ink on the paper expanded silently in the water, looking sinister and obvious.
It wasn’t just sweat from his forehead, but also tears from his eyes.
In his eyes, Ning Su saw terror.
An indescribable terror and despair.
