Chapter 318: 122 Call for Pickup God, Break Out of the Encirclement (Second Update)_2
[…]

“He must be busy with real-life stuff.” Song Min wasn’t sure either, he checked the background of his phone, and almost every week he would send a few messages to Bai Jian, dozens of them, and the other side didn’t even look at them.

Lately, he hadn’t even logged into the app.

“True,” Bai Shaoqi nodded, “He’s probably a member of some lab. Our little trifles are not something he’d care about.”

It’s just unknown which lab had spawned such a monster talent.

“The exam questions set by Jiangjing for this joint exam?” Song Min returned to the page, his voice cold.

“I heard they are very difficult.” Beicheng High School always had news in advance, and Bai Shaoqi had heard teachers mention it, she smiled, “But this time it’s about integrated subjects, and mathematics isn’t as focused on functions as last time. Don’t worry, it’s your home turf.”

Of course.

Neither of them could have imagined.

What they should worry about this time was far more than just mathematics.

**

Xu En returned to Jiangjing a week later to prepare for the wedding.

After Pu Xiaohan’s video was released, it went viral again, and the followers soared to 10 million. Xingyi Martial Arts School also gained a bit of fame, attracting many master teachers to apply for positions and enrolling a wave of students.

Meanwhile, Ming Dongheng practiced his boxing on the Plum Blossom Piles day after day.

Finally, the end-of-term exams at Xiangcheng High School arrived.

Each year, students looked forward to and were nervous about them.

“Everyone, quiet down,” Lu Lingxi stood at the podium, speaking seriously, “Tomorrow’s exam will be very difficult. If you encounter questions you can’t answer, just skip them so as not to affect the next test. It will determine whether you have a good year or not, got it?”

“Got it,” the students from Class 15 dragged out their response.

Without Zhang Shize, Class 15 had lost some of its vitality, and Weng Qi and the others barely played basketball anymore.

Lu Lingxi’s gaze rested on Bai Lian and Ning Xiao, both quietly working on problems, and she gradually calmed down.

The end-of-term joint exam still followed the national college entrance examination system.

The first morning was dedicated to the Chinese language exam.

After it was over, the students from Class 15 looked utterly deflated.

“Who the hell set these exam questions?” Pu Xiaohan complained to Bai Lian over lunch, “Who could understand that classical Chinese?”

Bai Lian, who was eating lunch, looked up casually and glanced at Pu Xiaohan.

Pu Xiaohan: “…Huh? You understood it?”

Bai Lian raised an eyebrow.

Pu Xiaohan felt a bit desperate, no way, you TM understood it?

Ning Xiao and Tang Ming, who wandered into the conversation, weren’t surprised. After all, have you ever seen someone who used Jiangjing University’s app exam questions as a practice database?

The afternoon brought mathematics.

The questions were genuinely difficult this time, even Ning Xiao, who had been specially trained by Jiang Fulai, felt utterly spiritless after finishing the exam.

In the Zhang Family’s backyard, the only one who seemed normal was Bai Lian, who was trimming Iris Flowers with scissors.

“Are your exams really that hard?” Zhang’s mother asked the only person who seemed unaffected, Bai Lian, with a watering can in hand, “Why do they all look like this?”

“Huh?” Bai Lian slowly trimmed the Iris Flowers, placing them one by one into a vase she intended to bring to Yan Lu’s set tomorrow, “It’s okay, they… don’t know.”

She didn’t find it particularly difficult.

After all, she had finished them.

Tang Ming, who accidentally overheard, turned around and patted Ning Xiao’s shoulder expressionlessly, “Genius, did you see the last question?”

Ning Xiao looked up at him, “…”

Tang Ming let out a breath of relief, wiping the sweat off his forehead, “Thank goodness, I’m glad I had you for company.”

Zhang’s mother watched quietly as Bai Lian arranged flowers. Unlike Zhang Shize, Bai Lian was very skilled in trimming, showing that she had some knowledge of floristry.

“Did you learn this?”

Zhang’s mother asked in surprise.

The next day.

The morning was for integrated science.

Bai Lian looked over the test paper from beginning to end, first completing physics, then biology, and finally picking up her pen to write the chemistry section.

She had been studying chemistry for the whole month.

After finishing, she still handed in her paper early, but this time, she only finished twenty minutes ahead of time.

On the main road of the school, several teachers who weren’t invigilating were chatting with the principal. From a distance, the principal saw Bai Lian, “How did the exam go, Bai student?”

He asked with a smile.

Carrying her backpack, Bai Lian stopped and greeted each teacher and the principal, “I wrote everything that I could.”

Today, her garment’s collar was embroidered with elegant lotus flowers. The light blue hem of her skirt resembled rippling waves, the water’s gleam crystal clear, with the green lotus leaves creating ripples as she moved. The pale lotus flowers in the middle appeared faintly visible amidst them.

“The questions were very difficult this time,” said the physics teacher, who had just received the sealed questions and had skimmed through to know the difficulty level, “It’s normal not to finish, you shouldn’t feel pressured.”

He thought that when Bai Lian said she hadn’t written everything, it included physics as well.

“Okay, thank you, Teacher,” Bai Lian replied, her eyelashes casting down in a nod.

The principal found Bai Lian more and more pleasing to the eye and his voice was even warmer, “Bai Lian, go back and rest now. You still have the English exam in the afternoon.”

After Bai Lian left.

The group of teachers then discussed her grades.

This semester, if you look at every test Bai Lian took, there wasn’t a single time her scores in math and physics weren’t perfect.

Only biology and chemistry were her weak points.

But her biology was better than her chemistry.

Now she was slowly catching up in chemistry too. Not just the students, but even the teachers were curious as to what level she could achieve in the final exam.

“Do you think she has the chance to surpass Ning Xiao this time?” someone asked.

The principal gestured towards the chemistry teacher, “You’ll have to ask him.”

The chemistry teacher shook his head, his indifference apparent: “Chemistry is tough this time, she doesn’t have an advantage… She might score around forty or fifty, barely passing.”

In the previous monthly test, which was basic, Bai Lian scored 40 as well.

In this month, the chemistry teacher knew Bai Lian had made significant progress, but for some reason, the final joint exam questions were bizarrely difficult, and his thoughts matched Ning Xiao’s: such questions did not favor Bai Lian, who was a newcomer to chemistry.

He had very modest expectations of Bai Lian and didn’t dare to set them too high.

“That’s pretty high!” the physics teacher, aware of the difficulty of this set of questions, commented, “She has a chance to compete with Ning Xiao!”

A score of forty or fifty was considered a medium achievement.

“So,” the principal focused on the key point, “does that mean we might have two students ranking in the top 30 of the province in this joint exam?”

Of course.

The physics and chemistry teachers based their analysis on Bai Lian’s performance this semester, feeling that she might, at most, match Ning Xiao’s score this time.

But how could they know?

Bai Lian now set aside everything else to seriously study chemistry and biology, even forgoing the math and physics apps…

If you ask how well Bai Lian could master these two subjects?

She was the only female disciple ever exceptionally taken in by Liang Zewen, the greatest imperial teacher of all ages!

When she had substituted for Bai Zhongyu in school, she also learned martial arts with teachers, impressing future generations enough to lament that she deserved a top scholar title. Such an extraordinary scene could only be witnessed firsthand—

Only then could you grasp how shocking Bai Xiangjun was, emerging triumphant from among the geniuses of the prosperous Dayong era.