Two hours later, the exam ended.

He Jing felt pretty good. Although she wasn't entirely confident on two questions, her overall accuracy rate for the questions she answered was about 95%.

Cheng Yi walked out of the examination room in a daze, her steps even unsteady on her way back. Her mind was filled with images of the end of the world: the teacher's reprimands, the classmates' cold stares, the parents' disappointment...

Her life was in complete darkness.

She returned to the Cheng family home in a daze, just in time to run into Ye Shuping who was walking towards her. Ye Shuping noticed that something was wrong with her and asked with concern, "Xiaoyi, what's wrong?"

Cheng Yi looked up, her eyes reddening, her voice choked with emotion: "Mom..."

"Did He Jing bully you again?"

"no."

Cheng Yi didn't dare let Ye Shuping know what she had done. But Ye Shuping kept asking, so she finally told the truth, crying as she spoke: "Mom, I really didn't mean to. I just wanted to become better so that you and Dad would look at me with new respect..."

Ye Shuping frowned, looking troubled: "This is indeed a bit difficult to handle."

"Mom, what should I do?"

"However, it's not like there's absolutely no way."

Ye Shuping wiped away her tears and said with heartache, "Don't cry. You just finished your exam and the papers haven't even left the city yet. Mom will hire someone to steal the papers for you. Just pretend you don't know anything."

Cheng Yi's beautiful eyes widened in disbelief: "Is this even possible?"

“Why not?” Ye Shuping had an idea and became more confident. “There are so many candidates in the province, who knows how many exam papers there are? Who cares why you lost your paper?”

Upon hearing this, Cheng Yi suddenly felt hopeful again and smiled through her tears, saying, "Thank you, Mom, you're so kind."

Ye Shuping tapped her forehead with her finger: "You naughty child..."

That very night, a thief broke into the school that had been set up as the examination venue for the provincial physics competition. He took Cheng Yi's paper from among a pile of exam papers, unaware that in his haste, another paper had accidentally fallen out...

About a month later, the results of the provincial physics competition were announced.

The entire school of Yin Gao cheered because Yan Hanxi had actually won first place in the province. The neighboring No. 1 High School only had one person in the top ten, while two other students had blank scores and were ranked at the bottom.

—Cheng Yi and He Jing!

Class 3 of Grade 11 exploded with excitement:

"Damn, what happened? Did Sister Jing miss the exam?"

"I clearly saw Sister Jing get on the school bus that day, this is too surreal!"

"Sister Jing, what exactly happened?"

...

He Jing didn't know what was going on either. She clearly took the test, so why was her score 0? Could it be that the protagonist's halo as a true heiress was so strong that it could cover up all the bugs?

And she, the villainous supporting character, also took the blame.

She couldn't help but look at Cheng Yi and saw that Cheng Yi's eyebrows were raised and her expression was pleasant, clearly showing that she had breathed a sigh of relief.

Cheng Yi was indeed greatly relieved. For the past month, she hadn't been eating or sleeping well, fearing some kind of accident. But when the results were announced, the weight on her heart finally lifted.

She also looked at He Jing, her brows furrowed with a hint of sarcasm. "Hmph, so what if she couldn't be separated from Yan Hanxi? So what if she did well on the exam? She's still at the bottom just like me."

Just then, the physics teacher rushed in from the corridor and said, "He Jing, Cheng Yi, the province is taking the matter of you losing your competition papers very seriously. After all, once you pass the provincial competition, you will be competing in the national competition, which is related to the honor of our province. In the end, the province has decided to let you take a make-up exam separately, scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. I hope you two will work hard and get good results!"