Chapter Thirty-Five

The next day.

On the day the results of the fourth city-wide mock exam for senior high school students, commonly known as the "Fourth Mock Exam," were released, the scrolling on the grade-level screen was half a minute slower than usual because two lines of data were flashing side by side, almost blindingly bright.

[Science Major - First Place in the City]

Xu Li

Chinese 148, Math 150, English 150, Physics 100, Chemistry 100, Biology 100, Total 748

[Second Place in the City for Science]

Tan Yuze

Chinese 145, Math 150, English 149, Physics 100, Chemistry 100, Biology 100, Total 744

The two were only 4 points apart, yet they left the third-place team a full 27 points behind.

The crowd gathered in front of the list let out a sigh of "I knew it"—as if they weren't just looking at the results, but witnessing the confirmation of a law once again:

"If the first and second place are not Xu Li and Tan Yuze, then the list must be wrong."

Old Cao stood at the back of the crowd with his hands behind his back, raised his chin towards the big screen, and muttered, "748, this girl has squeezed every last drop out of the Chinese composition."

The physics group leader next to him grinned from ear to ear: "744, Yuze's supplementary proof was even more concise than the standard answer, I'll give him full marks and a star."

Even more astonishingly, their individual subject scores dominated the city's rankings:

A perfect score in math and a perfect score in science both resulted in a double victory.

Both English essays scored 30, and the marking team scanned both papers into their database as model essays.

The difference in scores for the Chinese exam was 3 points, simply because Xu Li's composition was deducted 2 points for "overly elegant handwriting", while Tan Yuze was deducted 1 point for "perfect punctuation, resembling printed text".

Actually, Tan Yuze was also quite speechless!

Before evening self-study that day, someone in the class printed out a screenshot of the large screen and pasted it on the back blackboard, adding a line in red pen next to it:

"The daily synchronization rate between gods is 99.47%."

Lu Yi passed by and slapped the line of red text: "For the next mock exam, I suggest you just post a tie for first place, so the big screen won't blind my eyes."

Zhu Yu added fuel to the fire: "Tie first? That depends on whether the two gods are willing to share the throne."

Meanwhile, the two "gods" themselves are huddled in an empty classroom, comparing answers—

Xu Li pushed the last subjective question from the Chinese reading comprehension section in front of Tan Yuze: "Which one sounds more like the standard answer: my 'compassion beneath an absurd shell' or your 'existential tenderness'?"

Tan Yuze looked up and chuckled, "The teacher who graded the papers said that both would get full marks because..."

He paused deliberately, lowering his voice so that only she could hear him:

"Because they can't tell who copied whom either."

Xu Li clicked her tongue, folded the test paper into a paper airplane, and gently tossed it toward his chest: "Next time, I'll let you have 748, so you won't write 'existential tenderness' to disgust me again."

Tan Yuze reached out and caught it; the paper airplane landed steadily in his palm, as if he had caught a promise.

“Okay,” he said, “then 744 is mine, and 748 is yours—our total score is still 1492, it hasn’t changed.”

Outside the window, the large screen refreshed again, but nothing changed.

The first and second place winners remained side by side, like two parallel lights that were infinitely close together.

—Monday morning, three days after the results of Mock Exam 7 were released—

A special segment was added to the flag-raising ceremony.

The principal personally presented the two certificates to Xu Li and Tan Yuze, amidst a flurry of flashes from the audience.

Xu Li accepted the certificate and casually tilted the microphone towards Tan Yuze.

Tan Yuze only said nine words:

"Results are part of the process; the experiment continues."

The audience was stunned for a moment, then burst into applause—everyone knew that the “experiment” referred to their rumor-blocking system, as well as their default mode of “fighting side by side.”

After the flag-raising ceremony, Lao Cao called the two men to his office, closed the door, and threw out two printed "Tsinghua and Peking University Winter Camp" recommendation forms.

"748, 744, any more politeness would be pretentious. Sign it, and I'll mail them all out tomorrow."

Xu Li flipped through the pages and suddenly asked, "Can you write a two-person project?"

Old Cao raised an eyebrow: "Winter camp is an individual competition."

“Then fill in ‘Research direction: Rumor propagation dynamics and its immune mechanism’ for all of them.”

Tan Yuze added from the side: "It's easier to form teams if the same mentor is listed."

Old Cao was speechless for three seconds, then laughed and scolded, "Fine, fine, you two can do whatever you want, just don't save me any medals."

Lu Yi posted two A3-sized "Ultimate Mock Exam Prediction Lists" next to the blackboard.

The top spot was written in large, bold font:

[Mock Exam 8: Unofficial Betting Odds]

No.1 Xu Li 748 (-0)

No.2 Tan Yuze 748 (+4)

Zhu Yu, who was collecting money and taking notes, said: "Place your bets now! The odds for a tie for first place are 1:4, for a point difference of ≤2 is 1:2, and for Tan Shen to overtake is 1:6!"

As Leng Yuxuan passed by, he slapped five hundred-yuan bills on the "tied for first place" sign: "A sure win."

Bai Chuan went even further, betting 1000 points on a "tied score + perfect score in the science section".

Xu Li and Tan Yuze exchanged a glance, then simultaneously pulled out their meal cards and each deposited 200 yuan.

The one I bought was also "tied for first place".

The whole class erupted in an uproar: "You guys are playing your cards openly!"

The two said in unison, "It's a sure thing, no loss."

The winter camp application materials have already been sent out, but they upgraded the RumorShield 2.0 set used in the provincial competition to 3.0.

The countdown on the screen starts at [00:30:00], simulating the peak of rumors that may occur 30 minutes before the release of the mock exam results.

Xu Li typed the last line of code, pressed Enter, and the red dot appeared briefly before instantly disappearing. The system message read: 【TotalBlockingTime: 0.8 seconds】

Tan Yuze exported the data to a USB drive and turned to look at her: "Final on-campus test, complete."

Xu Li stretched, her voice hoarse from staying up all night: "After the college entrance exam, I'll open-source this system and leave it to the next cohort."

"Okay." Tan Yuze closed his laptop. "Then let's focus on the next track."

What track?

"The inter-school league between Tsinghua's Yao Class and Peking University's Turing Class—I heard that this year's exam will test the quantum rumor no-cloning theorem."

Xu Li laughed out loud: "Then let them see the superposition state of 748 and 744."

The next morning, the bulletin board

Old Cao posted a red-headed notice in advance:

Mock Exam 5 Postponed

—As the city uses our school's RumorShield 3.0 system as a pilot program, the exam time has been changed to "real-time cloud assessment," with results pushed out instantly.

in other words:

Starting today, the system will update the rankings for Xu Li and Tan Yuze every time they complete a question.

The entire student body gathered around the bulletin board, letting out a sigh of both shock and excitement:

"Will the leaderboard become a live stream in the future?"

"Yes."

The only response they received was from Tan Yuze. The boy stood on the steps, his gaze passing over the crowd and landing on Xu Li below.

"However, the first and second place will most likely remain unchanged."

Xu Li looked up and met his gaze across the distance. Her voice wasn't loud, but it was enough to silence the surroundings.

"Unless someone catches up with us first."

The sun was shining brightly when the large leaderboard flashed and displayed a new line of data:

[Real-time Ranking No.1: Xu Li 748]

[Real-time Ranking No. 2: Tan Yuze 748]

Point difference: 0

The applause, the sound of camera shutters, and the sound of wind mingled together, like pressing the play button for an infinite loop on the last summer of senior year.

—The third day after the postponement of the fifth mock exam, the last city-wide adaptive test before the college entrance examination—

At 6:30 a.m., school buses provided point-to-point transportation for students taking the exam.

Xu Li and Tan Yuze sat in the last row, wearing the same pair of headphones: English listening on the left channel and piano concerto on the right.

The streetlights outside the car window went out one by one, as if someone had pressed the shutdown button on the city.

Lu Yi turned around from the front row and lowered his voice: "The live broadcast rankings have been stopped. Today's scores are kept secret. Are you two worried?"

Xu Li took off one earphone and handed it to him: "Listen to this part first, then we'll talk."

It's a BBC report on the latest news about quantum computing—speaking at a speed that's like it's on 2.5x speed.

Lu Yi looked completely bewildered after hearing this: "This can relieve stress?"

Tan Yuze casually added, "It can refresh you."

The exam will begin at 8:30.

The exam paper bags were opened, and the exam papers were standardized for the entire city.

At the top of the first page, the names of two familiar faces were prominently displayed in the section for those who set the questions:

[Special Invited Review Team: Joint Expert Group from Tsinghua University's Yao Class and Peking University's Turing Class]

Xu Li raised an eyebrow and rubbed the paper with her fingertip, as if giving an old friend a high five.

Tan Yuze turned to the last page and found that the bonus question was an open-ended design question:

"Based on the RumorShield framework, an algorithm is proposed to prevent cheating rumors in the closed network environment of the college entrance examination, and a mathematical proof is given."

He wrote two lines at the top of the draft paper.

Assumption1:LiXuistrustworthy.

Assumption 2: I'm with her.

Then I picked up my pen and began to deduce the meaning line by line.

When the exam ends, the system automatically collects the papers and uploads encrypted data from across the city.

As students poured out of the examination hall, they were surprised to find that the giant screen outside the school gate wasn't displaying scores as usual, but instead was playing a loop of the message: "[Scores will be released by the Provincial Examination Authority in 72 hours]."

In the bottom right corner of the large screen, a line of small print signed:

Technical Advisor: RumorShieldTeam. Everyone instantly understood: this system had already taken over the control of public opinion regarding the college entrance examination.

That night, after the school lights were turned off, a desk lamp was still on in room 302 of the laboratory building.

Xu Li and Tan Yuze are conducting their final stress test.

They uploaded the core algorithm of RumorShield 3.0 to the provincial examination authority's internal network sandbox.

On the screen, millions of simulated rumors were flagged, traced, and debunked within 0.3 seconds.

The last line of the log reads: 【Allclear. Ready for production.】

Xu Li shut down the server, unplugged the power, and let out a soft breath.

"The rest, leave it to time." Tan Yuze turned off the lights, leaving only his words in the darkness:

"Leave it to us too."

The results were announced 72 hours later.

The homepage of the provincial examination authority's official website features a minimalist poster: [2024 Provincial College Entrance Examination (Science)]

First place: Xu Li, 734 points

Second place: Tan Yuze, 733 points

Point difference: 1

Note: 1 point was deducted from each of the Chinese composition sections, and all other sections received full marks.

The internet was abuzz with excitement, yet miraculously, there were no trending topics about "leaked exam questions" or "behind-the-scenes manipulation"—RumorShield was running silently in the background, filtering 100,000 abnormal messages per second.