Xiao Cheng was woken up by someone forcefully slapping her.
I groggily looked up and realized I was sitting in the exam room. Teacher Liu, unusually, wasn't holding a pointer, but instead was holding a stack of brand-new exam papers.
She pointed sharply at the corner of the table with her finger as a warning: "Pay attention, don't let your actions drag down the average score of our whole class."
Xiao Cheng was still a little confused when she received the exam paper. She turned around and looked around. Apart from herself, everyone else was a student NPC.
After distributing the exam papers, Teacher Liu returned to the podium. Where her eyes should have been, a faint red light flickered on her face, like a lit-up camera scanning the entire exam room without any blind spots.
On the blackboard behind her, a line of eye-catching words was painted in bright red: "School Rule Number Two: Grades are paramount; cheaters will die."
A sharp, piercing ringtone came over the loudspeaker, and the students who had been sitting there suddenly picked up their pens and began answering the questions.
The only sound in the classroom was the scratching of pens on paper. Teacher Liu stood silently on the podium, watching each student like a human spy.
The exam paper has a relatively small number of questions, with a total score of 100 points and a time limit of two hours. There are only two types of questions: multiple choice and essay questions, each accounting for half of the score.
After filling in her name and student ID, Xiao Cheng quickly flipped through the entire exam paper and could only say that it was incredibly stupid.
The first multiple-choice question was about the opening lightning strike.
As the first teacher to welcome you, your counselor is sincere towards you, and hopes that you will be sincere towards him as well. Therefore, his full name is:
A. Smith Marseille
B. Fellow Daoist, may you live as long as I do!
C. It's really unfair of me to call myself that.
D. Sparta
Xiao Cheng: "..." Which one of these sounds like a proper name?!
Then I chose a barely acceptable Sparta.
Fortunately, the style of the later questions gradually became more normal, but the scope was too broad, ranging from poetry and songs to philosophy of life. It was hard to understand what kind of talent this exam was trying to select.
After a series of guesses and stumbles, Xiao Cheng finally finished answering the multiple-choice questions, and nearly an hour had passed.
Red ink slowly appeared on her answer sheet, as if someone unseen was grading her paper in real time.
The final multiple-choice question was graded 22, with a comment following: "A regrettable score, but I know you must have done your best."
Xiao Cheng stared at the sentence for a long time, the pen twirling rapidly between her fingers.
So the counselor's name really was Spada.
There are five essay questions, each worth ten points. The first three questions can be treated as brain teasers; they are basically easy to answer.
Xiao Cheng barely thought about it and easily scored thirty points, then turned his attention to the second-to-last question.
Recite the ten school rules from memory.
She remembered these important clues fairly clearly, and without much hesitation, she began to write them down line by line.
[Second school rule: Grades are paramount; those who cheat will be executed.]
The third rule of the school regulations is for you: do you understand the importance of respecting teachers?
School rule number four: God gave you a mouth, and you actually used it to frame your classmates?
The fifth rule of the school is: How can you sleep at your age?
According to the sixth rule of the school, you were abandoned from the very first word.
The seventh rule of the school is to balance work and rest. You will obediently follow that rule, right?
School rule number nine: If you don't finish your food, are you going to save it for farming?
School rule number ten: Who gave you permission to scribble and draw in your notebook?
Two more are needed.
But Xiao Cheng didn't want to guess, nor did she plan to write any more.
She calculated her current score, which was exactly sixty.
A cold, impersonal voice came over the loudspeaker: "Attention all candidates, there are 15 minutes left until the end of the exam. Please carefully check your name and student ID to avoid errors or omissions."
While the other candidates were writing furiously, Xiao Cheng was a little curious. Were they writing books on the exam paper? They were all writing the same questions, so how did they manage to keep writing for almost two hours straight without stopping?
She rubbed her slightly sore neck and turned to look at the last question.
Name.
The two simple words printed on the snow-white paper were practically written down, as if the three people had just written down the easy questions.
But Xiao Cheng showed no intention of writing anything. She stared blankly at the test paper, as if she wanted to see something amazing on the paper.
"Aren't you going to answer?" Teacher Liu's sinister voice suddenly rang out above her head.
Xiao Cheng suddenly looked up and almost bumped into her chin.
"Aren't you going to answer?" Teacher Liu straightened up slightly, looking down at Xiao Cheng and the test paper on her desk, and asked again.
Xiao Cheng raised an eyebrow, looked at her indifferently, and after a while slowly shook her head: "Ah, no answer."
"It's a very simple question, worth so many points. Are you just going to give up like this?" Teacher Liu asked coldly.
She pressed her ten fingers hard against the table, her knuckles bent sharply back, looking as if they were about to break.
"Ugh, this question is so hard." Xiao Cheng said absentmindedly, resting her chin on one hand, while using her other hand to spin the pen in various ways until it almost flew.
The black ink was flicked out and splashed onto the back of Teacher Liu's hand, making a slight hissing sound as it seeped deep into her skin and then quickly spread out.
She recoiled as if burned, rubbing the ink off the back of her hand with utter disgust, as if she wanted to peel the skin off.
But it was completely useless.
The ink adhered deeply to the area and continued to spread, quickly staining most of her hand black.
"You...you..." she gasped, her voice trembling with anger. "Write! Why won't you write!"
Her screams were particularly jarring in the quiet examination room, but all the students ignored them, focusing intently on answering their own questions without even looking up.
"But I really don't know how." Xiao Cheng put down the leaking pen with a helpless expression and spread her hands innocently. "Teacher Liu, you're not planning to help me cheat, are you?"
As soon as he finished speaking, Teacher Liu fell silent, looking like a chicken with its neck stuck.
Looking at the black mark that was almost spreading to her shoulder, Xiao Cheng thought to herself with amusement, "It's probably just a black chicken."
The bell rang to signal the end of the exam, and everyone's exam papers floated up automatically. Some started to turn red, and some started to turn black. Then they were stacked up one by one according to their color.
The black stack fell onto the podium and burst into flames unexpectedly. The pungent smell of burning filled the entire classroom, and thick black liquid flowed from beneath the flames, dripping onto the ground and writhing restlessly like worms.
They burrowed into the bodies of the black exam paper's owners at incredible speed, and screams erupted one after another. The students' limbs cracked and snapped, twisting uncontrollably into bizarre angles.
Their bodies were quickly infected by blackness, first swelling violently, almost bursting their flesh, then gradually shrinking along with their bones, finally turning into silent, withered little people who collapsed one by one on the table.
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