The diagnostic test arrived as scheduled.
According to the rules of No. 1 Middle School, the last student in the top class and the first student in the regular class will switch places.
On the day of the exam, Ruan Chen was still listless, lying on the table looking at her phone.
Yu Xiaoya asked in a low voice, "Ruan Chen, have you finished reviewing?"
Ruan Chen told the truth, "No, I just stayed up all night last night to look at the test points posted in the group."
I watched it late at night; I was having an online meeting with Lin Fengzi and the others in the first half of the night.
Yu Xiaoya seemed particularly nervous for the exam. With half an hour left before the exam started, she kept quietly memorizing the concepts, but the more she memorized, the more flustered she became, and sweat even seeped from her temples.
Ruan Chen was quite surprised that the heir of the Yu family was under so much pressure.
After Yu Xiaoya recited an equation incoherently for the third time, Ruan Chen finally couldn't take it anymore, sighed, and snatched the book from Yu Xiaoya's hands.
With her neatly trimmed fingertips touching the line of equations, Ruan Chen said softly, "You've got your notes wrong. Old Li wrote on the blackboard..."
"My God, genius! You didn't even take notes, yet you still remember them!" Yu Xiaoya exclaimed in surprise, her eyes widening.
Ruan Chen, head tilted to the side and slumped listlessly on the table, said, "Actually, notes aren't that important. Look at Lin Feng and the others, they're always buried in taking notes, they want to write down every single thing the teacher says, even the exact moment they fart, but they still get the worst grades on the weekly tests—they probably don't even look at those notes themselves, they're just lying there deceiving themselves. The important thing is to know what was covered in the lesson, to learn how to extract the key points, instead of copying down every single detail..."
Yu Xiaoya nodded repeatedly with an admiring look on her face, but suddenly realized that Ruan Chen was not saying anything.
"Hey genius, can you help me with this...wait?"
Ruan Chen fell asleep.
There was also a faint bluish-gray tinge around his eyes, which clearly indicated that he was not getting enough sleep.
She seemed to be sleeping lightly, her brows were slightly furrowed. It was mid-September and the classroom air conditioner was still on, blowing directly on the first row.
Yu Xiaoya gently touched Ruan Chen's fingertips as they rested on the book pages.
It's cold.
She took out her latest baseball uniform from the drawer and draped it over Ruan Chen's shoulders.
There are still twenty minutes left, so Ruan Chen can sleep a little longer.
A minute before the bell rang, Yu Xiaoya woke her up, "Student genius, move the desk, the exam is about to start."
Ruan Chen's eyes were still blurry. She wiped away non-existent drool. Her clothes slipped down, and Ruan Chen caught them and glanced at them.
"Um... thank you."
It was Yu Xiaoya who draped it over herself.
Ruan Chen was somewhat touched—she didn't have many friends and little experience in making friends.
Yu Xiaoya didn't pay attention to what she was thinking. She got up and started moving the table, putting her things in the second row—the last three rows went to the next classroom, while the first three rows were still taking the exam in this classroom.
Upon receiving the exam papers, Ruan Chen habitually reviewed all the questions to estimate their scores, hoping to keep her performance within a range that was neither too high nor too low.
Footsteps came from the corridor.
The students in the examination room thought it was an invigilator, so they didn't dare to raise their heads, afraid of being mistaken for cheating, and focused on reading the questions.
So apart from Yu Xiaoya, who was sitting behind Ruan Chen, no one saw that the person who came in was Feng Yuankai.
He walked directly to Ruan Chen's side and lowered his voice, "Ruan Chen, come out for a moment."
In the corridor, Ruan Chen jogged along behind Feng Yuankai, who was striding forward, looking helpless. "It's an exam, Principal."
“It’s not important, we’ll talk about it later,” Feng Yuankai said with an unusually serious expression. “Five minutes ago, our school’s internal information platform was attacked by several forces at the same time, and the cybersecurity department is about to collapse. I have already reported this to my superiors, but it will take at least half an hour for the technicians to arrive—we may not be able to hold out until then. I think you should ask them to take a look.”
Ruan Chen smirked, "Principal, is No. 1 High School secretly building nuclear weapons behind our backs? Why not attack the four major research institutes, which are blatant targets? What's so interesting about our school's internal information platform? Have you hidden military deployment maps or the latest warship designs in it?"
Feng Yuankai tripped over his own feet.
"How come I never noticed you were so talkative before? Their target should be the roster of graduates from previous years and the statistics on their destinations."
Ruan Chen understood and nodded.
Countries around the world are scrambling to recruit talent, but China keeps its own talent information very secret, and it's not easy to find publicly available information about many of its technical personnel who work under assumed names.
The systems of the four academies were impregnable, so these people thought of No. 1 High School, since the Rocket Class was known as the Little Four Academy.
In the cybersecurity department's office, the sound of keyboards clattering away almost formed a continuous line.
A computer had been prepared in the corner. Feng Yuankai pressed Ruan Chen onto it and swiped the card to turn it on—"There's no time to give you temporary access, you can use mine."
Actually, he didn't have high hopes for Ruan Chen, after all, he was only fifteen years old. He just thought that having more people would give him more strength, and he was willing to try anything.
He was an outsider, so after Ruan Chen took his place, he consciously shut up and paced anxiously back and forth in the office.
Soon, his attention returned to Ruan Chen.
He noticed that when the girl focused, her entire demeanor changed dramatically.
The languid air and faint chill emanating from him had completely vanished. He had clearly looked half-asleep just moments before, but now his expression was calm and composed, and his fingers were practically leaving afterimages as he typed on the keyboard.
He frowned, looked at the small print in the lower right corner, and asked in a low voice, "Isn't this the backer of our No. 1 High School?"
Ruan Chen didn't stop working and quickly said, "The part I'm in now is supported by Shanhe University. You share this platform, so I'm currently in Shanhe University's backend."
Feng Yuankai lowered his voice, "I don't have the authority to go to Shanhe University!"
“I know,” Ruan Chen said calmly. “I hacked in with your ID. It’s fine. The chances of them finding out are very low. I’m not doing anything destructive. I’m just plugging leaks.”
By the time this matter was resolved, it was past lunchtime.
Amidst cheers and celebrations in the office, Ruan Chen quietly slipped away.
As she closed the door, someone inside asked, "Have you seen the colleague from Unit 1? Who is it? They're very skilled."
"Unit 3, please check the identity card to see which expert it belongs to."
"The number one machine is the principal's ID card; it seems to be someone the principal brought with him."
"So mysterious?"
"Forget it, I'll ask the principal later and have him bring the No. 1 machine expert to the celebration banquet."
The rankings from the preliminary exam came out quickly. Ruan Chen sighed as she listened to Zeng Han read out the rankings.
Zeng Han emphasized this point when she read it aloud.
Ruan Chen gloriously and unsurprisingly came in last place.
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