ngrong's issues; the company is facing financial difficulties and unrecovered project funds. Yesterday when Mao Director and I were drinking together, you know what he said: 'If we don't get the Xiaha...Chapter 18: The Fallen Tiger

No. 1 High School, the most prestigious school in Xiahai City, features a golden eagle sculpture at the entrance that seems to be about to take flight. A well-placed cluster of trees surrounds the central office area near the main gate and then extends outwards towards rows of teacher apartments, a wide square, cultural walls, bulletin boards for the school newspaper, and newly constructed teaching buildings stretching endlessly ahead. By 1998, No. 1 High School's new teaching buildings had been completed; they were mother-and-child style buildings connected by bridges in the middle, which was quite unique among contemporary school architecture.

The large teaching building and the square before it were eerily quiet, devoid of the bustling crowd that had just been there. Only the red rope barriers marked off a special area today, hinting at something unusual about this school.

As soon as the first bell rang out, all classrooms fell silent. In one of these classrooms sat Su Cen; everyone had their own single desk with a white slip bearing their randomized test number pasted on it in front. There were two stern-looking invigilators typical for such occasions.

Su Cen felt like an outsider since the test numbers were randomly assigned, and only about four or five of his classmates from his previous school were present in this classroom; most everyone else was a local student at No. 1 High School. When they entered fifteen minutes before the start, the locals had barely acknowledged their presence, seeing them as outsiders from another high school.

When the first bell sounded, everyone immediately ceased talking and turned silent. The invigilators were also locals, known to many in the room, even some students' own class teachers. They couldn't help but take notice of Su Cen's group due to their unfamiliar faces.

The saying goes that people can be intimidating; No. 1 High School, branded as excellent, had a sense of superiority among both its students and faculty members. This inflated sense of superiority sometimes led them to believe that anyone outside of the school was inferior in every way. If cheating or peeking occurred at No. 1 High School, it would be considered an outrageous matter shaking the entire campus; if such things happened elsewhere, however, they were almost expected.

Therefore, the invigilators at this exam seemed to have a keen interest in keeping their eyes on students from other schools like Su Cen's. In contrast, some of the more notorious troublemakers within No. 1 High School received much less scrutiny.

Sitting next to Su Cen was a girl with glasses and two braids hanging down her neck; she caught his attention as someone who seemed diligent in their studies but had thick lenses obscuring her features. She wore a tight little tank top, loose pants, and canvas shoes, looking quite fair-skinned and well-developed.

Su Cen couldn't help but sigh slightly. Indeed, No. 1 High School had reasons to be proud. A large number of local officials and upper-middle-class families sent their children to study at No. 1 High School. Ignoring the severity of the competition in terms of clothing and food among students, what was evident was that even Su Cen, who would be considered a person from the future, found the attire of the students there not outdated at all. Many were wearing famous brand-name clothes that had just entered the mainland market at that time.

"Hmm! Hmm! Hmph..." The invigilator standing next to Su Cen put the exam paper on his desk and rapped on the table with his knuckles, giving him a displeased look.

The girl beside him, who was also an excellent student at No. 1 High School, noticed that this candidate from No. 3 High School kept eyeing her, which naturally aroused the invigilator's vigilance.

While distributing the papers, he couldn't help but cough a few times to draw Su Cen’s attention back to his own paper. This indicated that Su Cen would likely become one of his main focuses during the exam.

The girl next to him raised her thick glasses and gave him a glance. Su Cen awkwardly smiled back at her, then opened the exam paper in front of him. The title "Xia Hai City 1998 Junior High School Entrance Examination Mathematics Paper" immediately caught his eye.

Finally arrived!

Su Cen roughly scanned through the test paper and was overjoyed. There was a fundamental difference between junior high school math and senior high school math. If junior high school math were like driving an electric scooter, then senior high school math would be akin to piloting a glider—there was a huge gap in difficulty. In his memories, the difficulty level of the entrance exam’s math paper was quite substantial, with many outstanding students complaining about it. However, why did this paper seem so easy

Its difficulty level was nearly two grades lower than those internal practice tests from No. 3 High School he had reviewed in recent days!

The second bell rang out. The thin invigilator adjusted his glasses and glared at everyone in the room, "You can start answering your questions now!"

The term "writing frantically" can be used to describe the speed of writing an essay, but if applied to Su Cen's current pace in filling out his math test paper, it would seem highly unlikely.

A thin invigilator brought a newspaper with two holes poked through the eyes of the cover story portrait. As he spread out the newspaper, he kept scanning the surroundings through those two holes. To him, taking an exam was like an obstacle race; every question was akin to an obstacle on the road. Only those who could complete the course within the given time and avoid stepping on landmines would emerge victorious.

He eagerly hoped to see many people frowning with worry, especially the students from Third High School present in the room. This would highlight First High School's advantage in such a mixed school exam venue. The best among them should be the students from First High School.

The two invigilators could tell that this test paper was quite challenging. It was rumored to have been set by an impending-retirement teacher as his final contribution, boasting of truly differentiating student abilities. Consequently, even some of their school's top-performing students were struggling with the questions.

One such student is the glasses-wearing girl sitting next to Su Cen...

Hmm... that's not quite right...

The patrolling thin invigilator, Xiao Rihua, was a math teacher and homeroom for one of First High School’s初三 classes. Glancing through the test paper briefly just now, he knew it posed significant difficulty even for his own school's students at this stage; many top-performing students who usually ranked in the top hundred of their grade were facing challenges. While Luo Yaoshun, Shen Lu, and Yang Zhao—these recognizable names from First High School—all furrowed their brows and struggled with repeated calculations on some problems, Xiao Rihua noticed that he had just heard a faint humming sound as a reminder not to look around, yet the Third High School boy was smoothly writing!

Xiao Rihua blinked. Indeed, Luo Yaoshun, Shen Lu, Yang Zhao—these students whose names were well-known in their grade—all showed signs of struggling with several difficult questions and engaged in repeated calculations. Xiao Rihua understood that although there were no top-tier prodigies from First High School present in this examination room (those who could clearly be identified as future Tsinghua or Peking University material), these students still represented a significant strength for First High.

For all of them to struggle while the candidate from Third High seems to breeze through, that's quite an exaggeration.

"It must be the difficult questions that I temporarily skipped over, and will come back to them later," Xiao Rihua gave a faint smile in his heart. This was indeed a reasonable approach; teachers from schools like the Third Middle School would naturally instruct their students this way to ensure they focus on the overall picture.

Xiao Rihua couldn't help but chuckle at that thought.

An hour and twenty minutes had passed, and several people had already finished and submitted their papers. The bespectacled girl sitting next to Su Can also put down her pen after checking her answer sheet, then calmly picked up her belongings without looking at anyone around her. With an air of arrogance and confidence, she walked out of the classroom.

Only then did Su Can finally check his work once more and submit his paper five minutes after the bespectacled girl left.

In truth, he had already completed all the questions in the promotion exam within forty minutes after the bell rang for submission, which was approximately ten minutes after it sounded. However, he still couldn't quite believe that the boss-level practice problem, filled with his meticulous answers, was actually the middle school examination paper that seemed insurmountable and almost made him drop out of school!

Su Can remained unconvinced about everything in front of him and continued to check and fill in his answers meticulously for forty minutes while doodling circles on his scratch paper out of boredom.

Only then did he submit his exam with a nervous heart.

This was Su Can's current mindset: as if someone had casually stuffed five million into their coat pocket but felt anxious and uneasy about it. The first major challenge in his life, the mathematics portion of which everyone acknowledged to be particularly difficult, seemed to have passed without much fuss, yet he still couldn't quite believe it.shrimp and little fish; however, the hill was already overgrown with lush weeds, and spring's humidity made everything slightly damp.As they were about to part, Hong Xiaotian smiled at Jin Donghai and...