Chapter 14: An Absolute Clean Sweep, Pure Crush at the Top!
However, once the results were posted, Xu Hui felt utterly dynamic.
Lin Wan scored 100 points, ranking first!
She herself scored 78 points, ranking second.
Third place went to Su Hongwei with 69 points.
The score gaps between each rank were quite substantial. Especially between first and second place—there was a staggering gap of over twenty points!
It was an absolute landslide!
“Lin Wan scored a perfect hundred!”
“And she was the first to hand in her paper!”
“Finishing in thirty minutes and getting a hundred, she must have known the answers beforehand.”
“Exactly, could she have cheated? She overdid it if she did!”
“The questions were so hard, how could anyone get a perfect score!”
The young men and women crowding around Xu Hui whispered and muttered, their voices far from quiet.
Lin Wan heard them clearly.
Xu Hui took a deep breath. “Everyone, let’s not make blind guesses. Since Comrade Lin Wan dared to score such a high mark, she definitely isn’t afraid of being questioned.”
The way she phrased it… it was just a hair’s breadth away from stating outright that Lin Wan had inside information!
Lin Wan didn’t take it to heart at all. After all, she did actually know the answers!
“Comrade Lin Wan, don’t be angry. We are all children of the post and telecommunications system, so we know exactly how hard these questions were.”
“So it’s only natural that people are skeptical of you!”
“But Comrade Lin Wan, you could always prove yourself to everyone to clear up this misunderstanding!”
Lin Wan sneered. “Who even are you?”
“On what grounds should I prove anything to you?”
“If you suspect me of cheating, bring out the evidence. The burden of proof lies on the accuser! Otherwise, I’ll sue you all for slander!”
Xu Hui’s expression froze.
True enough, there was a reason she detested this person. This Lin Wan was simply crossing the line.
“Comrade Lin Wan, we didn’t even say much, yet you’re throwing a tantrum. Why do you get so defensive when people question you?”
The moment Xu Hui said this, the others were instantly rippled into action by her words, and quite a few chimed in. “Exactly! If you haven’t done anything wrong, you shouldn’t be afraid to explain!”
“Refusing to explain means there’s a skeleton in the closet!”
“And talking about suing us for slander, that’s just a classic sign of a guilty conscience…”
Lin Wan mocked, “Then you ought to report it to the public security. Leaking exam questions is a crime too. Let the police come investigate. If they dig anything up, they can throw us all into the slammer together. Why waste your breath flapping your gums here!”
“And you—your name is Xu Hui, right?”
“You’re the one who can’t stand the sight of me, so come at me yourself. What’s the point of provoking everyone else to act as your shield?”
“You egg them on until they lose their heads and say something reckless, so that when I report it to the police for slander later, it won’t have a damn thing to do with you, right?”
“Tsk tsk. You look so clean and proper on the outside, but your heart is pretty filthy.”
This Xu Hui harbored an immense amount of hostility toward her. Since that was the case, she wasn’t going to play nice! They were very likely to become colleagues in the future, and she wasn’t about to let Xu Hui build cliques to isolate her.
The crowd: “…”
Lin Wan had looked at them as if they were fools, and now that they replayed her words… the way everyone looked at Xu Hui shifted completely.
It left Xu Hui so infuriated she nearly flipped backward.
The system: “…”
The host it fished out this time was a bit overpowered!
“Stop the bickering, Bureau Chief Zhao is coming over!”
Bureau Chief Zhao had clearly overheard the argument over here. Once the area quieted down, he spoke up: “The questions for this exam were randomly selected by three departments—the labor union, the administrative office, and the personnel department—from three separate question banks. They were delivered to me at 6:30 this morning for compilation, and I personally added three questions that weren’t in any of the banks…
Therefore, if anyone suspects that the comrade who scored a hundred points knew the questions in advance, then I am the only one who could have leaked them.”
The moment Bureau Chief Zhao said this, the expressions of quite a few people in the crowd shifted drastically.
Xu Hui’s face turned exceptionally ugly. The same went for the people who had joined her in raising a fuss about Lin Wan cheating.
Bureau Chief Zhao continued, “To dispel everyone’s doubts, the leadership group will conduct an interview for the top ten candidates.”
“We will hold a Q&A session based on the questions they got right. The questions will be extended further, ensuring the candidates don’t just know the answers, but also the underlying logic behind them!”
As his words fell…
Several of the pre-selected candidates who had made the top ten were completely flabbergasted.
It was all Xu Hui’s fault! If she hadn’t taken the lead to stir up this scene, Bureau Chief Zhao wouldn’t have proposed an interview!
Xu Hui instantly felt like needles were pricking her back under the collective glares.
Just as the leadership group was about to question Lin Wan, they were stopped by Bureau Chief Zhao: “Start the questioning from the tenth place.”
“Those who fail the interview will be dropped, and the next person in line will step up to continue the interview.”
The leadership group: “…”
Bureau Chief Zhao was newly transferred, and this examination method was entirely his idea. Certain things were understood by everyone implicitly. The candidates they wanted to squeeze in had also shared the questions among themselves beforehand, hoping to just fudge their way through right under the leader’s nose.
Who could have guessed… Director Xu also drew quite a few resentful glares from the crowd.
The group tried to keep the questions as simple as possible. However, the young man in tenth place was breaking out in a cold sweat, unable to answer a single question. He was the nephew of the general affairs section chief.
Bureau Chief Zhao announced, “Tenth place is disqualified. Eleventh place, step up for the interview.”
The general affairs section chief shot a fierce glare at Director Xu.
The eleventh-place candidate was a girl named Luo Jiahui. She had a round face with flushed, rosy cheeks and looked very endearing. Furthermore, she answered every single question correctly. Bureau Chief Zhao directly instructed the personnel department to record her name on the admission list.
Luo Jiahui was completely thrilled to pieces.
Right after that, the ninth, eighth, and seventh places were all disqualified one by one. Conversely, the candidates who stepped up from further down the line answered remarkably well.
Finally, it was Xu Hui’s turn.
Xu Hui managed to answer about sixty percent of the questions, barely allowing her to stay on the list. While letting out a deep breath, she clenched her fists tightly and looked toward Lin Wan.
Everyone’s gaze converged entirely on Lin Wan.
Lin Wan wasn’t nervous at all, looking completely cool and collected. Even if things went south, she still had the system to back her up. While the others were answering their questions just now, she had already finished haggling with the system.
An answer to an interview question would cost twenty points. If she ran into a question she couldn’t answer, she would just spend points to buy it from the system.
Director Xu was the first to hurl a question. It was entirely because of this Lin Wan that his colleagues had turned their anger and blame on him, offending several people in the process.
“If you encounter a public criticism rally during your delivery route, do you deliver the mail first or join the struggle?”
Director Xu smiled amiably at Lin Wan after finishing his question.
The others muttered underneath their breaths: “It’s definitely delivering the mail, that goes without saying!”
“There was a question on the written paper about how to serve the people. Director Xu is definitely targeting that question—this is a freebie!”
“Tell me about it. They asked us such hard questions, yet they give her such an easy one.”
Director Xu thought to himself: You people don’t know a damn thing. But I’m relieved you reacted this way. This question is a total trap; the moment Lin Wan jumps in, she’s finished. There wouldn’t even be any need to ask the remaining questions.
Lin Wan opened her mouth: “Stop the vehicle immediately to join the struggle. Hand the mail over to the Red Guards on-site for temporary safekeeping, and resume the delivery route after participating.”
She was calm and confident, a trace of a smile lingering in her eyes as she looked at Director Xu.
“Director Xu, are you satisfied with this answer?”
Trying to dig a pit for me? I just won’t step in! Hehehe!
The crowd fell silent. Not a single voice rose in rebuttal.
How could they rebut it? Rebutting it meant questioning the Red Guards! Or were they going to say that her participating in the struggle was wrong?
Slapping their own foreheads, why hadn’t they thought of that angle!
Choosing to deliver the mail wasn’t wrong, but it was very easy for someone to nitpick and find fault with it. Choosing to join the struggle wasn’t wrong either, but one could be faulted for failing to secure the mail properly. Yet Lin Wan had cleverly added the phrase ‘hand the mail over to the Red Guards’ for safekeeping.
Director Xu’s face turned completely choked and dark.
For the remaining questions from the various leaders, Lin Wan answered every single one brilliantly without spending a single point, leaving the system highly disappointed.
Bureau Chief Zhao flashed a gratified smile at her.
Section Chief Tang, who believed he knew the absolute truth, watched the comrades who had dedicated themselves to ramping up the difficulty and stacking obstacles for Lin Wan with an ‘everyone else is drunk while I alone am sober’ attitude, feeling thoroughly delighted inside.
He was the only one who hadn’t given Lin Wan a hard time! He was absolutely certain that Lin Wan was riding on Bureau Chief Zhao’s connections!
