Chapter 145: [Passing the Imperial Examination] Frenzied Interrogation
Fortunately, the female player didn’t have to stand there alone for long; two more players soon joined her.
All three were made to stay by the doorway.
Bai Cha was seated by the window to begin with, affording her a view of the people being scolded out in the hallway.
While loudly reciting her text along with the rest of the students, she stole glance after glance out of the corner of her eye.
The three of them stood with their heads hung low, taking the tongue-lashing.
After quite a long while, the three were finally allowed inside.
Fortunately, because they had arrived too late, they were punished by being forced to stand in the back row, meaning they didn’t have to worry about where their assigned seats were for the time being.
Those three seats happened to be the only empty ones left in the classroom.
They had textbooks in their backpacks, which they pulled out immediately to start reciting.
Although the instance provided very little information, it was fortunate that they weren’t thrown straight into hell mode right at the start.
Between getting scolded for being late and being unable to find their seats, the latter was far more critical, as it would inevitably raise suspicion regarding their true identities.
It had been a very long time since Bai Cha had studied this diligently—truth be told, she hadn’t worked this hard even back in her own school days.
She had been in frail health back then; though her grades were excellent, she was young, and her teachers had always granted her exceptional leniency.
The school she attended wasn’t like this one either, forcing students to arrive at 5:30 in the morning to start early self-study all the way until 7:30, followed by classes starting at 8:00, with each class lasting fifty minutes.
A class schedule was taped right onto her desk.
Lunchtime lasted a mere twenty minutes.
After that, they had to return for a twenty-minute nap before resuming their recitations.
By the time evening classes ended, it was already 10:30 at night.
In truth, for many high school students, such a routine was actually quite common.
It was just that the school she had attended placed greater emphasis on the students’ physical and mental well-being.
Usually, students arrived at 7:00 for half an hour of morning self-study.
Class periods were a standard forty-five minutes, with an hour for lunch and another hour for rest.
Evening self-study ended at nine o’clock.
It was intense as well, but compared to this instance, it was far better—and back then, she used to head home by eight during evening self-study anyway.
Having spent the entire morning reciting, the moment the dismissal bell rang, numerous students collapsed onto their desks in unison to catch up on sleep.
With the teacher already gone, the three players in the back hastily hurried off to locate their actual seats.
Since the real students couldn’t be bothered to care about what they were doing, the three managed to find their seats and sit down, finally letting out a genuine breath of relief.
Yet this was only the very beginning.
Time ran at double speed here, so things actually moved by pretty quickly.
However, no matter how fast time sped by, classes still had to be attended.
Quite a few players felt their heads throbbing as they listened.
High school students like Xu Shengsheng were extremely rare among the chosen players.
The general age group of the player base was mostly around the college student phase.
Those who had survived in the game for a few extra years to reach the level capable of entering B-rank instances were almost all working adults in reality.
Moreover, because of their involvement in the game, they didn’t dare take on overly demanding jobs; if their work was too critical, a single game-induced delay meant getting fired.
The jobs many of them could manage were relatively low-stress positions, akin to front desk receptionists or customer service reps.
As a result, the likelihood of them keeping up with academic studies was practically nonexistent.
Scraping by just to stay fed every day while constantly worrying about life and death in the game, who could possibly remember high school material?
Aside from fresh college freshmen who might still retain a bit of knowledge, others were completely out of luck.
To make matters worse, this instance offered no room for slacking off or faking it.
The first class of the morning was spent going over math problems. The second class was math as well, but the math teacher distributed a test paper.
An in-class pop quiz.
The difficulty of the test paper was far from low.
It had to be handed in within a single class period—fifty minutes, which translated to just twenty-five minutes under double speed—placing immense pressure on everyone.
The only sound in the classroom was the soft, collective rustling of pens.
Each student sat at an individual desk, making it nearly impossible to copy off anyone else.
The math teacher was a middle-aged woman whose sparse hair was combed neatly into place, clad entirely in black, looking rigid and solemn.
Her sharp gaze swept over everyone in the room as she paced back and forth down the aisles, randomly pausing in front of a student to watch them work through the problems.
[Holy crap, this instance… I hope I never get thrown into this instance in my entire life! I’d rather face ghosts and monsters than solve math problems here!]
[+1008611]
[How terrifying!!! A wave of suffocation hitting me right through the screen!]
[Is this instance literally just about solving test papers? That looks so boring.]
[Don’t worry, it won’t just be test papers. But if you can’t even solve the papers…]
The math teacher paused right beside Bai Cha.
She glanced down at Bai Cha’s test paper and adjusted her glasses.
“Mhm. You’ve made significant progress.”
Saying this, the math teacher walked away satisfied.
[Holy shit? Does that mean she got them all right?]
[Looks like the streamer really knows her stuff. She isn’t a high school student herself, is she?]
However, just because Bai Cha had no issues didn’t mean the other players were as fortunate.
When the math teacher walked over to another player, her expression lost all trace of pleasantness.
Her brows instantly knitted together, and the teaching pointer she had never put down slammed violently onto the desk.
The sudden crack startled everyone in the room, though most of the students were already accustomed to it, keeping their heads down to continue writing.
Bai Cha merely stole a lightning-fast glance.
The male player wore a face filled with bitter misery.
The math teacher’s sharp voice rang out: “Wang Jiapeng! How have your grades regressed this much? You can make mistakes on such simple problems? You even miss the freebie points—what are you even coming to school for?! I think you should just pack your bags and get out right now!”
“And this problem, this problem, and these few problems—they are all the most basic of basic problems! Your past scores were never this atrocious, so what on earth is wrong with you?!”
The male player assigned to the character Wang Jiapeng felt an indescribable bitterness welling up inside.
Did he want to get them wrong? He simply didn’t know how to solve them!
“I… I haven’t been feeling well these past two days…” He tried to scramble for an excuse.
In response, the math teacher’s pointer slammed onto his desk once again.
The loud crack made him jump violently.
“Look at you, learning to make excuses! If you weren’t feeling well, why didn’t your mother inform me?! You just don’t want to learn—it’s all excuses! If you keep going on like this, get the hell out of Class 3!”
Wang Jiapeng couldn’t squeeze out another word this time.
Truth be told, even though he had been out of school for years, the sheer oppression projected by this kind of teacher made him feel an instinctive, deep-seated dread.
After tearing into him, the math teacher moved on to inspect the others.
Before long, none of the remaining three players escaped unscathed.
“Chen Feiguang! Why have your grades dropped so dramatically as well? Don’t tell me you’re going to use the ‘not feeling well’ excuse too!”
“Did you sneak behind your parents’ backs to play video games outside?! Is that it?! Huh?! Otherwise, why would you make so many mistakes?! This problem! How many times have I taught this exact same problem?! I’ve gone over it word for word, yet you still managed to get it wrong?!”
“Li Shanshan, what on earth is this nonsense you’ve written down?! Let me ask you: What are the universal formulas for trigonometric functions?!”
“Why aren’t you speaking?! Why aren’t you answering?! Is it because you don’t know?! You don’t even know basic formulas like this?! Where did everything you learned go?! Did you feed it all to the dogs?! The college entrance exam is right around the corner—thirty days left! What on earth are you all doing?!”
“Stand up! Get the hell to the back of the room and do your problems!”
“Guo Wenhao, what is your deal now?! Did you guys gather together to play mahjong or something?! Formed a full table, did you?! Played away everything you learned, didn’t you?!”
“Are you trying to anger me to death?!”
Saying this, the math teacher suddenly turned her gaze toward one of the surveillance cameras.
