Chapter 155: [Passing the Imperial Examination] Meeting the Master at Night
Bai Cha stood concealed within the shadows below the apartment building.
Seeing Wang Jiapeng’s family step out, she trailed behind them from a distance.
They didn’t leave the neighborhood, heading instead toward another residential building.
Things were similar on the ends of Li Shanshan, Guo Wenhao, and Chen Feiguang; upon receiving the small notes, they had reacted swiftly.
None of them were genuine fools; it was simply that studying under these conditions was truly impossible.
Shortly after stepping out, they ran right into one another.
The parents exchanged glances, instantly understanding one another’s intentions.
Together, they arrived at Unit 1 of Building 4.
“No one is allowed to utter a single word in a moment, understand?” The parents issued identical instructions to their respective children, their faces wearing expressions of utmost deference.
They stepped straight into Unit 1, Apartment 101.
Bai Cha trailed behind them, though she naturally wouldn’t walk inside. Confirming they had entered 101, she located the apartment’s exterior window.
Some greenery was planted along the ground floor.
Bai Cha used her dodder vines to grab a few leaves and twigs, subtly obscuring her form as she crouched amidst the foliage.
The system shop sold pinhole cameras for one hundred points each. They could connect to a player’s interface for real-time viewing and record video complete with audio feeds.
However, they came with a restriction: after ten uses, they would be rendered useless.
Coiling around a pinhole camera, the dodder vines silently crept up toward the window of Apartment 101.
The housing in this school district wasn’t particularly new; the windows featured old-fashioned glass fitted with security bars. A twist of the dodder vine easily slipped through a narrow gap in the frame.
The pinhole camera silently began recording the room’s interior.
Checking her interface, Bai Cha saw that this was the living room window.
The curtains were drawn halfway.
Tracing silently upward along the wall, the vine traveled along the gap of the false ceiling, making its way all the way into the living room.
Intermittent voices were already transmitting out.
“Yes, our kids’ academic grades have dropped noticeably over the past few days. We were just wondering if there might be some way to boost their performance?”
“We tried those medicines you gave us too, and they drank them all, but we didn’t see any results.”
Visual feeds from the living room materialized as well.
The interior was somewhat cluttered.
Numerous silk banners hung proudly across the walls.
Miraculous Touch Brings Back Spring, Celestial Bearing and Immortal Bones, Turning the Tide to Save My Grades, A True Master Yielding Instant Results, and so on.
A middle-aged man sat comfortably on the sofa, while the parents of Wang Jiapeng and the others all stood crowded inside the room, making the living room appear quite cramped.
The middle-aged man wore traditional cotton-linen Chinese clothing, holding a strand of prayer beads in his hand, complete with a sparse beard—exuding quite the aura of a grand charlatan.
He cast a glance at the four players.
Truth be told, the four felt rather tense.
For one, they hadn’t expected to meet this group owner so smoothly; for another, this group owner undeniably carried an air of suspicion.
They were somewhat worried about messing things up.
“Did it only start these past few days—suddenly not knowing anything at all?”
Wang Jiapeng’s parents nudged him forward.
“He’s asking you a question!”
“Yes… it was just these past few days that I suddenly didn’t know anything, as if I had never learned a single thing in the past.”
The other few nodded in agreement as well.
The middle-aged man let out a nasal grunt, offering no immediate response.
This left the parents feeling quite anxious.
“Master, please look—what exactly is going on here? You see… they’re all in the same class. If our kids suddenly know nothing, while the child from Han Hong-mei’s family suddenly knows everything, could there be… something at play…?”
The middle-aged man raised his eyes.
“You’re saying the child from Han Hong-mei’s family suddenly knows everything?”
“Precisely! That child performed exceptionally well all day today—oh, yesterday too! She got every single problem right, and could answer whenever the teachers called on her! But in the past, wasn’t she on the exact same academic level as our kids?”
“Exactly!”
The parents nodded in rapid succession.
It was as if they had firmly convinced themselves that someone else must have employed some underhanded, insidious sorcery to achieve all of this.
The middle-aged man spun the beads in his hand.
“I see. Wanting them to get good academic scores is simple enough, though this item will cost quite a penny. As you said, their brains were stolen away. I can retrieve them for you, but…”
“Price is no issue! No matter how much it costs, as long as it doesn’t affect the college entrance exam and allows them to get great scores, we can pay it!” several parents chimed in almost simultaneously.
Nodding in satisfaction, the middle-aged man stood up and stepped into an inner room.
A short while later, he emerged once again, holding four necklaces in his hand.
They were four bronze-colored golden pagoda necklaces.
“Have your children wear these Wenchang Pagodas on their persons at all times. As long as the child has the heart for it, they are guaranteed to get into a good university.”
Ecstatic, the parents accepted the necklaces and immediately forced them over their children’s necks.
The players had zero desire to wear them.
Yet they were completely unable to resist.
Fortunately, nothing adverse occurred for the time being.
“Master, how much is one of these?”
The middle-aged man extended a hand to gesture a number—it appeared to be an eight.
Without hesitation, the parents pulled out their phones to transfer the funds.
Following that, the middle-aged man saw his guests out.
The parents led their respective children back home.
Bai Cha, however, did not leave.
Once the parents departed, the middle-aged man knitted his brows, pulling out a notebook from beneath the living room table.
The contents written on the notebook were impossible to make out clearly, but Bai Cha made a mental note of its location first.
After skimming it for a moment, the middle-aged man stashed the notebook back and walked toward the bedroom.
Bai Cha accordingly controlled her dodder vines to creep toward the bedroom.
This fine level of control actually consumed a considerable amount of energy.
Unlike ivy, dodder vines couldn’t cling to walls directly; they required coiling and weaving, thus demanding constant physical force to keep them pressed flat against the wall.
The bedroom door stood ajar.
Bai Cha silently positioned the lens by the edge of the door frame.
Only a single bedside lamp was switched on inside the room, casting a dim, murky glow.
The interior was likewise a cluttered mess, with numerous items hanging everywhere.
The middle-aged man flipped through his phone for a moment before placing a call.
“Hello? Yes, Boss Chen, it’s me. I wanted to ask how your son’s grades have been lately?”
“Oh, that’s great then, that’s great.”
“No reason, I just saw there’s only one month left until the college entrance exam and wanted to check in on feedback from client side.”
“Alright, sounds good. If you run into any issues over there, let me know right away and I’ll solve them on my end. I guarantee your son will pass the exam with flying colors!”
Hanging up the call, the middle-aged man’s brows knitted tightly into a knot.
“Han Hong-mei…” he muttered under his breath.
After a moment’s thought, he simply picked up his phone and initiated a voice call to Mother Han.
No one picked up on the other end.
The middle-aged man dialed a second time, but still no one answered. Furious, he hurled his phone straight onto the bed.
“What nerve, not even answering my call…”
Thoughtful, he began striding directly toward the bedroom door.
Bai Cha silently withdrew the camera, flattening it against the gap in the false ceiling overhead.
A false ceiling with built-in gaps like this was far too convenient for hiding things.
Perhaps sensing something, the middle-aged man glanced upward, but saw nothing, paying it no further mind.
He walked toward another room.
This time, however, he shut the door behind him.
Undeterred, Bai Cha quietly slithered down along the wall, aiming the pinhole camera through the bottom door crack straight into the room.
Her field of view was limited; even after a minor adjustment, she could only see the middle-aged man kneeling on the floor, appearing to burn incense.
Now, wasn’t this getting interesting?
