Chapter Thirteen: The Exam Begins

For the diagnostic test that arrived as scheduled, Wu Tong was uncharacteristically eager. She had done her utmost to lay a solid foundation—mastering the entirety of high school content in physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. Countless mock exams and exercise books had been completed to exhaustion. What she needed now was a real, tangible test to measure her progress.

The exam schedule and seating assignments were distributed the day before. The seating numbers were determined by the previous semester’s final rankings. Wu Tong had only ranked thirty-ninth in her class and somewhere in the six or seven hundred range in the whole grade. Both in class and year, she was almost invisible, so she was placed in seat forty-two of Exam Room Eleven.

The first subject was Chinese. At 7:50, the preparatory bell rang. After the invigilator emphasized the importance of exam discipline, the papers were handed out.

“When you receive your exam paper, first check for any pages missing or misprints. If you find a problem, report it immediately.” The invigilator repeated the familiar instructions—an essential preamble for every exam.

Wu Tong checked her booklet as soon as it landed in her hands, skimming through the major sections: the usual basic knowledge, classical text translation, analysis of ancient poetry, modern reading comprehension, and the essay—nothing particularly unfamiliar.

After confirming everything was in order, she filled in her class and name. With the official starting bell and the invigilator’s announcement, she read the questions carefully and began answering, her handwriting precise and neat.

She had put in considerable effort to relearn Chinese, focusing on memorization and recitation where required. Now, she approached the exam with far more clarity than before. The sections on basic knowledge, classical translation, and poetry analysis gave her little pause; her thoughts flowed smoothly, and her answers came easily.

But unlike these straightforward sections, modern reading comprehension and the essay required more from her. These could not be conquered by rote memorization alone; there were no fixed answers. Wu Tong could only do her best to read the passages closely and express what she felt were the most appropriate responses.

Thanks to her efficiency in the earlier sections, she had eighty minutes left to write her essay—an abundance of time, as only an hour and ten minutes had elapsed.

The essay prompt was based on provided material; students could choose their own title and form, but had to stay within the scope of the content, with a minimum of eight hundred words. It was modeled after this year’s freshly released college entrance exam topic.

Wu Tong carefully selected a clear perspective and theme, developing her essay in an optimistic direction. She paid attention to her wording and sentence structure, striving to make her writing as engaging as possible.

Chinese had once been her strong suit—the subject she faced with the least dread during exams. Yet now, after immersing herself so heavily in science, she found the process of analyzing authors’ thoughts, empathizing with their emotions, and wracking her brain to write was far less satisfying than the clarity of math and science, with their single correct answers.

It took her a full hour to complete the essay. Worth sixty points—more than a third of the entire Chinese exam’s 150 points—she couldn’t afford to let it drag her score down. She felt her performance in the earlier sections surpassed any previous effort; she couldn’t risk the essay being a weak link.

With twenty minutes remaining, Wu Tong checked her paper twice more. After two and a half hours, the exam ended.

At 10:30, the hand-in bell rang. At its sound, any student who hadn’t submitted had to put down their pen immediately, or risk their score being voided—a rule enforced in every exam, preparing students for the rigor of the college entrance test.

Every exam was treated as seriously as the real thing; this was the mantra of both teachers and invigilators. The students in this room generally took their studies seriously. Cheating was rare, and, especially in Chinese—a subject most handled well—discipline was maintained.

After a twenty-minute break, the next test began at 10:50: physics, the subject Wu Tong was most confident in after days of sharpening her skills.

The same instructions, the same distribution of papers and answer sheets. After verifying everything, Wu Tong began to answer from the start.

Having already self-studied all of high school physics and completed countless practice problems, Wu Tong was now incredibly proficient.

For the multiple-choice questions, she answered almost as soon as she finished reading them. The process of reading and responding was nearly simultaneous. For the fill-in-the-blank questions, a quick calculation on scratch paper yielded the correct answer, which she marked neatly. For the calculation questions, she carefully read each one, mapped out her approach mentally, wrote her solution on scrap paper for accuracy, and then transcribed the final answer onto the answer sheet.

Even taking extra care, Wu Tong’s deep understanding and practiced speed meant she completed the entire paper in just half an hour. She then spent twenty minutes methodically redoing and checking every question. Finding nothing to change and unwilling to waste any more time, she handed in her paper and left the exam room—though she wasn’t the first to finish; someone else had already handed in their paper ahead of her.

From this physics test onward, Wu Tong’s habit of finishing early began to spread.

In the afternoon, the first exam was mathematics, now Wu Tong’s best subject. The test lasted from two to four. She didn’t let her confidence make her careless; she was as meticulous and deliberate as ever.

The first question was about sets—a topic that had once baffled and frustrated her. Now, she faced it with clarity: reading the question, the answer surfaced immediately—option A, without hesitation. From there, indefinite integrals, functions—every concept was accounted for.

After three exams, Wu Tong could clearly feel that, just as her teacher had said, the tests focused on fundamentals, but the application of those fundamentals was thorough and inventive. The questions grew increasingly challenging, especially the last two, which were truly advanced—possibly even beyond the syllabus.

As always, Wu Tong redid and checked her answers three times. Confident she could improve them no further, she finished in just an hour and turned in her paper early—this time, the very first in her exam room to do so. The next fastest student had only just started the second major problem.