When school resumed on Monday, Su Yunluo faced her results with a mix of excitement and unease.
Chinese: 136. Math: 125. English: 132. Physics: 89. Chemistry: 98. Politics: 92. History: 89. Geography: 91…
She stared at the numbers. She really was excited—but at the same time, completely lost.
The high school entrance exam had felt, in a way, like luck. This time, however, every point came from nights of pushing herself to the limit, studying until her eyes burned. Back in middle school, when she always hovered somewhere in the middle, scores like this would have felt like a dream.
But now, she couldn’t even bring herself to smile.
That earlier success had given her confidence—but it had also blurred her sense of where she actually stood among her peers.
She immediately turned to ask Chu Han, who sat behind her and ranked second in their class. Chu Han’s total score was 841.
Su Yunluo let out a small breath. Hers was 852. She was still first in her class.
Soon, bits of information started coming in from all directions:
“Class Seven’s top student got 846!”
“Class Two has an 853!”
“Class Twelve has someone insane—869…”
Of course, what everyone cared about most was Class Five. And in Su Yunluo’s mind, there was another person she was quietly tracking as well. When someone came back and said the highest score in Class Four was 844, half the weight in her chest finally lifted.
The other half didn’t.
From the back row, Chu Han sighed. “Xie Chen was only ranked thirty-second when he got in, and his Chinese is… kind of abstract. So maybe he really didn’t beat you.”
Something about her tone felt strange—like she was trying to comfort Su Yunluo, but at the same time… almost pitying her opponent.
Su Yunluo wanted to relax, but she couldn’t. She still remembered how composed Xie Chen had been during the exams.
Just then, Yuan Weining burst into the classroom, slightly out of breath. “Yunluo! It’s over—it’s really over… we lost. Completely.”
Her voice hit the room like an explosion.
“Don’t panic!”
“Just say it!”
“How much did they get?”
Yuan Weining swallowed, then unfolded the slip of paper in her hand. “Math: 150! Physics: 100! Chemistry: 100! English: 146! Politics: 94, History: 96, Geography: 98…”
She looked at Su Yunluo, her expression full of hesitation. “Even his Chinese is higher than yours—137. Total score… 921.”
Nine… twenty-one?
The pen slipped from Su Yunluo’s hand and hit the desk with a soft tap.
Chu Han’s eyes went wide. “Full marks in physics and chemistry? Are you sure you didn’t hear wrong?”
“No way…”
The classroom exploded again. Shock and disbelief rippled through the room like waves. Su Yunluo sat frozen in her seat, her mind buzzing. Every number Yuan Weining read felt like a hammer striking her—just as she was barely settling—knocking everything out of place again.
She stared at the slip of paper in disbelief.
That math paper she had nearly pulled her hair out over. That physics exam she hadn’t even finished before it was taken away.
He had gotten full marks in both.
No one was surprised that Su Yunluo scored 136 in Chinese—her writing spoke for itself. But Xie Chen scoring 137?
“Second in the whole school!” another boy rushed in from the office, his voice full of awe. “Qi Ning, the top scorer from the entrance exam, is still first with 925. Xie Chen is just four points behind!”
“From thirty-second straight to second?”
“Did he just… rocket up there?”
“And the total score is only out of 950!”
“Are they even human?!”
Su Yunluo tightened her grip on her test papers.
The scores that had just moments ago made her heart race now felt like mocking faces, grinning at her confidence.
She sat there in the middle of the crowd, forcing her expression to stay calm, trying to hold on to the last bit of dignity that came with being first in her class. But strangely—whether it was relief or disappointment—she realized no one was paying attention to her anymore.
All the shock, all the discussion, all the attention… had shifted entirely to that unbelievable score—and to the opponent she had once looked down on.
Class Five.
Li Zhe slammed his hand on the desk, practically glowing with excitement. “Xiao Xie—no, Brother Chen, no, God Xie! Be honest—did you hold back during the entrance exam just so you could drop this bomb today?”
“Straight to second place in the whole school—damn! Those guys in Class Six must be stunned!”
A few girls nearby had stars in their eyes. “You were so calm before. I thought you just had good composure. Turns out you’ve been hiding your strength all along?”
At the center of it all, Xie Chen didn’t look particularly proud. He simply gathered his slightly messy test papers and straightened them. “Just got lucky. The questions happened to be things I knew.”
“Oh, come on!” Li Zhe reached out to throw an arm over his shoulder, but Xie Chen shifted slightly to avoid it. Li Zhe didn’t mind. “Acting humble now is a bit much—but honestly, I respect it!”
“Who wouldn’t?”
Xie Chen remained calm, as if the result was nothing special.
“Thanks to Brother Chen stepping up!” one boy said excitedly. “For the next whole month, someone from Class Six will be handling our cleaning duty. Just thinking about it feels great!”
“Cleaning’s boring,” another chimed in. “Wouldn’t it be better if that ‘ice-cold top student’ came over and performed a talent show?”
“What if she doesn’t have any talents?”
“Then at least sing a song, right? Or recite a poem. Don’t go soft just because she’s a pretty girl!”
Li Zhe rolled up his sleeves. “Right! Brother Chen, we should seriously think about what she’s going to perform!”
Xie Chen paused slightly while organizing his papers.
A competition was still a competition, but he had no intention of making things difficult for anyone.
He neatly placed the papers into his desk, stacking them like disciplined soldiers, then said calmly, “The agreement between the two classes only said the losing side would either do cleaning duty or perform something. There were no specific rules, right?”
Everyone froze for a moment, then slowly nodded.
“So how it’s carried out,” Xie Chen raised a hand to stop Li Zhe, who was already eager to suggest ideas, “should be decided by the other side.”
“Wait, what?!” Li Zhe groaned. “What if she just comes over and casually recites ‘Quiet Night Thoughts’ and calls it a day? That would be so boring!”
Xie Chen glanced at him, thinking how restless and childish this was.
“Boring?” he asked lightly, a hint of teasing in his voice. “What, you want her to perform the Rainbow Feather Robe Dance for you?”
Li Zhe immediately shut up.
After a month sitting next to Xie Chen, he had roughly figured him out. On the surface, he looked cold—but after interacting with him, he wasn’t that cold. But if you went too far, you realized he really was.
There was a clear boundary in him, like a precisely calibrated instrument. It could run smoothly and gently, but you could never randomly push it. Even when he smiled, that smile had limits—you could always tell where the joke ended.
Fine. Smart people had their own rules.
In the days after the monthly exam, Su Yunluo practically marked Class Five as a restricted zone. She would rather take a longer route than pass by those “dangerous” windows.
Unfortunately, the people in Class Five seemed to have radar. The moment her figure appeared nearby, voices would erupt from inside:
“Hey, top student, when are you performing?”
“We already brought stools!”
“Don’t back out—you have to keep your promise!”
Back in her own class, things weren’t much better. The girls looked at her with a mix of sympathy and disappointment, while the boys looked even more stressed.
Back then, to let her focus on the exam, they had confidently promised that if they lost, they would take over a full month of cleaning duty in Class Five.
Now things were worse. If she refused to perform anything, they would all end up cleaning instead.
Yuan Weining carefully comforted her. “Yunluo… honestly, you’re already really amazing. 852 points—that’s still top twenty in the whole school. It’s all that Xie Chen’s fault! Is he some kind of monster? How did he suddenly score so high?”
Su Yunluo let out a soft sigh.
Whether she was good or not didn’t really matter anymore. The result was already decided—she had lost.
And she was the only one in the class who understood the truth: Xie Chen hadn’t just scored an unusually high mark—his predictions had been frighteningly accurate too.
In this exam, apart from him and Qi Ning pulling far ahead, the rest of the top students across all thirty-seven classes were tightly packed between 840 and 870, like sardines in a can. It proved exactly what he had said before—there was no real gap to widen.
No wonder people were joking that this first big exam of the semester was basically a “classification test for top students.” The difficult math and physics questions were the real threshold, and Qi Ning and Xie Chen were the two monsters who broke through into the “super top student” tier.
Now that everything had settled, she could finally think back clearly.
A person doesn’t suddenly reach that level without warning.
There were always signs.
He had once told her they weren’t “suitable” opponents.
That the competition wouldn’t benefit her.
But she had been driven by emotion. She never seriously considered his words—instead assuming it was just an excuse because he was afraid.
Now, looking back, there was another explanation: his entrance exam score might not have been his real ability, just like she had once overheard from his mother.
Yuan Weining had said it before—there really was something “abnormal” about him, even if he looked polite.
Unless he had deliberately underperformed, what normal person could hold back that much in such an important exam?
Even though she had been the one who chose this “unsuitable” opponent and insisted on continuing the competition, she still couldn’t shake the feeling—
like she had somehow been played.