CH 11.1

Narrow-Minded (1)

“Hurry up. The invigilator teachers have come out of the administration building!” There was a sudden shout from a student beside the window.

Everyone moved simultaneously; the ones who brought phones hid them, and the ones who made cheat sheets hid those. Only Ruan Qingmu lazily looked at the back and took a bamboo broom from the classroom corner.

He frowned as he looked at the broom. Then, he snapped off two bamboo sticks from the broom and tapped Bai Jing, who sat one row across from him.

“Hey, please help me ask the one in front of you -” He suddenly paused as he couldn’t remember the girl’s name. “That girl, ask her to borrow something.”

Bai Jing looked at him in bewilderment and patted the girl sitting in front of him. “Niu Xiaoqing…..”

Niu Xiaoqing, the tall and robust girl who usually got along with Tang Tiantian, turned her head. “What?”

Ruan Qingmu waved in the air at her. “Do you have a rubber band? Please lend me one.”

Niu Xiaoqing hesitated, took off the spare rubber band on her wrist, and threw it to him. “Oh, you don’t need to return it.”

Ruan Qingmu faintly smiled. “Thank you, classmate.”

The movement of his fingers was nimble as he held the bamboo stick, bent it three times, and wrapped the rubber band around it. When the teacher entered, he had just finished making the little toy.

The invigilator teacher was the class teacher from the neighboring class. She was a middle-aged woman with a loud voice. She stood on the podium and said vigorously, “The same old rules: turn around all the desks. I’ll check them first before passing out the exam papers.”

The students below nodded. “We know, we know, teacher. The desks have already been turned around! ”

The female teacher sneered again. “As for other things, I don’t need to say it anymore, right? In short, don’t even think about any crooked ideas-”

She looked around the class. “For those who pass cheat sheets or something like that, both the receiver and sender will be caught. Don’t even mention things such as cell phones. I don’t care if you look at it or not, but it was a crime to carry communication tools.”

“Mm, we know the rules, teacher!” Another round of shouting came from below.

Liu Jun glanced around, stealthily stuffed a muted phone on his thigh, and firmly pressed on it.

His expression became tense as soon as he lifted his head.

Not far away, Ruan Qingmu propped his cheek and steadily gazed at him with a smirk, carrying a hint of mockery.

Liu Jun cursed a “fuck” in his heart. He vaguely felt a little uneasy.

After the female teacher finished speaking, the Chinese papers were passed in order from the front to the back. The classroom soon became quiet, and only faint rustling of pen strokes could be heard.

Ruan Qingmu let out a soft yawn and began to answer the questions.

It wasn’t that he completely couldn’t do it. After all, he still had the previous host’s memory. Even the handwriting had seven to eight points of resemblance to the original’s.

Multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, read and analyze…..Hey, these ancient language questions seemed relatively easy!

“Find out one incorrect statement from the following according to the text <Collection of Orchid Pavilion>”

“Which of the following sentences contains a group of Tongjia1 words?”

……

Once he lifted his spirit, he brushed his pen against the paper with flourish. After writing for a long time, he then randomly wrote a few hundred words of a composition. The silent clock on the wall showed that only an hour and a half had passed.

There were finally some rustling noises in the formerly quiet classroom.

Some people began to get anxious while some took advantage  of when the teacher was off guard to stealthily look around while gesturing at each other.

The female teacher stood on guard and tapped on the desk. “Be a little honest and slowly write the composition. Don’t glance around and try to court disaster.”

It became a little quieter below. But after a while, there was a disturbance again. The female teacher went down from the podium and imposingly patrolled around.

Ruan Qingmu raised his head and started to look around.

As expected, it was serene wherever the female teacher went, but there was turmoil behind her. Some threw balled up cheat sheets, some gestured ABC123, and others reached and felt around the drawer behind them.

Liu Jun lightly kicked the seat in front, and the boy had a tacit understanding with him. Grabbing onto the chance when the invigilator teacher turned around, the boy rapidly tapped the boy in front of him.

That boy, who had pretty good grades and had been threatened earlier, trembled and engrossed himself in writing on a small slip of paper.

After a short period, he finished writing the answer and speedily threw the paper toward the seat behind him.

Footnote:

1 replacing the original character with a word with the same or similar pronunciation.