Era of Mist

The academic affairs meeting went very smoothly.

During the meeting, the Dean of Academic Affairs delivered a profound review of the recent exam, fully affirming its importance and necessity. The teachers chimed in one after another, expressing that the exam had truly tested their students’ abilities and revealed their shortcomings. They all pledged that their respective grades would identify and address these gaps, redouble their efforts, and so on and so forth...

Old Jia didn’t hear a word of it.

Even after the meeting ended and he walked out of the office, Old Jia still felt dazed. The conference room had practically exploded just now. No one could believe that a student from a garbage class could get a perfect score. The teachers were all clucking their tongues in amazement, and they had actually taken out the test paper and gathered around to study it closely.

Old Jia had been the first to rush forward. He had to see it with his own two eyes, his own wide open.

He looked it over from left to right, and in the end, Old Jia discovered that not only was the test paper filled out perfectly, but even the handwriting was neat, square, and pleasing to the eye!

It was, one could say, a flawless answer sheet.

Placing this test paper next to Fang Qingjue’s, one was graceful and steady, the other torrential and grand. Like a sheer mountain peak and a great river rushing to the sea, both exuded a sense of unhurried composure, of still having strength in reserve even during an extreme exam. They were, without a doubt, far stronger than any other first-year student.

"A pair of twin stars for our time!"

One teacher began to praise them this way. The others quickly agreed. Two test papers like these truly deserved such a title.

Only Old Jia remained dazed, his mind buzzing as if an electric current was passing through it. He stared blankly, his mind suddenly flashing back to a basic arithmetic workbook called *Little Genius*, then to the way Shi Tiexin had so decisively and indisputably uttered the word "foundation."

That face, just like the handwriting before him now, possessed a heavy, powerful force.

’Back then, I thought he was just spouting nonsense, trying to make a fool of me.’

"I never thought..." Jia Guangsu sighed. ’I never thought he was serious. He really is reforging his foundation...’ He touched his own face, recalling the words he had said—’If you’ve got the guts, then use your grades to slap me in the face! Come on! You got the balls?!’

"And he really did slap me in the face. A loud, ringing slap." Old Jia’s weathered face flushed a little, but then he broke into a happy laugh. "But what a great slap! A great slap!"

He knew his own students. Although Shi Tiexin had once been the Champion Scholar Stone, the old Champion Scholar Stone definitely didn’t have this level of skill. He might have been able to get a high score, maybe even over three hundred and eighty, but he could never have gotten a perfect score.

In other words, Shi Tiexin wasn’t just coasting on his past achievements; he was truly forging himself anew. He wasn’t Fang Qingjue, with a perfect family background and privileged circumstances. He was stuck in the harsh environment of a garbage class, yet he remained unyielding, not only advancing from his already high perch but surpassing his former self, hammering his fundamentals to the point of perfection.

A person like that, even setting aside their roles as teacher and student, deserved respect.

"Looks like he’s really making a comeback." Old Jia smiled, deeply gratified. "That kid’s got guts!"

After the meeting, in the principal’s office, the Dean of Academic Affairs was reporting on the reactions to the exam. The teachers from all grades were preliminarily convinced, which would allow the next stage of reforms to proceed.

Principal Liu listened carefully, but his gaze involuntarily fell upon the copy of *On the Marquis of Liu* at his side. The book was open to a specific sentence: *This is because what he commands is great, and his ambition is far-reaching.*

He, too, had seen that exam paper, the one that could only be described as perfect.

Principal Liu thought of the name he had now committed to memory. This time, he believed he hadn’t misjudged.

He knew better than anyone the difficulty of the test he himself had written.

"Compile the results of this exam into a detailed data report and distribute it to every grade and class. Let all the teachers and students understand where they stand. Also, prepare to post the rankings and hang the red banners immediately!

"For this exam, every student who scored over three hundred will have their name posted in the most conspicuous spot! Oh, and for the four who got perfect scores, print their names in gold lettering, on a separate row." Principal Liu said with a smile, "We must let the victors enjoy the sweetness and praise of victory. Only then will more people chase after it!"

The Dean of Academic Affairs nodded and immediately went to carry out the orders.

Fengming First Middle School never needed to outsource the posting of its rankings. The school held enough exams and updated its rankings quickly enough that it had long since purchased the necessary equipment. The entire process was extremely well-rehearsed.

On Wednesday at noon, a number of staff members got to work. They were busy at the most prominent location in all of Fengming First Middle School: the intersection of the dormitory area, the academic buildings, and the cafeteria, right at the long row of announcement boards.

At noon, they cleared off all the previous content, leaving not a single corner untouched.

In the afternoon, the printing department delivered a thick stack of finished posters. The staff carefully applied glue, and then—they posted the rankings and hung the red banners!

SWISH, SWISH, SWISH. Large sheets of red paper were pasted onto the announcement boards. Gloved hands smoothed over the paper’s surface, pressing the red lists down more firmly with each pass. Some students peeked out from the nearby academic buildings, and the anticipation of the entire student body was raised to its peak.

This time, when school let out, the usual mad rush to the cafeteria was brought to a dead stop. The students didn’t make a break for the food first; instead, they stopped at the red-bannered boards to look. Students from the elite classes craned their necks, searching for their own names. Students from the key classes were also trying to find their places. The students from the ordinary classes watched the spectacle from the side, envious but also curious to see just how high the top students could score.

And at the very front, at the very top, in the most conspicuous position, four names were listed side by side.

Third-year, Class 1: Zhou Zhengyang. Third-year, Class 2: Gu Xuechao. First-year, Class 3: Fang Qingjue. First-year, Class 28: Shi Tiexin.

Perfect Score.

Tied for first place in the entire school!

All the students were rubbing their eyes, feeling like something strange had been mixed in with those four names. They stared blankly for a long moment before it suddenly dawned on them.

’Isn’t Class 28... the garbage class?!’

Holy shit!

It really *is* the garbage class!

A student from the garbage class actually got a perfect score!

Plagiarism? Plagiarize my ass! Cheating? Cheat your mom! With an exam like that, you try plagiarizing and see what happens! Let’s see how the hell you could possibly cheat your way to a perfect score!

Everyone was stunned. Utterly stunned. A huge uproar of chatter and debate erupted from the announcement boards and spread outward. A perfect score from the garbage class was just too eye-catching, too exceptional—practically unprecedented and unheard of. The news spread like wildfire, from one floor to the next, one class to another, and gasps of astonishment echoed from every corner.

Even in the faculty offices, the teachers who hadn’t been qualified to attend the morning’s academic affairs meeting were all buzzing about it. Many teachers went over to congratulate Teacher Chu of Class 28, figuring he had finally distinguished himself among the younger teachers and made a name for himself in front of the whole school.

But Teacher Chu couldn’t help but stare blankly into space, muttering to himself, "So he wasn’t deliberately stalling for time... he really knew it all! That guy... he’s incredible..."

He had tried the test himself and hadn’t even broken three hundred. He’d heard that some of the elite teachers had managed to score three hundred and eighty. Now, in a daze, he was beginning to understand that there was a reason he had been assigned to teach the garbage class.