This humble Taoist priest wants to take the college entrance exam.

Chapter 138 The Taoist Priest is Taking an Exam (Thanks to Shark for being the Alliance Leader)

Chen Shi'an arrived at Class 6 of the first year of high school, where his examination room was located.

This was his first time visiting the first-year high school building.

Apart from the different class signs in front of the classrooms, the structure and layout of the teaching buildings and classrooms themselves are actually quite similar.

Upon arriving at the examination room, first check your assigned seat.

The seating chart was posted at the door, and Chen Shi'an sat in the middle of the second row.

Normally, very few people would recognize Chen Shi'an when he walks outside the school, but at Yunqi No.1 Middle School, almost everyone knows him.

Upon seeing that he was in the same examination room as "Dao Ye," many of the other candidates greeted him warmly.

"Master Dao, what a coincidence, you're taking the exam here too!"

"Why do you call me Daoist Master too, classmate?"

"That's what the whole school calls you!"

Which class are you in?

"I'm in Class 16."

Chen Shi'an nodded. Having been enrolled for so long, he knew which classes were elite classes and which were key classes. Class 16 was a regular science class.

The gap between the regular class and Class 5 is huge. Even if you put Xu Zihan, who is second to last in Class 5, in Class 16, she would undoubtedly be the first...

As for putting him in, who was ranked last in the class, Chen Shi'an figured he probably wouldn't be ranked last again.

Of course, if they had been admitted when they first enrolled, they would definitely have been last in the class. After all, apart from a few high-achieving students, most of the students in the regular classes had entered Yunqi No. 1 Middle School with high scores.

It's a pity that Yunqi No.1 Middle School is full of top students. Perhaps these students were also 'academic superstars' in junior high school, but after coming here, they are just ordinary.

However, even among students in regular classes, many are promoted from the "teaching building exam room" to the "laboratory building exam room" every month. The school has a promotion and elimination system after the major exams at the end of each semester, which is both a reward and a pressure for students.

With nearly two years until the college entrance examination, the outcome is still uncertain, and no one knows who the dark horse will be.

Upon entering the classroom, Chen Shi'an sat down in his seat.

The table that's turned upside down is a bit uncomfortable to sit on, and the legs of this table, which I don't know whose it is, are a little uneven.

Chen Shi'an tore off a piece of paper, folded it into a mat, and stuffed it into the gap between the table leg and the floor.

I gave the table a gentle shake, and it was finally flat, no longer making any clicking noises.

Inside the exam hall, many students from regular classes were still using their Chinese language review materials to cram in the exam.

Some classmates who happened to be in the same class and the same exam room chatted and talked with each other.

Chen Shi'an didn't know them, and when no one spoke to him, he would sit quietly and wait for the exam to begin.

At 8:50, the exam bell rang.

The proctor walked into the classroom with the exam papers in his hand.

"Students who need to go to the restroom, hurry up and go."

"No personal items other than exam supplies may be left on your seat, especially cell phones, study materials, etc. If caught, it will be treated as cheating."

"Put away your backpack and review materials. You can leave them here on the podium. Don't leave your own draft paper either; we'll be handing them out in a bit."

Apart from Chen Shi'an, none of the other students were taking the monthly exam for the first time.

After the proctor finished speaking, everyone quickly got to work, taking their backpacks and other belongings to the podium and temporarily piling them on the ground. Some students who had already gone to the toilet but suddenly felt the urge to urinate rushed to the restroom.

Chen Shi'an also took his backpack and other belongings upstairs, leaving only two ballpoint pens, two 2B pencils, an eraser, and the soy milk and milk given to him by the two girls on the table.

At 8:55, the proctor distributed the Chinese language test paper, answer sheet, and draft paper for this monthly exam.

"Everyone, please check for any printing errors. You can start writing after the exam starts at nine o'clock. Remember to write your class, name, and student ID, and write your answers on the answer sheet."

Chen Shi'an didn't find the proctor nagging. Although such a careless mistake was almost impossible for him, the fact that the proctor mentioned it repeatedly meant that there must be many careless students like him.

Soon, at exactly nine o'clock, the exam bell rang, and the exam room quieted down, with only the sounds of scribbling and turning pages remaining.

Chen Shi'an first read through all the reading passages on the test paper with great interest.

Ten minutes later, Chen Shi'an picked up his pen and began answering the questions in the order they were presented.

His Chinese language foundation was already incredibly solid, and after a month of standardized training, he is now even more adept at solving problems.

Chen Shi'an did not write any answers on the test paper beforehand; he simply looked at the questions on the test paper and answered them on the answer sheet.

I felt that this month's Chinese exam was much easier than the weekly test. I don't know if it's because I've improved a lot recently, or if the exam was genuinely easier...

The information-based text reading comprehension questions that used to be the most difficult for Chen Shi'an are now quite manageable for him after he consciously intensified his training.

As for other types of reading comprehension questions, such as classical Chinese poetry, literary text reading, and dictation and recitation, they are even easier to handle.

Chen Shi'an did it smoothly and effortlessly, without even a single underlined, misspelled, or erased mark.

He writes very quickly, yet his handwriting remains beautiful, giving the impression that he's copying answers rather than doing a problem.

No, not a buddy...!
Don't you need to read the questions and compare them with the text when doing reading comprehension exercises?

You read the article once, and then, like copying answers, started writing without looking back?!

The Chinese exam lasted two and a half hours. He still remembered that when he first took the weekly test, it took him about eighty minutes to finish all the questions. But now, when he got to the essay question, there were still more than ninety minutes left in the exam.

Looking around, some students had only finished half of their work...

With only an hour and a half left to write the essay, Chen Shi'an finally slowed down. After all, he wasn't allowed to hand in his paper early for the monthly exam, and he had to wait until the exam was over anyway. He decided to think carefully about how to write the essay.

The essay topic for this monthly exam was a material-based essay.

[...In this era of information overload: endless trending topics on short videos, countless opinions circulating on social media, and packed schedules inside and outside the classroom often leave us busy 'listening' to everything. Some believe... others say... What associations and thoughts does the above material evoke in you? Requirements: Choose an appropriate angle, determine your theme, and specify the genre...]
Chen Shi'an took a sip of soy milk with his left hand, while the pen in his right hand danced and spun between his fingers, creating beautiful strokes. He calmed his mind and pondered the next part of his writing.

In previous weekly Chinese tests, Chen Shi'an used modern Chinese writing as his main focus, aiming to improve his skills in this area.

Now that it's time for the monthly exam, Chen Shi'an thought about it and decided to use classical Chinese, which he is best at, for his writing. After all, Teacher Liang had said that writing in classical Chinese is not bad, and if he can perform consistently well, then there's no harm in using it extensively.

That being the case...

Chen Shi'an stopped spinning his pen, put down his soy milk, laid out his essay paper, and began to answer.

As Zhuangzi said, "Do not listen with your ears, but with your heart; do not listen with your heart, but with your spirit."
[These words reveal the secrets of heaven and earth, and illuminate the mysteries of humankind. Hearing with the ears is to follow the surface of sound; listening with the heart is to discern the subtleties of reason; listening with the breath is to resonate with the truth of the Way. Breath is not merely respiration, but rather the state of clear-minded contemplation of the Way, the state of emptiness that gives rise to clarity. When the mind is free from hindrance, the breath is stable; when the breath is stable, all things reveal their true nature. Looking at the world today, information is as vast as the ocean…]
……

It contrasts ancient and modern times, interweaves positive and negative examples, and draws upon classical texts.

Once Chen Shi'an started writing, his pen moved without any stiffness, and he wrote a classical Chinese essay of eight hundred words in a flowing and elegant style.

When I get focused, I lose track of time; in fact, only forty minutes have passed.

When I looked up again, I realized that the proctor had been standing to the side at some point. I didn't recognize the proctor, Chen Shi'an, but judging from his demeanor, he was probably a Chinese language teacher.

The proctor was just making a routine rounds, but when he got to Chen Shi'an's seat and saw his classical Chinese essay, he was so engrossed that he couldn't move and stayed there for quite a while.

When Chen Shi'an finished writing his essay and looked over, the proctor nodded with an expression of appreciation.

He didn't say anything, but simply returned to the podium and continued proctoring the exam.

……

The first subject, Chinese, has ended.

Chen Shi'an himself couldn't predict how many points he would get in the end.

Ten days ago, he scored 132 points in the weekly test in Chinese, but lost 10 points on the composition, which was a modern Chinese writing style that he was not very familiar with.

This time he used classical Chinese, which he's good at, so he figured he shouldn't lose ten points again...

……

In the afternoon, it was the same exam room, the same seat.

The paper mat that was originally placed under the table leg had disappeared again, so Chen Shi'an had to use another one.

I got zero on the last weekly math test, so I can't get zero on this monthly math test.

After all, he had already learned the content of the second compulsory course, including plane vectors, solving triangles, complex numbers, and introductory solid geometry. Although he was still far behind the class in terms of progress, Chen Shi'an, who was very talented in mathematics, was able to do some problems beyond the syllabus.

If Chen Shi'an were to take the math monthly exam for the first-year high school students next door, he felt he would easily get a perfect score.

The math exam typically consists of three parts: multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and problem-solving questions.

Most of the multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions were quite basic. Chen Shi'an answered the questions in the order they appeared. Regardless of whether he had learned the material or not, he would try to answer them using his existing knowledge.

As for questions he had absolutely no clue about, such as those involving concepts he hadn't yet learned and questions he couldn't even understand, he simply left them blank and didn't bother to randomly select an answer.

Under the old college entrance examination model, multiple-choice questions accounted for 60 points, fill-in-the-blank questions accounted for 20 points, and problem-solving questions accounted for 70 points.

Chen Shi'an was confident that he had answered all the questions correctly. He estimated that he could get 45 points on the multiple-choice questions and 15 points on the fill-in-the-blank questions, which would bring him to a total of 60 points.

In the problem-solving section, the first basic problem-solving question tested trigonometry, which was an easy question and I got twelve points.
The second question tested the proof of line-plane parallelism and the calculation of dihedral angles. It was an easy question, and I got all twelve points.
But from the later stages onward, scoring became much more difficult.

There are three problem-solving questions worth twelve points each, and a final, ten-point optional question with three choices.

These questions all involve topics that have been recently covered in class, such as conic sections, statistics and probability, derivatives, and proofs of inequalities.

There were some concepts that Chen Shi'an hadn't even figured out, let alone answered.

Fortunately, these questions were divided into two or three parts, and the first part was quite basic.

After finishing the questions he knew how to do, Chen Shi'an estimated that he should be able to get another 18 points on the last few questions.

After finishing the Chinese exam, Chen Shi'an had forty minutes left. However, he felt that time was running out during the two-hour math exam, mainly because many of the questions were slightly beyond his current knowledge level, and the calculation and thinking process took him a lot of time.

However, he couldn't accurately estimate his score on the Chinese exam, but he could estimate his score on the math exam.

He can guarantee that everything he does is correct.

45+15+12+12+6+6+6……102分。

That's a passing grade.

There were three multiple-choice questions left blank. Chen Shi'an felt that it wasn't impossible to guess one or two correctly by blindly choosing the answers. In fact, although he didn't answer them, his strong number sense gave him a strong feeling that he could guess which answer was more accurate.

If it were someone else, they would have just guessed, but Chen Shi'an didn't.

Mainly because it's not necessary.

It's just a monthly exam. At his current pace, he'll probably be able to surpass the class's math learning progress by next month.

Chen Shi'an didn't believe there would be any questions he couldn't answer on the next monthly exam...

……

The last day before the holiday was also the last day of the exam.

This morning's exam was the combined science exam, which lasted the same two and a half hours as the Chinese exam.

However, the combined science exam has a large number of questions, making it the exam with the most time constraints for most students.

Chen Shi'an chose to do physics first because it was a subject that was quick to learn.

Chen Shi'an, who had just started learning high school physics and had only studied the chapter on 'description of motion', glanced at the physics exam paper and immediately froze.

However, relying on some common sense and basic physics knowledge, Chen Shi'an also answered a multiple-choice question, a single choice, worth four points.

OK, the egg has hatched successfully.

After finishing physics, Chen Shi'an went on to work on biology.

Biology is currently the subject he's progressing on the fastest in the science subjects, given its humanities-oriented nature and the fact that he started learning it directly from high school, meaning he's only about one book behind the current class.

Chen Shi'an did everything he knew how to do smoothly, and he estimated that he would get around 80 points.

In chemistry, the progress is faster than in physics, but slower than in biology. However, he has learned the basics of experiments and redox reactions.

Aside from the topics he didn't know, such as the heat effect of chemical reactions, rate and equilibrium, and electrolyte solutions—which were the subjects the class had recently learned—he should have no problem getting 68 points on the entire test.

While others were taking three exams, Chen Shi'an was taking only two, which suddenly gave him plenty of time.

Even after the exam ended, most of the students in the regular classes were still groaning that they hadn't finished and looking dejected.

"Master Dao, how did you do?"

"good."

"Damn, Dao Ye really lives up to his reputation as a top student!"

"..."

Chen Shi'an didn't finish either, and his score was probably worse than most of the students in the room, but his expression remained relaxed.

The thought that the last subject of the afternoon was English made Chen Shi'an feel even more relaxed.

Just like the previous subjects, after the exam, only the answer sheets were collected. The test papers and draft paper were kept by the examinees themselves. Wen Zhixia said that even the draft paper was collected during the college entrance examination.

Chen Shi'an put away the test paper and got up to go to the podium to get his backpack.

He was taking an exam in the first-year high school building, but now he had to go to the cafeteria to get food for Xiao Zhi...

(Thanks to Shark for being the patron! Boss, you're so generous! May you prosper! Thank you so much for your continued support!)
(End of this chapter)