Chapter 1211: Chapter 816: The Curtain Falls

"Oh, oh, it’s nothing serious."

"The water heater won’t light." Xu Qianqian pointed toward the kitchen. "Go see if it’s broken." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"Okay." He answered, then looked at the two girls and asked, "You both haven’t showered?"

"No."

"Not yet."

When the three of them answered, they didn’t feel anything wrong. After the words came out, they looked at each other and suddenly felt weird.

"What dirty idea are you cooking up now?" Xu Qianqian didn’t really get it, but she just lumped everything into something dirty.

"Not yet." He said.

Song Xiyun: "???"

She wasn’t used to this kind of situation, and the thing that bothered her most was, "It just won’t start, can it be fixed?"

"Yeah." Jiang Nian agreed.

He fished a screwdriver out from under the TV cabinet, then walked into the kitchen, took off the cover and started repairing it.

He glanced at the air-pressure switch and casually fiddled with it. Click, click—unexpectedly, it just worked again.

"Done." Jiang Nian came out of the kitchen and leaned against the doorway. "You can go wash now."

In the living room, the two girls were chatting. Xiao Song stood up and hurried into the room to grab clothes.

Jiang Nian instinctively turned his head and took an extra look.

"Oh right, it’s going to rain again tomorrow. Remember to bring an umbrella, or bring an extra pair of shoes and socks."

"Oh, oh, got it." Xu Qianqian nodded. "By the way, did you think today’s paper was hard?"

"Normal."

"That’s not bad then. I hope we can get into the same university." Xu Qianqian wanted to sigh, but forced it down.

Nothing else, it’s just that Xiao Song’s grades were a bit weaker.

If it was only that her own scores were a level higher, she could just fill in a bit lower on the application, it wouldn’t be impossible.

But...

"Don’t think too much yet. What if you both hit the cutoff?" Jiang Nian comforted her and changed the subject.

"Chinese and math were a bit easier, maybe science will be hard."

"Yeah, hard to say."

....

The next day.

The second day of the college entrance exam, the parents were still on edge. Seeing Jiang Nian washing up unhurriedly, they wanted to rush him but didn’t dare.

"Forget it, I’ll go send Qianqian and the others first." Old Jiang couldn’t hold it in anymore. He grabbed his coat and umbrella and headed out.

Li Hongmei: "...."

She watched her son moving so slowly and couldn’t help feeling annoyed, so she simply decided to go back to her room.

Out of sight, out of mind.

"Remember to head out early, don’t be late."

"Oh, oh."

Jiang Nian stayed slow as ever, calm after the quiet. They’d been busy for a whole year already, no need to be in such a rush.

Still going by the usual routine, he arrived at the classroom. He didn’t stay long; everyone gathered and got on the bus to head to the test site.

On the bus.

Li Hua was memorizing words, swiping through Baicizhan. Every time he got one wrong, he slapped his thigh once, looking a bit anxious.

Huang Fang sat in front, stood up and craned her neck to look.

"Monitor, we’re taking science this morning."

"Just warming up." Li Hua said. "If only English could be as easy as science."

Huang Fang: "...."

She really shouldn’t have talked to him, utterly speechless. She turned and saw that Jiang Nian next to him was also on his phone.

This... was way too demoralizing.

Jiang Nian wasn’t actually playing on his phone, just checking messages. Some didn’t need immediate replies, but he still had to read them.

Like the messages from Han Xiao.

That crazy woman had come back to take the exam too, but luckily she was also scrambling to deal with her own test and had no time to come over.

She just sent a few messages wishing Jiang Nian good luck on the exam.

This time all three subject teachers came, both to send the two classes to the exam and to get first-hand info.

Once they got off the bus, Class Three burst into cheers.

"Teacher!!"

The enthusiasm was too much; Qingbao was a little nervous. She could only wave her hand, signaling everyone to do their best.

Not until everyone had gone upstairs and the square was empty did she finally exhale and take out her phone to scroll.

"Riiiiing!!!"

The exam began.

In the exam hall, Jiang Nian flipped through the paper a bit and realized that some questions on the science test were on the difficult side.

But he wasn’t flustered at all. Pure cheap tricks.

Some hard questions were put up front, or turned into innovative problems. Like a trap, meant to mess up students’ rhythm.

Anyone with a fragile mentality would get filtered out right away.

Kinda dirty.

Following Qingbao’s reminders, he bulldozed through biology and chemistry first, directly skipping anything he wasn’t sure about.

His thought process stayed clear the whole time, like a cold, unfeeling problem-solving machine. He didn’t let score gains or losses make him happy or upset.

That way, he actually had a few flashes of inspiration. A last-minute breakthrough, solving quite a few medium-hard questions.

Only after finishing physics did he go back to check.

Jiang Nian found that there weren’t many questions he was unsure about. More importantly, he’d finished everything.

Finished everything, with only two small sub-questions he wasn’t sure of.

Thump thump thump—the desk next to him was shaking like crazy from leg shaking.

"Attention candidates, there are five minutes left until the end of the exam, please check your answer sheets..."

Oh, last five minutes.

Jiang Nian lowered his head and quickly checked his answer sheet. Before long, the bell rang and he got up in a hurry.

Science was over.

Ninety percent of the college entrance exam was done; the last English test, for him, was basically a sure thing.

They gathered, turned in their admission tickets.

It wasn’t raining at noon, but the ground was still damp. Class Three was chirping away, madly discussing the test.

"I’m done for, the overall situation is set."

"Bio was freaking insane, there was a big question I spent almost twenty minutes on, I was so anxious I almost pissed myself."

"Did you solve it?"

"I pissed."

Someone squatted on the ground, hugging their head. They didn’t cry, but their voice was already on the verge of breaking.

"I didn’t finish, I left a bunch of big questions blank."

Some were happy and some were miserable. Li Hua was obviously one of the happy ones, but he didn’t dare be too high-profile.

He looked around and scooted over to Jiang Nian.

"Nian, this paper was so easy."

"Mm."

Li Hua froze, shocked by how calm Jiang Nian was. "You bastard, don’t tell me you finished it all too?"

Hearing that, Jiang Nian turned his head and gave him a glance.