Chapter 147: College Entrance Examination (Gaokao)
The pain of impacting a solid object didn't occur. It was like suddenly passing through an invisible door. The light in Tang Xinjue's eyes suddenly changed, and her vision refocused in the new environment, finally outlining a long corridor.
She paused, reaching behind her and feeling for a wall.
The corridor she had come from was gone, blocked at the other end along with the invigilator who had nearly caught up with her. No sound could be heard.
But from another perspective, she couldn't return the way she had come.
Since she was here, she might as well make the best of it. Tang Xinjue continued walking forward, scanning her surroundings, quickly realizing that this corridor was almost identical to the one she had just come from.
The only difference was that the classroom was facing the opposite direction—if the wall at the end of the corridor was considered a mirror, then this was like another fifth-floor corridor reflected in the mirror, a mirrored version of the original fifth floor.
The corridor was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop, without a trace of anyone or anything. Tang Xinjue began her observations from the nearest classroom on her right and noticed that most of the exam room doors were locked.
Except for one door.
Tang Xinjue pushed open that door and entered exam room 508.
The exam room was empty and silent. The neatly arranged tables and chairs were empty. Only one seat, near the wall in the second-to-last row, was occupied: a girl with short hair sitting quietly. Tang Xinjue noticed that she still had no arms.
When Tang Xinjue approached her, the girl with short hair slowly raised her head. On her desk lay two pieces of paper. One was a blank exam paper with the title printed on it: [University Town First Higher Education Entrance Examination].
The other was an admission ticket, with only the single character "Cai" clearly visible in the name column.
"Cai tongxue,"
Tang Xinjue began.
"You brought me here because you have something to tell me?"
The girl's dark eyes were emotionless. She stared at Tang Xinjue silently for a moment before suddenly standing and walking out.
Tang Xinjue followed her.
Leaving the exam room, she turned right, heading towards the lobby near the stairwell. As she approached, the details of the stairwell came into view, and Tang Xinjue spotted a flight of stairs leading upwards.
—In the original exam building, the fifth floor was the highest, with no access to the upper floors.
Clearly, the layout of this mirrored corridor was different.
The short-haired girl walked briskly, especially as she approached the lobby and the stairwell, where her speed noticeably increased.
Tang Xinjue immediately realized something and rushed forward, precisely grabbing the edge of the girl's clothes.
"Thank you for your help," she said softly and politely.
The girl pursed her lips, saying nothing, and didn't push Tang Xinjue away. As they stepped onto the stairs leading to the higher floors, her already light legs floated upwards as if weight had been removed, indirectly pulling Tang Xinjue, who was clutching her clothes, with them.
"Sizzle—hiss—"
From the moment she stepped onto the staircase, the previously tranquil atmosphere suddenly changed! A chilly gust of wind whipped up from the ground, the temperature dropping as low as a freezer. All sorts of strange, unknown noises surged from all directions, the icy air licking the back of Tang Xinjue's neck several times.
Using the girl's speed, Tang Xinjue swiftly climbed the stairs, ignoring every sound around her and not even looking away. In just a few moments, she reached the sixth floor.
Pah. Her footsteps landed with a soft thud, and all the surrounding movement vanished instantly. Only her frozen, numb limbs bore witness to what had just transpired.
Tang Xinjue touched the back of her neck, her hand a bright red.
—Highly aggressive, highly dangerous, potentially fatal.
Quickly drawing these conclusions, Tang Xinjue covered the wound on her neck with her collar and calmly continued to follow the short-haired girl.
The sixth floor lacked a spacious lobby or corners. Long, solid walls obscured the view, and even a careful look was needed to discern the two narrow, cramped corridors to the left and right.
The girl entered the left corridor. It was dark, and the walls seemed poised to collapse at any moment. Tang Xinjue had to unleash her mental power to track her, keeping close.
Even so, she paused slightly, a dozen meters away.
The girl's trace vanished.
The dark corridor, completely devoid of all light, left no room for sight. The short-haired girl seemed to have vanished into thin air. Her mental power couldn't even detect the slightest fluctuation in the air, instead spreading a faint pang of exhaustion.
Tang Xinjue pressed her temple to retract her mental power, then reached out to the wall, exploring the surrounding area step by step.
The fact that the girl had led her here before disappearing meant something must be here.
—Click.
As expected, Tang Xinjue quickly found a switch like a handle. With a gentle push, a door, barely wide enough for one person, slid open. The incandescent light dispelled the gloom. It was a small room, about twenty square meters. The scent of dust and paper filled her nostrils, and large and small dust particles floated up and down near the light.
Is this... a data room?
The neatly arranged mahogany bookcases almost filled the entire room, forcing Tang Xinjue to sideways to pass through.
Each bookcase was piled with countless documents and papers, most of which were locked behind glass windows, with only a small portion scattered outside. Tang Xinjue picked up a few and examined them. They were mostly blank or filled with indecipherable garbled text, revealing no valuable information.
She looked up at the number of documents and remained silent for two seconds.
A systematic search was clearly unrealistic, so she abandoned the documents and focused on observing the differences in the bookcases.
This decision proved to be a good one. She soon discovered that while the bookcases lacked labels to identify them, they were all engraved with a row of tiny numbers on the top. The larger the number, the more documents and papers were scattered outside.
Tang Xinjue stopped in front of a bookcase, where almost half the documents were visible. The glass window was divided into nine identically sized squares, each labeled in Chinese at the bottom.
"...Not activated."
Tang Xinjue muttered the first word she recognized since entering the room. A thought struck her, and her eyes swept down, examining each one after another.
Not activated, not activated, not activated... Activated.
In the last square, the word "Activated" suddenly caught her eye.
Pile up a thick stack of papers within the square, still a mess of garbled text, but the title at the top was crystal clear:
[University Town's First Higher Education Entrance Examination]
[Admission Ticket]
With her gaze fixed, Tang Xinjue opened the admission ticket she had folded in her pocket for half a day and compared it to find that it matched the size perfectly.
Simply add the prefix "University Town" before "Higher Education Entrance Examination" and replace the garbled text on the "Admission Ticket" in the bookcase with normal information and photos, and the two formats will be identical.
Tang Xinjue unhesitatingly took out the stack of garbled admission tickets and examined them one by one. About halfway through, she finally spotted a very special one:
[Candidate Number: 20190607]
[Name: Zhang You]
[Gender: Female]
…
The photo on the admission ticket showed a woman with her hair tied up low, her hand resting on her black glasses, staring straight ahead with a serious and calm expression. Both her face and her clothing were familiar to Tang Xinjue.
This was enough to confirm: This was Zhang You's admission ticket.
If Zhang You's admission ticket was here, then... what about the others?
Continuing to search, after twenty or thirty more tickets, another one without the garbled text fell out. This time, her gaze suddenly fixed—
[Candidate Number: 20170607]
[Name: Tang Xinjue]
On her admission ticket, her own photo stared silently into the camera.
From beginning to end, it was identical to the old, wrinkled admission ticket next to it.
“…Remarkable.”
Tang Xinjue pinched the two identical admission tickets simultaneously. If there could only be one "Gaokao Admission Ticket," then one of them must be a fake.
Which one?
After examining them for a moment, Tang Xinjue took the old admission ticket, which had always been with her and had been checked countless times without any flaws, and placed it securely on top of the other one. Then, she flipped the new one over and pressed down firmly where the photo would be.
Then, a subtle sound of peeling came from the inside of the admission ticket. After peeling it open, the smooth surface of the old admission ticket had a small dent—
This dent was, surprisingly, her "photo."
And beneath the detached photo, another color was clearly visible.
Tang Xinjue tore her photo off without blinking, and instantly saw another girl's headshot in the same spot!
It was a girl with long hair and bangs. The photo seemed badly worn, and her features were barely visible. But Tang Xinjue caught a glimpse of familiarity the moment she took a look.
Aside from her hair, the girl in the photo bore a striking resemblance to the "Teacher Lü."
One could even say they were identical.
Tang Xinjue narrowed her eyes and continued experimenting with the same method on other parts of the admission ticket. However, from the moment the photo fell off, the paper seemed to have lost its camouflage. Just a simple brush of her palm lifted the countless rough edges.
Then, without hesitation, she tore them all off until the admission ticket's true form was revealed:
[2017 National College Entrance Examination Admission Ticket]
[Candidate Number: Garbled]
[Name: Lina Lü]*
[Gender: Female]
…
[Registered Address: Dormitory 315, Building 250, University Town]
[Exam Guarantor: Wang Jiji]
*莉娜绿 - The last word of her name, Lü, means Green
Looking at the revamped admission ticket, Tang Xinjue smiled for the first time since entering the mirrored corridor:
"I see."
—So all this time, she'd been taking the exam "for someone else."
Even more intriguingly, this "someone else" was the exam's invigilator, a friend she'd never met but felt familiar to her... Lina Lü, huh?
Reciting the name aloud, Tang Xinjue returned her gaze to the pile of papers and continued searching. It wasn't long before she found Zheng Wanqing and Guo Guo's admission tickets.
Four brand-new admission tickets lined up, pointing to a highly likely scenario:
If the four were in the same situation, then each of them was likely holding a fake admission ticket, impersonating someone else.
The real admission ticket was hidden here. Without the guidance of that special candidate, finding it on their own would be nearly impossible, let alone the four students in the dormitory being forcibly separated and having to recover their strength after repeated exams.
Or, could the endless cycle of college entrance exams be linked to the swapping of admission tickets?
After sorting out the five key clues, Tang Xinjue hadn't yet decided on her next move when she heard a distant, dull thud.
…like something heavy falling from a high altitude.
The author has something to say: -------
Today's Comment:
A college student was tricked into taking the college entrance exam for someone else, and the one she's substituting turned out to be the invigilator.
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