Study Monster Cultivation System - Chapter 2
Chapter 2: Becoming a Monster
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The experience bar slowly vanished, leaving Li Zheng feeling lost.
He rubbed his eyes.
“Is there something wrong with my brain because I studied too hard?” he thought. “I should have it checked out at the hospital.”
A faint cough interrupted Li Zheng’s thoughts.
Lin Yujing pouted as she grabbed her pen and poked the test paper, “Hm.”
Li Zheng sighed indifferently.
“An opportunity to spar with an expert is not to be missed,” he thought. “I guess I’ll finish the test paper before heading to the hospital.”
He picked up his pen and stretched to the left and right.
He unsheathed the cap of the pen to reveal its tip.
He glanced toward Lin Yujing and nodded earnestly.
Lin Yujing lifted the corner of her mouth slightly. She turned around and began to write her answers after she tightened the rubber band holding her ponytail together.
Li Zheng glanced toward the clock.
It was now 4:15.
The standard amount of time allowed for an exam was 120 minutes. If the exam was of average difficulty, Li Zheng would be able to finish the paper in 80 minutes and leave the rest of the time for checking through the paper.
Lin Yujing would usually hand in her paper at the 50-minute mark and then disappear like a cat. She would then reappear at the next exam as if she had caught the scent of a tin can of food.
The time Lin Yujing didn’t use was Li Zheng’s only chance of victory.
He had to be cautious and check through his paper multiple times. Only then did he have the right to gamble on this slim chance.
Li Zheng lifted his pen and prepared to answer the questions. He cleared his mind of all distracting thoughts.
There was only one thought in his brain: “The questions are here!”
Multiple choice questions of varying lengths entered his field of vision.
The graceful questions quickly dampened his shock of being bound to the system.
It had only been a moment before he entered his problem-solving mode. His mind was exceptionally clear.
In fact, he was already reading the next question as he wrote the answer to the previous question.
This paper had been handwritten, then photocopied. It was proof of Hu Chunmei’s spontaneity.
The difficulty level of this test was slightly lower than that of the monthly exam. Furthermore, 70% of the questions were similar to those posed in the monthly exam.
More interestingly, Mrs. Hu had just spent the entire lesson explaining the monthly exam.
Thus, as long as they had listened to the lesson seriously, even students who usually scored about 80 points would be able to easily score over 100 on this paper.
It looked like Mrs. Hu was not trying to cause trouble for everyone by getting them to stay behind and complete the test. She only wished to consolidate their knowledge.
At the same time, she could encourage the students who listened seriously to her lessons, yet did not achieve good results.
Even though Mrs. Hu was not good with words, she did everything she could as long as it was beneficial to the students.
Li Zheng gradually lost himself as the difficulty of the questions increased.
Time always flew when he was completing tests.
Time usually passed in the blink of an eye when he was immersed in the sea of questions.
Unknowingly, Li Zheng had finished all the questions.
However, he did not feel the fatigue that he usually felt after a major exam.
Instead, he desperately craved for more.
He even felt a little indignant.
He thought, “Those enchanting formulas had only begun to tease me, yet I already capped my pen and finished the test.”
Annoyed.
Unhappy.
Uncomfortable.
More unpleasantly, there were three questions which he did not know how to do at all.
If he calculated his score, the most he could get was 130 points.
That was the limit of an ordinary person.
The difficulty of obtaining every point after 120 points grew exponentially.
It was hard to imagine what kind of world Lin Yujing was living in.
She should have finished her paper by now.
Li Zheng could not help but look toward Lin Yujing.
She moved the tip of her pen from time to time. At other times, she bit on her lips and looked slightly worried.
Li Zheng had never seen her this immersed.
“She’s sweating.
“It feels as though I can sense the rise and fall of her breaths even though I am far away.
“A woman who is fully immersed in her studies is sexier than I imagined.
“Stop, I got sidetracked.
“I should not think too much when I am studying.
“Quick, regain a firm mindset.
“‘As the wise men say: There’s no end to learning.’
“‘Green is derived from blue…’” he thought to himself.
…
Li Zheng barely managed to stabilize his emotions after reciting “An Exhortation to Learning” twice.
There was no way that Lin Yujing would be slower than him at completing the test.
She must have finished the paper long ago and was now checking her answers.
Li Zheng sighed when he thought about this.
He had lost his only chance of victory. There was no way that she would make any careless mistakes now.
No one could surpass Lin Yujing if she checked her test.
She had killed off the last unknown variable in this competition.
Li Zheng glanced toward the clock.
It was already 4:23.
He had spent a full eight minutes to complete this set of questions.
“Eight minutes…
“Eight minutes?
“Even copying the answers would not be that quick, would it?” he thought.
Li Zheng could not help but secretly glance at the students around him.
Most of them were focused on the upper left corner of the paper. That was the section for the multiple-choice questions.
Liu Xin was extraordinary. His drool had reached the calculation questions.
He glanced at Lin Yujing once again.
She was a little far away. He had to put in a little effort.
He glared at her.
Yes, she’s at the lower-left corner. She’s doing the fill-in-the-blank questions.
Perhaps because Li Zheng glared too intensely, Lin Yujing suddenly arched her back and vigilantly turned her head around.
She stared into Li Zheng’s bulging, bloodshot eyes.
“Hmph, hmph…” She let out a laugh of disdain.
She then turned her body to obscure her paper. She no longer allowed Li Zheng to have a glimpse of any section on her paper.
Li Zheng saw the disdainful gaze of contempt for cheaters.
Lin Yujing did not know that her gaze had hit the sore spot of a man.
Being seen as a cheater was the greatest humiliation Li Zheng could receive. It also completely discredited him.
He was furious.
He was not as intelligent, but he had lofty ideals.
He thought, “I only wanted to see where you are at with your paper. Who cares about your answers.
“Damn it…
“Just this once.”
Li Zheng wanted to win.
“Forget it, I’ll seize the time to check my answers,” he thought.
Two minutes later.
He was done checking his paper. He had rectified a mistake.
“I’ll check it again,” he thought.
He took less than a minute this time. Furthermore, he could not find any other mistakes.
He was still stumped on the three difficult questions.
At this moment, all Li Zheng could think about was whether he would win or lose. He did not care about how he had finished the test so quickly.
With his current answers, it was a given that he would get 130 points.
However, Lin Yujing was aiming for 150 points this time.
Li Zheng thought about the mocking expression Lin Yujing would have toward a cheater after she achieved victory.
Li Zheng wanted to vomit.
He put all of his efforts into thinking about the three questions.
He had filled up his scrap paper in less than two minutes.
However, learning without thought was just labor.
He would only stray further away from the question if he tried to solve it without understanding the key points.
Li Zheng realized when he saw the mess on his scrap paper that he would not be able to obtain the 20 points through just improvisation.
Could this be the insurmountable difference between an ordinary person and a genius?
Li Zheng felt indignant.
Whoosh!
He raised his hand fiercely.
Mrs. Hu, who was sitting in front of the podium with her head lowered in her lesson plan, was shocked by the fierce sound of air being sliced.
She looked at the eager Li Zheng and waved her hand in a hurry, “Go quickly, don’t forget to bring along the paper.”
However, Li Zheng asked, “Mrs. Hu, I have questions that I don’t know how to do. Can I flip through the textbook?”
“Of course.” Mrs. Hu nodded as she said, “The same goes for the other students. You can flip through your formulas or assignments if you have questions that you cannot answer. What’s important is that you understand the concepts. Don’t place your hopes in finding the answer though. These are impromptu questions created by myself.”
Li Zheng quickly flipped open the mathematics textbook after he obtained permission.
“All of the examinable key points are in the textbook,” he thought.
If he did not know how to do a question, it meant that he was not familiar enough with the textbook.
The three questions that he could not answer were questions about geometry.
More specifically, they asked about the relationship between lines and planes, as well as circles and equations.
Li Zheng collected himself. He honestly went through the section about geometry word by word, line by line.
He did not miss a single formula or example question.
He even took out and went over the other practice booklets and supplementary material.
This took much more effort than the test paper. He spent over 20 minutes going through the material.
He felt as though the entire world was made up of geometric diagrams by the time he put down the last set of practice questions.
As for the three questions.
They had become a walk in the park.
In reality, he had stored the questions in his mind when he had started studying the concepts.
He usually associated three questions with every key point he established.
At this moment, he had come up with three to four ways to answer the question.
He had never been so familiar with geometry before. It was a topic that he had always been poor at.
“Damn it. This is what studying truly is!” he thought.
He fluently wrote down the derivations for the three difficult questions in one minute.
He laid down the proof, then stopped writing.
“I feel great!” he thought.
Li Zheng had the freeing feeling of breaking through a bottleneck.
He had occasionally had this kind of study high in the past, but it was usually fleeting. It was something that could only be discovered, not sought.
However, today, his thoughts were like a tsunami. They thoroughly soaked in every key point, which felt like reefs from the past that he had stored in his brain.
Unknowingly, he had reached the top of the wave.
“Is there an end to the sea of knowledge?” he wondered.
“I don’t know.
“I’ll know when I cross it,” he thought.
Li Zheng raised his test paper and laughed heartily.
“Hahaha!”
He had forgotten that he was still in the classroom.
His classmates looked over in a daze. They sensed that Li Zheng was showing symptoms of becoming a monster.
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