Chapter 156: Waiting to Watch a Good Show

During the military training, Professor Guo and Professor Zhao had sent their best students to try and convince Tan Mo to join their departments.

Nowadays, they seemed to have given up.

They really could not understand why Tan Mo wanted to remain in the Finance Department.

Under the tutelage of Professor Guo or Professor Zhao, her future prospects would be endless, regardless of whether she chose Chinese or History as her major.

If they had been in her shoes, they would have switched majors a long time ago.

Up until now, most people were still unaware that Tan Mo was undertaking research with Professor Guo’s team.

Apart from the students on Professor Guo’s team, as well as Wu Xiaoye and the other 20 year-two students from the History class, no one else was aware of this.

This included the students studying Chinese. None of them were in the loop.

Wu Xiaoye and the other students in Professor Guo’s team couldn’t be bothered to spread gossip.

If they had extra time, wouldn’t it be better to spend it on research?

As for the 20 second-year History students, the news didn’t spread very far since they were from a different group of kids.

Even if there were some first-year students who were acquainted with these older kids one class above them, there weren’t many of them.

What’s more, those 20 students were merely a fraction of the entire population of students studying History.

Additionally, they had lost out to a freshman.

This was an extremely embarrassing state of affairs. It would have been silly to tell others about it.

Hence, they guarded this secret tightly, determined not to let students from other classes find out.

Whenever Tan Mo went to the research room, Jin Yuelin and Meng Yuxi didn’t ask her any questions.

As for Lin Fuxi, she had become simply a passing acquaintance of the three other students who shared the same dorm room. When Lin Fuxi interacted with the other three, they maintained a superficial sense of politeness with her.

She was quite a pretentious person and couldn’t bring herself to ask Tan Mo any questions. Hence, she also knew nothing about what was going on in Tan Mo’s life.

“Tan Mo, do you know what will be on this test?” a few of her classmates asked.

Lin Fuxi was waiting to watch a good show unfold.

Tan Mo…most certainly knew nothing.

At the start, Professor Zhao had looked on her favorably.

But in the end, she hadn’t switched to becoming a Chinese major, right?

Now Tan Mo had nothing to do with the Chinese Department.

All the hubbub was because Professor Guo and Professor Zhao had personally sought out Tan Mo to recruit.

This had made Tan Mo quite well known among her classmates. A lot of students had felt that Tan Mo was quite impressive.

But now Tan Mo had nothing to do with Professor Zhao.

What was the use in her claiming to be connected to him?

Lin Fuxi couldn’t bear to watch Tan Mo act like a smart aleck.

She was impressive…

Professor Zhao looked favorably on her…

She should spill the beans and tell everyone what would be on the test during the Ancient Text Competition.

“I do know.” Tan Mo wasn’t trying to boast. She didn’t volunteer any information about being a part of Professor Zhao’s team.

But she saw no reason to hide any details regarding this competition.

Lin Fuxi looked over in shock.

Tan Mo really knew what was on the test?

Was it all just empty words?

Since someone asked, Tan Mo didn’t keep it to herself. “Although there are changes every year, there are a few topics that will definitely be on the test such as ancient script. These scripts are applicable to historical periods like the Spring and Autumn Periods, the Warring States Era, and the Qin dynasty. They will also show original texts and phrase and ask you to choose the appropriate translation. All the questions will be multiple choice, and you won’t have to come up with a translation on the spot. However, this will take place in a buzzer format. If you press the buzzer but answer wrong, your competitors won’t gain any points, but you will lose points. As for the format changes that they make every year, I’m not sure what they’ll add this year.”

“That seems too difficult. I can’t recognize any of those ancient texts.”

“Indeed. After all, we never studied it formally.”

“Tan Mo, why do you know all this?” Lin Fuxi questioned Tan Mo and observed her reaction.

In the end, Tan Mo really did know about it. Or had she casually made up a lie to save herself from embarrassment?

“I asked my seniors,” Tan Mo replied honestly.

“Then should we sign up?”

“To be honest, there is no harm in signing up for fun. After all, we don’t have to fork out a registration fee. I’m not hoping to get selected anyway. I’m simply going there to expand my horizons and have fun answering the questions and, at the same time, to see how many I can actually answer.”

“But we’re not trained in this. If we score terribly and come out in the bottom ranks, won’t it be very embarrassing? The whole school is going to see the ranking of scores, right?”

“Yes, they said that they were going to publish it on the school’s website. They’ll disseminate a link. Once you click on the link, the site will direct you to the page where the rankings will be shown.” Lin Fuxi nodded her head.

Everyone: “……”

The school was so contemptible. Were they trying to destroy any trace of self-confidence they had?

They didn’t want to embarrass themselves.

Soon, the room quietened down.

They wanted to have fun, but they also didn’t want to embarrass themselves.

“Actually…it should be fine,” someone spoke up. “There will be lots of other people taking part. If we study a little bit and work a bit harder, it should be enough to prevent ourselves from falling into the bottom ranks.”

“That makes sense. We’re from Beijing University, and we’re not the average student. Naturally, we want to try everything. Even though we’re not doing this for our degree, we should still expose ourselves to different things and broaden our horizons, right?”

“I agree. My close friends and relatives don’t even care what major I enrolled in. When they found that I study at Beijing University, they had the impression that I knew everything. The type of questions they asked me were…” The boy who was speaking pressed his hand onto his forehead, almost as though he was suffering from a headache. “I was too embarrassed to tell them I didn’t know the answers. I had no choice but to study hard and do loads of research. I certainly couldn’t embarrass myself.”

Everyone could relate to his words on a personal level.

“It’s the same for me.”

“Tan Mo, are you going to register?” Suddenly, somebody asked her the pertinent question.

At that moment, Lin Fuxi turned to look at Tan Mo. She perked up and listened intently. However, she had to pretend to be completely uninterested at the same time.

She…needed to appear indifferent.

She adjusted her expression to make herself appear nonchalant and calm.

“Yes.” Tan Mo nodded her head. “I will register.”

The moment Lin Fuxi heard this, she immediately said, “Then Tan Mo, shall I help you register?”

“Okay!” Tan Mo nodded.

Her professor had already registered on her behalf a long time ago.

However, Tan Mo was not planning to tell her this.

Otherwise, she would have to explain all the circumstances. She would need to explain the fact that she was on the team.

When the students from the History Department had heard that she had joined Professor Guo’s team, they had been quite unhappy. Surely, the Chinese Department students would react in the same way.

It would be difficult to predict whether the students in the Finance Department would also think like this.

Tan Mo didn’t want to be troubled by all this idiocy. Hence, she kept everything to herself.

If Lin Fuxi registered for her, it would simply be a double submission. It wasn’t a big issue.

Lin Fuxi put down Tan Mo’s name. After pondering for a moment, she quietly added her own name to the submission.

However, Lin Fuxi didn’t tell anyone. No one at all.

Just in case her score was low and she embarrassed herself.

As for the possibility that her name could appear on the leaderboard, she decided to worry about that later.

After all, so many people were signing up. The leaderboards would be so full that the chances of finding her name in the sea of names would be very low.

As she contemplated this, Lin Fuxi made up her mind.

When someone heard that Tan Mo was signing up, he said, “All right, then I will sign up as well. Even if I embarrass myself, it will only be a one-off thing. What’s more, there will be so many people that my name might not even be able to be seen. Even if they do see it, they won’t know who I am.”

His words seemed to make sense.

Hence, even more people registered.

A few of them were unwilling to put in much effort on an unrelated major. They were more inclined to spend their energy on their own specialty.

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