Chapter 28

Ever since obtaining the Academic Genius System and learning that she was the beloved female lead in a novel, Su Momo had never felt so defeated.
It was one thing for a balding teacher to remain unmoved by her charm, she didn’t care about him anyway, but why would an ordinary high school boy guard against her as if she were a cheater?
The boy’s swift action of covering his test paper and his cautious gaze wounded Su Momo deeply.
After sitting down, Su Momo commanded the system, "Activate the physics ability I copied from the tutoring teacher."
Su Momo wasn’t completely naive. Fearing unexpected setbacks, she had deliberately gotten close to a tutor from a cram school and stolen their physics expertise.
No matter how clever or naturally gifted Tao Shushu was, how could she, competing in her first contest, possibly compare to a tutor with over a decade of teaching experience?
Feeling smug and confident, Su Momo opened her test paper and began pretentiously marking key points on the questions.
However, after waiting two minutes, Su Momo realized she still had no ideas.
Not to mention the final physics problem, she couldn't even make sense of the fill-in-the-blank questions at the beginning. After reading the questions, she only felt utterly bewildered.
Su Momo refused to believe it and read through them again.
How was this possible? Was the tutoring teacher really that incompetent? It was just a competition paper, she had already used her ability, yet the answers didn’t come to her instantly.
Considering one possibility, Su Momo broke out in a cold sweat on her palms. "System..."
"System malfunction. Services temporarily unavailable..."
Su Momo’s pen slipped, leaving a glaring scratch across the test paper.
Ever since obtaining the system, Su Momo had been unstoppable. She successfully reclaimed her identity as the Su family’s daughter, gained entry into high society, and everything was going according to her plan, except for the setbacks she’d faced because of Tao Shushu.
Yes, it must be Tao Shushu’s doing.
Su Momo wiped the cold sweat from her palms and glared fiercely at Tao Shushu’s straight-backed figure in front of her, biting her lip in frustration.
Noticing that Su Momo wasn’t focusing on the test but was instead fixated on the person in front, the girl sitting next to her frowned and covered her own test paper.
Seeing this, Su Momo felt a wave of disdain. Why was everyone guarding against her as if she were a thief? Did she, Su Momo, even need to cheat?
Su Momo turned her attention back to the questions. The first one was about the ideal gas thermodynamic model, she skipped it.
The second question was about the probability of observing decay particles, skip again.
The third question required using the Cauchy limit to calculate a micro-element field strength... Su Momo couldn’t understand, so she skipped again.
Before she knew it, she had skipped all the fill-in-the-blank questions.
As for the experimental question, Su Momo vaguely remembered seeing something similar in a textbook, but her memory was hazy. A few phrases came to mind, but they didn’t seem quite right. She reluctantly wrote something down, then crossed it out, wrote again, and crossed it out again, leaving the paper a messy sight.
Only the short-answer questions remained.
Su Momo’s eyes lit up, fortunately, there was an optical reflection question. Reflection was relatively simple. Filled with confidence, she began her calculations.
However, after filling an entire scratch sheet and drawing three diagrams, she somehow ended up with three different refractive indices.
Su Momo couldn’t take it anymore.
She glanced around, everyone else was scribbling away, buried in their calculations.
Except for her. She didn’t even know what to write on her scratch paper.
Wide-eyed, she caught a glimpse of her neighbor’s short-answer section, where the calculations alone spanned over a dozen lines.
Su Momo flipped through her test paper from back to front, then front to back, adding up all the possible points. She estimated that she might only score a few points on the optics question.
Just then, Li Xin announced, "Time is almost up, ten minutes left."
Su Momo’s heart raced, her face turned pale, and her mind grew increasingly frantic. Her ability to think seemed to shut down completely, only by digging her nails into her palms could she stay somewhat calm.
To make matters worse, Li Xin stepped down from the podium and began inspecting each contestant’s progress.
"System," Su Momo whispered urgently, "What’s wrong with you? I’m supposed to be a top student, I can’t get a zero."
"But you’ve scored single digits in chemistry before," the system replied coldly. "You can activate emergency evasion mode."
Su Momo looked up, Li Xin was already heading her way. She absolutely couldn’t let anyone find out she couldn’t solve the problems on her own. "Activate emergency evasion," she said.
The next moment, Su Momo collapsed heavily onto the desk.
She had fainted.
When the others heard the noise, they looked up in confusion. As Li Xin rushed over in a few quick strides, the messy calculations, diagrams on Su Momo’s scratch paper, the wrongly highlighted key points on her test paper, and the answers she had crossed out and rewritten slowly faded away, as if she had never written anything at all.
Su Momo’s sudden fainting caused a small commotion.
Li Xin called the school doctor, who arrived quickly, but they still needed a few people to help carry Su Momo downstairs.
Two boys voluntarily stood up out of humanitarian principles, though they weren’t particularly enthusiastic about it. On their way back to the classroom, one of them remarked, "Going up and down the stairs took five minutes. I could’ve at least solved the first part of the last question by now. Ugh."
Su Momo was taken away by the school clinic’s ambulance and didn’t hear their conversation. Otherwise, she would have been even angrier, how dare these two not be captivated by her female lead charm and instead complain about her wasting their time?

Tao Shushu’s mind remained fully immersed in the problems.
As soon as she received the test and glanced at the questions, she knew it was a high-level set.
From the moment she started, her mind was highly stimulated, thinking through every second and every minute.
Deconstructing the problems in her head, building models…
The moment she put down her pen, Tao Shushu heard a "thud" from behind.
She turned and saw Su Momo’s head slam onto the desk.
That’s going to leave a bruise on her face, Tao Shushu thought, curling her lips. How unfortunate.
While the school doctor was taking Su Momo away, Tao Shushu used the answer key provided by Teacher Li Xin to grade her own paper.
The fill-in-the-blank questions were straightforward, and all her answers were correct.
The experimental questions tested procedural rigor and experimental design thinking. Estimating that the female lead, Su Momo, had already left the building, Tao Shushu began to feel lazy. [System, are you there? Come out and grade this.]
[I’m not a grading program,] the system weakly protested.
[Hurry up,] Tao Shushu insisted.
Beside her, Li Xin spoke before the system could respond: "Your experimental approach is quite good, very efficient."
Li Xin reached over, flipped Tao Shushu’s test paper to the other side, and after studying it for a few minutes, said, "You’re Tao Shushu, right? Your physics teacher has mentioned you. You’re definitely a promising talent."
Tao Shushu smiled slightly.
After speaking, Li Xin picked up his large teacup and strolled over to the next student.
The student behind Tao Shushu tapped her on the shoulder. "Tao Shushu, could I take a look at your answers?"
Tao Shushu generously handed over her test paper. Immediately, several others crowded around, studying her efficient experimental design approach.
After a short break, Li Xin stood at the podium and announced, "I won’t be going over today’s test, it’s just a routine assessment. In five days, once the selection is finalized, I’ll address the common issues."
The final selection for the competition team would be decided in just five days, a piece of news that made many gasp in apprehension.
Tao Shushu had long known that not everyone could participate, and for efficiency’s sake, the selection had to be finalized quickly. She wasn’t intimidated by Li Xin’s high-pressure attitude.
The curriculum at Huiwen Highschool progressed rapidly. Even though they were only in their second year of high school, both the compulsory and elective physics courses had already been taught.
One student raised a hand and timidly said, "Teacher, I didn’t take the electromagnetism elective."
"Learn it yourself. One day is enough. The competition committee won’t avoid certain topics just because some individuals haven’t studied them."
One day! Tao Shushu considered herself quite efficient, but she hadn’t expected Li Xin’s demands to be even more extreme. No wonder he was known as the "devil teacher."
Sitting up straight, Tao Shushu pulled out her notebook and followed Li Xin’s train of thought, delving into the theories commonly used in competitions.
After two hours of competition training, Tao Shushu felt she hadn’t had enough.
As the group stood up and bid the teacher farewell, one student stepped forward to stop Li Xin from leaving. "Teacher, I’d still like to try and figure out these problems on my own first." They could always ask their tutors, but getting answers directly from the problem-setter was faster and more accurate.
Li Xin waved a hand dismissively. "Ask Tao Shushu. She got all of them right."
And so, Tao Shushu, who had just packed her bag and was ready to head home to rest, was forced back into her seat to explain the problems.
Her neatly written, accurate test paper was even photographed by one of her classmates.
After half an hour of discussion, covering the reasoning and calculations for every problem, Tao Shushu was finally allowed to leave. She made her way toward the school gate.
Just as she stepped out, she spotted her father’s car.
Tao Shushu dashed over in a few quick strides, tossed her backpack inside, and said, "Mom, Dad, why did both of you come? I could’ve gone home by myself."
Her mother pulled out a thermos of chicken soup. "We were worried you didn’t eat enough. Shushu, why does this competition have to run so late? It’s really affecting your rest."
Tao Shushu was indeed a little hungry. Sipping the black chicken and ginseng soup, she replied, "Mom, I enjoy the feeling of solving problems."
"Alright then," her mother said, gently brushing Tao Shushu’s hair aside. "Good thing your dad and I both have low hairlines."
After finishing the soup, Tao Shushu took out her phone.
Having spent the entire evening thinking hard and exhausting countless brain cells, she desperately needed some comfort from her "the cub."
It was late at night on the cub’s end as well, but he wasn’t asleep.
Tonight was the cub’s patrol shift.
He paced around the base, over and over.
Tao Shushu couldn’t help but chuckle.
the cub appeared to be patrolling meticulously, but in reality, he was amusing himself by intimidating the tall, thin man and the scar-faced man, who were up to no good.
The two men were hiding in a room, carefully handling some glittering minerals. Every few minutes, footsteps echoed outside the door.
Frozen in fear, they didn’t dare move a muscle, as if playing a game of "statues."
Feeling mischievous, Tao Shushu made a piece of the mineral clatter to the ground. Startled like birds startled by the mere twang of a bow, the two men immediately crouched down, covering their heads.
These were the same men who had boldly schemed to kill everyone and escape alone, yet now they were so easily frightened.
While Tao Shushu played her prank, Nan Yuan paced outside the door, perfectly in sync with her antics.
Tao Shushu’s attention suddenly shifted entirely to the cub.
He was truly adorable.
With others around, she didn’t speak. Instead, she gently hooked her finger around Nan Yuan’s.
Nan Yuan’s fingers paused for a moment before slowly settling on the trigger of his particle gun.
He lifted his head: "You all patrol the main hall. I'll go check the entrance and ventilation shafts again."
The others agreed. It was pitch black late at night, and they didn't want to venture that far.
Tao Shushu had already finished reading the event log about the cub. After returning from hunting, he hadn't been idle.
He was teaching the others combat techniques, showing them how to hunt, and how to identify the toxicity of mutated plants. He unreservedly passed on all the survival skills he knew.
Tao Shushu imagined the scene of the three-heads-tall little bun with a stern face, slowing down his movements, demonstrating each move step by step, and asking "Do you understand?" She couldn't help but chuckle.
It was just a pity that the event log was in text form, without any visuals.
Next, Nan Yuan went to check on the spaceship and stayed there for a long time.
The cub seemed to like the spaceship chamber the most, he probably really wanted to leave this barren planet.
Tao Shushu ruffled the cub's hair. "Cub, where do you plan to go after leaving this barren planet?"
Many thoughts flashed through Nan Yuan's mind. Ever since he saw the spaceship and realized leaving the barren planet was possible, he had been pondering. He wanted to return to the capital planet, to avenge his parents, to survive. But he had no idea what had become of the human world, or why he should keep living, he hadn't really thought that far yet.
Back then, would she still be by his side?
Nan Yuan thought this, and so he asked.


Author's Note:
Shushu: Yes, yes, yes! Cub, Mama will support you through studying!
Title referenced competition materials ouo