Chapter 48

Tao Shushu was racing against time to study.
Meanwhile, Su Momo furiously smashed all her cosmetics.
After dinner, she was about to go on the forum to slander Tao Shushu a few more times when she noticed an unusually high number of notifications. Su Momo initially thought her words had gained support.
But upon clicking in, she discovered that Tao Shushu had challenged her to a competition.
Su Momo wasn’t afraid of an English speech contest, her current level could easily surpass even the English teachers in the international class.
The problem was, Tao Shushu had tagged her alternate account.
On WeChat, a flood of people questioned Su Momo about the situation.
Having been burned several times before, Su Momo hesitated to outright deny that it was her account, she had stumbled too many times at Tao Shushu’s hands.
Su Momo spent a long time deliberating how to respond for the best effect, but before she could post her carefully crafted reply, she saw the forum administrator’s response.
Su Momo felt her heart drop.
Shen Yichen, the forum administrator, had refused to even add her on WeChat, yet now he showed up to meddle.
She was supposed to be the beloved female lead, why had things turned out this way?
Furious, Su Momo overturned her vanity table.
As the cosmetics shattered, she froze for a moment, overwhelmed by a wave of panic.
She was the campus goddess, she couldn’t let her classmates find out she had so many alternate accounts, each spewing venomous words.
Desperately, Su Momo tried to contact Shen Yichen.
But the senior who had once been friendly with her now refused to pass on any messages, responding only with an ellipsis.
Refusing to give up, Su Momo sought help from others, only to be met with red exclamation marks, blocked.
To make matters worse, her phone was instantly flooded with messages demanding to know why she had been slandering Tao Shushu on the school forum.
Su Momo collapsed to the floor, numb to the shards of foundation bottles cutting her hands.
She cursed wildly, "Tao Shushu, Shen Yichen, why must you oppose me at every turn?"
Crying and raging in her room, Su Momo instinctively thought of using an alternate account to insult Tao Shushu on the forum, only to realize her forum IDs had already been exposed to her classmates.
She crouched on the floor, sobbing for a long time, until her phone rang and snapped her back to reality.
Too afraid to check who was calling, Su Momo just wanted to turn off her phone and hide.
She called out to her system, but there was no response.
Was she going to be abandoned?
Su Momo’s confidence completely shattered at this moment.
She hadn’t become the top student yet, hadn’t reached the peak of her life, hadn’t become the darling of countless influential figures, she couldn’t just be abandoned like this.
She was the female lead.
"System!"
"Come out, System!"
"Answer me!"
"You said I’m the female lead, the only halo in this world."
"Waaah, System, come out?"
Just as Su Momo was crying, her door suddenly knocked. The voice of the Su family’s butler sounded gloomy through the wooden door: "Miss, what mischief are you up to again? Madam wants you to go to the forum immediately and clean up this mess."
"I am the eldest daughter of the Su family. The only young lady of the Su family, get lost!" Su Momo shouted furiously.
The phone screen was still ringing incessantly.
Su Momo finally noticed the caller’s name, Qin Rui.
She was so startled, as if scalded by firewood, that she dropped her phone.
The next second, Su Momo scrambled on the floor, nervously picking up the phone. "President?"
She was utterly terrified, genuinely panicked to the extreme this time. "President, I, I haven’t provoked Tao Shushu again."
"It’s the foolish things you did in the past."
"You agreed to compete with her tomorrow. But you have to win. I’ll give you half of the Academic Genius System’s energy. If you fail this time, you can go back to how you were before."
"No! I don’t want to go back. President, I will definitely beat her, I will!" Su Momo exclaimed loudly.
"You only have this one chance." Qin Rui hung up.
Su Momo returned home, worked through a set of practice questions, washed up, and finally waited for a reply on the forum.
In the end, Su Momo agreed to the competition.
Of course, as soon as she appeared, the forum erupted in boos.
The comments from Su Momo’s alternate accounts had already been compiled into a single post.
At times, she pretended to be "Su Momo’s friend," praising how hardworking and beautiful she was.
At other times, she posed as a bystander, defending herself while belittling Tao Shushu.
The remaining accounts were filled with curses, slander, and sarcasm, starkly contrasting her usual gentle and graceful image.
With just a casual scroll, Tao Shushu could see replies like, "Su Momo is actually like this? I must have been blind to like her before," "I actually defended her for so long," "Sorry, I really thought Tao Shushu was maliciously targeting Su Momo, I was wrong."
Su Momo’s female lead halo no longer worked.
At the very least, tomorrow’s competition would be fair.
A few minutes later, Tao Shushu came across Qin Rui’s reply.
Qin Rui volunteered to serve as a judge for the competition.
The female lead halo had shifted to the male lead halo.
Tao Shushu bit her lip. Fortunately, she still had many high-level Primary Clarity Cards left unused.
Tao Shushu replied: For fairness, I’ve also invited two teachers and two AIs to serve as judges. Thank you, President Qin Rui.
AI Shushu was a recent discovery. She found that the information-gathering plugin she used was quite effective and subsequently located a language-based artificial intelligence developed by the same research team.
While artificial intelligence couldn’t yet fully handle translation and creative tasks, it was more than adequate for scoring an English debate competition, with precedents in some official contests.
Qin Rui had no choice but to agree.
Li Anyu, upon learning that Tao Shushu was preparing for the competition, suppressed her excited scream. "Shushu, then do your best. Just tell me whatever you want me to do. Oh, and Senior Shen Yichen asked me to pass on a 'good luck' to you."
Shen Yichen?
Tao Shushu didn’t know why Shen Yichen was helping her. She smiled and said, "Then please convey my thanks to him."
Tao Shushu stayed up late into the night memorizing sentences.
The competition format was also finalized through a forum vote: five judges, each posing one question, with two-minute rapid-fire debates, and a best-of-five system.
Among the five judges, one of the foreign teachers was Su Momo’s instructor, and he, along with Qin Rui, would likely favor Su Momo.
The foreign teacher Tao Shushu had invited was fair and impartial.
The two AI judges were absolutely impartial as well, so she had to perform at her very best.
Only after finishing memorizing and organizing her materials did Tao Shushu find time to open the game.
Surprisingly, Nan Yuan was still awake.
"Sorry, cub, I’m late today." Tao Shushu didn’t quite know why she felt reluctant to face her cub today.
Even though her cub would never know she had done something so impulsive.
"Shushu, it’s not late. I waited for you," Nan Yuan looked up and smiled. "And it’s a happy you."
"Hmm, you could tell?"
"Yes, Shushu seemed very excited today." Nan Yuan wanted to ask what had happened to make Shushu so excited she couldn’t sleep, but he knew he didn’t have the right to ask yet.
Tao Shushu thought for a moment. "Cub, I mentioned before that there’s a bad guy I’m planning to deal with. But there’s also a smaller bad guy, and I’m going to confront him tomorrow."
Nan Yuan paused, then took off a necklace from around his neck. "Shushu, this is a lucky necklace my mother gave me. I’m giving it to you. I know you can do it."
He carefully removed the necklace and hung it around the neck of a small plant-fiber doll by the bed.
That doll was one he had made of Shushu, Nan Yuan, and the golden-maned lion back when everyone in the base got new clothes.
The three of them were still huddled together.
Tao Shushu affectionately touched the little doll. Her cub kept everything in perfect condition.
The necklace hung too long around the doll’s neck, so Tao Shushu adjusted it, letting it drape over both dolls’ necks. "Shushu and Nan Yuan, lucky together."
"Meeting you has already been lucky enough," Nan Yuan gently touched the hand of the doll representing Shushu. "I’m passing this luck on to you. May Shushu’s future world be free of worries."
Tao Shushu’s heart twinged, feeling both tender and bittersweet. She ruffled Nan Yuan’s hair. "Cub, I will be lucky."
Only by winning could she continue to protect her cub and all the people she wanted to keep safe.
After saying goodnight to her cub, Tao Shushu reviewed some grammar before finally falling asleep.
The next morning, Tao Shushu woke up refreshed and full of energy.
As she did every day, she greeted her cub and headed to school.
On the way, she heard magpies chirping, a sign that, just as her cub had wished, she would be blessed with luck.
A crowd had already gathered beneath the flag-raising platform, and sharp-eyed students began shrieking the moment they spotted Tao Shushu.
Calmly, Tao Shushu said, "The competition won’t start until after morning self-study. Everyone, please go back and focus on your reading."
When she entered the classroom, all eyes turned to her.
To her surprise, her desk drawer was filled with small gifts, milk alone numbered four or five boxes.
Tao Shushu picked up a note that read: "Shushu, you’ve worked hard. Su Momo has been insulting you all this time, and you endured it until now before finally standing up for yourself, and even then, you chose a fair competition. That couldn’t have been easy. Drink more milk to replenish your strength."
Tao Shushu smiled as she spotted the functional drink favored by the class sports committee member, the sugar-free sparkling water beloved by the beauty-conscious Fang Leyi, the energy bars the academic committee member nibbled on while stuck on difficult problems, the sour plum candies her deskmate adored, and the four-leaf clover pen refills Li Anyu had recently taken a liking to…
Class One had truly accepted her as one of their own.
She was also grateful that, unlike the original storyline, Class One hadn’t become the "control group" to Su Momo’s international class.
8 a.m.
As soon as the bell rang, signaling the end of morning self-study, Tao Shushu stood up.
Her Chinese teacher patted her shoulder and said, "I thought you’d be memorizing English vocabulary during my self-study session. I was prepared to turn a blind eye, but you were reviewing Chinese the whole time. Go for it, Tao Shushu."
"I will, teacher," Tao Shushu replied. Turning around, she caught the academic committee member winking at her.
The usually introverted girl walked over and said, "Shushu, I had a bad feeling about Qin Rui… Ahem, anyway, I spoke to the teachers. Even though they aren’t judges, they’ll be supervising the competition. You can compete with peace of mind."
"Thank you."
Amid the hopeful gazes of her Class One classmates, Tao Shushu made her way to the flag-raising platform.
Just a few days earlier, Su Momo had stood there to deliver a self-criticism.
Now, standing there again, Su Momo seemed much more subdued. Gone were the sycophants who once trailed behind her.
She stood beneath the platform, her face haggard, with deep dark circles under her eyes.
But her one night of exhaustion was nothing compared to the suffering Gu Lanchun had endured after having her knowledge stolen.
Tao Shushu would make sure Su Momo paid for the pain Gu Lanchun had suffered.
[Continue using the Advanced Primary Clarity Card.]
[Understood.]