Ch. 274 - If the Peak Won't Hold, the Factory Offers Room and Board [1]

The downside of [Sustained Assault] was indeed exactly as Shen Wushuang had described.

For anyone else, it'd be practically useless — it relied far too heavily on the skill's own level.

Chen Shu: "Since it's a limited-edition skill, I'm taking it for sure!"

"Are you actually insane? Just because it's out of print?"

Shen Wushuang shook his head. This was pure lose-lose — damaging to others, no benefit to himself.

Chen Shu had his own ideas, of course. He typed, "Thanks, Teacher Shen. By the way, are you free tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"How about the day after?"

"Also free."

"How about yesterday?"

Shen Wushuang was dumbfounded. "Yesterday I was grading gaokao papers. What's this about?"

"Ah, what a shame. If you'd been free yesterday, I would've treated you to a meal as thanks."

"???"

Shen Wushuang's eyes bulged. "Get lost!"

"Next time! Next time for sure!"[2]

Chen Shu grinned, about to put his phone away and head to City Hall to apply for the skill.

"Oh right, come to school tomorrow. The gaokao results are being announced!"

Shen Wushuang reminded him, then added:

"You little bastard, you'd better keep it in check once you're at university. If you end up in prison, as long as you don't tell anyone I was your teacher, I'll be thanking heaven and earth."

"Is it really that serious?"

Chen Shu shook his head and left the house.

That afternoon, he went to City Hall and applied for the skill [Sustained Assault]!

Due to shipping logistics, the lord materials wouldn't arrive until the next day.

"Results are about to come out... It should be fine, right?"

Chen Shu rubbed his chin, feeling a bit uneasy. He stopped by Ye Qing's house, hoping to get a definitive answer.

But Ye Qing wasn't home. Lately, the old man had been running all over Huaxia Academy on Chen Shu's behalf, determined to leave nothing to chance.

That evening, just as Chen Shu was about to head home for dinner, his phone rang.

"Xiao Xing?"

"Chen Pi, come out for dinner! Gaokao scores drop at midnight — let's check together!"

The school would post the official score rankings tomorrow, but students could look up their own results tonight.

"Alright!"

The three gathered, had dinner, then hit up an internet cafe to game while waiting for midnight.

The cafe was packed — most of the patrons were senior high students, all waiting to check their scores.

Sure enough, well before midnight, people were already pulling up the results page, desperate to know how they'd done.

Right next to Chen Shu's group.

A guy with glasses sat there, staring at his screen with a face full of hope as he entered his personal information.

When he clicked "Check Results," he immediately covered the screen with his hand, too scared to look directly.

"God bless. I got this, I got this..."

The guy kept muttering, practically on the verge of lighting incense right there on the spot.[3]

His right hand slowly slid aside, revealing the first digit — a 6.

"Holy crap, over six hundred?!"

The guy's face exploded with joy, instantly drawing the attention of everyone else in the cafe.

"Whoa, we got a gaokao god over here, come check this out!"

"Over six hundred — must be from a Special Training Class, right?"

Sure, Chen Shu bullied his classmates daily, but every single one of them was genius-tier, the kind of academic monster other students could only envy.

"Six-twenty or above, six-twenty or above!"

The guy started his ritual again. Six-twenty was the cutoff for a prestigious university.

The second digit slowly revealed itself — a 5.

"Holy crap, six-fifty?!"

A crowd had already gathered around him, all eyes locked on. Six-fifty was brushing up against Huaxia Academy's admission line.

"A genius?"

Chen Shu looked over as well, sizing the guy up.

Wait, no. He was pretty sure he'd never beaten this guy up before, which meant he probably wasn't from the Special Training Class.

Could an ordinary Beast Taming class have produced a prodigy?

The guy heaved a massive internal sigh of relief. As long as he had six-fifty, he could pick any university in the country except Huaxia Academy. His future was blindingly bright.

He moved his hand away, eager to see the exact score.

In that instant, the atmosphere froze solid!

"Huh? Where's the third digit?!"

Everyone stared in utter bafflement, mouths hanging open, completely speechless.

Chen Shu's own mouth twitched. He looked more carefully. So that was it — the score was sixty-five. And all of it from the Academic Written Track...

"How the hell did you even dare to imagine that?!"

Everyone present had probably never been this speechless in their entire lives.

This guy genuinely had zero self-awareness. His regular test scores definitely never even broke a hundred, and yet he thought the gaokao would net him over six hundred?

"I just thought maybe I'd performed way above my usual level..."

The guy rubbed his forehead and sighed. "If the peak won't hold, the factory offers room and board!"

He refreshed the page over and over, then finally slumped into his seat and accepted reality.

"Man, you're something else."

Chen Shu shook his head and started checking his own score.

"Got mine!"

Xu Xingxing had a grin on his face as he pointed at his screen.

Displayed plain as day: 642!

"Holy crap, now that's a real god!"

Everyone's attention instantly shifted, eyes brimming with envy.

Xu Xingxing obviously had his pick of prestigious universities in Capital City.

Right then, Xie Sunan also pulled up his score — 625.

Their insane antics in the alternate dimension had pushed their Practical Combat scores well beyond what either of them had expected.

Xu Xingxing especially — his Mutant Thunderbird's performance had been nothing short of spectacular.

Both had hit prestigious-university territory. Combined with how sought-after support-type contract spirits were, they could basically get into whatever school they wanted.

"Chen Pi, hurry up and check!"

The two of them looked over eagerly, dying to see Chen Shu's results.

As the undisputed number one of their class — Potential Rating dragging him down aside — his other subjects were basically flawless.

He hit the search button. The very first line that appeared made everyone's jaws drop!

Academic Written Track: 400.

"HOLY SHIT! Perfect score on the Written?!"

"Is this guy even human?!"

"Now THAT'S a real god. What the hell was that sixty-five total score earlier?"

The glasses guy shot them a mournful look. You're really just gonna keep roasting me, huh?

Then, one after another, the other subject scores appeared.

Potential Rating: 20.

Practical Combat: 245.

These two numbers made everyone's eyes go wide, staring transfixed.

If only one of them had appeared, they wouldn't have been this shocked.

But the problem was this: a Potential Rating of only 20 meant his contract spirits weren't that strong.

Yet his Practical Combat had hit 245. A complete paradox!

The next line left the entire crowd dumbfounded.

Bonus Points (Provincial Competition): 20.

Total: 685.

"Holy crap! It's the bonus points!"

The onlookers suddenly understood and looked up at the candidate's name at the top.

The two characters "Chen Shu" made their hearts lurch. Shock flooded their eyes.

"The Nanjiang Bandit — Chen Shu?!"

"Fucking hell, no wonder someone could score this high! Huaxia Academy, guaranteed!"

"Bandit Bro, can I get your autograph?!"

[1] 如果巅峰留不住，那就进厂包吃住: "If the peak won't hold, the factory offers room and board" is a self-deprecating Chinese internet meme from the "lying flat" (躺平) era. The rhyming couplet encapsulates the dark-humor resignation of young people facing economic pressure: if you can't stay at the top, at least a factory job provides food and housing. Variants include "如果巅峰留不住，那就进厂包吃住，进厂之前先致富，进厂之后没退路" ("...get rich before you enter, once you're in there's no way out"). It is the factory-job cousin of earlier memes like the "three-and-a-half-hour sleep" death-bravado of Chapter 272's title. In the novel, the student deploys it after scoring 65 total points on the gaokao — accepting his factory-bound fate with meme-born gallows humor.

[2] 下次一定 (xià cì yī dìng): "Next time for sure!" — a ubiquitous empty promise in Chinese streaming and gaming culture. Originating on Bilibili, where viewers would promise to donate, subscribe, or support a streamer "next time" with no intention of ever following through, it became a running joke about performative enthusiasm with zero commitment. Chen Shu uses it here after dodging out of treating Shen Wushuang to a meal — the most transparently insincere "thank you" imaginable.

[3] 当场上炷香 (dāngchǎng shàng zhù xiāng): "Practically lighting incense right there on the spot." Burning incense (上香) is a traditional Chinese practice for paying respects to deities, ancestors, or the Buddha — a prayer ritual for blessings and good fortune. During exam season, students across China flock to temples to burn incense and pray for good scores. The comedy here lies in the student treating the gaokao score-checking webpage like a temple altar, his desperate superstition laid bare in a fluorescent-lit internet cafe.