37: I want to be a salted fish

"When things happen, don't panic. Just think about whether you can score 0 on the cultural courses in the evening."

Song Yu stood on the playground, watching the students on the platform commanding their contract beasts in intense 1v1 battles, involuntarily repeatedly calculating her own plans.

"A perfect score in Beast Taming class is not scary. As long as I get 0 in the other two subjects, no one can stop me from entering the bottom 23 in the class!"

"But... it's so hard to get 0 in the cultural courses. Unless I submit a blank exam, with so many multiple-choice questions, I can't get 0 even if I randomly fill them out."

Song Yu's face turned pale. It's not that she hadn't thought about submitting a blank exam...

To be honest, if she could, she would submit a blank exam tonight. But if Song Yu dared to submit a blank exam tonight, her class teacher, Zhou Tao, would have to call Song Wenhai and his wife. Tomorrow, she would end up in the hospital.

So, that's definitely not an option!

She wants to be a slacker, not spend her whole life in a mental hospital.

For parents, it's okay if their children's exam scores are not good. They can say it's because of poor memory.

But submitting a blank exam in an exam would be an attitude problem.

"Never mind, never mind. I'll take it step by step in the cultural courses exam." Song Yu's brain worked hard, but she couldn't figure out how to ensure that she would definitely rank in the bottom 23 of the class tonight.

The whole morning's Beast Taming practical combat class had nothing to do with Song Yu.

She was even driven away from the examination room like chasing away flies by Zhang Guoping, Zhou Ting, and others. They claimed that the examination room was crowded, and her presence would affect the mood of other examinees.

Song Yu: ...

Song Yu was speechless. She couldn't do anything about Zhang Guoping, who was in charge of the Beast Taming practical combat class. She also didn't want to stay in the stadium, which was a sad place, so she brushed off the non-existent dust on her and left the playground with a trudge.

There was no one in the classroom when she returned, and she was driven away from the playground.

After thinking for a moment, Song Yu turned around and walked leisurely to the school's convenience store.

The school convenience store in the parallel world was similar to the one she had seen before, with the only notable difference being the larger number of high school students, resulting in a relatively larger area for the store. Various expensive and inexpensive snacks were abundantly available, making it look not much different from a supermarket.

Running the snack store was a middle-aged couple.

There were also two contract beasts belonging to the middle-aged couple: a petite wind-type civet cat, who loved squatting on the shelves watching students come and go to buy snacks every day, and a golden-winged cat-headed owl that had already learned to calculate and collect money during the day but didn't like sleeping.

"Hey, Xiao Song, what are you buying today?"

With few people early in the morning, the store owner, a middle-aged woman, was quite relaxed. Upon seeing Song Yu's familiar face, she greeted her immediately.

"I want a piece of white chocolate, a pack of spicy strips, and a bottle of chilled cola!" Song Yu smiled, and upon seeing her favorite snacks, even her originally gloomy mood brightened a bit.

While paying, she casually reached out to pat the little head of the golden-winged cat-headed owl.

The couple's contract beasts had mediocre talents.

Therefore, after contracting with beasts for so many years, the contract beasts were still in their juvenile stage, with a size much smaller than a ball.

Song Yu envied the store owner's golden-winged cat-headed owl, glancing at it. Seeing that the owl cub resisted her touch, she quickly extended her hand and handed it a pack of beef jerky, expressing that she would pay for it to eat.

Fifteen minutes later...

Song Yu spent two packs of beef jerky, patted the store owner's two cats, and then walked back to Class 5 with snacks.

Compared to the battle classes every day, petting cats and eating snacks seemed more suitable for her.

In her previous life, she had been studying for over 20 years, and in this life, she really couldn't muster the motivation.

Song Yu felt that even if a butcher's knife were placed at her neck in this lifetime, she would still choose to be a glutton.

 

******

 

The Beast Taming battle exam proceeded quickly.

Even though there were more than 70 students in Class 5 who needed to undergo battle assessment, after each person completed three battles, the whole group returned to the classroom before noon.

After a quick lunch break, all the senior three students headed to the indoor sports arena without stopping.

The familiar indoor sports arena was now packed with people.

With a quick glance, Song Yu saw a large group of heads crowding the place.

Holding a microphone, Zhou Tao stood on one of the platforms and shouted loudly, "This exam is a physical battle competition! Similar to the morning Beast Taming practical combat, except for students without contract beasts, who will be considered automatically giving up the opportunity for wilderness practical lessons, the remaining students will all undergo three rounds of battles!"

"Each battle, the winner gets 33 points, and the loser gets 0 points! Those who win all three rounds get a perfect score of 100!"

"During the exam, if any examinee gets injured, there will be no school nurse to treat you!"

"Once the school nurse is called to provide treatment, the examinee will be immediately considered as giving up the assessment!"

Zhou Tao's voice was loud, and everyone in the indoor sports arena could hear it clearly.

However, because they could hear it so clearly, many examinees present furrowed their brows. Some even lowered their voices to discuss the matter.

Zhou Ting frowned, lowered her voice, and said to Song Yu, "No wonder last week, Teacher Zhou told us that the assessment would take place three days later. It turns out the trap is waiting for us here."

Unlike beasts, humans' physical fitness and recovery ability were far inferior to contract beasts.

If the school had notified them in advance about the exam today, many students would have come prepared with healing potions just in case.

However, with the school's sudden announcement of the exam, catching everyone off guard, it was impossible for many to have expensive healing medicines on them.

Unlike the slow healing process on Earth, this world had many magical elixirs. While some couldn't instantly heal severe injuries, there were many elixirs that could immediately restore physical strength and alleviate the pain of injuries.

"No treatment allowed during the exam" indicated that besides defeating opponents, the school wanted them to learn to seize the opportunity and prevent situations where they won the first round but were exhausted in the next two.

Zhou Ting thought seriously, her face turning stern. "It seems that in the upcoming exams, we need to save energy as much as possible, avoid direct confrontations with those strong students, or we won't be able to fight three consecutive rounds..."

In fact, they only needed to win two rounds in this exam to surpass over 30% of the students!

In previous physical battle courses, students often suffered broken ribs or arms due to combat, making it difficult for them to continue fighting.

Without a school nurse to treat them, once bones were broken, it meant losing combat effectiveness completely.

Unless they had absolute strength and exceptional physical fitness, this exam, for ordinary students, was all about making choices.

Zhou Ting contemplated the tactics for the upcoming battles.

Muttering about what to do if they encountered a tall and burly student, or how to deal with an opponent with extreme speed...

Only Song Yu, looking at the crowded heads filling the entire sports arena and glancing at the nervous students around her, took out a piece of chocolate and stuffed a small chunk into her mouth. The sweet, milky white chocolate melted in her mouth. Song Yu watched Zhou Tao on the stage already loudly announcing the names of the contestants and, without a care in the world, returned the chocolate to her pocket.

No matter what, she was determined to get a score of 0 in this physical battle exam!

As for tactics, choices, what to do and what not to do—what did it have to do with her, the slacker?

Song Yu felt extraordinarily relaxed in her heart. When Zhou Tao loudly called out her name on the stage with a megaphone, she still felt no sense of crisis.

However, when she heard the name of her opponent, Song Yu was subconsciously stunned.

On the stage, Zhou Tao shouted, "Class 2, Zhou Wenchang, Class 5, Song Yu, Match 6!"

Song Yu: ???

She originally thought that this physical battle competition would be similar to the previous Beast Taming battles, where classmates within the same class would face each other.

Unexpectedly, not only did it change to random matches for the entire grade, but her opponent turned out to be Zhou Wenchang?

Without the influence of novel plots, Song Yu couldn't believe that such a coincidence could happen!

Keep in mind that there were students from ten classes in this indoor sports arena! From Class 1 to Class 10, with so many students, how could it be so coincidental?

"Song Yu, you must do your best after going up this time! Don't get knocked down by this scum again like before!" Zhou Ting also felt that this matter was a bit too coincidental, but she furrowed her brows, waved her fist, and cheered Song Yu on.

A few months ago, the physical battle between Song Yu and the scum made her angry. Fortunately, the scum was also dealt with quite miserably by students from other classes in the end, which relieved Zhou Ting a lot.

"Okay, I'll do my best!" Seeing that her opponent was Zhou Wenchang, Song Yu breathed a sigh of relief.

She confidently waved her fist, happily echoing Zhou Ting's cheers.

As the saying goes: familiarity breeds contempt.

As long as Zhou Wenchang threw a punch, she would immediately lie down following the trajectory of his fist!

However.

Just as Song Yu stepped onto the stage and Zhou Wenchang also jumped onto the platform...

Zhou Wenchang suddenly raised his hand high towards the nearby female teacher acting as a referee and said, "Teacher, I forfeit this exam!"

Song Yu was shocked, widened her eyes, and suspected she was having an illusion: ???

The female teacher, equally surprised, asked, "Are you sure you want to forfeit, young man?"

Zhou Wenchang nodded, with a determined face, "Teacher, I'm sure. I want to forfeit this exam."

Song Yu stiffened: ...

"May I ask, young man, why do you want to forfeit?" As the referee, the female teacher still conscientiously asked a few questions.

"Teacher, because I can't beat her, I want to conserve my energy, so I decided to forfeit." Zhou Wenchang, with a serious expression, nonsense'd confidently. But his serious and earnest expression immediately made the referee believe what he said.

The teacher nodded, not dwelling on the issue any further. She immediately announced loudly, "Since that's the case, Song Yu from Class 5 wins this round of the competition!"

Watching the teacher on the stage declare the winner of the match, Song Yu could hardly hold back the tears in her eyes. Even as she descended from the platform, she felt a bit dazed, as if her feet were stepping on cotton.

Just at this moment, the previously serious-faced Zhou Wenchang approached...

The young man seemed a bit shy as he scratched his cheek and touched his nose.

Lowering his voice, he said, "Song Yu, I broke up with Huang Jiayan a few months ago. What do you think about us getting back together?"

"In the previous physical competition, I accidentally hit you. This time, I directly surrendered. Can we consider that an apology?"

Song Yu: "..."

Okay, okay?! Song Yu was momentarily stunned!

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