He flipped through the pages faster and faster, and the room grew quieter and quieter. When he reached the last page, he finally stopped. “This time, the essay topic was actually ‘universal love.’ Mozi’s words are a bit hard to understand, but the poet’s are much more straightforward. Most of you focused your essays on the point that ‘no man is an island, entire of itself, isolated from the world.’ Let’s hear how Laura Bennett interpreted it.”

Laura Bennett froze.

He didn’t know what universal love was; he only knew that he didn’t recognize the words for “isolated” or “island.” His essay only covered the first half of the sentence.

It was an even more complete disaster than he’d expected.

Old Parker personally came over and handed him the paper. “Go ahead and read it.”

“……”

After a good half minute, Laura Bennett slowly stood up.

The essay looked like it filled half a page, but in reality, only the first paragraph was in Chinese. His handwriting was terrible; he could recognize most characters but couldn’t write them, so he’d flip back to earlier pages to find the words in the reading passages and copy them. With limited time, after finishing the first paragraph, he gave up and switched to English.

“No man is an island, entire of itself. This is a view everyone agrees with.” Laura Bennett read with his head down. “We seem independent, but in fact, we are made up of two halves—”

Samuel Grant was frantically nudging Faye Young below. “Damn, write this down, quick! I feel like a brilliant metaphor is coming.”

Laura Bennett: “...One half is mom, the other half is dad.”

Samuel Grant scribbled down a few words, then suddenly his pen froze.

He slowly turned his head: “?”

The owls slowly turned their heads: “?”

Brian Clark woke up, sat up straight, and looked up at Laura Bennett.

Laura Bennett, looking like a dead man, continued reading: “No man is an island. We should be grateful to our parents, just like the ancient Chinese—Confucius letting others have the pear—demonstrating traditional culture: filial piety.”

Actually, he didn’t know how to write the character for “filial piety,” and couldn’t find it in the reading passages, so during the exam he just switched to English: filial duty.

The classroom was dead silent for a full ten seconds.

Until Brian Clark suddenly let out a snort—

“Filial piety to death.”

Then the owls blew the roof off, Samuel Grant slapped the desk, and nearly toppled over with his chair.

“Legendary, hahaha!!”

“Laura Bennett, the master of filial piety!”

“What’s so hard about essays? Laura Bennett passes with just one act of filial piety!”

“Confucius giving up the pear, what a riot. Kong Rong’s filial piety shakes the underworld.”

“……”

Laura Bennett moved the paper aside, glaring at Brian Clark.

Brian Clark was laughing with great delight. Somehow, he’d gotten another piece of phoenix tree leaf, quickly scribbled a line of small characters, and slapped it onto Laura Bennett’s desk.

—Laura Bennett, powerful through filial piety.

Chapter 7: Eating Alone

Amid the laughter, Old Parker told Laura Bennett to sit down, then returned to the front and patted the desk. “Alright, that’s enough. Our math whiz still needs to work hard to catch up in Chinese. He just got back to the country, so everyone help him out.”

Everyone responded in agreement. A boy said, “Poor teacher, failed at becoming young again.”

“It was a success,” Old Parker smiled. “Thanks to Laura Bennett, laughter makes you ten years younger. I laughed half the night.”

There was another round of low laughter, then Old Parker sat down to grade papers, and the classroom quickly quieted down.

Laura Bennett was a bit speechless.

It wasn’t that he was thin-skinned; he was mainly speechless about the grading.

He got 6 points for the essay, guessed two out of six multiple-choice questions for another 6 points, and picked up 4 points on the short-answer questions, for a total of 16.

Not exactly a failure—actually, it was one point higher than he’d estimated—but he felt a bit wronged about the classical poetry fill-in-the-blank. Out of ten questions, there was one he definitely knew: “Heaven gave me talents, they will be of use.” But he still got a big red X.

Laura Bennett checked the next line on his phone: “A thousand gold coins spent, they will return.”

Brian Clark whispered, “That one was a freebie. What did you write?”

Laura Bennett instinctively turned his phone face down. “Why are you looking at my phone?”

“I just glanced by accident.”

Laura Bennett was a bit annoyed. “Anyway, it was almost the right answer. If I’d gotten it, my total would be 17.”

“That’s a real shame,” Brian Clark clicked his tongue in sympathy. He was about to lie down and keep sleeping when he caught a glimpse of Laura Bennett’s answer sheet, and his expression froze.

First line: Heaven gave me talents, they will be of use.

Laura Bennett’s next line: A thousand gold coins spent, never to return.

Brian Clark searched the desk for that phoenix tree leaf, flipped it over, and wrote four more characters: Just a tiny bit off.

Laura Bennett: “……”

Self-study period was very quiet. The only two not studying were Laura Bennett on the left, and at the other end of the row, Eric Brooks.

After two Chinese periods, Old Parker left with the test papers, but stopped at the classroom door.

“I want to say a couple of words to you.” He looked at everyone. “You’re about to be split into classes. According to this year’s science track, some of you will go to the all-subject A class, and others will be assigned to other classes by rank. All of you here were top students in the city a year and a half ago. I hope you don’t forget the ideals you had when you first entered high school, no matter where you go next—”

He paused, his gaze shifting to the back door, and said word by word, “Don’t give up.”

Laura Bennett instinctively turned his head. When Eric Brooks heard the words “don’t give up,” he seemed a little moved, but soon he bent down, picked up the basketball from the floor, and walked straight out the back door.

Old Parker also left, and the classroom instantly became noisy.

Laura Bennett’s left arm was suddenly poked.