Chapter 3: I Didn’t Cheat at All

Chapter 3: I Didn’t Cheat

But Li Jingkun didn’t mind, or rather, he didn’t think too much about it; he simply focused on his own work.

For him now, ordinary homework wasn’t difficult since the questions were quite basic. The teachers assigned these tasks mainly to check if students had grasped the day’s lessons. More challenging assignments were rarely given—or rather, rarely assigned in the regular class.

As a result, Li Jingkun’s homework notebook (mostly math, since other subjects had less homework) quickly became the most popular one around, circulating through several hands each time.

Consequently, the whole class’s math skills seemed to improve overall, causing their thirty-something female teacher to break into a sweat.

Having taught for over a decade, she clearly sensed something was amiss. After all, this was the regular class, where overall performance was poor and few students were serious about their studies. So copying homework was normal—otherwise, how could ninety percent of the class get A’s on homework but then ninety percent fail the exams?

Therefore, the teacher didn’t reprimand them excessively; if everyone had to rely solely on their own answers, then ninety percent of homework would be wrong or many wouldn’t submit anything at all. That would be an embarrassing situation no teacher or school could tolerate.

Yet tacit acceptance had its limits. Copying from one person to such an extent, with identical thinking and methods, and even the same occasional mistakes—did they think the teacher was a fool?

So she conducted a simple inquiry, asking the class monitor.

“Li Jingkun? His math scores aren’t that great. Has he improved that much recently?” the math teacher asked. Since there weren’t many exams at the moment, even if the homework was all A’s, the teacher couldn’t be sure if he truly did it himself.

“He’s been working pretty hard lately,” said the class monitor, a boy named Peng Bin.

Usually, class officers were among the better students. Some teachers, however, appointed average students as group leaders, hoping to spark their competitiveness and motivate them to study harder because of their position.

The math teacher, who was also the homeroom teacher, appointed Zhang Linlin as group leader with this in mind. But Zhang Linlin didn’t really appreciate the teacher’s good intentions. At first, she found it troublesome, but later thought it wasn’t so bad—at least it made copying homework easier.

Most class monitors, however, were chosen from students excelling in the subject. Peng Bin’s math scores were much higher than Li Jingkun’s, and he was far more responsible. He wouldn’t allow others to copy his homework—partly because he didn’t want to, and partly because he agreed with the teacher that letting classmates copy would only harm them.

“How exactly has he been working hard?” the math teacher still had some impression of Li Jingkun, who was one of the few in the class with barely acceptable grades.

“He’s been diligent with practice problems and has asked me some questions a few times,” Peng Bin replied.

“Is that so?” The math teacher pondered. If all the recent homework was truly his own work, then he had indeed improved. But until the exam results came out, it was hard to say for sure. The midterm was approaching; they would see how well he did then.

...

With the midterm approaching, Li Jingkun put aside reviewing the first-year textbooks and focused on the second-year material.

For Chinese, he mainly memorized poems and key points highlighted by the teacher. Reading comprehension and essay writing relied on his own understanding and accumulated knowledge, requiring little extra effort.

Math involved memorizing formulas and understanding them well, along with doing plenty of practice exercises to reinforce those formulas.

English was about memorizing more vocabulary. Other subjects required more memorization and comprehension, with no shortcuts—only time and effort would suffice.

Still feeling unprepared, the exam day finally arrived.

During the Chinese exam, luck was on his side. The dictation parts were all well memorized, so he did well on the earlier sections. Then came the essay, which carried a significant portion of the score; a poor essay would make it difficult to achieve a high grade.

The essay prompt was to write a 600-word piece on the theme of “Confidence.”

There was actually a formula to scoring well on essays. The teacher would often directly give away the secret: pick the right topic, start with your viewpoint as the opening paragraph.

Then, list two or three famous figures to support your stance—preferably well-known names like Edison, Wen Tianxiang, Einstein, Sima Qian, Han Xin, and so on. Memorize about ten examples; that’s usually enough.

No matter the prompt, you could find two or three stories from these ten figures to back up your argument. For “Confidence,” you could use Edison, Sima Qian, Han Xin, and others.

Because Edison’s confidence made him unafraid of failure—he knew he would eventually succeed. One success could change his fate and even humanity’s future.

His confidence led to a brilliant and dazzling life, giving all mankind a bright and radiant future.

Likewise, Sima Qian and Han Xin succeeded because they believed in their abilities and talents, never giving up despite repeated setbacks and humiliation, thus becoming immortalized in history.

Although Li Jingkun understood this formula and method, being a lover of literature himself, he didn’t want to rely on such formulaic writing to get high scores.

The structure—viewpoint, examples, conclusion—was sound, but he wanted to write honestly, in a natural voice.

So he finished the essay in his own way—if needed, he could fall back on the formula occasionally in the future.

But with only 600 words, it was tricky to manage space—randomly writing a few paragraphs would leave no room for more.

Therefore, each paragraph and section needed careful length control.

The second subject was math. The intense month of preparation paid off; after the exam, he felt quite confident.

He hoped it wasn’t just one of life’s three great illusions.

...

About a week later, the test papers for each subject were handed back, and class and grade rankings were released.

Li Jingkun’s name appeared prominently before many teachers and classmates for the first time.

Not because his scores were terrifyingly high, but because his progress was remarkable.

He ranked second in the class overall, just behind Peng Bin.

This was enough to earn the respect of teachers across subjects.

Previously, he was among the top few in class, but compared to first-place Peng Bin, he often lagged by nearly fifty or sixty points—a reflection of the regular class’s wide score gap. This time, he had improved in almost every subject.

Out of a hundred, his scores were: Chinese 85, Math 76, English 92.

(End of chapter)