Examination hall.
Twenty-six tables were lined tidily. There was a figure seated behind each table studiously scribbling away. Middle-aged or younger invigilators patrolled the examination hall, with stern expressions adorning their faces. Whenever someone rose their head even the slightest bit, they would be showered lovingly with a collection of stares from the invigilators.
The examination room was stuffy. The scorching sun spilt in, bathing the rows of students inside in heat as they rose their head uncomfortably. Under the scary gazes of the teachers though, they lowered their heads back again.
Amongst the students was a person; she sat, unmoving.
Her discipline in sitting still had some of the teachers even looking over at her at a frequency higher than normal. A middle-aged lady walked over and silently looked over. When she saw the empty examination script, she frowned.
This student's Mathematics paper—from the multiple choice questions all the way to the end—was completely blank.
They were the top school in the province, so there shouldn't be such a student in their school! No matter how poor her studies was, she should at least write her name on her script!
Her finger twitched. The invigilator wanted to collect her script and just get the student out of the examination hall… after all, it's already been half an hour, she won't be able to pass this exam even if she was a genius.
And on top of that, the script this time was… hah.
Just as her hand moved, the student's right hand suddenly moved and scratched a few lines and circles across the blank space provided for the last question. After repeatedly writing those symbols, she drew a few lines between the numbers and wrote a few strange characters above.
The invigilating teacher paused. Such a strange scene was the no-brainer for the invigilator, it was prevalent despite repeated prohibition—cheating. The teacher walked one round around the student; the student had her head lowered. Her black hair was down on her shoulders, her ears revealed; she wasn't wearing any earpiece. Both her hands were on the table, the space under her table was empty too. She was wearing the simplest short-sleeved shirt and jeans possible; the teacher found no trace.
During this short span, the teacher saw the candidate writing a few symbols beneath the numbers before writing an answer down in the blank.
The answers hadn't been published so the invigilating teacher wasn't sure if she obtained the correct answer. But since this student had started working on the questions, there was nothing more for her to say. After looking at her a while more, the invigilator slowly walked away.
If the invigilator were to turn around to spare the student another glance—just one glance—she'd definitely be so floored her eyeballs would have popped.
The student only paused for a short moment. After which, the candidate immediately turned her gaze to the questions before her, scribbling away madly.
She only spared each question a single glance before jotting down the answers without further hesitation, and that lasted all the way till the end of the paper. She gave only the final answer even for the open-ended problem-solving questions.
After finishing, she placed her pen down and turned to look out, no longer looking at the script.
The sun shone brightly, the greenery vibrant; the mountains, water, clouds, sky, none of them had changed.
The Blue Planet* didn't change; its masters changed.
* 蓝星 = Blue Planet (literally translated into Blue Planet); referring to the Earth
These astonishingly able beings with their ridiculously low culture yet incredibly sharp instinct, strong defense and heavy damage, and acute, violent intelligence were…. so difficult to get along with yet so easily hoodwinked and… so adorable!
It was unlike here, where she discovered her master—body—wasn't someone easily deceived. And just as she was learning how to walk, she's dragged along to sprint; the moment she sat, she had to learn how to hold this ancient writing device, and then stare blankly into the sheet of paper filled with alien symbols.
The Blue Planet civilisation seemed to have undergone a considerable change, launching itself down a route similar—yet not quite the same—to that of her home-planet.
Judging from the surrounding mammals walking with both their feet on the ground, this planet was still in the mid-late stage of its industrial civilisation with some budding signs of technological revolution. The evolution of the livings beings and development of civilisation was going to take a detour.
What was she seeking while taking this detour?
Sigh.
While she had time, she carefully extracted some of the memories of this body and roughly figured out that the process she was going through at the moment was something termed as an examination at the beginning of the term, and it was going to be for ranking, streaming…
What were they? She understood ranking… but streaming… was this racism? If that was the case then according to statutes of evaluation, this civilisation seemed to be less developed than she'd thought…
There were four subjects tested in this examination at the beginning of the term, namely Mathematics, Language, English, Science, and they were tested in this order as well. Mathematics was termed something else back in her home-planet; though the expression and symbols were different, it was… shockingly simple once she understood what the symbols meant.
The bell rang; it was time to hand in the scripts.
When she saw the others going forward to submit their papers, she blindly followed suit. After which, she carefully watched as the people sitting around her left this closed-off place—apparently termed as a classroom—with four surrounding walls, and quietly wondered what she should do…
"Mo Mo! What are you doing sitting and stoning? C'mon let's get lunch! Then tidy our dorms later…" A girl ran over, her ponytail bobbing behind her. She pulled her up, "goodness, don't blank out, it's not like you don't know that the semester-beginning examinations in First High are known to be demonically hard, and that's the case especially for the Science paper… this Math paper's definitely trying to scare us to pull up our socks before school starts too."
Mo Mo… is probably my name right, she quietly slinked into the memory garage in her head with the name Mo Mo, and immediately found countless memories regarding this name.
Xuan Mo was this fifteen-year-old female's name.
With these information in hand, she would be able to quietly live among the humans and await her next hibernation, and await the next individual who… like her, came here.
"Mo Mo, you're spacing out a lot since morning, c'mon girl, you gotta stay awake! The Language and English paper tomorrow's our stronger subjects! We'll be fine as long as we don't fail those!"
Xuan Mo looked at the girl pulling her along; this girl, named Tian Jin Jin, was a someone she grew up with, "childhood friend". She was a very… happy-go-lucky*? …human.
* 没心没肺 = (idiom) happy-go-lucky/senseless/simple-minded; if you break the four words apart, they directly translate into "no heart no lungs"
She was a little dubious about the happy-go-lucky description Xuan Mo had for her friend. She had the impulse to x-ray Tian Jin Jin to see if she really lacked these two vital organs*.
* wordplay; see footnote on the term "happy-go-lucky" above
But never mind that, it's not like she could give her lungs and heart even if she managed to see.
She followed Tian Jin Jin and they headed over to another place that was filled with lots of humans. All the people there had a metal board with dents in their hands. It seemed like they were getting food… a consumption commodity of meager energy yet high waste output.
"They say the food in First High is good; it does look good!" Tian Xin Xin looked around in excitement, skipping over to get two plates and handed one to Xuan Mo. "Here, what do you want to eat? Let's queue up!"
Xuan Mo was at loss. Just as she figured out what these beings were doing, she had to do what they were doing. Did that mean that she had to learn how to use utensils after using how to write?
As expected…
She stared at Tian Jin Jin using chopstick silently. Xuan Mo first grabbed her pair of chopsticks, not moving. After which, she turned around to survey the surroundings; while she observed, she caught the knack of how to wield her chopsticks before she clipped the wooden stalks properly.
"Hurry eat! The food's gonna get cold!"
Damnit, she still had to learn how to chew her food! Z L T
The body did not actually belong to the original owner, rather, it was made from the remaining materials left in the nutrition pods, so the memories were only extracted from the original owner by a mental transmission device. So… Xuan Mo was very worried that her different chewing efficiency and frequency may differ from other people's.
Hence, she could only observe how the people around her consumed their food, such as how many times they chewed their food before swallowing it…
How tiring!
Though she was extremely spirited, she could not withstand such exhaustion either. Xuan Mo very quickly realised that not everyone was consuming food. And so, she followed suit and pushed the plate aside after taking a few bites and looked away.
"You're not eating again?" Tian Jin Jin rolled her eyes, "Your figure's good enough! You're pretty enough, so stop starving yourself! But hm… why do I feel like you've somehow changed?"
Xuan Mo glanced at her.
"You got a lot prettier… your figure's became… woah, when did you get so hot? I didn't see you over the holidays at all, did you go off to exercise?"
Xuan Mo was very puzzled. She didn't know what hot meant—that word didn't sound like a good one— yet Tian Jin Jin said it with such admiration.
"I'm not eating either then? Exactly how did you exercise, teach me!" Tian Jin Jin pushed her plate aside.
"…" Xuan Mo could tell Tian Jin Jin's calorie intake was insufficient with just a single glance. She opened her mouth, but suddenly realised that she wasn't able to reach the frequency to pronounce the words from her home-planet with her current body. However, she didn't know how to speak the dialect of this place either.
At that, she stood, helpless, and wanted to head outside to look around. She'd been dragged over to this school when she'd just awoken today, so she had yet to get the chance to properly see this world.
Just as she reached the exit, a group of people entered. The person in the lead was a male around her age.
Xuan Mo moved aside to let them pass. Though her soul was light, her body was heavy, so she was still unaccustomed to the disparity. Therefore when she moved, her steps were still a little unsteady. At that, the youth in the lead leaning against the glass door to the canteen squinted at her actions.
Xuan Mo had all the memories the original Xuan Mo owned. However, no matter how strong her mental spirit was, it was too dangerous for her to accommodate all of Xuan Mo's memories in one go. Therefore, Marshal-grade mental power wielders like her had the ability to automatically save someone else's mental data into another opened region in their heads. It's similar to how a computer functions, where the C drive is your own system disk, while other people's items are placed accordingly elsewhere, and requires time to be retrieved.
The retrieval of such data wasn't something that can be done immediately and at one's will either, one will need relevant information to trigger the memories, else this certain piece of memory will remain in existence unknowingly for a long time.
For example when Tian Jin Jin mentioned money, Xuan Mo recalled that there was a pile of small change in a shoebox under a bed in one of the rooms…
When she saw the youth, even more information, of which were much more important than money, flooded her head.
Memories from when she was young, when she was sniffing, punished to stand, crying, laughing, being mischievous…
This retrieval was only of the memories however. Xuan Mo would not inherit any of the original owner's emotions, else she could have experienced how widely different this place was from her home-planet—it was liberal, free of data and numbers. And, love existed.
Despite so, that youth walked past her without even glancing at her. Behind him were a few Blue Planet males and females whom she presumed were seen as relatively good-looking on this planet.
Xuan Mo, originating from a society where hierarchy didn't exist, probably would never know what princelings* were if she hadn't come to the Blue Planet.
* 太子党 = Princelings/Party's Crown Princes; referring to the descendants of prominent and influential senior communist officials in the People's Republic of China.
After the group of them walked off, Xuan Mo turned to exit.
"Mo Mo! Where are you going!" After discarding her food, Tian Jin Jin caught up with her.
"Walking around." After having so many of her memories triggered, Xuan Mo now possessed the ability to utilise a part of her language ability, and it wasn't very stiff when she said it.
Tian Jin Jin paused for a moment before suddenly saying: "I just realised this is your first time talking today
Insensitive… another new word.
"Are you very stressed?"
"Honestly, the fact that you can even enter this school already mean that you're pretty good. Not only so, your grades are also better than mine. We may not be able to enter Class One but it won't be a problem for us to get into the normal classes. Even if we did get into Class Thirteen very unluckily, the faculty teachers are still very good…"
And so, the afternoon passed with a certain someone nagging away and another certain false human studying away, guilty.
After lunch was the Language paper.
Xuan Mo cupped her forehead with a hand; she was struggling.
One required emotions to learn a language. It's not that Xuan Mo didn't have any of that, it's just that she didn't have the emotions the Blue Planet inhabitants had, neither did she posses the same thought process.
After triggering her memories continuously, she'd finally reached the stage where she could look at the script without a problem—she recognised every single word, but when they were chained together… she recognised them no more.
Lotus pond… that's a part of the scenery, what could a scenery entrust* (ji tuo)? What did entrust (ji tuo) mean? Was mailing (you ji) and checking in (tuo yun) a new form of logistic chain?
* 寄托 = ji tuo; to entrust, 邮寄 = you ji; to mail (often letters), 托运 = tuo yun; to check in/consign; the 2nd word of 邮寄 and 1st word of 托运 makes up 寄托
Goodness…
She really wanted to groan.
After barely scraping through the multiple choice questions and filling in the blanks, Xuan Mo finished reading the remaining questions in earnest, all the while completely befuddled. There were two passages, of which one was written in classical prose—which she of course didn't get a single bit. Let's not even talk about the essay question… it was something on disappearing existence. Though this topic reminded her of her old friends that had once ruled this Blue Planet, the teacher marking this evidently won't like seeing an introductory essay on the lives of dinosaurs under this profound topic.
Sigh. Placing her pen down, she rubbed her temples and looked out, continuing to observe the world.
The language paper was collected, and with that, the examinations for the day ended.
As expected, Tian Jin Jin dashed over in a flurry: "Almost forgot we had to tidy our dorms after walking around with you in the afternoon, let's hurry! I'm almost done tidying, but you're not, but you're still disappearing on me!"
Xuan Mo let herself be dragged as they weaved through the bustling crowd of people. She smiled bitterly. This lass must've been terribly unobservant to not realise that the previous Xuan Mo was running off to suicide rather than simply disappearing on her! Though she took advantage of this loophole with the previous Xuan Mo's death, suicide, no matter which era or civilisation, was not something to make light of.
Thinking of the suicide, she immediately retrieved another memory; she saw a chilly youth with a mocking laugh in her head.
Forget it; it was none of her business.