Dai Li opened the gift package and saw something golden twinkling. He took it out carefully and saw that it was a halo.
"Congratulations. You got a piece of equipment," the System said.
"What is that? A golden aperture? Should I put it on my head and pretend I'm an angel?" Dai Li asked, joking around.
"You should, actually. The point of this halo is to put it on your head. But you should call it a halo instead of an aperture. There is a tag on it," the System said.
Dai Li noticed the small tag stuck to the halo. It said "explosive force halo."
"Explosive force halo. Does it increase explosive force?" Dai Li asked.
"Yes. You can increase explosive power by 10% when wearing it. Everyone on your list will benefit from the effect of explosive force halo, too," the System said. "Equipment like this halo can't help the trainees develop much, but given the fact that everybody can benefit from it, we can say that it belongs in the 'A' rank among those gifts for upgrade."
"10% more explosive power does have some benefits, though, thinking about the state everyone is in now. Among the three activities in the high school entrance PE exam, the 1000m race mainly focuses on testing students' endurance; pull-ups are more about the strength of the upper body since a full-score requires more than 10 repetitions; and as for the standing long jump, it requires explosive power. With the help of this explosive force halo, students will save more time and energy training for it," Dai Li thought to himself.
Since the explosive force halo could improve the students' performances in the standing long jump, Dai Li reduced the training time allotted to it and increased the practice of the other two activities.
…
As the saying goes, time waits for no man. The high school PE entrance exam had come quickly, seemingly sneaking up on everyone.
Yuzhou City, where Dai Li lived, was a place with a large population, even compared to other cities nationally. Including all the middle schools from counties and towns, Yuzhou City had more than one hundred thousand examinees who would take the high school entrance exam this year. This number was almost the same as all the other first-tier cities.
However, Yuzhou City had much less educational resources compared to the other first-tier cities. With more than one hundred thousand examinees, the enrollment quota was only five thousand for high schools, and three thousand for technical secondary schools. This meant that there would be two thousand middle school graduate students who were not going to be enrolled.
This made for a much more grave competition where there were many wolves but not enough meat. The competition of the high school entrance exam in Yuzhou City was very intense, and attracted much attention to it. Not only did the municipal education system put a premium on it, but the provincial education department did as well. Let's take the PE exam for example. To prevent students from cheating, all the exam proctors were from other cities, not local schools. It was more strict than college entrance exams.
The Ninth Middle School had the highest passing rate compared to others. All the examinees had a higher possibility of entering the key high schools. The results of the examinees in the Ninth Middle School were regarded as the standard for the other schools.
Right next to the horizontal bar outside the Ninth Middle School, there were two proctors talking and laughing in the shade.
"Professor Zhang, I heard that this Ninth Middle School is the best in Yuzhou City and has the largest number of examinees at more than 1,000!" one of them said.
Professor Zhang nodded. "Tell me about it, Professor Wang. One thousand students in one day. That's too many for us. I heard that it could be finished before lunch or at least before three o'clock in the afternoon in schools with less students. But here we have to stay until it gets dark! We should have a lot to eat for lunch, because I have no idea when we are going to have dinner."
"There is no one to blame besides our bad luck that we were sent to the examination room with the most students. And the activity is pull-ups, the most time-consuming subject," Professor Wang complained.
Professor Zhang nodded in agreement and said, "The examination time was limited to one minute a few years ago. Do as many as you can in one minute and that was it. But it was too difficult for most students, and 2/3 failed. The exam is going to take longer now that they've gotten rid of the time limit."
Many people thought that the 1000m race was the most time-consuming subject, but in actuality, it was pull-ups. It took middle school students four or five minutes normally. Because the examinees could do the 1000m race together, they could ask 12 students to run together if 10 students per group was too slow. They could even ask 14 or 15 students to run in the same group.
Both the standing long jump and pull-ups required students to take the exam one by one. Standing long jump only took a few seconds, however, while pull-ups took much longer. Even if some of the examinees couldn't do any more pull-ups, they would still hang on the horizontal bar, which wasted even more time.
Professor Zhang continued complaining. "The quality of life is getting better and better, but the physical abilities of the children is getting worse. We used to run 5000 meters to go to school back in our day. Look at the students now—the 1000m race could kill them! And the passing grade for pull-ups is only six. Yet there are still many students who can't even make it. Look at this fatty. I bet he can't do more than three or four."
Professor Zhang pointed at the next examinee. It was Xiaoming Huang.
He passed his examination admission card to the proctor and walked up to the horizontal bar.
"Another fatty. I bet he can't do much. The other examinee who was as fat as him only did two, right? That's good for us since we can save more time. The more students like them there are, the earlier we can finish and go to dinner," Professor Wang thought, laughing to himself.
Xiaoming Huang jumped onto the horizontal bar as they were speaking to each other. The proctor began counting.
"One, two, three, four, five, six…" Professor Zhang counted with low voice.
"He passed? Did I count wrong? How could an examinee as fat as him pass the exam?" Professor Wang was very surprised.
"Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten! Is there something wrong with my eyes? Most of the examinees slimmer than him couldn't do more than ten!"
Xiaoming Huang slowed down his tempo after doing ten pull-ups. But he didn't stop.
"Eleven! Twelve! Is he going to get a full score?" Every proctor's attention was now on him. They didn't expect a fat examinee like him to do more than 12 pull-ups consecutively.
Xiaoming Huang's technique started to break down for the 13th pull-up. He didn't take a breath, instead clenching his teeth and doing the 14th one. However, this time it was obvious that he had done it in a rush. The movement was far from skillful, and he had even used his legs to help him up. Still, Xiaoming Huang had done 14 pull-ups.
"Fourteen! Oh my gosh! He really got a full-score!" Professor Wang couldn't help but shout.