Chapter 102: Mud and Scale

When the tricycle sputtered to a halt at the fork outside Qingshi Town, the rain had already let up, but the damp chill in the wind seeped through his trouser legs and drilled straight into his bones. Lin Chen climbed down from the cargo bed. The moment his left foot touched the ground, his sole made a thick, sucking sound as it peeled away from the mud and water. He pulled out his last eight yuan and handed it over. The driver didn’t count it, just stuffed it into his jacket pocket, fired up the engine, and turned back into the downpour.

Lin Chen stood still and checked his watch. 7:18. Twelve minutes until evening self-study roll call.

He adjusted his breathing, shifted his weight to his right foot, and tapped his left toe to the ground as he started walking along the cement road at the town’s edge toward County No. 1 High School. The road surface had softened from the rain, and with every step, the mud sank half an inch deeper around his soles. He ignored it, recalibrating the parameters in his head: from the town entrance to the school gate was 1.2 kilometers. At a normal pace, it would take fifteen minutes. With a limp, his stride shortened by thirty percent, pushing the time to roughly twenty minutes. Arrival at 7:38. Eight minutes late.

The rules permitted lateness, but not absence. As long as he appeared at the classroom door, the signature chain wouldn’t break.

He quickened the pace of his right foot. Wind swept past his ears, carrying the dull rumble of a factory boiler in the distance. Passing the town clinic, he paused for a second. Dim yellow light spilled through the glass window; the doctor on duty was bent over a newspaper. Lin Chen looked away and kept walking. Going to the clinic meant registering, consulting, getting a prescription, and paying. The time cost was at least forty minutes; the financial cost, at least two yuan. He couldn’t afford either right now.

At 7:31, the iron gates of County No. 1 High School came into view. The guardhouse light was on, and Old Zhao was sipping tea from an enamel mug. Lin Chen didn’t greet him, just slipped sideways through the gap in the gate. Puddles on the playground reflected the streetlights, shattering into patches of dim yellow light. He followed the tree-lined path toward the teaching building, his footsteps echoing loudly in the empty campus.

At 7:35, he reached the back door of Class 7, Senior Three. He pushed it open. The classroom was already full, the rustle of turning pages mingling with low murmurs of recitation. The homeroom teacher stood at the podium, checking the evening attendance sheet. Lin Chen walked up to the desk, pulled a document folder wrapped in a plastic bag from inside his jacket, and placed it on the corner of the desk.

“Teacher,” he said, his voice low but clear. “A landslide on Provincial Highway 302 halted the buses. I walked back via the old forest farm dirt road. Here’s my deferred exam application. Please sign it.”

The teacher looked up, his gaze lingering for two seconds on Lin Chen’s soaked trouser legs and mud-caked shoes. He set down his red pen and pulled out the application form. The paper was slightly wrinkled, but the verification seal from the Provincial Institute of Technology was crisp and clear, with the one-inch photo and photocopies neatly clipped on the third page. The teacher flipped to the signature line, his fingertip hovering over the blank space.

“Dirt road?” he asked.

“Yes. Agricultural tricycle. Didn’t take Highway 302,” Lin Chen replied.

“How do you prove you arrived on time?”

Lin Chen pulled a bus ticket stub, softened by rain, from his pocket and pointed to his watch. “Got off at 7:18. Entered the school gate at 7:31. Walking plus dirt road took thirteen minutes. The route is verifiable, the time is checkable.”

The teacher looked at him, silent. Only the ticking of the wall clock filled the room. After a few seconds, he picked up his fountain pen, signed the application, and stamped it with his personal seal. The nib scratched lightly across the paper.

“Thursday, 8:00 AM. Science Building, Room 304. One minute late, and it’s marked as an absence. Deferred doesn’t mean exempt. The school won’t interfere with your Provincial Institute of Technology matters, but you hold the baseline for senior year yourself.”

“Understood.” Lin Chen took the form with both hands. The paper still carried the dampness of fresh ink. He turned and walked to his seat without pausing.

Once seated, he untied his left shoelace. The sock had fused to his skin. He slowly peeled it off, revealing dark purple skin on the instep. The seepage around the edges of the bandage had dried into a yellowish-brown crust. The swelling had spread from his ankle to his calf, feeling as heavy as lead. He took out a spare roll of clean gauze from his pocket, dampened it with the remaining warm water from his thermos, and gently wiped around the wound. No iodine, no anti-inflammatory drugs—just physical cleaning. He rewrapped the bandage, tied the knot, and pulled it tight. The movements were slow, but every step followed a strict sequence.

He opened his ledger and wrote on a blank page: 19:38 Signature complete. Thursday 08:00, Room 304. Left foot swelling worsening, requires immobilization. Shift review focus to Comprehensive Science error notebook, pp. 47-62. Funds: 0. Transport: settled. Materials: complete.

Closing the ledger, he pulled out his Comprehensive Science test papers and error notebook. The evening study bell had already rung; the only sound left in the classroom was the friction of pen tips against paper. He opened to the physics mechanics section, his eyes landing on the inclined plane friction model on page 51. The Provincial Institute’s supplementary exam emphasized circuits and signal processing, while the senior year Comprehensive Science paper focused on variations and calculations of foundational models. The two overlapped on the knowledge tree, but their problem-solving logic was entirely different. Within fourteen hours, he had to switch his brain’s operating mode from “engineering parameter calibration” back to “maximizing exam scores.”

He took out a pencil and sketched a free-body diagram on his scratch paper. Gravity, normal force, friction, acceleration. Formulas automatically aligned in his mind. He stopped looking at the questions and directly wrote out the derivation process from memory in the margins. Mistakes were crossed out and rewritten. No hesitation, no looking back. Time was sliced into twenty-minute blocks, each dedicated to conquering a single question type. Physics done, switch to chemistry. Chemistry done, switch to biology. His breathing remained steady, the ache in his wrist was ignored, and the throbbing in his left foot was pushed to the bottom of his consciousness.

At 9:40, evening study ended. Students began packing their bags, the screech of chair legs against the floor rising and falling. Lin Chen didn’t move. He flipped his error notebook to page 62, closed it, and stood up. The numbness in his left foot had already crept up to his knee. Gripping the edge of the desk, he slowly straightened, then packed his papers and notebooks into his bag.

Stepping out into the hallway, the motion-activated lights flickered on one by one with his footsteps. He reached the stairwell, preparing to head down to the dorm. A folded piece of stiff paper slipped from a gap in the bulletin board at the landing and fell at his feet.

He bent down to pick it up. It was a standard notice printed by the Academic Affairs Office, headed 《高三缓考补充安排》. He unfolded it and scanned the text:

因理科楼304室多媒体设备检修，原定理综卷附加实验操作环节取消。本次缓考改为纯闭卷笔试，总分120分。考试时间压缩至90分钟。

Lin Chen’s fingers tightened slightly. The paper reflected a cold white light under the hallway lamp.

90 minutes. 120 points. Experimental operation canceled.

This meant the originally reserved 30-minute buffer for practical tasks was completely wiped out. The volume of questions on the Comprehensive Science paper wouldn’t decrease, but the answering pace had to accelerate. His original strategy of “secure the basics first, then tackle the final questions” would directly result in blank pages in the second half under the compressed timeframe. He needed to reallocate time per question, compress calculation steps to the absolute minimum, and use conclusions to reverse-engineer the process.

He folded the notice neatly and slipped it into an inner compartment of his bag. Without pausing, he continued down the stairs. Night wind poured in from the end of the corridor, carrying the crisp chill of early autumn. He reached the dorm building and looked up at the third-floor window. The light was still on.

He pushed the door open and stepped into the darkness. As his left foot landed, the sharp pain pierced through the numbness once again. He clenched his teeth and didn’t slow his pace. Tomorrow at 7:00 AM, he needed to be standing outside Room 304 in the Science Building. And the time left tonight was only enough to restructure his answering rhythm one more time.