Qin Tian returned home, and his mother asked if he was hungry before going to the kitchen to cook him a bowl of tomato and egg noodles.
While eating his late-night snack, Qin Tian handed the answer sheets he brought back to Tang Xiuxia and told her about his performance in the mock exam.
To prevent his mother from becoming too emotional, he tried his best to speak calmly and convincingly.
After he finished speaking, seeing his mother staring at the answer sheets in shock and daze, he quickly added:
"Don't doubt it, it's all true. You can directly call the head teacher to confirm."
As expected, silence still fell upon the room after his words.
Qin Tian didn't rush, quietly eating his noodles, waiting for his mother to recover from her astonishment.
He knew himself that the surprise was too sudden for his mother.
After all, in his mother's eyes, he had always been playful and not fond of studying since childhood, and his grades were always at the bottom of the class.
His mother had even given up, only hoping that he could get into a mediocre university.
Now, suddenly, several full-mark answer sheets were placed before her, and she learned that her son had achieved the top spot in the entire school with an incredibly high total score.
It was normal for her to find it hard to believe such a sudden, dream-like surprise.
It wasn't until Qin Tian had eaten half a bowl of noodles that Tang Xiuxia finally made a move.
She blankly looked up at her son, took out her phone without a word, found his head teacher Li Xueping's number in the contact list, and dialed it.
The call was answered after two rings, likely because Li Yanwang had just returned home.
"Hello, Teacher Li, good evening. I'm Qin Tian's mother. Yes, I have something I'd like to ask you."
"Yes, yes, yes, it's about his mock exam."
"Is it true? Okay, okay, I understand. Thank you, sorry to disturb your rest."
"Mhm, okay, I understand. Goodbye, you should rest early."
After Tang Xiuxia hung up the phone, she remained in a daze for a while, then suddenly shook her head vigorously. Her eyes, shining brightly, turned to her son.
"First in the school?"
"Mhm!"
"Full marks in three subjects? Total score 745?"
"Mhm!"
Qin Tian's smile widened, his expression expectant of praise.
"Stop eating. Give them back to me."
Tang Xiuxia suddenly stopped smiling, snatched the bowl from his hands, and took away his chopsticks.
Qin Tian froze like a statue, a look of utter confusion on his face.
"You brat, your academic performance was so poor before, you were just pretending, weren't you? You're quite something, fooling your old mother for so many years."
Tang Xiuxia glanced at him with a casual expression, then gracefully twirled the noodles with the chopsticks and ate them.
Qin Tian suddenly understood, and with a cry between laughter and tears, he exclaimed in protest:
"Mom, this is a frame-up!"
"A frame-up?"
Tang Xiuxia narrowed her eyes, looking at him with a meaningful gaze.
"Yes, a colossal frame-up!"
Qin Tian nodded heavily.
"Then explain to me, how did you go from the bottom of the class to first in the entire school?"
"Also, your Teacher Li just said on the phone that I should educate you properly and tell you not to be so pretentious."
Qin Tian: "..."
Good ol' Li Yanwang, backstabbing me!
I'll never forgive you!
And so, Qin Tian, who had been eagerly anticipating praise and rewards, was instead severely lectured by his mother.
It wasn't until eleven o'clock that his mother let him off the hook and told him to go wash up and rest.
Qin Tian left dejectedly, his head hanging low, and went to the bathroom in the back to wash.
However, he didn't know that as soon as he left the room, his mother's face broke into a long-lost, brilliant smile.
She picked up the answer sheets on the coffee table and looked through them again and again.
The mother's hushed murmurs and occasional strange laughter echoed in the room.
"First in the school, my son? Heh heh... Teacher Li said a stable Tsinghua or Peking University? Oh my god, right, right, I need to find time to go back to my hometown and offer incense to the ancestors."
………………………………………………………………………………
After a cold shower and changing into clean shorts,
Qin Tian returned to his room, crossed his arms, rested his head on them, and lay on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.
He didn't have to worry about his studies for now.
Next, he just needed to figure out how to improve his Chinese subjective questions and essay writing skills to become the top scorer in the province in the college entrance examination, and that system task should not be a problem.
"Right, what was the topic for the Chinese essay in the college entrance examination in my previous life?"
A flash of inspiration struck him, and he frowned in thought.
If he could remember the essay topic, he could gather some writing materials around it, and he would be more confident then.
However, the college entrance examination in his past life was over ten years ago, and his memory was too distant, so he couldn't quite recall it for a moment.
He could only put this thought aside for now, perhaps he would suddenly remember it when a sense of déjà vu occurred.
"Also, about making money, I wonder how Xu Hao is doing with the boosting shop. I'll go check it out after school tomorrow afternoon, and those few orders, I need to find time to complete them!"
Thinking of this, Qin Tian felt a headache coming on.
He was in his third year of high school now, and he didn't have much free time to play games.
The accumulation of this first pot of gold was still very important to him.
The system's soul-detention mechanism hung over his head like the Sword of Damocles, and having enough money as a safeguard would keep him from panicking.
Moreover, he also needed money to open a clothing store for his mother and alleviate her burden.
"Are there any other ways to earn some money!"
As Qin Tian thought this, he opened the system's treasure pavilion page and browsed through it.
Suddenly, his eyes lit up slightly, and his gaze fell on one of the items.
[Advanced Clothing Design Experience Pack: 999 points]
This was one of the items in the treasure pavilion that required the most points so far.
If he redeemed this experience pack, he might be able to combine elements of popular clothing from later generations and create a few design drafts to earn some money.
More importantly, this could also be useful when he opened a clothing store for his mother later.
After agonizing for a while, Qin Tian gritted his teeth and used the redemption opportunity he had obtained from a previous task to redeem this experience pack.
In an instant, a large amount of information about clothing design poured into his brain.
Soon, he became a proficient and experienced clothing designer without needing a teacher.
He opened the system interface and looked at the skills column, and indeed, two new skills related to clothing design had appeared.
Painting Lv4, Clothing Design Lv5.
Apart from Comprehensive Combat Lv5 obtained from a previous task, these were the two highest-level skills he possessed so far.
"System daddy is awesome!"
Qin Tian, with true humility, fawned over it again.
"Sleep, sleep, I'll deal with other things tomorrow!"
He pressed the button on the bedside table to turn off the light, closed his eyes, and yawned. Sleepiness soon surged over him like a tide.