Since summer break was almost here, everyone was preparing for the final exam. After knowing that Mo Li was going to participate in the national IMO, many universities extended an olive branch to Mo Li. Qiao Qing got not one offer.
...
For the final exam, everyone believed Mo Li would be the first in class, perhaps even in school. However, to everyone's surprise, Mo Li only scored middle of the road. That was impossible!
The old crone was very dissatisfied with Mo Li's result because she knew that with Mo Li's brilliance, she could easily score the best in class! For Teacher Sun, the only explanation was, Mo Li was taking revenge on her! If Mo Li scored well in the finals, it would reflect well on Teacher Sun because she was Mo Li's class teacher. It would help with the old crone's resume and year-end bonus. However, Mo Li decided to rain on her parade.
The old crone did question Mo Li about her less-than-satisfactory result but Mo Li always had an excuse, saying that she was careless or she was sick during the exam.
It annoyed the old crone aplenty because the whole world knew that Mo Li was only faking it!
In everyone's eyes, especially Teacher Sun's, Mo Li was purposely not giving her face. This extended to the classroom sessions. Mo Li almost never paid attention in class.
She would spend her time reading a romance novel left open on her laps. Of course, only Mo Li knew that underneath the cover of the romance novel was a hard to understand English thesis.
Mo Li had so many things to do, she had no much time for anything else, including to score well in the school exams.
In Mo Li's defense, she had her own plan. She didn't want to score the best in class because it would make her stand out too much. She had learnt her lesson from the IMO. The moment it was revealed that her math was good, the old crone shoved her to participate in the IMO. If Mo Li revealed that she was also good in the other subjects, wouldn't she be forced to participate in so much more competitions? Mo Li didn't want that, she wanted to have time to do her own things.
In fact, Mo Li would have bowed out from the national IMO if not for the ongoing bet with Ding Yi and his family's POS device factory.
This incident was a great lesson for Mo Li, if she wanted to be left alone, she needed to keep a low profile!
The fact that Mo Li didn't become the top student at school was also comforting for the other students. After all, it would have been too demoralizing to see a girl who spent her whole day reading romance novels scoring the top spot. It would have negated their hard work.
Things slowly settled at school. The other students' attitude towards Mo Li changed from disdainful to acceptable. However, considering everything the original Mo Li had done to them in the past, there was still some way to go before the others would be friendly with her.
Mo Li then understood that the secret to befriending others was not to be the best of the best but, ironically, was to be ordinary. When you showed yourself to be as ordinary as the masses, the masses would naturally accept you as part of them.
...
After the finals were over, half a month had passed since Quan Yu helped Mo Li with the video footage.
She wandered how he was doing and whether his guard's case had been resolved.
When that thought crossed her mind, Mo Li was startled.
Why would I care about him?
Mo Li packed her bag and left school.