Two hours passed quickly. When the paper was put in front of Huang Xuan, he was all at sea with the questions and looked left and right. The funny thing was that all the students were doing the same thing as him.
The headteacher gave two coughs and said, "Do the paper by yourself. It's just a quiz to examine your studies. Relax. Just do it carefully."
Monkey sitting behind Huang Xuan said in a low voice, "The same remarks every time. Yet, they send me to the platform every time."
Huang Xuan couldn't help laughing quietly. Hou Minyue's father, the boss in Yadong Industrial Corporation, was a billionaire who never knew how many houses he had and never got married. He had started his business from real estate and kept busy. Thus, Monkey's education had become a big problem. He hung around a lot with the group and had done a terrible job with his studies.
The headteacher looked around and didn't find anything suspicious. Her teaching skill was average, but she was excellent at arranging seats. The students would be able to copy nobody's answers around them; however, to be honest, there were few students that were good enough to be copied in the class.
In front, Wei Mujian was already answering the questions. Huang Xuan looked at the paper and started writing too.
It was his mother tongue after all. Although he was clueless what the questions were about, he eventually "answered" them all and put his pen down. Seeing the confused looks on his fellows' faces, he was proud of himself.
"According to my analysis, you stand a chance of getting less than 50% of the questions correct." Rolin always gave a blow to Huang Xuan's confidence at a bad timing.
Huang Xuan closed the paper carelessly, lowered his head and said, "They are multiple choices anyway. I have elevated the chance from 25% to 50%. Good enough for me."
After a while, Rolin's voice was heard again, "According to the information I got from your headteacher, your correction rate for the whole paper is under 60%."
"Fail?" Huang Xuan blinked his eyes and asked, "Do you have the answers?"
"I've just got them." Rolin was modest and never felt superior to humans. "If you need a precise correction rate, I can scan her habit of grading compositions and give a grading range."
There were only 20 minutes left. Huang Xuan blocked his face with one arm and said in a hurry, "Don't bother. I know you are precise. Tell me the answers."
Huang Xuan clapped himself on the head and said, "How stupid I am! How could I forget to use Rolin, which is such a good resource."
Rolin didn't help Huang Xuan at once but said in a calm tone, "I need something in return after I have helped you."
"I knew it." Huang Xuan clapped himself again on the head. "How much electricity?"
"I need some servers with outstanding properties and plenty of hard drives."
"You even want something so archaic?" Huang Xuan was confused. Although he had promised to buy Rolin some hard drives, he had been just kidding. It seemed ridiculous for Rolin who was from the future to use hard drives which were so out of date.
"The upgrade of a 24th-level buffer will help reduce the energy consumption. When the base is at level 21, it will be capable of basic manufacturing. Depending on your ability to get the material, I think it should be purchased ahead."
Huang Xuan said "Hmm" in contempt. "'According to my ability to get the material. If you have another person to do it, you will know that few people can get the material for you as I have done.
"Currently, base security is the priority, upgrading second, and getting the material third—"
"So the third in the order can't affect the first," Huang Xuan interrupted him right away. "You are really earnest about it. OK. I will buy them for you. But, two million at most. If I buy more, I won't even have money for bread."
Rolin didn't respond to that and started telling him the answers, "A, C, C…"
Huang Xuan sighed as he wrote the answers, feeling that Rolin had become smarter who had even known how to evade major issues. He was afraid that his wallet would be lighter.
Now that he couldn't even pass Chinese, in which he did best among the three subjects, Huang Xuan lost faith in the other two. It proved that he was right.
The test was much harder than Grade 8. Even Wei Mujian was stumped, let alone Huang Xuan, who had hardly listened to the teacher. He thought that maybe nobody would be able to get an "A" in the class. Thinking this, Huang Xuan didn't dare to get all the answers correct. Three hours before, he had been thinking how to fill in all the blanks while now he was considering which part to delete to get lower scores. It was troublesome, yet Huang Xuan felt good about it.
The scores had to be kept at around 65, which was demanding.
At six, Huang Xuan walked out of the classroom. The hallway was noisy and full of angry students who had just entered the graduating class and hadn't adapted to the harsh educational situation. In other words, most of the students didn't have to experience this kind of harshness, but a certain Mr. Principal made them.
Monkey threw himself at Wei Mujian with a sad expression on his twitching face and shouted, "Brother, for the sake of our party and country, save me!"
"I can't even save myself."
On the other side of the hallway, the monitor Chang Shayan shouted to a bunch of his sidekicks, "Comrades, thank you for your hard work!"
"Service for the people!" returned his sidekicks.
Student Chang walked away proudly. He didn't hang around much with Huang Xuan. He had been said to be aspiring and was complacent after each test. What frustrated him was that there were too few tests.
Huang Xuan shook his head and left. He used to accompany Monkey, but today was a little different. He thought he had better leave early.
As soon as he had got in the car, Rolin said, "I have searched the quotes of each provider. There are three models. You can choose two of them."
"I?" Huang Xuan was doubtful about Rolin's sincerity.
"Z990, the mainframes of IBM, named T-Rex, quoting one million dollars—"
"Stop right there! That's eight million RMB. What am I gonna do? Stop eating? It cost me several million to buy that factory last time, and then I bought Xinye Company's shares. Where am supposed to get money for this?"
"The auction for ancient books is going to happen in one week. You will get 20 million at least."
"No," Huang Xuan said decidedly. "Find something cheaper. Since you want to transform them and the technology are from tens of thousand years later, you needn't care about the quality. Any piece of junk should be fine." Huang Xuan was more and more certain that he was right about it. "You should read the materials of the providers and manufacture the servers yourself. You don't need to buy them."
"Since the base at level 21 can only transform things and conduct the basic production, the servers with a better frame and advanced technology can help us to get the best products with less energy."
"Can the transformed computers be as good as the ones in your times?"
"The computers in our times are called wise brains." It seemed that Rolin minded his identity. He stressed, "They can't catch up with wise brains. The reason for purchasing servers is to have a better access to the modern Internet system. As a buffer, it is important to keep modern attributes. If you want me to make them myself, I need about six billion kWh of electricity and the materials."
"I see." Huang Xuan closed his eyes and pleaded, "Can we just choose something cheaper?"
"There is a low-grade edition of X235 with a 2.2 GHz processor, an 18GB hard drive, a 512 MB internal memory and double chargers, the price of which is $3,724. The other edition has two processors, three 36GB hard drives, a 2GB internal memory and other functions, the price of which is around $7,800. If we choose these two kinds of processors, I am going to need 2000 of them."
"That would be ten million dollars." Huang Xuan calculated for a long while and finally found Rolin's evil purpose.
"That's why I suggest you buy the first edition z990, which can save energy."
The car rattled a little. It seemed to be the red light. Outside the window were the people and vehicles rushing home. Huang Xuan sighed and said reluctantly, "Fine, can you contact the providers? It will be bought from foreigners anyway."
"OK," Rolin said. Huang Xuan smiled and comforted himself with the thought that Rolin bought these servers to help him.