Chapter Two: Everyone Else Was Wrong

Across the hall, sixty students stopped writing one after another. Behind the invigilators, sponsor Gu Tingzhi adjusted his tie and glanced at the blond boy in the front row. “All questions were reviewed by experts,” the chief examiner announced. “There are no errors.” A massive equation materialized above him. Its root pointed to a server backstage, 2:14 that morning, and a file that had been replaced. Lin Yan surveyed the hall. Two of the three invigilators had equations above them. The blond student, Gu Yan, did not. He did not know his father had altered the problem; he believed the paper he had received early was merely a practice examination. The power judged subjective deceit, not objective falsehood.