SMMW | Chapter 11

At last, the game reached the provincial examination segment. Song Hao came prepared with both save-scumming and intelligence search, and first place was already in the bag.

〖Inside the examination hall, all the candidates stood waiting.

At the sound of the gong, Chief Examiner Lord Xue entered the main hall. When he passed by your side, however, he stopped and looked you over with a grave expression.

Yuan Hao: This student is Yuan Hao, a native of Jinping Prefecture. Greetings, my lord.

Lord Xue: …Yuan Hao? So you are the top scorer of Jinping Prefecture. No wonder your bearing is so outstanding. This time, you will surely be able to take first place.

Yuan Hao: Many thanks for your encouragement, my lord.

Lord Xue sat behind the chief desk and announced the start of the exam.〗

“Here it comes, the little cultural knowledge mini-game~” Song Hao rubbed his hands together, planning to speedrun it in one go. But this was the more difficult provincial exam after all, so every question came with a timer bar. If the countdown finished and he still had not picked an answer, it counted as wrong.

When he reached the seventh question, something unexpected happened.

A three-second prompt suddenly popped up on the screen: 〖Dodge!〗

Song Hao’s finger was still hovering over intelligence search. He had no time to click it, and the result was:

〖A proctor accidentally knocked over your inkstone, and two sheets of your exam paper were damaged.〗

“Ah??? On what grounds was that an accident?” Song Hao demanded angrily. Then he missed the selection window for the next question too, and in the end only got seven questions right. When the rankings were posted, his name was at the very bottom.

Of course Song Hao was unwilling to accept that, so he loaded his save. This time, he stared fixedly at the screen, and after answering the fifth question, decisively chose 〖Dodge!〗, successfully saving his exam papers and getting a perfect score.

〖Yuan Hao, Provincial Graduate First Place〗

“Hahaha, I’m just that awesome! Where’s my bro, let me see, at… twelfth place. That’s still alright.”

Song Hao happily listened to the NPCs singing his praises. When he returned to the inn, he found Wen Qing waiting outside his room, carrying a food box in his hand.

〖Wen Qing: I passed by a pastry shop and found some new varieties, so I specially bought them for you to try.

Your choice is: Agree / Refuse〗

“What is there to refuse? Who wouldn’t want free stats?”

Song Hao happily clicked agree, and then ten options appeared in front of him.

〖You choose: First plate / Second plate / Third plate / Fourth plate / Fifth plate / Sixth plate / Seventh plate / Eighth plate / Ninth plate / Tenth plate〗

Song Hao: …

[Don’t be too in love]

[So exaggerated]

[The streamer isn’t going to load saves and try them one by one, is he]

[Definitely, he can spend half an hour just eating pastries]

[Being zero-spend is so miserable, I’ll just honestly pay up]

〖You choose: First plate

※ Literary Talent +2, Calculation +1〗

Song Hao opened Notepad and wrote down the stat result. He would pick the best one to eat in a bit, but if he calculated it that way, he would have to load eleven times back and forth.

〖You choose: Second plate

※ Literary Talent +1, Fatigue -3, Wen Qing Affection -10〗

“Cough, cough, cough!”

What the hell was that?

Song Hao felt like all these days of streaming had made him go blind. Wen Qing? That angel baby Wen Qing? How could affection possibly drop?

[That relationship broke apart fast]

[BE]

[Did the system bug out?]

[A straight drop of 10 affection, what did you do?]

[It’s over. You can’t even keep your male sis-in-law, streamer is doomed to be alone.]

“…He likes this plate, so he doesn’t want me to eat it? Then let’s switch to another.”

〖You choose: Third plate

※ Fatigue -5, Wen Qing Affection -5〗

“Ah??? It’s still going down? What sore spot did that hit?” Song Hao finally felt the game’s perverse difficulty. Before, he could just throw the values into Excel and calculate them. What was there to calculate now? It was completely unreasonable.

Still unwilling to give up, he loaded again.

〖You choose: Fourth plate

※ Intelligence +2, Wen Qing Affection -2〗

Affection still decreased, but it was a bit better than before. The chat, on the other hand, did not care much. They even urged Song Hao to just pick the fourth plate, since Intelligence was hard to raise.

But Song Hao refused to accept it. He had gotten used to easy days. Which time had Wen Qing ever met him without his affection jumping up fast? What was going on today? He could not take it anymore.

Song Hao’s choice was still to load.

The result of loading was that only the stat bonuses on the pastries changed. After randomly testing a few of the later plates, Wen Qing’s affection steadily dropped by 2 every time.

[Just go with the fourth plate, Intelligence is really hard to raise, trust me]

[Feels like the streamer’s heart is broken]

[Love~ left so easily~ the forever you promised~ will never come true~]

[You’ve spent forty minutes picking a pastry, are you even going to play the rest?]

[In memory of the BL route you lost [free flowers x1]]

Song Hao gripped the mouse and wandered in indecision in front of the computer. He loaded again. This time, he went back to an earlier point, to Wen Qing standing at the door holding the food box, asking whether he wanted pastries.

〖Refuse〗

〖※ Wen Qing Affection -5〗

“No, wait, why? If I don’t eat them, it still drops???”

[Why wouldn’t you eat them? Do you know how hard Intelligence is to raise???]

[The person above is definitely a straight guy]

[Breakup meal? He wants to break up with you]

[This is a twisted kind of love, the official game won’t allow it]

[Front row eating popcorn]

“Is he jealous that I did better on the exam? The first time I went to his house, when I said I passed in one try, his affection increase was smaller than when I said it took me three tries.” Song Hao started wildly speculating. He even zoomed in on the screen to look at Wen Qing’s face.

“Hey, hey, hey, look. Aren’t his eyes a little red? Did he cry? He looks very magnanimous, but actually he really cares about grades. He’s the typical top student type, the kind who can’t stand that I did better than him.”

[Can’t tell]

[The streamer is really panicking]

[He can’t really be gay, right? Jokes are jokes, but I’m Kongtong]

[Since affection drops either way, can you just go eat the fourth plate of pastries]

[Seriously, can’t anyone comfort the streamer?]

“How about I take the exam again, miss two questions, and place around twentieth to thirtieth? Then I’d rank below him.”

[?]

[?]

[?]

[?]

[I’ll fight all you hopeless romantics]

Looking at the question marks filling the screen, even Song Hao felt he was being a bit ridiculous. In the end, he did not go back and take the exam a third time. Instead, he opened the in-game shop, found the gift page, and spent 100 cash to buy a wolf-hair brush.

He clicked gift and gave it to Wen Qing.

〖※ Wen Qing Affection +1〗

“Thank god,” Song Hao let out a long breath, “it’s finally not dropping anymore.”

[…]

[What part of that is ‘thank god’?]

[What’s so great about 100 cash for 1 affection?]

[The streamer used to be too stingy to spend 100 to go to Wanshu Pavilion. You can even run into Kong Mengxue there, and it even gives 10 Literary Talent at one time]

[What do you even want his affection for? Marriage?]

〖Wen Qing: Thank you. Wolf-hair brushes are very hard to come by.

Wen Qing: You really aren’t going to eat the pastries?

Your choice is: Agree / Refuse〗

[Agree already, hurry up!]

[Streamer, if you refuse again I’m reporting the stream]

[You already spent the money, why wouldn’t you eat the pastries]

[Agree agree agree]

[Hurry up and agree!]

After weighing it again and again, Song Hao chose 〖Refuse〗.

〖※ Wen Qing Affection -2〗

“!!! What is with his emotions today? It deducts points if I eat, and deducts points if I don’t eat too?”

[Serves you right]

[I’m reporting you for passive gameplay]

[You pissed me off so much I laughed]

[Can you stop the BL flirting, okay?]

[[slap][slap][slap]]

Song Hao no longer had the energy to pay attention to the chat. Acting all timid and aggrieved, he clicked load again, and this time chose 〖Accept〗.

〖Your choice is: All ten plates〗

“Huh? This time I can only eat all of them? You can eat all of them? Then let’s choose it.”

Song Hao hesitated, then chose 〖All ten plates〗.

〖※ Literary Talent +12, Physique +4, Intelligence +3, Calculation +5, Fatigue -18, Wen Qing Affection +5〗

“All the pastries are for me to eat, and it even adds affection, so it should be fine now, right?” Song Hao asked the chat uncertainly for their opinion. What he got, of course, was nothing but mockery and sarcasm.

[Not even looking at the stat bonuses at all?]

[What is this, a relationship advice stream?]

[Guys really are impossible to figure out]

[[smile]]

[It’s fine now. You two are doing great. Can you keep playing already?]

He could, but Song Hao still opened the status panel first to take a look.

〖Affection Value: Wen Qing 75〗

Song Hao opened the story review, pulled up a calculator, and rapidly tapped away, only to discover that the number 75 meant all the affection losses from every save-load attempt had been counted in too.

“I already loaded my save, so why are the affection losses still being accumulated!”

Song Hao was irritable. Song Hao was unhappy. Song Hao felt wronged.

He did not want to deal with Wen Qing anymore. Let it drop if it wanted to drop. He did not care. He absolutely did not care, hmph, he was just a man.

Still, maybe the system had bugged out. Once he logged in again the next day, that affection score in the nineties would probably come back.

Yeah, it definitely would.

With the provincial exam over, of course it was time to go home. Just like when they came, they were also going back together. As for the route home, the system presented some new options.

〖Left Route: Lush trees for shade, the must-pick for summer travel

Middle Route: Cut through villages and towns, shorten the journey by half a day

Right Route: Strange peaks and jagged rocks, enjoy the sheer-cliff scenery〗

“How random. This definitely isn’t well-intentioned. Let’s pick the shorter one.” Song Hao was still thinking about whether the affection could come back, so he was not paying much attention to this boring route choice.

〖You chose: Middle Route

The carriage traveled through country villages and towns. The villagers rarely saw such a tall carriage, so they all stopped, calling friends and neighbors over to look. Along both sides of the road stood crowds of people, cows, horses, pigs, dogs, chickens, ducks, geese…

One goat had not been tied up and suddenly shot out, startling the horses.

The horses reared their front hooves high, and with one swish of the tail, knocked you off the carriage. You crashed heavily to the ground and spat out a mouthful of blood.

Check:

Physique < 30, death;

Physique < 50, injury;

Physique ≥ 50, unharmed.

Yuan Hao Physique 40. This damage check results in severe injury. Unable to act for one year.〗

What a shameless trick. The player got severely injured on the spot. So the previously required 30 Physique had only been there to keep the player from dying, that was all.

What a sinister setup. Being unable to act for one year meant not only being unable to study or make money, but also having to spend money on medical treatment, and simply waiting things out would make him miss next year’s metropolitan examination too.

While sneering, Song Hao could not help clapping twice in admiration.

[Holy shit…]

[Old-school games were really brutal about forcing top-ups]

[No wonder the official game gets cursed out all the time, they deserve it]

[You need 50 just to come out uninjured?]

[An unreasonable scripted kill]

〖You chose: Left Route

The carriage traveled through dense woods, along a mountain path with scarcely any people around.

Several masked burly men suddenly sprang out ahead, brandishing long sabers and sharp blades, shouting that you had to leave behind toll money.

Judging the clothes on the two of you, they assumed you were poor, so one of them brought down a blade at once, killing the chicken to warn the monkeys. Your whole body was covered in blood as you slumped crookedly over the carriage shaft.

Check: Yuan Hao Physique 40. This damage check results in severe injury. Unable to act for one year.〗

[Got slashed and got called poor too…]

[That’s rubbing salt in the wound]

[Should I say I already expected this]

[The last route definitely won’t work either]

[The emperor route is so hard to play]

Song Hao opened the save list and took a look. There were only two free saves he could use now. One was at the route choice, and one was the herb-digging event in June. If he rolled back to June and dumped all his money into Physique, it would work too, but that would rewind way too much. It was not fun for him to play like that, and there was no way the stream would sit through him grinding his stats all over again.

Spend money? No way. The whole gimmick of his stream was that he was a zero-spender. From the first day with eight viewers to now, with nearly two thousand, people were here specifically to watch him suffer. Compared with topping up, he might as well grind his stats all over again. At worst, he could replay on his own during the day, then watch the new story with his viewers again at night.

Aaaaaah, this was infuriating, so frustrating. He could not swear on stream, so Song Hao could only slam his fist against the desk.

After bracing himself mentally, he loaded again and entered the right route, wanting to see what kind of torture this side had in store.

〖You chose: Right Route

The carriage traveled along the edge of a steep cliff. The mountains towered high, and strange rocks jutted everywhere.

A rumbling noise suddenly came from ahead, and several loose stones tumbled down from the mountain. The carriage had nowhere to dodge.

One rock struck your right arm, and it immediately drooped down, numb and useless.

Another rock smashed toward your head… Wen Qing shoved you down.

…

…

…

Wen Qing’s lower leg was struck by a rock, and blood immediately poured from the wound.

Check: Yuan Hao Physique 40. This damage check results in a light injury, unable to work for three months; Wen Qing Physique 22. This damage check results in a moderate injury, unable to work for six months.〗