Chapter 112: The Last Question that No One could Match!
Square in the school.
The woman from the Couplet Organization gave him a call.
“Hello, Teacher Zhang Ye. Where are you?”
“I’m already inside, in the square where the preliminaries are held.”
“Oh? Why can’t I see you? Which one are you?”
“Are you the one in a white long dress? I can see you.”
She was the only one making a phone call. Zhang Ye walked over, and she was indeed the woman from the Couplet Organization. “Hello.”
The woman lowered her cellphone and handed him a contestant pass and said, “Sorry, Teacher Zhang. The staff missed it. They just found it. Hurry up and participate. There’s no need to register. You just need to answer a question. Well, I have something else to do. I’m leaving first.”
“Thank you.” Zhang Ye watched her leave.
Not far away, Hu Fei greeted him, “You got it?”
Zhang Ye tersely acknowledged before looking at the questions asked in the preliminaries.
There were three question boards in front. They were spaced ten meters apart. There were many people crowded in front of each question board. There were contestants, as well as spectators. Of course, there were not many contestants left at this moment. Many of them had passed the preliminaries and entered the hall by answering correctly. There were less than twenty people left answering. They were pondering deeply in front of the question boards. The questions did not seem easy.
There were the preliminaries’ rules by the side.
1. Contestants, please answer the questions according to the specifications.
2. You have passed only after the judges’ decision.
3. There are only 50 questions. There cannot be more than 50 people passing the preliminaries.
Xiao Lu exclaimed, “There are only 50 questions? Aren’t there nearly a hundred contestants? Doesn’t that mean that they are eliminating half? That’s too cruel!”
Hou Ge was in a hurry, “There’s not much time left!”
Hou Di pointed to the question board. “There are only two questions left on this board. Ah, that board is full and all the questions have been answered by others. The third board also only has one question left!”
There were three questions left, and about 20 contestants who had not given up on answering!
Some of the contestants felt that they would not be able to answer and had given up, so they had entered the spectator stands.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry! Let us quickly look at the questions! Grab every second!” Xiao Lu said in a rush.
The 50 questions were all couplets. There were four-word, five-word and seven-word verses. All of them were the first half of a couplet. The rules were very simple. There was no lack of ink and brushes in front of the boards. As long as a contestant wrote an answer below the first half of a couplet, and matched it properly with the proper correspondence, they would pass.
The three judges from the Couplet Organization had the authority to make the judgement. The judges were all pretty old. Two of them were old men, and one of them was an old granny. Although Zhang Ye did not know them, he could tell that they were likely authoritative figures in the industry from the way the contestants were so respectful to them. At least, they were top experts in the couplet domain.
After calming his mind, Zhang Ye began looking at the questions.
Three…
Five…
Zhang Ye scanned them once. He discovered that the couplets in this world were similar to those from his world. Heaven matched Earth, Rain matched Wind, Land matched Sky. There was no difference at all. However, he saw some that he had never seen before. Many of the couplets did not exist in Zhang Ye’s former world. Maybe it was because Zhang Ye was not well-read, or perhaps he had already forgotten. After all, he did not really study much of couplet culture.
Let’s eat a Memory Search Capsule first!
Zhang Ye opened his game ring and looked at his Reputation. With the help from yesterday’s public service advertisement, his overall Reputation points were still slowly increasing. It wasn’t fast, but after two days and one night, it had managed to reach 100,000. Zhang Ye clicked on the Merchant Shop to buy one Memory Search Capsule, before eating it.
……
His memories flashed past.
Under the mental guidance of Zhang Ye, time returned to the year 2011 from his previous world.
Back then, Zhang Ye had just entered college. He was determined to become famous. Every piece of news had an objective attraction to it. One weekend, he had obtained a library card and went to the Media College’s library to browse through books. In the beginning, he did not manage to find books he wanted to read. So he flipped through books like searching a needle in a haystack. In the end, he had flipped through a couplet compilation and a companion book that explained and dissected couplets.
The two books were not thick.
One page, ten pages, a hundred pages.
……
The five minutes were