Wu Xiaoye nodded and took the documents from Professor Zhao. When he noticed the name on the cover of the documents, he was stunned for a second before printing eight copies of the answers and handing them out to the rest of the team while keeping the original for himself.
“All right! Everyone, stop what you’re doing for a bit and read the documents Xiaoye handed out first,” Professor Zhao urged them, not wanting to make Tan Mo wait for too long.
“Tan Mo?” One of the research team members raised their brows when they noticed the name. “The same Tan Mo who won the Ancient Text Competition?”
The Ancient Text Competition that year was known by everyone in the university.
Usually, only those who were interested would follow the competition. Most that weren’t Chinese Department students wouldn’t even pay any attention to it.
But this year had been different as Tan Mo had crushed the teams of the other five universities all on her own.
She had even made a few of the Tsinghua University contestants cry as they left the stage.
Tsinghua University had changed the system of the Ancient Text Competition that year to an elimination system so that they could completely crush Beijing University.
Instead, they were surprised to discover that the changes had actually worked in favor of Tan Mo.
As soon as she stepped onto the stage, she never left until the whole competition ended.
She proved to everyone that as long as she chose to remain on the stage, no one could force her off it.
Not only that, she even embarrassed the whole Tsinghua University team. They lost the whole competition in utter humiliation.
The two universities had been rivals for years, and the Beijing University students were finally able to vent their frustration for always losing to their rivals. Thus, none of them thought that Tan Mo went too far with what she did at the competition.
Of course, there were some who thought that Tan Mo didn’t have to resort to such extreme measures.
No matter what the students thought, Tan Mo’s name was now known by every single student of Beijing University.
Even though they had no idea what she looked like, they would still react when they heard her name.
Since her name was a rare one, it was unlikely for them to confuse her with anyone else.
“That’s right,” Professor Tang nodded.
Yu Jianan began to go through Tan Mo’s answer. The more she read, the more surprised she became. “It’s already amazing for a Finance Department student to be better in Chinese than the Chinese Department students, but now she’s also showing talents in our department as well? This answer is way better than the one I submitted years ago.”
Shen Jingyi went through the answers for a while and suddenly said, “So, this is Tan Mo? It’s a good thing that she won the competition, but isn’t it a little too much for her to humiliate her opponent? For a young girl like her to be so impulsive, it shows that she has quite the arrogant personality.”
“So, you think she’s in the wrong?” Wu Xiaoye suddenly asked.
“It’s not like I have the right to judge her. She did bring pride to the university in the end.” Shen Jingyi smiled. “But I think that we should always respect our opponents. Being so arrogant at such a young age spells trouble. No matter what the reason was, I don’t think it’s good to embarrass your opponent so badly.”
“Yet, that wasn’t the situation,” Zhong Liusi butted in. “I don’t think any of you know this since you guys rarely interact with the Chinese Department students, but from what I’ve learned from them, the Tsinghua University team had been looking down on ours for years. I even heard from the students who went there in the audience that they weren’t only looking down on us, but on all the other four universities as well. I think it’s all right for Tan Mo to teach them a lesson so that they won’t be so arrogant, that even though we might not be as good as they are, it doesn’t mean they can trample over our pride. It’s just karma doing its work, I guess.”
“Is that so? Well, whatever,” Shen Jingyi responded, pretending to not care.
Zhong Liusi frowned immediately as Shen Jingyi had made it sound like Tan Mo had been doing the bullying.
The relationship between these two had always been stiff. They would rarely converse with each other, or, rather, they could not converse with each other because of how different their personalities were.
Whenever they had no choice but to talk to each other, they would get straight to the point.
When Zhong Liusi heard Shen Jingyi’s response, she couldn’t help but sigh. That personality of hers is killing me.
Zhang Honghai raised his head after scanning through Tan Mo’s answers and asked, “Professor Zhao, the reason you’re showing us this is because you want to include Tan Mo on this team, right?”
“That’s right,” Professor Zhao nodded. “To tell you all the truth, I have thought of making her part of the team as soon as she was admitted to the university, but I was worried that you guys might argue since she had never proved how good she actually is. That’s why, after consideration, I decided to have her finish these questions first. They are the same questions I gave every one of you to complete in a semester, but she managed it before the deadline I set for her, which is after the finals. It only took her half a semester to produce this.”
Everyone exchanged quick glances with each other. It sounded almost as if Professor Zhao was complimenting his own child when he talked about Tan Mo.
He was pretty much showing how proud he was on his face, which was something natural since he was the first to notice Tan Mo’s talent.
Now, he had proved that he had the eye to spot talent.
“So, does anyone have any opinion regarding this matter?” Professor Zhao asked.
He could have just made Tan Mo part of the team from the beginning, but chose not to do so because he wanted the team to accept Tan Mo wholeheartedly.
“I, for one, can’t wait for her to be part of this team.” Wu Xiaoye was the first to respond. “I heard from Wang Yuemu that ever since Tan Mo joined their team, everything has been going much smoother for them. The more I hear about her, the more anxious I am for her to join us. I even kept asking myself why Professor Zhao was so slow inviting her.”
Instead of getting angry at his student for this honest remark, the professor laughed instead.
The others also agreed on having Tan Mo join them.
“Heck, there is no way we are going to refuse when you show us her answers,” Liu Zhiqi sighed as sweat rolled down her face after reading the answers.
It was as if she hadn’t put in any hard work when she did hers a few years ago, yet she knew she gave it her all at that time.
It wasn’t easy to be part of Professor Zhao’s team, and it was way too important for any of them not to take the questions seriously.
And, in spite of all the hard work they had put into their tasks, Tan Mo’s answers were still far more superior than theirs.
Even after being part of Professor Zhao’s research team for years and knowing they would answer the questions better now, they would still not give such outstanding answers to the questions as Tan Mo had.
“But…,” Shen Jingyi had a worried expression. “she’s a Finance Department student, right? And part of Professor Guo’s team as well. If she joins us, can she handle the workload? Or, is she going to favor one party over another? There’s no way she can equally distribute her time for all three different aspects, right?”
