I Have Decided to Go Look for My Father

Chapter 108 – That was short  of a public execution.
(1)

The final round.
Per the rules, each school would only be sending two persons to compete.

Gu Xi and Sheng Xiuyan would be representing HSAU.
The others would be waiting in the wait area till the round was over and the award ceremony that followed.

Many in the wait area discovered, to their surprises, the two new huge screens on the wall.
Displayed on one of them was the name of the competition and on the other, a countdown to the final found and some other data.

“Wow, this wait area was really hopped up overnight,” lamented someone.

“No kidding.”

“What’s that?” Someone pointed at the data on the lower part of the screen on the left-hand side.

“That looked like the team number for each school.
Look at the number A-002 behind our school’s name.
That was the number that we received after the initial draw, right?” said another one but then asked, “But, what was the purpose of displaying them?”

“To fill the white space?”

“Em, I don’t know……” The person next to him looked baffled as well.

***

Meanwhile, Gu Shao headed straight to the monitoring office in the back.

Director Li with the organizer was very surprised to see Gu Shao showing up there.
Then she quickly recalled that Boss Zhou mentioned yesterday over the phone that NTN would be conducting some equipment testing today.

“Hi, Professor Gu.” Director Li walked up politely and asked Gu Shao with a smile.
“Are you here to check out the statuses of the equipment and the system testing?”

Before Director Li could even finished telling Gu Shao that everyone was running smoothly, Gu Shao said to him, “No.”

“I am here to watch my daughter compete.”

“?!” Director Li’s jaw always fell off when she heard that.
Was she experiencing auditory hallucination? Someone like Gu Shao would make a special trip to watch his child compete?

No, wait.
That wasn’t even the point here.
Gu Shao has a daughter?!

Director Li finally regained control of her expression.
She was just about to say something else when she noticed Gu Shao walking toward the main controlling screen and stared intensely at one area.

***

Over on the other side, Gu Xi and Sheng Xiuyan entered the venue together and located their seats.
As the two students would be working together for this portion of the competition, their seats were arranged to be next to each other.

Lo and behold, Gao Zifan and his teammate’s spots were immediately next to Gu Xi and Sheng Xiuyan’s.

Gu Xi and Sheng Xiuyan were busy organizing their scratch paper and pen and had no time to spare for Gao Zifan.

Gao Zifan, on the other hand, gave Gu Xi a deadly stare before he sat down.
He gritted his teeth.
He had learned in the group chat yesterday that HSAU was not only in the first place after the first four rounds of competition but they were 30 points higher than the number two team.
That was a hard pill for him to swallow.

But he still has one more chance – he only needed to score higher than Gu Xi in his individual score during this round and it wouldn’t matter what place Liming ended up in.
After all, it wasn’t all his fault that their school’s overall score was lower than another team’s.
All he could say was that his teammates weren’t good enough.

The thought made him happier.
Returning to his own spot, he, too, started getting ready anxiously.

Over on this side, once they were all set, Gu Xi looked over at Sheng Xiuyan and asked, “How do you want to split the questions up?” After all, they would both be working on the same set of problems.
It was necessary for them to divide it up.

Sheng Xiuyan said without missing a bit, “You go from top down; I’ll go from bottom up.” Gu Xi will start from the beginning and work toward the end; whereas Sheng Xiuyan would start with the last problem and work his way back up.

“That way we will not affect each other at all.” Sheng Xiuyan added.

He wasn’t sure how many could Gu Xi complete.
This way would work out the best while leaving enough problems for Gu Xi to work on.

Gu Xi was taken aback a little when she heard his suggestion, “But, that’s inconvenient for you, no?”

Habitually, from top down was normal but many would feel awkward going from bottom up.

Sheng Xiuyan scratched out his hands to show that that would not matter to him at all.

“It won’t bother me at all.” That’s stuck-up tone.
Yup, that was the valedictorian alright.

“Besides, you want to compete with that what’s his name from the school next to us, no?” said Sheng Xiuyan.

“……” Well, yes.
But, what Gu Xi wanted to say was that the one next to them was really not that much of a challenge.

“Alright.” Gu Xi nodded and said, “Then, once it started, we will go as fast as we can and skip the ones we don’t.
We can swap afterward.”

Sheng Xiuyan gave Gu Xi a look and nodded.
“Alrighty.”