Zhang Ye/History

#### Joining the Question Setting Team

Dean Pan suddenly called him one day to invite him to be a question setter for the Beijing college entrance examination. He wants Zhang Ye to set difficult questions but solvable within the context of an examinee, similar to the problems that he gave when he was at No. 2 Experimental Primary School and in Zhang Ye's Classroom. Zhang Ye accepted the invitation, as it would help him receive some fame and bring him closer to being an A-list celebrity.

He then went to meet Jiang Yuan to apply for leave. Jiang Yuan was worried at first, as the question setters cannot return home or contact the outside world until the day of the college entrance exams, but Zhang Ye assured him that all the episodes are ready for broadcast while he's gone. He announced to the program team that he would be on leave then called his parents to tell them about his appointment as a question setter and left Chenchen in their care.

He was also invited by Chang Kaige to be a question setter for Chinese Literature for the Beijing college entrance examinations. Since being a question setter for both the Chinese Literature and Mathematics exam sections is not only unprecedented in the history of Beijing's college entrance exam but even throughout all the provinces in the country, he accepted the offer.

He was received personally by Dean Pan when he arrived at the question setters' location and had his cell phone confiscated. He was well respected on the Mathematics team, as he was one of the few world-class Chinese mathematicians. After familiarizing himself with the scope of the questions and its presentation, he asked to take a few exams and the past rough draft of the exam that was sketched out by the team to read up on them. Dean Pan also informed him that he was appointed as head of the Mathematics examination question setting team and that most of the questions will be set by him.

He went over to the Chinese Literature team and found that Su Na was also there. She was the only one who welcomed him when it was announced that he would be joining the team. The others were not so friendly with him, as he was young and did not have many qualifications. He also had many conflicts and scolding battles with many of his peers from the literary and education world, so when they saw him joining the Chinese Literature team, a lot of the teachers felt that he was not worthy to be there. After chatting with Su Na for a short while to find out about the situation, Zhang Ye took a sample exam and went back to his dorm.

As someone who had participated in the college entrance exams before, the number of past exams he had seen, taken, and studied numbered close to at least a hundred, including exams dating back to the 90s. He used a total of four "Memory Search Capsules" to recall his previous world's memories of the college entrance exam questions, Tsinghua's and Peking University's student admission questions, and other kinds of extremely difficult questions. He would even laugh evilly sometimes when he came up with extremely tough questions.

The day before the deadline for the submission of the exam questions, Zhang Ye submitted the questions he prepared to the question setting teams. Although his Mathematics problems are solvable through the knowledge found in high school textbooks, they were very tricky, deceptive, and needs out-of-the-box thinking to figure out the solutions. On the other hand, his Chinese Literature questions could be described as totally unexpected, yet had very interesting meanings behind them and left the question setting team speechless. He gave a simple explanation of the answers and thought processes then left, as he knew that a few of the Chinese Literature question setters did not have good opinions of him, so he didn't want to bother with them either.

#### Poetry Duel

Zhang Ye later found out about "Operation Send Zhang Ye Home" from Su Na while they were taking a morning jog and was speechless at how he's getting boycotted every few days. After their jog, they met Dean Pan, who informed them about the celebratory feast organized by the question setting team teachers at the hilltop later that day.

Before going to the feast, Zhang Ye visited the library. He speedily flipped through pages of several random books, then used "Memory Search Capsules" to absorb the contents of the books. He had realized before that he was still too unfamiliar with this new world and there were too many differences with his previous world, so he wanted to gain a deeper understanding of this world. He used up a huge amount of "Memory Search Capsules" to memorize the books, but The Voice has given him a lot of Reputation Points, so he was able to support his expenditure. He was able to etch the contents of ten books deep inside his mind before heading out for the feast to pig out.

When he arrived at the hilltop, he was teased by his colleagues about the boycott against him by the Beijing college entrance examinees. The question setting team teachers later decided to have a friendly competition between themselves and split the teams by gender, but Zhang Ye was more interested in eating than the contest. Since there were fewer people in the female teachers' team, and since they are not good drinkers, they picked Zhang Ye to drink on their behalf.

Although he joined the female team, he was still only concerned with eating but still drank whenever the female team lost and ended up drinking three bottles of ice-cold beer. As the teams ended up with a 3-3 score, everyone agreed to have the last round as a decider, and the judges decided that the final topic will be poetry with a subject of "husband and wife". A few of the Chinese Literature team teachers felt that Zhang Ye's literary standards have been deified too much by people so they wanted to use this chance to test him and go up against him. Despite everyone cheering for him to participate, he still only cared about eating and suggested for Su Na to do it instead. When a young male teacher from Tsinghua University goaded him, he responded to the challenge.

When he finished writing his poem titled "Husband Missing Wife", he nodded satisfyingly at his work then went back to the barbecue grill to continue eating. Everyone was surprised that his calligraphy skill was at a high level, but when they read the poem, some people thought his poem was better than Liao Qi's while some thought it was worse, especially since his poem only expresses one side of the pair's feelings. In the end, the judges decided to call it a draw. The Chinese Literature question setting team teachers were satisfied with the result, as it means Zhang Ye is not as legendary as the rumors say. The female teachers thought that Zhang Ye wrote the poem casually and did not take it seriously, resulting in his poem not being as good as his usual standard.

The supervisor of the Chinese Literature question setting team arrived later and read Zhang Ye's poem, and he evaluated Zhang Ye's poem as worlds apart from Liao Qi's. He revealed that Zhang Ye's poem was actually a palindromic poem that also contained a "Wife Missing Husband". Everybody was shocked to see that his poem can really be read backward and still work perfectly. Su Na immediately grabbed the paper the poem was written on and asked Zhang Ye to gift it to her.

After the feast, Zhang Ye borrowed another dozen books from the library and brought them back to his dorm room. He flipped through the pages then used a Memory Search Capsule to take in all of the information. He planned to use the remaining days until the college entrance examination doing the same thing over and over.

#### Aftermath

When the college entrance exams were over, he went home and was shocked by the number of people cursing him online due to his exam questions. He posted on Weibo to try to calm them down and reason with them, but when he showed up online, he was suddenly besieged by countless people. He tried to shift the blame and claimed that the questions were set by Dean Pan, but no one believed him. Zhang Ye had no other way out, so he simply went offline as he knew that if he couldn't appease them, then the better way was just to hide.

Dean Pan called him the next morning and ranted on how Zhang Ye tried to shift the blame to him. He also caught Chenchen having fun reading all the angry comments scolding him on Weibo. His mother berated him for causing trouble instead of just staying at home peacefully. He couldn't believe that he caused the examinees to cry so his father told him to watch the news.

A few days later, he and dozens of other question setters were at the Board's office for a meeting and discussion on some issues when the results of the national college entrance examinations were released. Everyone looked at him when it was revealed that the average score of the Beijing examinees in Chinese Literature and Mathematics was lower than the national average by nearly 30 points and 40 points, respectively. He tried to give an excuse that the cutoff score will be adjusted lower, so it shouldn't affect the admissions. Then, he shifted the blame again to Dean Pan for insisting to invite him in the first place. Zhang Ye was curious when he heard that someone got a perfect score on the Math test and was pleased to find out that it was Huang Lingling.

Zhang Ye's exposure rate soared again when Central TV's News Simulcast reported on the drastic drop in the cutoff scores of the Beijing college entrance exam admission.

#### Zhang Ye's Classroom is Back!

His mother woke him up one weekend but he insisted on sleeping in. His father reminded him that he promised to accompany his mother with shopping, but he says he's too tired and was derided by Chenchen for being lazy. He said that he's so tired that even if the sky is falling, he won't get out of bed. The next moment, Wu Zeqing suddenly called him and invited him over to her place, as she has the next two days off and they haven't seen each other for a long time. He immediately got up and left the house, leaving his parents and Chenchen speechless.

Zhang Ye and Wu Zeqing haven't seen each other in at least a month or two and had only kept in contact by texting or through phone calls, so Zhang Ye's heart thumped with excitement when he arrived at Wu Zeqing's villa and saw her, as he had missed her badly.

Although Wu Zeqing didn't want him to dirty his hands, Zhang Ye insisted on helping her garden as they chatted. After gardening, Wu Zeqing sent Zhang Ye inside the house to try the clothes she bought for him while she tidies up the things outside. She later made him breakfast while he leaned back on the sofa comfortably with his legs crossed and eyes closed while waiting for breakfast to be ready. Zhang Ye wasn't modest and treated her home as his own.

After breakfast, Zhang Ye praised her cooking then borrowed Wu Zeqing's laptop while she went to do the dishes. He was in a very pleasant mood while admiring Wu Zeqing doing the dishes and thinking of how such a great beauty was his girlfriend, so he decided to make an appearance on Weibo. He started another session of "Zhang Ye's Classroom" and announced that whoever can correctly answer all the questions will not only receive an autographed calligraphy piece from him but will also be able to scold him face-to-face for 30 minutes. The netizens were immediately excited to get a chance to scold Zhang Ye, especially the Beijing examinees. Wu Zeqing also came then sat down beside him and watched.

After posting the questions, Zhang Ye decided to relax his requirements and only asked for the first three questions to be answered correctly to pass, but everyone thought that the questions were just jokes without a proper solution. However, he proved that the questions had solutions by giving the answer and thought process to the third question. After everyone saw the solution, they were dumbfounded and tickled. Although many people were angry at him for his Beijing college entrance exam, they eventually forgave him after making them laugh with his questions.

Before he could post the answer to the other problems, someone already posted their solution. He was able to deduce from the username that it's Huang Lingling. She told him that she applied for Peking University as her first choice since her greatest goal is to become his student. Zhang Ye told her that even if she doesn't meet the admission cutoff score, he'll help her.

After he successfully downplayed the "scammer" label the netizens have given him, he went offline and chatted with Wu Zeqing. She offered to help him with his job if he ever needs it, but he doesn't want to get her in trouble since she's now the Deputy Chief of the SARFT, so he'd like to handle his problems on his own as much as possible. As they chatted, he realized that the more time he spent with her, the more he liked her, as she would support him 100% no matter what he did as long as it did not deviate from her principles.

#### Student Recruitment War

Zhang Ye stayed over at Wu Zeqing's house that day since it wasn't easy to have matched his schedule to her days off so he wanted to spend more time with her. She woke him up the next morning to eat breakfast but as he didn't want to get up, she brought breakfast to his bed instead. Since Wu Zeqing hasn't had breakfast yet either, they ate together. Wu Zeqing offered to help him ask around about his suspension from Peking University but he refused since he's still busy with The Voice anyway.

After breakfast, he called Dean Pan to talk about Huang Lingling's matter while Wu Zeqing went downstairs to do the dishes. Dean Pan told him that she's already on the list of top scorers that the student recruitment team went to meet.

When he found out that Peking University and Tsinghua University fought over the top scorers of the entrance exams and that Huang Lingling has been taken by Tsinghua, he was outraged and drove off to Tsinghua University. As soon as he arrived at the university, he heard Xin Ya challenging the Peking University student recruitment team to compare Math departments, which he readily accepted. He echoed Xin Ya's challenge back at her, which left her and the other Tsinghua University teachers speechless.

Xin Ya questioned his hostility but he said that he's only defending Peking University's Math Department, as it has always been in the top two in the country, and the quality of the teachers is real. While the Peking University and Tsinghua University teachers were arguing, he stared straight at Xin Ya and asked for them to open the car doors and he will take those who applied for Peking University as their first choice with him.

When the Tsinghua University teachers refused, he headed straight towards the car Huang Lingling was in. Liao Qi tried to grab him but he subtly performed some martial arts, making Liao Qi fall on his own. Realizing that the car was locked, he picked up half a slab of brick and smashed it on the driver's side window of the car then unlocked the car doors from the inside. Although the Tsinghua University teachers were angry, they did not dare get closer to him, as they all know the rumors of his violence. After freeing Huang Lingling, he told her to go to where the Peking University teachers are and to wait for him there.

He then walked towards another car and smashed its window and unlocked the doors, releasing the two students in there. The Tsinghua University teachers screamed for him to stop, but he just walked calmly towards the third car and smashed its window. The top scorers inside didn't know how to react and just hurriedly got out.

He started walking towards the fourth car, but the teacher inside did not wait for him to smash the car and unlocked the doors himself then ran out of the car frantically. When he looked at the fifth car, its driver immediately ran away and abandoned the car. The driver of the sixth car did not even wait for him to look over and had already disappeared swiftly. The drivers of the rest of the cars also scattered away in panic. The examinees held in the cars were all set free and gradually came out of the cars.

When he saw that all the examinees have been released, he threw away the brick in his hand. Zhang Ye then told Su Na to take the examinees who are willing back to Peking University to talk about admissions and terms of enrollment. When the teachers of Tsinghua University wanted to rush forward to grab the examinees back, he simply took a step forward and they immediately stopped in their tracks.

When he heard that the Tsinghua University teachers called the police, he decided to also give a call to the police. They laughed when they saw Zhang Ye calling the police since he was the one who smashed their windows but they were dumbfounded when they heard Zhang Ye was reporting a kidnapping at the main entrance of Tsinghua University instead.

When the police arrived at Tsinghua University, they were surprised when they saw that it was Zhang Ye who reported the kidnapping. When the Tsinghua University teachers accused him of beating up Liao Qi, he said that it was Liao Qi who wanted to grab him and tried to push him but he didn't even raise an arm.

The police asked who smashed the windows, and Zhang Ye admitted he did it because as a citizen of China and as a public figure, he couldn't ignore the "kidnapped" students. He was surprised when the parents of the top scorers he freed earlier arrived at Tsinghua University and sided with him. Su Na explained that it's because they were Peking University graduates.

After understanding the situation, the lead officer suggested dropping the matter, as both sides were at fault. Zhang Ye and the Peking University personnel had no issues with this outcome since the cars were already smashed and they also got the students back. As the people from Tsinghua University could not accept the outcome, the police officer suggested Zhang Ye compensate them for the car windows, which Zhang Ye agreed to.

After the matter was settled, Zhang Ye went back to Wu Zeqing's villa, where she was cooking his favorite dishes and she told him about Xin Ya's call. Zhang Ye then suddenly received a phone call from Dean Pan, who called to ask how he is and to pass a message from the university's president. He also told Zhang Ye that many of the teachers who used to be not friendly towards him, now spoke well of him, including Han Henian. Dean Pan was also worried whether Zhang Ye can shoulder all the anger of Tsinghua, to which Zhang Ye assured him that he can but asks if the heads of the university can compensate for the car windows for him. As Zhang Ye had been a great help to Peking University, Dean Pan readily agreed. Jiang Yuan also called him to make sure of his safety and to verify that he was not arrested.

On Weibo, when the news of the incident was published, some people fully supported his actions while some scolded him. The Ministry of Education also admonished Peking and Tsinghua University and publicly criticized Zhang Ye for his misconduct.

### **Chenchen's Adventure Arc**

After his off days were over, he came back to work to continue recording The Voice. During the recording for the first episode of The Voice since his return, he chatted with the coaches while waiting for Zhang Yuanqi to arrive. They talked about his recent incident, and Zhang Xia criticized him for his temper while Fan Wenli praised him for having his popularity increase every time there's negative news or trouble concerning him, while she and Chen Guang suffer a drop in their popularity even for baseless rumors.

After around a month or so, the curtain was finally drawn on the first season of The Voice with much anticipation. Zhang Ye had strongly advocated for the season finale to be broadcast live on TV, but due to Central TV Department 1's status as a national broadcaster, they could not risk having anything that could not be controlled go wrong on live television, so Zhang Ye's application was denied.

On the day of the season finale of The Voice, he returned home late from the celebratory feast and found that his parents were still up, waiting for him. He read the newspapers to see what they're saying about his show and saw that they gave a mixed review of Zhang Ye as a person but their comments on his works are consistently positive. He later checked on the Celebrity Rankings Index

## References

1. ↑ Chapter 702: Celebratory feast!
2. ↑ Chapter 706: Husband Missing Wife!
3. ↑ Chapter 717: Zhang Ye, you've really won!
4. ↑ Chapter 720: Tsinghua and Peking University fight over the students!
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Chapter 722: Rage smash!
6. ↑ Chapter 152: Beating the sh\*t out of Wang Shuixin’s Son
7. ↑ Chapter 175: Wang Shuixin gets Beaten Up!
8. ↑ Chapter 401: Zhang Ye's One Kick!
9. ↑ Chapter 725: An urban legend of the entertainment industry!