There is an unspoken and unspoken rule in Provincial No. 1 Middle School: every year on the day after graduation, the top ten "favored students" in their grade will receive admission notices from prestigious overseas schools and "go abroad for further study." No one knew that these top students would disappear from the world, be sent to underground "think tanks", stripped of their self-awareness, and become human decision-making machines for the powerful class. All insiders either received hush money or shut up early.
Jiang Wen had been the "No. 11" Student for three years and stayed on the safe side by deliberately controlling his scores. He just wanted to survive until graduation and be a transparent person that no one would remember. But three days before graduation, Su Wan, who had always dominated the rankings and was the perfect number one, suddenly collapsed. She thrust a coded full-score test paper into his hand and begged him in a low voice to "ruin it." Then he received a "cleanup" warning against himself - the rule of substitution had already nailed him to the altar.
In order to survive, Jiang Wen had to team up with No. 10 Xu Nian to sneak into the forbidden area and uncover the shady story that had been buried for thirty years: the current principal was the "Ninth" who escaped by chance, and the so-called "recycling" was essentially a batch harvest of "absolute perfection." On the day of the graduation ceremony, Jiang Wen gave up the chance to escape, grabbed the radio and disclosed the coordinates of the "think tank". He was taken away, but he finally broke into this dark machine that had been running for decades.
Many years later, Xu Nian became a lawyer specializing in education equity lawsuits. Jiang Wen's name was always marked "missing" on the school's honor wall. This is not a counterattack novel, it is just an ordinary person trying his best and burning himself, just to tear open the abscess under the appearance of perfection.
Purpose: To accuse utilitarianism: when people are reduced to tools, "excellence" is the original sin.
