The air in the Multi-Purpose Lecture Hall seemed to freeze.
The area designated for **Class 9** was dead silent. To show up to a municipal-level speech contest without a script, without a USB drive, and without a PowerPoint presentation was akin to a soldier walking onto a battlefield without a gun. It was suicide.
**Lily** sat trembling in her seat, her knuckles white as she clutched the empty blue plastic folder. Tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to spill over. She felt a crushing weight of guilt; she had been the one to entrust the materials to Ren, and now, the class was facing total humiliation.
"It's over," a student whispered. "We're going to get a zero."
Just as the despair reached its peak, a tall, slender figure stood up from the second row of the Class 9 section.
It was **Xavier**.
The class monitor and top student looked cold, his jaw set in a hard line. He glanced at **Wendy**, who was struggling to hide a look of malicious triumph, and his eyes darkened with disgust. He didn't have time to argue or investigate the theft now. He had to save the ship from sinking.
"I'll go," Xavier said, his voice low and steady. "I helped write the draft. I can't recite it word for word, but I remember the structure and the key arguments. If I go up, I can at least salvage a passing score. We won't get a zero."
The surrounding students let out a collective breath of relief.
Yes, Xavier. The academic god of Wolven High. If anyone could turn this disaster into a salvageable situation, it was him. His English was impeccable, and his presence was commanding.
"Thank god," **Joey** whispered. "Xavier, go save us. Just don't let Ren go up there and embarrass us."
Xavier adjusted his collar, preparing to step into the aisle to approach the judges.
Suddenly, a hand reached out and clamped down on his shoulder.
The hand was pale and slender, the fingernails trimmed into neat, rounded arcs. It looked delicate, like the hand of a pianist, but the grip was iron-clad. Xavier tried to move, but he found himself rooted to the spot.
"Sit down."
**Ren** stood beside him. She was still in her casual posture, one hand in the pocket of her windbreaker, the other holding Xavier in place. She tilted her head slightly, the brim of her baseball cap casting a shadow over her eyes, but Xavier could see the faint, lazy amusement dancing in them.
"Since I agreed to do it," Ren said, her voice indifferent but carrying an undeniable weight, "I don't need the class monitor to worry about it."
"But you don't have the script!" Xavier hissed, lowering his voice so the judges wouldn't hear the internal conflict. "Ren, this isn't just about you. This is about the class honor. There are cameras here."
"Who said I can't speak without a script?" Ren raised an eyebrow.
"You..." Xavier started to argue, but Ren cut him off.
"It's all in here," she said, tapping her temple with a long finger.
Before Xavier could react, she released her grip. Without looking at anyone else—not the crying Lily, not the gloating Wendy—she turned and walked toward the stage with her signature long, lazy strides.
***
"Next candidate, representing Year 3, Class 9, Ren."
The host's voice echoed through the speakers.
Ren walked up the steps to the stage.
She looked nothing like the other competitors. The previous speakers, including **Faye**, wore formal dresses or suits, their hair perfectly styled, their posture rigid with practiced etiquette.
Ren wore a simple white T-shirt tucked into black jeans, with her oversized black windbreaker left open. She didn't bow to the audience. She didn't smile at the judges. She simply walked to the center of the stage, stood behind the podium, and adjusted the microphone stand with a sharp *click*.
A murmur rippled through the audience.
"That's Ren?"
"I heard she lost her script."
"Look at the screen behind her. It's black. She didn't even bring a PPT. How is she going to present?"
In the front row, Faye crossed her legs elegantly. She smoothed the skirt of her expensive dress and settled in to watch the show. A small, cruel smile played on her lips. She had been waiting for this moment—the moment Ren would be exposed as the fraud Faye believed her to be.
At the judges' table, the **Director of Education** frowned deeply. He tapped his pen against his clipboard, his expression stern.
"Student," the Director spoke into his microphone, his voice booming through the hall. "Where is your presentation? Where are your note cards? This is a municipal competition, not a playground. If you are unprepared, please step down."
Ren rested her hands on the podium. She looked out at the sea of faces—the mocking students, the worried Class 9, the smug Wendy. Finally, she glanced at the blank screen behind her.
"Apologies. Technical difficulties," Ren said calmly. Her voice was steady, lacking even a hint of nervousness. "However, I believe this topic doesn't require a PowerPoint to be understood."
Arrogant.
It was breathtakingly arrogant.
The audience gasped. Even Xavier closed his eyes, bracing for the inevitable disaster.
But just as everyone thought she was about to start rambling nonsense, Ren turned around. She walked away from the podium and towards the large blackboard at the back of the stage.
She picked up a piece of white chalk from the tray.
*Snap.*
She broke the chalk in half with her thumb.
Then, she raised her hand.
*Scritch-scratch-scritch.*
The sound of chalk hitting the board was rhythmic and sharp. Ren moved with a speed and precision that was mesmerizing. In less than thirty seconds, white lines began to form a complex structure on the dark surface.
She didn't use a ruler, yet the lines were perfectly straight.
She didn't use a compass, yet the circles were mathematically flawless.
She was drawing a logic diagram. But it wasn't the simple flowchart from the original speech. It was a multi-layered architectural model of the "Global Economic System and Technological Barriers."
***
Ren drew the final arrow, tossed the remaining piece of chalk into the tray, and dusted the white powder off her hands.
She turned back to the audience, the microphone catching the sound of her breath.
"Let's talk about the technical barriers from a purely structural perspective."
When the first sentence left her lips, the entire lecture hall went dead silent.
It wasn't the high school English they were used to hearing.
It wasn't the American accent that most students, including Faye, tried so hard to mimic from movies.
It was pure, unadulterated **Received Pronunciation (RP)**—the Queen's English.
Every vowel was rounded and precise. Every consonant was crisp. The intonation rose and fell with an elegance that sounded like music. If one closed their eyes, they would not picture a rebellious high school dropout; they would picture a young professor at Oxford, or perhaps a member of the Royal Family giving a press conference.
Faye's smile froze on her face. Her eyes widened in disbelief.
She had spent years practicing her pronunciation with private tutors. She prided herself on her fluency. But compared to Ren's natural, aristocratic accent, Faye's English suddenly sounded clumsy and forced—like a cheap plastic imitation of a diamond.
Ren didn't need the script. She didn't need note cards.
She gestured to the diagram she had drawn on the board and began to deconstruct the topic.
The speech Wendy had written was good—grammatically correct and safe. But it was filled with clichés pulled from Wikipedia.
What Ren was delivering was on an entirely different dimension.
She cited data from the latest issue of *Nature* magazine. She wove in metaphors connecting particle physics to economic inflation (clearly influenced by the doctoral books **Juan** had forced her to read). She even cracked a dry, sophisticated joke about trade protectionism that made the foreign language judges chuckle.
It was profound. It was witty. It was brilliant.
***
In the audience, the students of Class 9 sat with their mouths hanging open.
"Holy sh*t..." Joey whispered, clutching the back of the seat in front of him. "Is that... is that Ren? Since when does she sound like she grew up in Buckingham Palace?"
Lily had stopped crying. She stared at her deskmate, the girl who usually slept through class with a book over her face, and realized she didn't know her at all. The gap between her perception of Ren and the reality on stage was as wide as the ocean.
But the person with the most interesting reaction was **Wendy**.
Wendy sat in her seat, her face draining of all color until she looked like a ghost. Her hands gripped her skirt so hard that her knuckles turned blue.
She had stolen the script to destroy Ren.
She had wanted to watch Ren stutter and fail.
But now, she realized the truth. The script she had written... was trash compared to what Ren was saying.
Every sentence Ren spoke, every brilliant point she made, felt like a slap in Wendy's face. Ren wasn't using the script because she didn't *need* it. The stolen folder in the trash can wasn't a loss for Ren; it was the removal of a shackle.
*I didn't sabotage her,* Wendy thought, a wave of nausea washing over her. *I set the stage for her to become a god.*
Ren paused for effect, her eyes scanning the room. She looked directly at the section where Class 9 sat. Her gaze lingered for a split second on Wendy, cool and mocking, as if to say: *Is this the best you could do?*
Xavier watched the girl on stage with a complicated expression.
He understood every word she said. And because he understood, he was the most shocked of all.
The vocabulary she was using... the logic structure... this wasn't something you learned in high school. This was the result of massive reading and a genius-level intellect.
"Ren..." Xavier whispered the name like a question. "Just how many secrets are you hiding?"
***
"...and that is the inevitable evolution of the market. Thank you."
Ren delivered her closing line, simple and powerful.
For three seconds, there was absolute silence in the hall. The kind of silence that comes after a thunderclap.
Then, the Director of Education stood up.
He was a strict man, known for never smiling. But now, he was standing, clapping his hands enthusiastically.
Following his lead, the other judges stood up.
Then the seniors in the front row.
Then Xavier.
Finally, the entire hall erupted into applause. It was a roar of approval, a wave of sound that shook the windows.
It wasn't just polite applause. It was the sound of respect.
Ren stood in the center of the adulation. She didn't blush. She didn't look excited. She just nodded once, acknowledging the applause as if it were simply the expected outcome.
She turned around, picked up the eraser, and casually wiped away the intricate diagram she had drawn on the board. With a few swipes, the evidence of her genius vanished into chalk dust.
She dusted her hands off again, adjusted her cap, and walked off the stage with one hand in her pocket, cool and unbothered, leaving a stunned audience and a devastated sister in her wake.
**[Chapter 43 End]**