They're already in university, and the primary school system is only just starting out?

Time ticked by, and the conference room remained silent.

Chen Lin, on the other hand, was completely unaware of Professor Gu Ming's series of expressions and actions.

When he enters the "little mathematician" state, the entire outside world seems to be covered by a semi-transparent filter, becoming blurry and distant.

His entire mind was focused on the mathematical calculations before him, constructed from symbols, axioms, and logic.

Before the exam started, he was calculating in his mind that one hour for each paper, and three papers would take three hours, which was right at the safe threshold he had set for himself, and he might still be a little tight on time.

But when he actually started doing it, he discovered that he was much faster than he had imagined.

For about half of the questions, he completed the entire process, from reading the question to writing, in no more than five minutes.

There was even a mathematical analysis problem where the solution flashed through his mind so concisely that it surprised even himself. He wrote only five lines and perfectly completed the proof.

The remaining half of the questions were slightly more difficult, but it only made him think about them a few more times, and it only took him seven or eight minutes.

This made Chen Lin secretly breathe a sigh of relief.

At this pace, I can definitely keep the total time spent completing the three papers under three hours.

……

……

4:50 p.m.

When Chen Lin finished writing the last punctuation mark on the topology exam paper, he slowly put down his pen, leaned back in his chair, and let out a long sigh.

That familiar feeling of exhaustion after one's mental energy has been depleted slowly resurfaced, like a reef after the tide has receded.

Although it wasn't nearly as intense as the one on the night of the 15th, it was still enough to make him feel a slight heaviness in his brain.

He looked up and realized that Professor Gu Ming across from him was staring intently at his laptop screen, his fingers occasionally swiping across the touchpad, seemingly absorbed in the content of a paper, completely unaware that he had finished.

"Professor Gu?" Chen Lin called out softly.

"Huh?" Gu Ming seemed to have just been awakened from deep thought. He first looked up blankly, then saw the three test papers in front of Chen Lin that were already filled with writing. His expression instantly switched from focus to surprise.

"Finished?" He glanced at his watch subconsciously; the hour hand hadn't even reached five o'clock yet.

It started at 2 PM, and it's been less than three hours since then.

Gu Ming quickly concealed his surprise and regained his composure as a professor. He smiled and nodded, his tone filled with undisguised praise: "Very good, very good! Much shorter than I expected."

He stood up, walked over to Chen Lin, and asked, "How was it? The difficulty of the questions was alright, wasn't it?"

"It's alright, not too difficult," Chen Lin said honestly.

Gu Ming smiled and didn't take the somewhat "Versailles" remark too seriously.

He pointed to the remaining two classes: "So, the same time tomorrow?"

Chen Lin thought for a moment and nodded: "Okay, then I'll trouble Professor Gu."

"No trouble at all, no trouble at all." Gu Ming waved his hand, his eyes showing increasing appreciation for Chen Lin. "Alright, then you should go back and rest first. You've worked hard today too."

"Okay, goodbye Professor Gu."

Chen Lin tidied up briefly and then got up to say goodbye.

As the conference room door closed gently, Gu Ming's smile slowly faded. He subconsciously reached out to tidy the table, but his gaze inadvertently fell on the stack of pristine white A4 papers beside him.

He then suddenly remembered that Chen Lin hadn't even touched the draft paper he had specially prepared from beginning to end!

A slight shock rose in Gu Ming's heart.

Is it really possible for someone to have mental arithmetic skills this strong? To solve problems of this level without even needing to use scratch paper?

With a hint of disbelief, he gathered up the three papers Chen Lin had finished and flipped through them roughly.

This revelation deepened his shock.

The answer area for each question was completely filled with answers.

It's worth noting that in order to accurately assess Chen Lin's abilities, he secretly increased the difficulty of the questions he set.

At least half of the questions on these three exam papers require graduate-level mathematical knowledge and tools to solve successfully.

Not only that, in order to test Chen Lin's potential, he even put a challenging question, as difficult as the doctoral qualification exam, into each paper!

His original expectation was that Chen Lin could get most of the undergraduate-level questions right, and then try to solve some graduate-level questions, which would be considered very good.

But now it seems that Chen Lin actually finished all the questions?

Considering that he was a transfer student from the Faculty of Arts, this means that almost all of his mathematical knowledge was self-taught.

This learning speed is simply astonishing!

Gu Ming took a deep breath and stopped thinking about it.

He carried three heavy exam papers, walked quickly back to his office, took out the answers that had been prepared at the same time as the exam papers were created, and began to grade them.

After half an hour.

Gu Ming leaned back in his office chair, staring blankly at the three test papers laid out on the table in front of him.

In the upper right corner of each exam paper, a striking and glaring number was written in red pen.

100.

100.

100.

He anticipated that Chen Lin would score very high.

However, completing all three papers in less than three hours and getting full marks on all of them was still far beyond his expectations.

Just now, he carefully and meticulously compared and checked every step of every one of the thirty major questions with his own answers.

There is not a single error.

The logic is rigorous, the steps are clear, and it's as perfect as a textbook example.

Even more outrageous, when he graded the math analysis paper, he saw the proof question that was only written in five lines.

The method Chen Lin used was even more concise and ingenious than the standard answer he himself gave!

Gu Ming's gaze lingered on the short proof of the Five Elements for a long time, and he subconsciously muttered to himself:

"In Banach space, weak relative compactness is equivalent to 'every sequence has a weakly convergent subsequence'... Therefore, we can directly extract a weakly convergent subsequence from the bounded sequence {x_n} to complete the proof... Why didn't I think of this approach when I designed this problem..."

He shook his head with a wry smile, took off his glasses, and pressed his brow hard with his fingers.

"Is this what a true genius is?"

He graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a bachelor's degree and then went to the UK to obtain a doctoral degree from Cambridge University. Throughout his academic career, he has met countless so-called "geniuses" and "academic superstars".

However, after carefully searching his memory, Gu Ming discovered that among all the people he knew, no one could reach Chen Lin's current level at the age of twenty...

not a single one!