Top student: All my teachers are academic whizzes!

Back in the dormitory, after washing up, Han Chuan lay down on the bed, took out the seventh-grade textbook, and sat on the top bunk to read it.

Just then, Li Hao, who had returned with Coke and spicy strips he bought from the convenience store, habitually handed over the already torn spicy strips.

"Want some?"

He asked a question and then discovered that Han Chuan was reading a book on the upper bunk.

He came closer and, upon seeing that it was a math textbook he had been studying during evening self-study, his voice was filled with astonishment, and he looked like he had seen a ghost.

"Holy crap, no way, bro?"

"You were watching during evening self-study, and now you're watching again? Seriously, are you really planning to study hard and become a top student?!"

"Don't do this, buddy, I'm scared!"

Han Chuan looked up at Li Hao, smiled, and said, "We can't keep drifting along like this forever."

Li Hao opened his mouth, wanting to say something discouraging, but seeing the seriousness in Han Chuan's eyes, he swallowed back the teasing words that were on the tip of his tongue.

He popped a spicy snack into his mouth, chewed it a couple of times, and then suddenly his eyes lit up. He pulled out a CD carefully wrapped in a plastic sleeve from under his pillow and waved it in his hand.

"See that? Akiho Yoshizawa, the latest anime! Didn't you say you wanted to watch it last week?"

Han Chuan glanced at the disc reflecting light under the dim yellow light, smiled, and didn't reply.

In his past life, Li Hao treasured this disc and wouldn't let anyone touch it. Later, it was taken away by the head of the teaching department, and he cried for several days.

Seeing that he didn't react, Li Hao simply slammed the disc onto Han Chuan's bed, plopped down on the lower bunk, and yelled at the upper bunk, "Okay, buddy, I'll make a bet with you!"

"What are we betting on?" Han Chuan glanced at him.

"I'm betting you can keep this up for a few more days!"

Li Hao pointed at the seventh-grade math book in Han Chuan's hand and said confidently, "Didn't you say you were going to study hard? If you can stick to it for ten days—just ten days! This treasured book of mine is yours!"

Han Chuan shook his head: "Keep this for yourself, I don't want it."

"Given up?"

Li Hao raised an eyebrow, even more smug: "I knew you were only enthusiastic for three minutes..."

"no."

Han Chuan interrupted him, his voice not loud but firm: "I mean, let's change the stakes."

Li Hao was taken aback: "Change what?"

Han Chuan: "I haven't decided yet."

"So what if you lost?" Li Hao asked.

Han Chuan: "How about I ask Ang Lee to cover your breakfast outside the cafeteria for a week?"

Ang Lee was a day student and could bring his own breakfast from outside the school, but the quality of breakfast at the county's No. 1 High School was best left unmentioned.

Upon hearing this, Li Hao's eyes lit up, and he pointed at Han Chuan and started shouting in the dormitory.

"Everyone heard that! You can all be my witnesses! Han Chuan said he'd study hard for at least ten days! If he can't, he'll provide me with breakfast for a week!"

Hearing this, the dormitory immediately became lively. Zhou Yu poked half his head out from Han Chuan's lower bunk, his gaze sweeping between his two roommates, and asked with a hint of suspicion, "Han Chuan, are you serious?"

"Seriously," Han Chuan said.

The other roommates also gathered around, discussing the matter animatedly.

"Holy crap, ten days?"

"The kind of person who listens attentively in class and reads diligently."

"Can I gamble too?"

Li Hao chuckled and started planning his breakfast for tomorrow: "Two meat buns from Zhou's restaurant! No, three! Plus a cup of soy milk and a fried dough stick."

"Don't rush to order."

Han Chuan peeked out from the top bunk, looked at him, and laughed, "If I lose, you get breakfast for a week. What if I win?"

Li Hao waved his hand dismissively and said, "Name your terms!"

Han Chuan thought for a moment and said, "I won't make it difficult for you. If I win, you can put away that book of martial arts stories, replace it with a math textbook, and listen attentively to lessons for three days, how about that?"

"No reading novels or using your phone for three days, okay?"

"......What?"

Li Hao's expression froze on his face, as if he had accidentally bitten his tongue while eating spicy snacks.

Forbidding him from reading novels or using his phone for three days? Isn't that like taking his life?

"You dare not?"

Han Chuan mimicked his tone from before, a slight smile playing on his lips.

"Who the hell wouldn't dare!"

Li Hao gritted his teeth, stuffed the spicy strip in his hand into his mouth, and said, "I'm betting! I don't believe you can last ten days!"

The more he talked, the more confident he felt that this bet was a sure thing. He happily lay back on the bed and started planning for tomorrow's free breakfast!

The noisy dormitory finally came to an end with a stern shout from the teacher checking the rooms.

Baling County No. 1 Middle School implements a strict boarding system. The time from the end of evening self-study to lights out is not long. The dormitory lights are turned off promptly at 11:30 p.m., and students are not allowed to turn on the desk lights after lights out.

The dormitory supervisors patrol the corridors from time to time. If they catch a student still reading or playing on their phone, they will either deduct points from the class or, in more serious cases, call the parents.

However, this is no challenge for any student who has gone through exam-oriented education.

After the dormitory lights were turned off, Han Chuan pulled the blanket over his head, held a mini flashlight he had bought from a stationery store near the school gate in his left hand, and pressed his right hand against the seventh-grade math textbook.

The light was dim and the air inside the blankets was stuffy; soon, a thin layer of sweat seeped out from my back.

He did the same thing in his past life, except back then he hid under the covers with a flashlight to read martial arts novels.

This time, he wanted to seize the time to make up for his shortcomings.

He especially wanted to try that state of mind he had during evening self-study tonight.

That ability to 'see' mathematical structures is probably not accidental; it must be related to his cheat code, and it can be actively triggered or guided.

Huddled in bed, Han Chuan recalled how he had triggered that state.

It seems to have started when Ge Jun instructed him to ask himself three questions while reading.

Starting with the concepts of integers and fractions, and then moving on to the conversions between them...

When he actually started thinking about these questions, the knowledge in the books seemed to be activated, transforming from flat text into three-dimensional, logically connected images.

"What are you thinking about?"

Ge Jun's handwriting emerged from the textbook, eliciting some curiosity.

Han Chuan thought for a moment and then briefly described the state of affairs that night.

Of course, he didn't say it was some kind of cheat code or anything like rebirth; he simply described the scene where he saw rational numbers turn into a net, a three-dimensional structure.

Ge Jun remained silent for a moment, as if he was thinking.

Then, a line of text slowly appeared: "I don't understand, but I think it must be related to your ability to summon me?"

He really couldn't understand why, in this day and age, all sorts of imaginative online novels hadn't become fully popular yet.

Besides, how could a math professor like him know anything about the arcane systems in novels? He's more like an Olympiad math professor.

Han Chuan nodded, and then asked thoughtfully, "Professor Ge, have you heard of 'hyperthymesia'?"

Upon hearing this, Ge Jun wrote in his handwriting: "I've heard of that."

After a pause, another line of text appeared.

"You think your condition might be similar to hyperthymesia? A kind of illness? Or that I'm even a figment of your imagination? Schizophrenia?"

Han Chuan scratched his head and said, "I don't know."

He originally just wanted to find a reason for his cheat ability, but he didn't expect Ge Jun to think about it in the direction of "schizophrenia".

But this is for the best. If this Teacher Ge had told him to find another Ge Jun in the real world, he wouldn't know how to handle it.

If he mistakenly believes that this is a figment of his schizophrenia, perhaps that wouldn't be so bad?

"Forget it, I don't understand what's going on in your head either."

Ge Jun's handwriting revealed a casualness that suggested he was too lazy to investigate further: "I'll give you a few more rational number calculation problems to practice with, to reinforce your skills while they're still fresh in your mind. We'll start learning the new part tomorrow."

"Your foundation is really too weak; you simply can't catch up unless you start working on it right away!"

Han Chuan nodded, turned to the chapter on rational numbers, and began to work on the problems.

This time, he no longer tried to directly apply formulas and find answers as he had done before when he received a question.

Instead, first ask yourself: Which knowledge point is this question testing? How is that knowledge point defined? How does it relate to what you've learned before?

He did each question very slowly.

After the dormitory lights were turned off, he would use a flashlight to shine into his bed and continue doing it.

Before he knew it, a brand new workbook was filled with seven or eight pages of dense writing.

When he stopped, he found that everything outside the window was quiet, even the whispers of his roommates' daily chatter had disappeared, and only the sound of breathing echoed in the dormitory.

Although I don't have a cell phone and don't know what time it is, judging from the time my high school roommates went to sleep, I estimate it's past 1 a.m.

Surprisingly, he didn't feel tired at all; instead, he felt a strange sense of excitement, as if he had finally completed a level he had been stuck on for a long time after playing a game for two hours.

The numbers and threads in my mind were still faintly flashing, like the embers of a fireworks display.

"That's enough for tonight."

Ge Jun's handwriting emerged. This sentence should have been a plain instruction, but a few strokes in the handwriting were slightly elongated, revealing an undisguised approval, which Han Chuan did not notice.

"good!"

Han Chuan nodded, put away his textbooks while holding the flashlight, went to the toilet to take care of his personal needs, lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. Soon, he began to snore.

As Ge Jun listened to Han Chuan's snoring and sensed the answers and solutions written in the workbook, a look of surprise appeared on his face.

"This little guy is improving pretty fast."

He had seen Han Chuan's true abilities.

From the very beginning, he couldn't even apply concepts like rational numbers and negative numbers to math problems, and he could even get the simplest propositional judgments wrong.

Now, with just one evening study session and some spare time before bed, I can understand the concepts of rational numbers, number lines, opposite numbers, absolute values, and extensions.

Although these basic concepts are nothing special, it's already quite impressive that they were able to rebuild a solid foundation in such a short time from such a poor starting point.

This little guy isn't as 'bad' as he imagined.

.....

The next morning, Han Chuan, who usually lingered in bed a little longer after the alarm rang, woke up before the alarm even sounded.

He didn't get out of bed, but sat up almost instantly, his eyes shining brightly, showing no signs of fatigue from staying up all night, but rather as if he were fully charged.

As Han Chuan pulled out his seventh-grade math textbook from under his pillow, a sense of peace washed over him the moment his fingertips touched the pages.

He let out a long sigh, sat on the bed, savoring the unique smell and environment of his high school dormitory, and listened to his roommate's snoring. A smile involuntarily appeared on his face.

He sat quietly for a while before getting up and slid down from the upper bunk.

Feeling the bed frame vibrate slightly, Zhou Yu, his roommate sleeping on the lower bunk, rubbed his sleepy eyes, glanced at Han Chuan coming down from the upper bunk, and asked in a daze.

"What time is it, Han Chuan? Why didn't I hear the alarm?"

Afraid of waking his other roommates, Han Chuan moved quietly as he spoke softly:

"I don't know, the bell hasn't rung yet, you can probably sleep a little longer."

The wake-up time for boarding students at the county's No. 1 Middle School is seven o'clock. Before his rebirth, he would usually stay in bed a little longer after the alarm rang.

But now, the excitement and agitation in his heart made him wake up earlier than expected.

"oh oh."

Zhou Yu gave a muffled reply, then tilted his head to the side and fell asleep again, facing the wall.

After quietly washing up, Han Chuan left the dormitory and went to the playground.

The campus was still shrouded in a light mist in the early morning, and physical education students were already running on the playground, their footsteps making a thumping sound.

After stretching his muscles, Han Chuan stepped onto the track and started jogging. The frustration and mediocrity that had weighed on his mind before his rebirth gradually dissipated.

It has to be said, youth is truly wonderful!

He jogged three or four laps around the track before he was slightly sweaty. Just for that, he could say that being reborn was a huge win.

Before his rebirth, he was busy making a living and had no time for morning runs. He couldn't even run three or four laps, let alone climb a few flights of stairs.

When I arrived at the classroom, it was barely dawn. Only a few people were there, most of them catching up on sleep at their desks.

Han Chuan walked straight to his seat, put down his schoolbag, opened the seventh-grade math book, and skipped directly to the sections on number lines, opposite numbers, and absolute values.

Following Ge Jun's method, he didn't rush to memorize the definitions, but instead asked himself three questions first:

Why does a number line have a defined origin, positive direction, and unit length?

Where exactly are opposite numbers "opposite"?

What is the "absolute" in absolute value?

He held the pen and drew little by little on the draft paper.

A straight line, with a zero point, gets larger to the right and smaller to the left.

Numbers are no longer dry symbols, but soldiers standing neatly in a straight line.

Looking at the straight lines on the manuscript paper, and thinking about it, that familiar feeling came back again.

The words on the paper trembled slightly and turned into a faint light once more.

A silvery-white number line unfolded in the air before his eyes, extending infinitely.

0 is the brightest center point, to the left is negative, to the right is positive, and each number corresponds to a clear point.

Opposite numbers are like symmetrical shadows on both sides of a number line; if you're three steps to the left, I'm three steps to the right, the distance is exactly the same. And the absolute value is that distance.

It has nothing to do with whether the number is positive or negative, but only with how far it is from the origin.

A moment of clarity.

Han Chuan's hand holding the pen trembled slightly.

So this is how beautiful mathematics is. So these formulas and definitions that he once found boring and disgusting actually hide such clean and concise logic.

"Did you understand?"

Ge Jun's handwriting appeared on the math textbook.

"I understand!" Han Chuan answered quickly in his mind.

"Then let's do some problems." Three problems instantly appeared on the textbook, with the difficulty gradually increasing:

What is the opposite of -|-5|?

If |x－2|＝3, then x＝?

Given a < 0, b > 0, |a| > |b|, compare the magnitudes of a, -a, b, and -b.

There were still three questions. Han Chuan lowered his head, his pen gliding rapidly across the paper. There were no pauses, no hesitations; every step was natural and logical.

In less than a minute, all three questions were answered.

Ge Jun was silent for a few seconds, then a line of text appeared on his face: "All correct, not bad."

A few simple words are more effective than any praise.

Han Chuan couldn't help but smile, his heart warmed as if it held a little sun.

Beside him, on a high school math textbook, Ge Jun's handwriting appeared again: "This week we'll finish the first semester of seventh grade, and next week we'll start the second semester."

"So fast?" Han Chuan was taken aback.

There are only two textbooks for the first year of junior high school, one for the first semester and one for the second semester. What was originally supposed to be a semester's worth of material has now been compressed into two weeks.

......