Redemption from the Abyss: The School Beauty Insists on Pulling Me Out of the Mire

Monday morning.

After a heavy rain, the air in Wuhan was exceptionally clear.

Xie Wang walked into Class 1 of Grade 11 as the bell rang.

This time, he didn't wear the faded old school uniform, but instead put on the high-quality black windbreaker that Lu Wen had given him, with a clean white T-shirt underneath.

His hair was neatly trimmed, and the band-aid on his brow bone didn't detract from his good looks; instead, it added a touch of untamed wildness.

The moment I stepped into the classroom, the whispers about whether Xie Wang had cheated vanished instantly.

Instead, countless pairs of eyes looked on with curiosity, awe, and even a touch of amazement.

That once gloomy, dirty boy in the corner seemed to have shed his dust overnight, revealing his original sharp edge.

Xie Wang ignored these stares.

He walked straight to the last row, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

I glanced ahead out of habit.

Su Qinghe was sitting in his seat memorizing vocabulary words.

As if sensing something, she slightly turned her head, her gaze meeting his for a second in the air.

He didn't speak.

But Xie Wang saw the fleeting smile in her eyes.

……

After morning reading, in the office.

"Xie Wang, Su Qinghe, come here for a moment."

The homeroom teacher, Ms. Li, called the two of them to her office.

At that moment, both Mr. Zhang from the computer science group and Mr. Liu from the physics group were present.

The two teachers looked at the two "super students" in front of them with somewhat complicated expressions.

"Regarding the next two weeks of training..."

Teacher Zhang scratched his head and said with a wry smile, "The school originally planned to arrange one-on-one tutoring, but I studied the code optimization solution Xie Wang gave me all night... To be honest, that idea is even more advanced than the textbook. If I were to teach you, it would be like showing off my limited skills to an expert."

Teacher Liu put down his thermos and looked at Su Qinghe with a sigh: "Not to mention Xiao Su, his self-study progress has already reached the level of university physics. My teaching syllabus is too shallow for you, and I don't have much to teach you."

Seeing this, Teacher Li opened the drawer and took out a heavy, bronze key.

He stood up and solemnly placed the key in Su Qinghe's hand.

"This is the key to the reading room on the top floor of the library."

Teacher Li looked at the two of them, her eyes filled with trust and expectation:

"For the next two weeks, that will be your independent battlefield. You won't need to attend classes; you can arrange your own time."

After a pause, Teacher Li added:

"Of course, giving you freedom doesn't mean the teachers will stop caring about you."

"If you encounter any bottlenecks in your studies, or have any difficulties that you can't solve, feel free to come to our office anytime. Although we can't teach you anything beyond the curriculum, we can still provide you with a solid foundation of experience."

Su Qinghe gripped the slightly cool key tightly and nodded: "Thank you, teacher."

Xie Wang also dropped his lazy demeanor and said earnestly, "Thanks, Lao Li."

……

The library, top floor.

A musty, bookish smell wafted over me.

A few minutes later, the two sat down facing each other.

Sunlight streamed onto the large solid wood table, illuminating the dust particles in the air.

There were only the two of them there.

It was so quiet that they could hear each other breathing.

"Alright, let's begin."

Su Qinghe was the first to get into the swing of things. She took out an original computer textbook that was entirely in English and pushed it in front of Xie Wang, and then took out an Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

"Your computer skills are fine, but the national competition has questions entirely in English."

She adjusted her glasses, instantly switching into "Teacher Su" mode:

"Read after me."

"The time complexity of an algorithm..."

For the next hour, Xie Wang's slightly stiff but gradually becoming fluent reading voice echoed through the library.

Su Qinghe taught him very meticulously, from connected speech to stress, and would even get close to correct his mouth shape.

The faint scent of jasmine made Xie Wang drift off into thought several times, only to be snapped back to reality by her pen.

……

It was afternoon.

Roles reversed.

Su Qinghe was frowning as he faced an extremely complicated physics competition problem.

This is a problem about "nonlinear dynamic systems," and the amount of computation required is astonishing. She has already written three pages of derivations on scratch paper, but the final result always fails to converge.

"Is it stuck?"

Xie Wang twirled his pen and lazily glanced over.

Su Qinghe sighed, put down his pen, and rubbed his temples in frustration.

"This system has too many variables, and the system of differential equations cannot be solved. The conventional law of energy conservation fails here."

Xie Wang leaned forward and glanced at the densely packed draft paper.

Unlike Su Qinghe, he didn't get bogged down in the specific steps.

In his view, this was just a simple matter of logic.

"Su Qinghe, you're making something simple complicated."

Xie Wang suddenly reached out, took her pen, and drew a simple coordinate graph in the blank space of the draft paper.

"Don't worry about all the messy changes in between, it's too tiring."

Xie Wang pointed to the model, his voice deep and resolute:

"Since it's a closed system, no matter how things change in the middle, the total energy is a constant. You can directly use the limit method to check it."

He wrote down a few simple inequalities on the paper, completely skipping the tedious calculus calculations in between.

"If we let time t approach infinity, the work done by friction will reduce the kinetic energy to zero. Then the remaining potential energy..."

Xie Wang wrote down a concise answer on the paper:

mgh/2.

Su Qinghe was stunned.

She stared at the simple formula, and the jumbled calculations in her mind instantly collapsed and reassembled.

"The limit method...we directly examine the final state..."

Su Qinghe muttered to himself, his eyes suddenly lighting up as if they were ignited by stars.

"Yes! That's it! If we consider it from a limiting perspective, all the intermediate variables can cancel each other out! How come I didn't think of that!"

She suddenly looked up at Xie Wang, her eyes filled with surprise and admiration:

"Xie Wang, how is your brain structured? This solution... is too cheating, but too fast."

Xie Wang curled the corners of his lips, tossed the pen back to her, leaned back in his chair, and smiled with a hint of roguishness and smugness:

"That's what you call simplifying complexity. Professor Su, how much is the tuition for this physics class?"

Su Qinghe looked at the boy's spirited face.

The sunlight fell on him, making even the fine downy hairs appear to have a golden edge.

She couldn't help it, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a smile.

"First, memorize that English essay you just wrote."

Su Qinghe pushed the English book back, a smile playing on her lips.

"No dinner until you finish memorizing it."

"……Depend on."

Xie Wang let out a wail and picked up his English book again.

Cicadas chirped outside the window, while the room was quiet and filled with the fragrance of books.

Two equally proud and dazzling teenagers became each other's strongest support in this sun-drenched reading room.