My IQ has been increasing year by year.

"Let's go big."

These four words were like a spark that fell into a group of boys filled with gasoline drums.

For a group of energetic first-year junior high school boys who are always looking for trouble but are afraid of being scolded by their teachers, nothing is more tempting than this.

If someone else said that, Liu Fei might think that person was crazy.

But this is Chen Zhuo.

He was that "child prodigy" whom even teachers respected.

If a child prodigy leads the way in causing trouble, can that be called disrupting the peace?

That's called a scientific experiment!

That's called exploring the truth!

That's called rebelling under imperial orders!

Liu Fei's eyes lit up instantly, brighter than the sun outside the window.

"How big?" he asked in a low voice, his tone full of excitement.

"Turn the classroom into a movie theater."

Chen Zhuo took a sip of water, speaking calmly as if he were saying, "Hand in your homework."

Liu Fei stared at Chen Zhuo for two seconds.

Then he suddenly turned around, threw the other newspaper in his hand hard, and shouted at the group of boys around him:

"Brothers! Stop!"

"Listen to Brother Zhuo! Tear it all up and re-paste it! Bring out all the old newspapers, draft paper, and scrap papers we've collected!"

"Seal all the windows shut! Not a single ray of light should get in!"

"Okay!"

A group of boys who were looking for ways to vent their energy instantly became excited.

"Wang Hao! Wake up! Bring out your pile of 'Comic King' magazines!"

"Does anyone have wide tape? Clear tape doesn't work!"

"I have some! I have packing tape!"

The classroom instantly became lively.

A tacitly agreed-upon "riot" has begun.

The once chaotic classroom suddenly shared a common goal.

Chen Zhuo did not do it himself.

He has self-awareness.

At 1.42 meters tall, even standing on the table, he would have a hard time reaching the top of the window, and in terms of physical strength, he couldn't compete with these hormone-fueled teenagers.

He stood in the aisle with his arms crossed, like a calm chief engineer, directing people to complete their ideal blueprint.

"Liu Fei, go and stick the top row of tape. Stretch the tape horizontally, don't skimp on it. Yes, stretch it out a bit, stick both ends to the wall."

"Hey you over there, fold the newspaper in half. It's too thin and won't block the UV rays."

"Don't leave a gap! Add another sheet to that corner!"

The boys displayed amazing initiative at this moment.

This is a characteristic of males:

If you ask him to sweep the floor and take out the trash, he'll slack off whenever he can. But if you ask him to climb up and down and do some large-scale project that is both destructive and constructive, he'll be more enthusiastic than anyone else.

They put the tables together to form a human ladder.

The guy standing by the window with duct tape in his mouth, wiping the newspaper with saliva or water...

Even the girls in the class were helping.

Li Xiaoya, along with several girls, quickly collected all the tape in the class, tore it into strips, and stuck them on the sides of the desks, passing them to the boys like ammunition.

"Here you go! This one's long!"

"Be careful not to fall!"

"There's a light leak here! Fix it quickly!"

The entire classroom was transformed into a giant construction site.

The boys and girls who were complaining about the unbearable heat and feeling drowsy are now busy as bees.

Although no one knew what Chen Zhuo was going to do, or what would happen after the windows were sealed off.

But this feeling of "the whole class conspiring to fight against the harsh environment" is something else.

So cool.

This is a collective conspiracy, a rare moment of wildness in this rule-abiding school.

Ten minutes later.

Liu Fei slammed the last thick copy of the Yangtze Evening Post into the center of the window.

"Snapped!"

The last ray of light was cut off.

The entire classroom was plunged into complete darkness.

Only the cracks in the front and back doors, and the occasional slivers of light filtering through the edges of the newspaper, prove that it is still broad daylight.

Apart from that, it was pitch black.

"Holy crap, that's really shady."

In the darkness, someone sighed.

An eerie silence fell over the entire class.

Everyone was panting heavily, from the exhaustion of the work they had just done, but also from the excitement.

This act of turning the classroom into nighttime in broad daylight gave them a strange sense of excitement.

All the heat seemed to vanish the moment darkness fell.

"Brother Zhuo, and then what?"

Liu Fei remained standing on the table, calling out in the darkness.

"What should we do now? Tell ghost stories? Or go to sleep?"

"Come down."

Chen Zhuo's voice sounded exceptionally clear in the darkness, even seeming to echo slightly.

"Everyone, go back to your seats and don't talk."

After a series of crashing sounds, tables and chairs collided.

Everyone groped their way back to their seats in the dark.

Dozens of eyes gleamed in the darkness, looking expectantly in Chen Zhuo's direction.

Although they cannot see it.

Chen Zhuo left his seat.

Using his memory and the faint glimmer of light, he walked to the center of the back row of the classroom.

That was the only window that wasn't completely sealed off, with only a small open space in the middle, which was something he had specifically instructed him to leave out.

Chen Zhuo took a compass out of his pocket.

That was something he had prepared long ago.

He groped around and found the center of the newspaper.

Take a deep breath.

This doesn't require any formula calculations.

This requires a feel for things, an intuition for optics.

If the aperture is too large, the image will become blurry, like astigmatism.

If the aperture is too small, insufficient light will enter, making the image too dark and difficult to see.

3 to 5 millimeters is ideal.

Chen Zhuo held the needle of the compass and gently but decisively pricked the thick newspaper.

"puff"

A soft sound.

The newspaper was punctured.

A beam of light instantly pierced through the small hole, breaking through the thick darkness in the classroom.

Like a sharp sword, or the beam of light from a projector lens, it pierced straight onto the white wall at the front of the classroom.

next second.

A painting suddenly appeared on the wall that was originally just whitewash and water stains.

A colorful, dynamic, and stunningly clear painting.

That's the world outside the window.

However, it is upside down.

The enormous canopy of the plane tree hangs down like green roots, and the swaying of each leaf is clearly visible, even the golden sunlight on the leaves can be seen.

The red teaching building hangs upside down from the ceiling, its windows resembling rows of neat little squares.

The blue sky stretched across the ground, with a few white clouds drifting by as if beneath one's feet.

The most amazing thing is the playground.

The students who were having physical education class were reduced to tiny figures, no bigger than a finger.

They were wearing red and white school uniforms, standing upside down, running around at the very top of the wall.

An orange basketball flew backwards into the sky, tracing an arc, before landing in the upside-down basket.

This is a silent film.

An upside-down, color film about the fall of 2001.

The classroom was completely silent.

Everyone stared wide-eyed at the world depicted on the wall.

In this small city in an era when smartphones, projectors, and even color televisions were not very common.

This visual spectacle, created purely by optical principles, was nothing short of a miracle to these twelve- or thirteen-year-old children.

"Holy crap..."

"Oh my god..."

"How...how did they do that?"

Li Xiaoya covered her mouth, her eyes shining.

Looking at the upside-down world on the wall, she felt as if she had fallen down Alice's rabbit hole.

"So beautiful..."

"Look! That's the fat guy from Class Two! He just missed an entire three shots! Hahahaha!"

Liu Fei, with his sharp eyes, pointed at the chubby little boy standing upside down on the wall and burst into laughter.

That laugh broke the silence of the classroom.

The classroom erupted in chaos.

People excitedly pointed and chatted, searching for familiar faces in the picture and commenting on the teachers walking upside down.

"Hey, hey, hey! Look at that guy on the bike! Isn't that Grandpa Li, the gatekeeper?"

"That bird! That bird flew by!"

"Look, that girl is drinking water upside down!"

This inverted, unprecedented perspective gave them an unprecedented sense of security and novelty.

They hid in this cool, dark box, like a group of gods, looking down on that hot, busy world.

Chen Zhuo did not participate in the discussion.

He simply returned to his seat silently and sat down in his soft chair.

In the darkness, no one could see his expression.

But he was comfortable.

The glaring sunlight disappeared, replaced by soft, diffused light.

Even the air seemed to cool down as darkness descended.

He picked up the bottle of AD calcium milk on the table that was still half-finished and took a sip.

Hmm, it tastes better cold.

"Chen Zhuo".

My deskmate leaned over, lowered his voice, and spoke with adoration.

"What's the principle behind this? Did you invent it?"

"This is pinhole imaging."

Chen Zhuo explained calmly.

"Mozi discovered this 2,400 years ago. Light travels in a straight line. After passing through a small hole, the light from above goes to the bottom, and the light from below goes to the top, so it is upside down."

"oh......"

The girl nodded, seemingly understanding.

Although it sounds simple, in her eyes, Chen Zhuo was able to turn this messy classroom into a movie theater.

He's absolutely stunning!

She secretly took a freshly opened bag of potato chips from her desk and stuffed it into Chen Zhuo's hand.

"Chen Zhuo, eat this, it's tomato flavored, it's delicious!"

Chen Zhuo took the potato chips.

Click.

It's crunchy.

"Squeak~"

The front door of the classroom was suddenly pushed open.

A blinding beam of light shone in from the corridor, blurring half of the image on the wall.

The students who were watching the movie were startled and immediately fell silent.

Old Zhao stood at the door with his lesson plan tucked under his arm, his brow furrowed and his face full of anger.

He sensed something was wrong as soon as he was in the hallway. All the other classrooms were brightly lit, but this one was completely dark, like a haunted house.

"What's going on?!"

Old Zhao's voice was stern, carrying the unique authority of a homeroom teacher.

"Who sealed the windows? What are you doing in the dark?! Are you rebelling?"

"Liu Fei! Were you the one who started this?!"

Liu Fei shrank back in fright, and was about to stand up and take the blame.

But he hadn't had a chance to move yet.

Old Zhao's voice suddenly stopped.

Because he saw it too.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw a silent film playing on the wall at the far end of the classroom.

The colors are vibrant and the image is clear.

You can even see the leaves that have fallen from the old locust tree by the playground.

Old Zhao was stunned.

As a teacher, he certainly knew what it was.

But in his more than 20 years of teaching, he had never seen any class of students do such a grand and beautiful experiment.

The entire classroom was transformed into a giant black box.

More than fifty students sat quietly in the darkness, watching physics paint on the wall.

There was no fighting, no sleeping; everyone kept their eyes wide open.

Old Zhao stood at the door, staring at the upside-down painting for a good ten seconds.

The rebuke that was on the tip of his tongue was slowly swallowed back.

He glanced at Chen Zhuo, who was sitting calmly eating potato chips in the middle of the first row.

That little hole, without a doubt, was that kid's handiwork.

I glanced again at the faces of the class, some excited and some nervous.

Old Zhao sighed and gently closed the door.

As the door closed, the light that had flooded the corridor disappeared, and the image on the wall became clear and sharp again.

"Alright."

Old Zhao's voice rang out in the darkness, carrying a hint of helplessness and a subtle, almost imperceptible tenderness.

"Don't play for too long, it's bad for your eyes."

"Since it's already sealed off, let's leave it like this for now, so you won't complain about the sun."

"During this study period, if you don't want to do your homework, you can watch a movie. But one thing: no loud noises allowed."

"Wow!!!"

The whole class erupted in a suppressed cheer.

"Thank you, Teacher Zhao!"

"Long live Old Zhao!"

Old Zhao shook his head, walked to the podium in the dark, and sat down.

He also looked up at the upside-down world on the wall.

You know what?

It's still pretty.

These bastards know how to enjoy life.

That afternoon.

Class 1 of Grade 7 at the No. 1 Middle School in the city has become the most mysterious and enviable class in the entire school.

While other classes were being baked in the scorching sun, they were fanning themselves with books, sweating profusely.

Only their class.

Hiding in the cool darkness, I ate snacks while watching a film called "Autumn in 2001".

And the director of this film.

He was lying on the table, continuing to derive his unfinished mathematical formula by the dim light.

But this time...

There was a large pile of potato chips, two cartons of milk, and a piece of chocolate that someone had secretly slipped to him on the corner of his table.

And behind him.

Liu Fei and the group of boys were quietly discussing the optical principles they had just learned from Brother Zhuo in the dark.

Li Xiaoya and the group of girls were searching for handsome guys in their upside-down world.