My IQ has been increasing year by year.

1998, fall.

The city library is located next to People's Park and is an old Soviet-style building made of red bricks.

Back then, libraries didn't have electronic reading rooms or air conditioning.

In the tall reading room, only a few old-fashioned ceiling fans whirred overhead, stirring up the unique smell in the air, a mixture of musty paper and the aroma of ink.

For Chen Zhuo, this was paradise.

Since that watch repair incident, although Chen Jianguo didn't understand why his son suddenly fell in love with reading, he still got him a library card.

Every weekend afternoon, Chen Jianguo would go to the park to play chess with others, while Chen Zhuo would go to the library alone.

He was too short to reach the high bookshelves, so he had to use a small stool to support himself.

He reads a wide variety of books.

From "100,000 Whys" in the children's picture book section to "Basic Mechanical Principles" in the science section, and even the "English-Chinese Dictionary" that no one ever turns to.

If someone were standing nearby observing this, they would think the child is a bit silly.

While other children read books, Chen Zhuo seems to be scanning them, but the scanner's rollers appear to be stuck.

He opened a book on basic physics and stared at the page about the principle of leverage.

"Effect multiplied by the effect arm equals resistance multiplied by the resistance arm..."

He read those few simple lines of text five times over.

My brain still felt that familiar sluggishness.

He recognizes every single word, but when they are combined into abstract logic, the CPU in his brain starts to overheat and throttle down, making comprehension extremely difficult.

If it were an ordinary child, they would have thrown the book away and gone to play with their toy cars.

But Chen Zhuo did not.

He took a hardcover notebook and a pencil out of his schoolbag.

Since your brain works slowly, use your hands.

He held the pen and copied down the definition from the book stroke by stroke.

"F1 × L1 = F2 × L2"

If you can't remember it after one time, copy it twice. If you can't remember it after two times, copy it five times.

The pencil makes a rustling sound when it rubs against the paper.

This monotonous, mechanical movement actually made him feel at ease.

He saw himself as a sponge, or a floppy disk, a common material in those days.

Although the processor hasn't been upgraded and can't run complex programs, the memory can be expanded first.

He doesn't need to deeply understand the calculus derivations behind these formulas now; he just needs to store them.

These concepts, terms, and theorems are neatly stacked in a corner of the mind, like bricks being moved into a warehouse.

An afternoon has passed.

As the sun set, golden rays shone on the notebook in front of Chen Zhuo.

The densely packed pencil writing was as neat as printed text.

When Chen Jianguo finished his game of chess and came over, this was the scene he saw.

The son was lying on the table, a speck of pencil dust on his nose, staring blankly at a complex diagram of gears.

"Son, did you understand?"

Chen Jianguo leaned over for a look and chuckled.

"Hey, I have trouble even looking at this picture, how could you, a little kid who can't read, possibly understand it?"

Chen Zhuo closed the book, rubbed his sore wrist, and honestly shook his head: "I didn't understand it."

"You spent the whole afternoon copying it if you didn't understand it?"

"Just copy it down and you'll remember it," Chen Zhuo said earnestly. "You'll understand it later."

Looking at his son's honest yet stubborn appearance, Chen Jianguo felt both gratified and a little uneasy.

I'm relieved that this child can sit still, and I'm sure he'll study hard in the future. But I'm a little worried that this child is too quiet.

At only five and a half years old, he lives like a fifty-year-old scholar.

What if he becomes a bookworm in the future and can't even find a wife?

……

This anxiety reached its peak the year before Chen Zhuo was about to start primary school.

I was six years old in the traditional Chinese way, just after the Spring Festival in 1999.

At the dinner table, while peeling shrimp for Chen Zhuo, his mother Liu Xiuying worriedly discussed with her husband, "Jianguo, I think we should enroll Xiao Zhuo in an extracurricular class."

"What's wrong? Doesn't kindergarten teach drawing?" Chen Jianguo took a sip of his wine.

"That's not drawing, it's just scribbling."

Liu Xiuying pointed to Chen Zhuo, who was quietly eating his rice.

"Haven't you noticed? This child is so quiet. All the other kids in the yard are running around downstairs, but he's just sitting on the balcony, lost in thought."

I've heard that learning a skill is popular now, as it can cultivate one's character and make children... a little more lively?

Liu Xiuying pondered the word "agile" for a long time.

What she actually meant was, "Don't be so dull."

Chen Jianguo thought for a moment and nodded:

"That's true, boys should have some special skills."

"Look at Old Zhang's son in the factory, he can play the saxophone, how impressive is that? What should he learn? Martial arts? His physique probably can't handle it. Painting? He draws those straight lines and circles at home every day, it looks so boring."

"Learn a musical instrument."

Liu Xiuying suggested, "Music can develop the right brain, and it is said to make people smarter and cultivate temperament."

After discussing it, the couple decided to take Chen Zhuo to the city's children's palace.

In those days, the children's palace was a sacred place for all parents who hoped their children would become successful.

On weekends, the corridors of the children's palace are filled with the sounds of various musical instruments.

On the left is the "boom boom boom" of the electronic keyboard, on the right is the "mournful and miserable" sound of the erhu, and in between are the reverberations of the hulusi and saxophone.

Chen Zhuo followed behind his parents, feeling as if he had walked into a huge, noisy factory.

He doesn't really care what he studies.

He's fine with anything as long as he doesn't have to learn dance.

In any case, this is also a form of data input for him.

"Want to learn piano?" Liu Xiuying looked at the row of black and white keys with a hint of envy. "It looks quite elegant."

"It's too expensive." Chen Jianguo glanced at the price tag, then thought about his 60-square-meter apartment. "Besides, we don't have anywhere to put it."

Indeed, in the late 90s, a piano was a luxury for ordinary working-class families.

They continued walking and came to a classroom at the end of the corridor.

The sounds here are the most jarring.

How can I describe that sound?

It sounded like sawing wet wood with a rusty saw, even worse—sharp, dry, and enough to make your scalp tingle.

"This is... the violin class?" Chen Jianguo looked at the sign.

Inside the classroom, seven or eight children were tilting their heads, holding violin bows, and creating strange sounds under the teacher's direction.

Chen Zhuo stood at the door, his brows slightly furrowed.

What he heard wasn't harsh words, but rather "mistakes".

The waveform in that sound was chaotic, and the frequency was unstable.

It's like a gear in a precision instrument that's not meshed properly, emitting a painful groan.

"This is good!"

Chen Jianguo's eyes lit up.

"This thing is small and inexpensive, you can just carry it around. If the school puts on a party or something, just stand on the stage and you'll exude an aura of elegance, wow."

Liu Xiuying was also a little tempted, mainly because the female piano teacher was very elegant, with long hair and standing straight.

"Xiao Zhuo, do you want to learn this?" Liu Xiuying squatted down and asked.

Chen Zhuo looked at the teacher who was demonstrating how to hold a piano.

He saw the teacher's fingers pressing on the fingerboard, the bow being pulled across the strings, and the strings vibrating to produce sound waves.

"Stringed instruments...produce sound by the vibration of strings, and the frequency is related to the string length, tension, and density. f = (1/2L)*√(T/ρ)..."

High school physics formulas automatically popped into my mind again.

Although he couldn't calculate the exact values ​​yet, he found the instrument very interesting.

Unlike a piano, the violin does not have fixed pitches; the accuracy of the violin depends entirely on the position of the fingers.

If you press it off by even a millimeter, the frequency will change and the sound will become inaccurate.

This means that this is a game that requires extremely precise control.

"Okay." Chen Zhuo nodded. "I'll learn this."

……

The process of learning the piano is far less elegant than parents imagine.

For beginners, the violin is practically a torture device.

You need to tilt your neck at an odd angle, clamp it between your fingers, press your left hand on the fingerboard in a twisted position with your wrist suspended in the air, and control the bow, which is longer than a chopstick, with your right hand while keeping it straight.

In the first lesson, Chen Zhuo only learned how to play the violin by pinching the strings.

When I got home, a red mark appeared on my neck from rubbing.

The second lesson was about learning to play open strings.

"Squeak—creak—"

When Chen Zhuo first plucked the E string, the sharp sound sent a chill down his spine.

The teacher in charge of teaching the piano, Ms. Zhao, was a strict middle-aged woman. She held a small wooden stick in her hand and tapped Chen Zhuo's elbow.

"Relax your wrists! Don't make them stiff like iron rods! They need to be flexible!"

Chen Zhuo was in great pain.

His brain knows how to exert force, using the lever principle to transfer the weight of his arm to the bow.

But his body couldn't do it.

At six years old, the small muscle groups are completely out of control.

He wanted to relax, but his hands were stiff and wouldn't obey him. He wanted to straighten the bow, but it always slipped crookedly onto the fingerboard.

"This child..." Teacher Zhao shook her head and said to Liu Xiuying, who came to pick up the child, "His hands are too stiff. And this child seems to... have no sense of rhythm."

"No sense of rhythm?" Liu Xiuying felt a chill in her heart.

"Um."

Teacher Zhao spoke frankly.

"When other children play the violin, although it sounds bad, you can feel the emotions. Some are urgent, some are slow. But when your Chen Zhuo plays the violin, it's like he's completing a task. He's not listening to music; it's like he's doing a math problem."

Teacher Zhao is right.

Chen Zhuo was indeed doing the problems.

When he practiced at home, he didn't think about "beauty" or "sadness" at all. His mind was filled with nothing but:

"The bow speed should be even... the contact point should be two centimeters above the bridge... the pressure should be constant..."

He turned violin playing into a mechanical engineering project.

I practiced like this for three months.

While other children were already able to play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with difficulty, Chen Zhuo was still playing open strings and scales.

Chen Jianguo was even considering giving up.

"Why don't we stop him from learning? I see this kid always looking like he's going to his execution every time he practices the piano; I've never seen him smile."

Until one night.

Chen Jianguo was adjusting the old black-and-white television. The signal was bad, the screen was full of static, and there was a piercing electrical noise.

Chen Zhuo was practicing the piano nearby.

His piano was a little out of tune.

Violins are greatly affected by temperature and humidity, and need to be tuned every day.

Usually, at this point, one would have to wait until next week's class to ask the teacher to adjust the schedule, or for the parents to help, but Chen Jianguo is tone-deaf and cannot hear accurately at all.

Chen Zhuo put down the bow and stood the zither upright.

He stretched out his fingers and turned the tuning pegs on the headstock of the instrument.

"Bang, bang..." He plucked the A string.

In his ears, or rather in his brain, the sound wasn't "La," but a frequency.

440Hz.

International standard pitch.

Although he didn't know the number 440, he remembered the sound of the piano when Teacher Zhao tuned it last time. That wave-like vibration left an absolute coordinate point in his brain.

The sound is a bit muffled now, and the frequency is low, only around 435Hz.

Chen Zhuo turned the tuning peg. It tightened a little.

"collapse."

438Hz. A little short.

He made another slight adjustment, the movement of his fingers so subtle it was almost imperceptible.

"collapse."

440Hz.

perfect.

That sense of perfect order returned, just like the repaired pocket watch, sending a pleasant shiver through his mind.

Next are the E string, D string, and G string.

The violin is tuned in fifths, with each pair of strings being a perfect fifth apart, and the frequency ratio is 3:2.

For Chen Zhuo, this was simply a ratio calculation problem.

Five minutes later.

Chen Zhuo picked up the bow and played the four open strings that he had just tuned.

"So-ri-ra-mi-"

Although the sound was still a bit dry, the purity of its pitch stood out starkly in the room filled with electrical noise.

Chen Jianguo, who was filming the television, stopped what he was doing.

He couldn't read music, but he felt that those few notes just now sounded particularly...pleasing to the ear?

It felt like drinking a sip of pure water, without any impurities.

Classes started the next day.

As usual, Teacher Zhao picked up Chen Zhuo's piano to tune it for him.

She took out a tuning fork, tapped it once, held it to her ear, and then plucked Chen Zhuo's A string.

Teacher Zhao stopped.

She glanced at Chen Zhuo in surprise, then dialed the number again.

They overlap perfectly. Not a single detail is different.

"Did your dad tune your piano?" Teacher Zhao asked.

"No," Chen Zhuo answered honestly, "I twisted it myself."

"You yourself?" Teacher Zhao didn't believe it.

A six-year-old child might not even have the strength to turn the tuning pegs, let alone hear the correct pitch.

Many children who have studied for two or three years still need to find each note on the piano one by one when listening to music.

"Adjust this one again."

Teacher Zhao deliberately loosened the D string by a large amount and handed it to Chen Zhuo.

The other children and parents in the classroom all looked over.

Chen Zhuo took the violin. Unlike other children who would draw the bow to listen, he simply placed the violin between his legs and plucked a string like he was playing a guitar.

"collapse……"

It's too loose, probably only 280Hz.

Chen Zhuo turned the tuning pegs expressionlessly.

He searched his mind for the coordinates of that "Re".

Twist, listen.

Twist it again, listen again.

His movements were not skilled, even a bit clumsy, and he missed twisting the handle several times because his hand slipped.

A chubby boy nearby chuckled.

But Chen Zhuo turned a deaf ear; in his world, only the vibration of that string remained.

Final fine-tuning.

"collapse."

Chen Zhuo let go and handed the instrument to Teacher Zhao: "It's done."

Teacher Zhao picked up the bow with suspicion and pulled the D string.

"Waaah—"

The moment the sound rang out, Teacher Zhao's pupils contracted.

quasi.

That's incredibly accurate.

It's not the kind of "almost accurate," but the kind of accurate that's been calibrated with an electronic tuner and has no fluctuations whatsoever.

"Do you have perfect pitch?" Teacher Zhao's voice was slightly distorted.

Chen Zhu blinked blankly: "What feeling?"

He didn't understand the word; he only knew that if he didn't twist it to that position, he would feel awkward, as if there was a thorn stuck in his head.

Teacher Zhao took a deep breath and looked at the dull-witted child in front of her; her eyes changed completely.

She had always thought the child was a blockhead, hard-witted, emotionless, and played the violin like sawing wood.

But she forgot that in this world, there is a talent that is even rarer than "emotion".

Precise.

Emotions can be cultivated, skills can be practiced, but these ears that can distinguish minute differences of a few hertz are a gift from God.

"Chen Zhuo".

When Teacher Zhao squatted down for the first time, her gaze was level with Chen Zhuo's, and her tone became exceptionally solemn.

"When you practice the piano in the future, don't think about whether it sounds good or bad. Just follow your feeling. Where do you feel most comfortable playing a particular note? That's where you should press the key."

Chen Zhuo nodded.

He likes this requirement; isn't this just like doing a fill-in-the-blank question?

From that day on, Chen Zhuo's piano playing changed.

Still devoid of emotion, still dry and lifeless.

But the scales he played sounded as if they had been measured with a ruler.

Every note falls precisely on its proper frequency, the rhythm as steady as a Swiss watch.

The performance six months later.

Other children played "XJ Spring," swaying their heads and making expressive faces. Although their pitch was off, they still won rounds of applause from their parents.

It was Chen Zhuo's turn.

He stood in the center of the stage, expressionless, wearing an ill-fitting suit and standing like a wooden stake.

He was playing the first of the simplest etudes, "Kaiser 36".

It's all fast running in sixteenth notes.

"Da da da da, da da da da..."

Chen Jianguo, sitting in the audience, had sweaty palms, afraid that his son might forget the score or play the wrong notes.

But Chen Zhuo did not.

His right wrist was still a little stiff, but his left hand fingers moved like a precise ticker timer, rapidly rising and falling on the fingerboard.

There were no changes in strength or weakness, and no emotional fluctuations.

The audience was silent.

Parents who don't know much about it think the child's playing is meaningless, like chanting scriptures.

But the few professional teachers sitting in the first row felt a chill run down their spines.

Because from beginning to end, among hundreds of notes, not a single note is false or off-key.

Even when shifting positions, the duration of the slide is controlled to the millisecond level.

The song ended.

Chen Zhuo put down his zither, bowed, and still had that sleepy, dazed expression on his face.

Only he knows the state of his brain working at a high speed during those three minutes.

Each note is a coordinate point, and his fingers are performing a precise spatial vector calculation.

Although he was exhausted and his head was throbbing, he felt great.

This is much more exciting than copying formulas in the library.

This is an empirical demonstration of how physical laws can be translated into sound.

Sparse applause rang out from the audience, mainly from Chen Jianguo and his wife.

Teacher Zhao stood behind the curtain, watching Chen Zhuo's back, and murmured to herself:

"This isn't playing a violin...it's practically a human metronome."

What she didn't know was that this comment would stay with Chen Zhuo for many years.

Much later, when he played Bach's Chaconne in Princeton's concert hall with this absolutely rational, emotionless, yet extremely precise piano music, the world's top mathematicians and physicists were moved to tears by this "divine order."

But now, he's just a six-year-old who wants to go home and sleep as soon as he finishes playing the violin.

"Dad, I want to eat the grilled sausage from the doorway."

Chen Zhuo put the zither into its case and said to his father who came to greet him.

This was the first time today that he had shown the longing that comes with being a child.

After all, overworking your brain can really make you hungry.