My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 77 A Stable Foundation

It's exactly twelve o'clock.

The shrill sound of the doorbell rang throughout the campus once again.

"Stand up! Stop answering questions!"

A commotion of chairs being pushed back filled the classroom.

The exam papers were collected one by one.

Chen Zhuo stood up.

He picked up the pens and his ID, and left the classroom.

I walked into the stairwell.

The silence that had lasted for three hours was broken in an instant.

It's like a sealed jar being suddenly smashed.

The entire corridor and stairwell were instantly filled with loud voices.

"Was the final result of the third question a negative number?"

"Oh no, I forgot to add the coefficient of expansion of the container in that thermodynamics problem!"

What is the maximum integral for the second-to-last question? Is it L or 2L?

Everywhere you look, you hear the sound of people asking for answers.

Someone was arguing loudly with their companion in the corridor, their face red and neck bulging.

Someone was leaning against the wall, their eyes vacant, muttering to themselves.

Many more people looked exhausted and dragged their feet as they walked down the street.

Chen Zhuo followed the flow of people down the stairs.

I walked out of the main teaching building.

The midday sun shone down directly.

It was extremely glaring.

The heatwave on the ground had already begun to rise.

Chen Zhuo narrowed his eyes slightly.

He walked to the huge statue of a celebrity in front of the building.

The area was covered in shadow.

Zhou Kai was already standing there.

His back was soaked with sweat, clinging to his short-sleeved shirt.

His right hand unconsciously drew circles in the palm of his left hand.

His lips were pressed tightly together, and his eyes were unfocused as he stared at the gaps between the square tiles on the ground.

Not far from him, several boys from other provinces were loudly checking their solutions to the last question.

One of the boys gave an extremely complicated radical-based answer.

Zhou Kai's finger, which was drawing circles, suddenly stopped.

His brows were furrowed tightly.

The boy's answer and the final result he calculated on the scratch paper differed by a coefficient in the denominator.

Zhou Kai's breathing became rapid.

The brain began to uncontrollably rewind the calculations of the last ten minutes.

Did you miss it when factoring out the greatest common factor during integration?

Or was the initial boundary condition incorrectly substituted?

He looked up, wanting to go over and ask the boys how they handled the second step of their deduction.

A figure blocked his way.

Chen Zhuo stood in front of Zhou Kai, blocking his view of the boys.

Chen Zhuo held a bottle of chilled mineral water that he had bought from a vending machine next to him.

Without saying a word, he handed the bottle of water to Zhou Kai's chest.

The coolness of the water droplets seeped through my clothes.

Zhou Kai paused for a moment, then looked up at Chen Zhuo.

Chen Zhuo didn't ask him how he did on the exam, nor did he bring up that question.

"Let's go."

Chen Zhuo spoke, his voice not loud, but extremely clear in the noisy environment.

"Let's go to the cafeteria."

Zhou Kai glanced at the water in Chen Zhuo's hand, then looked into Chen Zhuo's eyes.

The violent heaving in his chest gradually subsided under Chen Zhuo's unwavering gaze.

He reached out and took the bottle of water.

The cool touch lowered the temperature of my palm.

The slight spasm in my fingers also disappeared.

"it is good."

Zhou Kai swallowed hard, turned around, and stopped looking at the people checking their answers.

Soon, He Gui, Miao Shi'an, Wang Huashao, and Lin Yi also gathered over one after another.

Wang is a man of few words; at first glance, he looks like he's overworked.

My hair, which is usually neatly combed, is now a mess, like a bird's nest.

He walked over, and just as he opened his mouth, he said, "Brother Kai, the third-to-last optical beam—"

He hadn't finished speaking.

Chen Zhuo turned his head and casually tossed over another bottle of room temperature water he was holding.

Wang, who was not talkative, instinctively caught the water bottle.

"Thanks, Captain!"

He was about to continue the previous topic when he looked up and met Chen Zhuo's calm gaze.

Chen Zhuo remained silent.

Just looking at him.

The physical constant that Wang had been talking about for a while suddenly got stuck in his throat.

He remembered the rules he had set at the noodle shop the night before.

He coughed twice, unscrewed the bottle cap, and took a big gulp of water.

The change of address was extremely abrupt.

"Uh—is the cafeteria far? I'm so hungry I could eat a whole cow."

Chen Zhuo withdrew his gaze.

"It's not far, just five hundred meters to the east."

The six of them walked along the tree-lined path toward the cafeteria.

Along the way, there were groups of three or five contestants arguing heatedly over a certain question.

The anxiety and frustration were so intense that they almost set the air above the campus ablaze.

The six members of the Jiangsu team walked among the crowd, yet maintained an extremely eerie silence.

No one talked about the three hours that had just passed.

Chen Zhuo walked at the front, like an invisible wall, blocking out all the interference and noise.

Enter the second canteen.

The place was already packed with people, and long queues had formed at the food windows.

The aroma of braised pork ribs with green beans blends together with the sweet and sour flavor of scrambled eggs with tomatoes.

Chen Zhuo found a clean stainless steel table in the corner.

Everyone split up to line up for food.

Before long, six stainless steel plates filled with food were placed on the table.

There was no small talk.

The only sound was the chopsticks hitting the plate.

Zhou Kai lowered his head and shoveled large mouthfuls of rice into his mouth.

Carbohydrates are broken down in the mouth, and the chewing action is extremely mechanical.

The four boys at the next table were slapping their thighs in frustration because the force analysis diagram for an electricity problem was drawn in the wrong direction.

Zhou Kai listened to those sounds.

He picked up a piece of braised pork and put it in his mouth.

He suddenly realized that the rule Chen Zhuo set last night was practically a bulletproof glass.

Without this glass, his hands would probably be shaking even when he holds chopsticks.

Lin Yi ate very slowly.

She squinted, clearly exhausted.

The chopsticks casually poked at the vegetables in the dish, and after a couple of bites, the person would stop to yawn.

Miao Shi'an ate with refined manners, chewing slowly and carefully.

He Gui, on the other hand, honestly ate every single dish on his plate clean.

twenty minutes.

Lunch is settled.

1:10 PM.

There are 50 minutes left before the afternoon's experimental exam.

The six people walked out of the cafeteria.

I didn't go back to the bus, nor did I wander around the playground.

Chen Zhuo led them to the comprehensive laboratory building where the afternoon exam would be held.

There is a long row of wooden benches in the lobby on the first floor for people to rest.

There weren't many people in the lobby at the moment, and it was very quiet.

"sit down."

Chen Zhuo pointed to the bench.

The six people sat down in a row.

Leaning against the wall.

"Close your eyes."

Chen Zhuo spoke very softly.

"Whether you can sleep or not, don't think about anything involving numbers, just clear your mind."

Lin Yi's breathing became heavy almost the instant his head hit the wall.

Wang, who spoke little, leaned back in his chair with his long legs stretched out, and soon began to snore softly.

Zhou Kai placed his hands on his abdomen with his chin slightly tucked in.

Chen Zhuo sat on the far side.

He did not close his eyes.

His gaze was fixed on the open space outside the hall, which was bathed in sunlight and appeared white.

The clockwork in my mind is slowly winding up again.

1:45 PM.

A series of chaotic footsteps echoed in the hallway.

The break time is over.

Teams from other provinces poured into the laboratory building one after another.

After fermenting for half a day, many people's faces turned very pale.

That was the lingering frustration and disappointment after discovering the answer was wrong that morning.

This emotion is like a slow poison, gradually eroding their mindset.

Chen Zhuo stood up.

He patted Gui on the shoulder next to him.

Everyone opened their eyes and stood up.

After more than half an hour of forced rest and carbohydrate replenishment, although the deep fatigue still lingered, the bloodshot in my eyes had faded considerably, and my gaze had regained focus.

"Let's go."

The loudspeaker in the corridor started playing.

Candidates are reminded to go to the laboratory to prepare for their individual experimental operation exam in the afternoon.

Several people straightened up.

I washed my face with cold water from the cafeteria restroom.

The cold water jolted him awake from his sleepy state.

1:50 PM.

Laboratory building.

The doors to all the physics labs are now open.

The security checks in the afternoon were more stringent than in the morning.

Besides your ID card and admission ticket, no stationery is allowed.

Pens, draft paper, rulers, and even erasers are all provided by the lab.

Chen Zhuo entered the examination room.

I found the spot I scouted out yesterday, the one on the right side of the aisle.

The laboratory now looks completely different from how it was empty yesterday afternoon.

On each lab table, there is a blue square plastic tray.

Next to the tray was a thick experimental test paper.

The air in the examination room carried a faint scent of pine resin and metal.

Chen Zhuo pulled out a chair and sat down.

He didn't look at the exam paper.

His gaze calmly fell on the blue plastic tray.

There was no sealed black plastic experimental box inside.

Advanced testing equipment without an LCD screen.

There are no standard terminals that are easy to plug and unplug.

The tray was filled with a jumble of extremely basic components.

Several thin copper wires of varying lengths, with only a small amount of insulation stripped from both ends.

An ordinary soldering iron with a plastic handle and its simple wire stand.

A palm-sized white breadboard covered with countless holes.

The color stripes on the several loose carbon film resistors were somewhat blurry.

Two ceramic capacitors.

A black, eight-pin integrated chip without any model number printed on it, its pins pressed into anti-static foam.

A small roll of tin wire and a small piece of dried-out yellow sponge.

There were also a few bare lenses that were not mounted on the bracket, with edges that had not even been finely polished and had some rough edges.

A simple laser pointer, secured to a metal clip with a rubber band.

This is all the equipment.

A very faint commotion began to emerge in the examination room.

It was a suppressed sense of bewilderment and helplessness.

The boy sitting to Chen Zhuo's left was clearly from a prestigious high school that was used to using top-of-the-line experimental equipment.

He stared at the pile of junk on the tray.

My hand hovered in mid-air for a long time, not knowing where to start.

He was used to plugging the wires into the red and black terminals and looking at the readings on the screen.

He had never dealt with a bare chip without an instruction manual before, let alone knew the interconnection rules inside a breadboard.

Faced with the bare lens, he didn't even know how to make it stand steadily on the table, let alone adjust the coaxiality.

Geniuses accustomed to foolproof operations experienced a brief malfunction when faced with the raw, unfiltered nature of physics.

Two o'clock in the afternoon.

The doorbell rang on time.

"Start operation."

The proctor's voice echoed in the quiet laboratory.

Most people immediately opened the exam paper, trying to find the instructions for assembling these broken things from the questions.

Chen Zhuo did not turn the page.

He extended his right hand without any hesitation.

He picked up the black power plug of the soldering iron from the corner of the table and accurately plugged it into the power socket under the table.

Then he picked up the shriveled yellow sponge from the tray.

I stood up and walked to the water tank at the edge of the laboratory.

Turn on the tap.

When water is poured onto a sponge, the shriveled sponge instantly absorbs water and expands.

Chen Zhuo squeezed out the excess water from the sponge with one hand until it was in a perfect state of being slightly moist but not dripping wet.

He walked back to his seat and put the sponge back on the edge of the tray.

At this point, the soldering iron had already started to heat up.

Chen Zhuo picked up the soldering iron.

With his other hand, he pulled a piece of solder wire from the rosin core.

The soldering iron tip contacts the solder wire.

There was no unfamiliarity, no hesitation.

A wisp of white smoke rose instantly, accompanied by the unique, slightly pungent aroma of rosin melting when heated, spreading to Chen Zhuo's nose.

Chen Zhuo slightly turned his wrist.

He quickly rubbed it twice on the freshly damp sponge.

"Hiss~"

A small wisp of steam rose up.

The excess oxide layer on the tip of the soldering iron was wiped away, revealing a bright, silvery-white, evenly coated layer of solder.

Chen Zhuo put the prepared soldering iron back onto the wire stand.

After doing all this.

While others in the exam hall were still staring blankly at the individual components, or flipping through the exam paper trying to understand the underlying principles.

Chen Zhuo calmly reached out his hand to the exposed, uninstructed eight-pin chip.

This is their daily routine, repeated countless times, in the Jinling laboratory, facing that pile of scrap metal.

There is no advanced kit.

The essence of physics has always started with these most primitive, disjointed components.

Chen Zhuo opened the first page of the experimental test paper.