My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Fourth day.

evening.

The cafeteria was filled with the aroma of stir-fried green peppers with pork and stir-fried tomatoes with eggs.

The clinking of stainless steel plates echoed throughout the room.

Mo Xiaoyu, carrying a tray, sat opposite Zhang Bai and Li Nanbai.

She only took half a portion of rice and barely touched the vegetables.

Her eyes were a little red.

The mock exam in the afternoon was significantly more difficult.

Mo Xiaoyu spent a full hour stuck on the second-to-last question.

She used three methods, and each time she found that the conditions were insufficient when she was halfway through the derivation.

The suffocating feeling of watching time slip away helplessly almost brought her to tears when she handed in her paper.

They are separated by two aisles.

Chen Zhuo, Zhou Kai, and Lin Yi sat at a table.

Mo Xiaoyu picked up her rice with chopsticks and said something in a low voice.

"Look at them."

Zhang Bai and Li Nanbai followed Mo Xiaoyu's gaze.

Lin Yi was listlessly picking at the green pepper strips on his plate.

Zhou Kai held a steamed bun in his hand, but his eyes were fixed on a piece of draft paper on the corner of the table. He muttered to himself, seemingly still reviewing the questions from the afternoon. Meanwhile, Chen Zhuo...

He was eating with chopsticks in one hand and resting his other hand on a thick book lying open on the table.

It was an English journal that he had borrowed from the library.

The noise in the cafeteria seemed to have no effect on him at all.

"How did they manage to do that?"

Mo Xiaoyu's voice trembled slightly.

"Zhou Kai is still working himself to the bone on those insanely difficult tests every day, Lin Yi is acting like nothing's wrong, and Chen Zhuo... he even has the energy to look at other things." Mo Xiaoyu lowered her head.

"I think I might not be suited to studying math at all. My brain was completely blank this afternoon, and I panicked whenever I saw a problem."

Zhang Bai remained silent.

He took a couple of bites of rice, but found it hard to swallow.

Chen Zhuo finished the last bite of rice on his plate.

He closed the book and held it in his hand.

I stood up, picked up my tray, and prepared to go to the recycling bin.

Chen Zhuo stopped as he passed Mo Xiaoyu's table.

Chen Zhuo glanced at the almost untouched food on Mo Xiaoyu's plate, then looked at her slightly reddened eyes.

He felt around in his pocket.

He took out a mint wrapped in clear candy paper.

Lin gave it to me after lunch.

Chen Zhuo bent down slightly and gently placed the mint next to Mo Xiaoyu's plate.

"National competitions are not about who is smarter."

Chen Zhuo looked at the somewhat tense girl and spoke in a steady voice.

"It's a contest of who can burn out their stamina the slowest."

Mo Xiaoyu was stunned.

"If I encounter a problem that I'm stuck on and haven't figured out how to solve within fifteen minutes, I just give up."

Chen Zhuo held the plate in one hand, looking very relaxed.

"If you get bogged down in one problem, the mental effort you expend will cause you to make mistakes on the easier problems later on. It's not worth it."

He pointed to Mo Xiaoyu's plate.

"Eat your fill these next few days, and don't study tonight, not even look at the questions you got wrong. Take a hot bath and get a good night's sleep."

Mo Xiaoyu raised her head and looked at Chen Zhuo.

The tears in my eyes did not fall.

Chen Zhu left those words behind, picked up his tray, and left.

Zhang Bai and Li Nanbai looked at the mint candy placed on the table.

She glanced again at Chen Zhuo's retreating figure.

They suddenly felt that the sense of oppression they had felt due to the gap in grades had largely disappeared.

In this small team of six people.

Some people are responsible for anxiety, some for relentless effort, and some for exceptional talent.

Chen Zhuo is the one who walks ahead of everyone else and tells you at crucial moments that it's okay, throwing you the ballast stone directly.

Mo Xiaoyu took a deep breath.

I reached out and picked up the mint, tore off the wrapper, and popped it into my mouth.

The coolness of the mint spread down my throat.

On the fifth night.

The seminar room after evening self-study.

The newlyweds have all gone back to the guesthouse.

Lin Yi also went to bed early.

Zhou Kai remained seated without moving.

Two sheets of paper covered with dense writing were placed in front of him.

These were the traces he left behind after spending three nights using the most traditional geometric theorems and algebraic equations to painstakingly reverse-engineer Chen Zhuo's matrix solution method. Chen Zhuo returned from the library and went into the seminar room to get his bag.

"team leader."

Zhou Kai called out to him.

Chen Zhuo walked over.

Zhou Kai pushed the draft paper in front of Chen Zhuo.

"The orthogonal transformation you used in that problem the day before yesterday."

Zhou Kai pointed to a formula on the paper that had been derived to the last third, his brow furrowed.

"I've tried to get to this point using traditional methods, but I just can't separate these three variables. The logical leap here is too big, and I can't find the transition conditions." Chen Zhuo pulled out the chair next to Zhou Kai and sat down.

He carefully read through Zhou Kai's derivation process.

Two whole pages.

Every step is supported by extremely rigorous logic, without any shortcuts, and is entirely based on the most solid fundamentals.

Chen Zhuo stared at it for a full two minutes before letting out a soft sigh.

He picked up Zhou Kai's pen and drew a circle next to the stuck formula.

"Your derivation is flawless; your foundation is as solid as it gets."

Chen Zhuo reached out and patted Zhou Kai on the shoulder.

"Traditional methods have reached their limit here; going any further would be beyond human calculation."

Chen Zhuo wrote a determinant symbol next to it.

"The reason you can't separate it is because you're still looking at this problem from a three-dimensional perspective."

He wrote those three variables into the matrix.

"Upgrade it to a higher dimension, treat it as a linear mapping in a four-dimensional space, and these three variables become a whole. You don't need to separate them; just directly calculate its eigenvalues." Chen Zhuo quickly wrote down a few lines of the transformation process on the paper.

That complex algebraic expression was directly transformed into a simple quadratic equation in one variable.

Zhou Kai stared at those few lines of text.

He went through Chen Zhuo's train of thought in his mind.

What was originally a tangled mess of conditions instantly disintegrated and became clearly distinct from a higher-dimensional perspective.

"Understood."

Zhou Kai let out a long breath.

He leaned back in his chair, looking at his two pages of draft paper filled with writing, and then at Chen Zhuo's few simple lines of writing.

"Isn't my method a bit stupid?" Zhou Kai chuckled self-deprecatingly.

"What nonsense are you spouting?"

Chen Zhu threw the pen on the table and leaned back.

"Tools can only solve efficiency problems, but your ability to deduce things so thoroughly is the most scarce. When it comes to building the real thing, no one dares to entrust their life to someone who only knows how to find shortcuts." Zhou Kai raised his head and looked at Chen Zhuo.

Chen Zhuo stood up, picked up his backpack, and casually slung it over his shoulder.

"Let's go back to sleep."

Coach's office.

Coach Xu sat at his desk.

The incandescent light bulb overhead emitted a slight hum.

The desk was piled high with all the mock exam papers from the past few days for the six students.

Coach Xu was holding a red pen and looking at Mo Xiaoyu's test paper today.

He drew a wavy line in the middle of a major problem and wrote a note: "[Note the implicit boundary conditions; the discussion is incomplete]". Then he turned to Zhang Bai's exam paper.

A checkmark was placed next to a tedious proof process: "[The idea is correct, but it takes too long. Optimization of the path is recommended]".

Scroll down further.

It was Lin Yi's exam paper.

The answer section is largely empty.

At the very bottom, there was only a solitary conclusion.

Coach Xu sighed, put down his pen, and rubbed his temples.

He couldn't correct this kind of person because her thought process wasn't recorded on paper at all.

Finally, he pulled out Chen Zhuo's exam paper.

Every single one is like this.

Clean, tidy, and symmetrical.

Not a single word wasted.

All steps are based on impeccable high-dimensional logic.

Coach Xu held the red pen and hovered it over the test paper for a long time.

He tried to find even one 0.5 point of inaccuracy that could be deducted.

but.

There wasn't a single punctuation mark.

Coach Xu covered the red pen.

Take Chen Zhuo's exam paper out separately and set it aside.

I picked up my thermos and took a sip of the green tea, which was already starting to taste a bit bitter.

He has led the provincial team for so many terms.

I have seen all kinds of geniuses.

Some are so diligent it's heartbreaking, some are so intelligent it's enviable, and some are so fragile they break at the slightest touch.

But he had never met anyone like Chen Zhuo.

This person sat there like an outsider.

He had no competitive spirit regarding these questions.

He was just doing his job.

Moreover, it was accomplished with an absolute crushing victory.