The thirty-minute extreme blind test was over.
Wang Huashao stared at the draft paper in front of him. It was a complete mess of corrections, the lines tangled into knots.
He ran a hand through his hair in frustration.
Beside him, Zhou Kai didn’t move.
He remained in the same posture, pen in hand, eyes locked on the half-written nonlinear algebraic equation on his paper.
The tip of his pen rested on the paper, the ink bleeding into a tiny black dot.
He knew he’d hit a dead end, but mental inertia kept him searching for a way out.
Chen Zhuo was sprawled over the third lab bench.
He wasn’t asleep.
He just had his face buried in his folded arms.
His eyes were closed.
His nostrils filled with the lab’s characteristic scent—a mix of old wood and rosin, from a place that rarely saw sunlight.
His right hand hung limply off the edge of the bench.
Professor Wang didn’t rush them.
He left the lecturer’s desk, walked down the aisle, and collected the papers from Zhou Kai and Wang Huashao.
Returning to the front, Professor Wang added the two sheets that Chen Zhuo and Lin Yi had submitted earlier to the pile.
Six sheets of paper.
Gathered in Professor Wang’s hands.
He walked back to the lecturer’s desk.
He pulled over the peeling wooden chair and sat down.
He didn’t look at the papers right away.
Instead, he rolled them into a tube and held it in his hand.
The lab was silent.
The only sounds were the occasional chirp of cicadas from outside and the rustling of sycamore leaves in the wind.
"Zhou Kai."
Professor Wang spoke.
His voice was level, devoid of any mockery—just a statement of fact.
Zhou Kai looked up.
"You wrote four equations on your paper."
Professor Wang unrolled the papers, pulled one out, and glanced at it.
"You tried using Kirchhoff’s laws to calculate node voltages and reverse-engineer the topology."
"It’s a sophisticated approach. If the box contained only pure resistors, you might have even solved it."
Professor Wang looked at Zhou Kai.
"But there are diodes inside."
"The direction of the diodes is unknown. When you assume a current direction to build your equations, your entire network topology changes if that direction is reverse-biased."
"Every unknown you defined was just you lying to yourself."
Zhou Kai’s lips tightened into a thin line.
He didn’t speak.
Nor did he have any dramatic reaction.
He just slowly reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
The moment he heard Professor Wang’s analysis, the anxiety from failing to solve the problem suddenly vanished.
In its place was a profound sense of resignation.
He knew where he’d gone wrong.
Overcomplicating a simple problem, using high-level math to cover up his neglect of the underlying physical logic.
It was the kind of arrogance people like him were most prone to.
Professor Wang set Zhou Kai’s paper aside and pulled out the second sheet.
It looked like a tangled mess.
"Wang Huashao."
The boy whose name was called flinched slightly.
He was slumped over his desk, only the top of his head visible.
"Four terminals, including positive and negative, makes a total of twelve directional variables."
Professor Wang’s tone remained even.
"You were just randomly poking around with the probes."
"By the time you measured the fifth one, did you still remember the polarity and resistance of the first?"
Wang Huashao buried his face in his arms, letting out a faint, frustrated sigh.
"One should not place blind faith in one’s own brain."
"Especially when you’re exhausted and dealing with disordered information."
"You were running around like a headless chicken, and it’s not because you aren’t smart."
"It’s because you’re too confident in your own cleverness, too disdainful to use a brute-force method like taking notes."
Professor Wang put down Wang Huashao’s paper.
And picked up the third and fourth sheets.
"Miao Shian, He Gui."
Professor Wang glanced at the two boys.
"For the first twenty minutes, the two of you were just like them."
"But in the last ten minutes, you chose to give up."
Miao Shian’s fingers, in the middle of pushing up his glasses, paused.
He Gui nervously fiddled with the hem of his shirt.
"One of you started methodically making a list, the other started checking every possibility with the most rigid method."
"You were slow."
"But backed into a corner, you found the most reliable bottom line for dealing with an unknown system."
"Recording, and exhaustive search."
Professor Wang put all the draft papers down.
He stood up.
And picked up half a piece of chalk from the chalk box.
He turned to face the blackboard.
The chalk scraped against the board with a crisp CLACK, CLACK.
A horizontal line. A vertical line.
Three horizontal lines. Three vertical lines.
A neat 4x4 matrix appeared in the center of the blackboard.
The diagonal was crossed out with large X’s.
The rows and columns were labeled A, B, C, and D.
Finished.
Professor Wang turned around and, with a chalk-dusted hand, pointed to the grid on the board.
"Some people think that making a table and testing each possibility one by one is a ’dumb method,’ that it has no technical merit."
Professor Wang’s gaze swept over the boys below.
Finally, it rested on Chen Zhuo, who was still slumped over his desk.
Chen Zhuo had already opened his eyes at the sound of the chalk.
But he didn’t sit up.
He maintained his slumped posture, chin resting on his arms, looking at the blackboard through his glasses.
"In physics, this is called black box testing."
"This table is called a transfer matrix."
Professor Wang’s fingers tapped the blackboard twice, hard.
"When you’re faced with a completely unknown, complex system..."
"Don’t try to guess what’s inside. Don’t bet on your intuition."
"List all the inputs. Exhaustively test all the outputs."
"Take a complex physical topology problem that overloads your brain..."
"...and reduce its dimension to a pure data-entry exercise that requires no thought."
The lab was so quiet you could hear everyone breathing.
"As long as you fill out your grid completely, as long as your execution is as rigid as a machine’s..."
"...all the nonlinear components, all the hidden short circuits..."
"...will reveal themselves in this table."
"The truth will emerge from the data on its own."
Wang Huashao slowly lifted his head.
He looked at the ridiculously simple 4x4 grid on the blackboard.
He just bit his lower lip in frustration.
Zhou Kai sat there.
He reached for a clean sheet of draft paper.
And uncapped his pen.
Silently, stroke by stroke, he drew the grid from the blackboard onto his paper.
Drawing the horizontal lines.
Drawing the vertical lines.
He was internalizing it.
Internalizing the clarity of taking a tangled mess and forcibly cutting it into structured data.
He was thoroughly convinced.
Professor Wang watched their reactions.
Without another unnecessary word.
He walked back to the lecturer’s desk and bent down.
CRASH~
There was a dull thud of metal and plastic colliding.
Professor Wang dragged a huge, dusty cardboard box out from under the desk.
He heaved the box onto the desk.
It was filled to the brim.
Full of discarded old radio motherboards, complex breadboards, and electronic components blackened by oxidation.
It gave off the strong, stale smell of old e-waste.
"Alright."
Professor Wang clapped the dust from his hands.
"Have you all come to your senses?"
He glanced at the wall clock.
It was exactly three in the afternoon.
"Two and a half hours until dinner."
Professor Wang pointed to the large cardboard box.
"Now, come up and grab a board."
The boys below stared, stunned for a moment.
"Use that ’dumb method’ you just learned, the one you looked down on."
There was no room for negotiation in Professor Wang’s tone.
"I want you to find every hidden short circuit and every cold solder joint on these boards, one by one."
"Don’t guess with your brain. Use your draft paper to draw tables, and use your multimeters to fill in the data."
"Practice until it’s muscle memory."
A wave of resigned sighs swept through the lab.
Chen Zhuo, who was still slumped over his desk.
His shoulders slumped.
Slowly, with a million protests, he sat up straight.
He reached up and rubbed the red mark on the side of his face where he’d been leaning.
Then, he picked up the multimeter from the desk.
The first bench.
Professor Wang walked over and tapped the desk, not too hard and not too soft, with the rolled-up papers.
Lin Yi, who was sprawled out there, was jolted from her sleep.
Like a fish out of water, she turned over with extreme reluctance.
Then, she slowly pushed herself up.
Her hair was a mess, with a few stray strands sticking up on top of her head.
She rubbed her eyes. A red line from the zipper of her canvas bag was imprinted on her cheek.
"Huh? Is it time to eat?"
Lin Yi mumbled groggily.
Professor Wang ignored her and pulled a dusty, complex old motherboard from the box, tossing it directly in front of Lin Yi.
"If you’re done resting, get to work."
"Intuition is a gift from the heavens, but you still have to master the fundamentals for me."
Lin Yi looked at the filthy board in front of her.
Her nose caught the stale, dusty smell.
She let out a super-exaggerated, theatrical sigh.
Without any resistance.
She unzipped her canvas bag and found a pen.
And resignedly began to work.
「For the next two and a half hours.」
The lab was no longer filled with the previous sense of impatient, blind panic.
Six people.
Six lab benches.
In front of each of them lay draft paper covered in grids.
Throughout the room.
There was only the soft scraping sound of metal probe tips touching the solder points on the motherboards.
The clicking of selector dials turning.
And the scratching of gel pens recording data on paper.
The sunlight shifted bit by bit.
As it retreated from the hallway windows, the light inside the lab began to dim.
The smell of rosin in the air grew stronger.
It was an extremely tedious task, like defusing mines on an industrial assembly line.
An endless repetition: locate, apply voltage, record, change nodes.
Chen Zhuo sat in his chair.
Staring at the rows of data on his draft paper.
The web of his right hand was a little stiff.
He put down the probes, shook out his hand, and picked up his pen again to write down a resistance value.
Lin Yi propped her head on her hand.
The black probe rested on one solder point while the red probe moved to another.
Her eyes on the multimeter’s needle, she drew an X on her paper.
Then moved on to the next point.
Her movements weren’t fast, but they were methodical.
When she occasionally encountered a spot thick with dust, she’d wipe it away with her thumb, completely unconcerned that her finger was getting smudged gray and black.
「5:30 PM.」
The light outside had turned a deep orange-red.
"Time’s up."
Professor Wang’s voice was like a royal pardon.
In the lab.
Almost simultaneously, six heavy exhales could be heard.
Probes were tossed onto desks.
Draft papers were pushed aside.
The boys were like puddles of mud that had been drained dry.
They slumped into their chairs.
"Clean up. Class dismissed."
Professor Wang rolled up the attendance book he was holding, clasped his hands behind his back, and slowly walked out of the lab.

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