The fourth day.
Evening.
The cafeteria was filled with the smell of stir-fried green peppers with pork and stir-fried tomatoes with eggs.
Mo Xiaoyu carried her tray and sat across from Zhang Bai and Li Nanbai.
She had only gotten a half-serving of rice, and she’d barely touched her other food.
Her eyes were a little red.
The difficulty of that afternoon’s practice test had ramped up sharply.
Mo Xiaoyu had been stuck on the second-to-last problem for a full hour.
She tried three different methods, and each time, she realized halfway through her derivation that she didn’t have enough information.
That suffocating feeling of helplessness as she watched the clock tick down had almost brought her to tears the moment she turned in her paper.
Two aisles away.
Chen Zhuo, Zhou Kai, and Lin Yi were sitting at another table.
Mo Xiaoyu poked at her rice with her chopsticks and spoke in a low voice.
"Look at them."
Zhang Bai and Li Nanbai followed her gaze.
Lin Yi was listlessly picking at the slivers of green pepper on her tray.
Zhou Kai was holding a steamed bun, but his eyes were fixed on a piece of scratch paper at the corner of the table. He was muttering to himself, apparently still reviewing the afternoon’s problems.
And then there was Chen Zhuo.
He was eating with his chopsticks in one hand, while his other hand rested on a thick, open book on the table.
It was an English-language academic journal he had checked out from the library.
The noise of the cafeteria didn’t seem to affect him at all.
"How in the world do they do it?"
Mo Xiaoyu’s voice trembled slightly.
"We get such insane tests every day. Zhou Kai is still grinding away at them, Lin Yi acts like it’s nothing, and Chen Zhuo... he even has the energy to read other things."
Mo Xiaoyu lowered her head.
"I don’t think I’m cut out for math at all. My brain was a total mess this afternoon. I just panicked when I saw the problems."
Zhang Bai was silent.
He shoveled a couple of mouthfuls of rice into his mouth, but found it hard to swallow.
Chen Zhuo finished the last bite of food on his tray.
He closed his book and picked it up.
He stood, grabbing his tray to take it to the return station.
As he passed Mo Xiaoyu’s table, Chen Zhuo stopped.
Chen Zhuo glanced at the nearly untouched food on Mo Xiaoyu’s tray, then at her slightly red eyes.
He felt around in his pocket.
He pulled out a mint candy wrapped in clear cellophane.
Lin Yi had given it to him after lunch.
Chen Zhuo bent down slightly and gently placed the mint candy next to Mo Xiaoyu’s tray.
"The national finals aren’t about who’s smarter."
Chen Zhuo looked at the tense girl, his voice calm and steady.
"It’s about whose stamina runs out slowest."
Mo Xiaoyu stared, stunned.
"If you get stuck on a problem and have no ideas after fifteen minutes, drop it."
Chen Zhuo held his tray with one hand, his posture relaxed.
"Wrestling with one problem like this drains so much mental energy that you’ll start making mistakes on the easier ones later. It’s not worth it."
He gestured at her tray.
"For the next few days, make sure you eat properly. Don’t look at any books when you get back tonight. Don’t even look at the problems you got wrong. Take a hot shower and get a good night’s sleep."
Mo Xiaoyu looked up at Chen Zhuo.
The tears in her eyes didn’t fall.
With that, Chen Zhuo turned and walked away with his tray.
Zhang Bai and Li Nanbai stared at the mint candy on the table.
Then they watched Chen Zhuo’s retreating back.
They suddenly felt that the oppressive feeling caused by the gap in their scores had mostly vanished.
Mo Xiaoyu took a deep breath.
She reached for the mint, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth.
The cool sensation of the mint spread down her throat.
The evening of the fifth day.
In the seminar room after evening self-study had ended.
The newcomers had all returned to the guest house.
Lin Yi had also gone back to sleep early.
Zhou Kai sat unmoving in his seat.
In front of him were two sheets of scratch paper, densely covered in writing.
They were the result of three nights spent using the most traditional geometric theorems and algebraic equations to reverse-engineer Chen Zhuo’s matrix-based solution method.
Chen Zhuo returned from the library and walked into the seminar room to get his backpack.
"Captain."
Zhou Kai called out to him.
Chen Zhuo walked over.
Zhou Kai pushed the scratch paper in front of him.
"That problem from the day before yesterday, the orthogonal transformation you used."
Zhou Kai pointed to a formula about two-thirds of the way down the page, his brow furrowed.
"I used the traditional method to get to this step, but I just can’t separate these three variables. The logical leap here is too big; I can’t find the transitional condition."
Chen Zhuo pulled out the chair next to Zhou Kai and sat down.
He carefully looked over Zhou Kai’s derivation process.
Two full pages.
Every step was supported by extremely rigorous logic, with no shortcuts—just the most solid fundamentals.
Chen Zhuo studied it for a full two minutes before sighing softly.
He picked up Zhou Kai’s pen and drew a circle around the formula where he was stuck.
"There’s nothing wrong with your derivation. Your fundamentals couldn’t be more solid."
Chen Zhuo reached out and patted Zhou Kai’s shoulder.
"With the traditional method, this is the absolute limit. Going any further isn’t something that can be calculated by hand."
Chen Zhuo wrote the symbol for a determinant next to it.
"The reason you can’t separate them is that you’re still looking at the problem from a three-dimensional perspective."
He wrote the three variables into a matrix.
"If you elevate its dimension and view it as a linear map in a four-dimensional space, these three variables become a single entity. You don’t need to separate them; you can just find its eigenvalue directly."
Chen Zhuo quickly wrote a few lines of the transformation process on the paper.
He turned the complex algebraic expression directly into a simple quadratic equation.
Zhou Kai stared at those few lines.
He followed Chen Zhuo’s line of thought, running it through his mind.
The conditions, which had been like a tangled, knotted mess, instantly unraveled from this higher-dimensional perspective, becoming perfectly clear and distinct.
"I get it."
Zhou Kai let out a long breath.
He leaned back in his chair, looking at his own two pages of dense scratch work, and then at Chen Zhuo’s few simple lines.
"My method... is it really stupid?" Zhou Kai laughed self-deprecatingly.
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
Chen Zhuo tossed the pen on the table and leaned back.
"Tools only solve problems of efficiency. But your ability to build a derivation with such a perfectly solid foundation is the rarest thing of all. When it’s time to build something real, no one would dare entrust their life to someone who only knows how to look for shortcuts."
Zhou Kai looked up at Chen Zhuo.
Chen Zhuo stood up, grabbed his backpack, and casually slung it over his shoulder.
"Let’s go. Time to get some sleep."
The coach’s office.
Coach Xu sat at his desk.
The incandescent light overhead emitted a faint hum.
Piled on his desk were all the practice tests from the six students over the past few days.
Coach Xu held a red pen, looking over Mo Xiaoyu’s paper from today.
He drew a wavy line under an intermediate step on a major problem and wrote a note: [Mind the implicit boundary conditions. Incomplete discussion.]
Then he flipped to Zhang Bai’s test paper.
Next to a tedious proof process, he made a check mark: [Correct line of thought, but took too long. Suggest optimizing the path.]
He flipped further down the stack.
It was Lin Yi’s paper.
A large part of the answer area was blank.
Only a single, lonely conclusion was written at the very bottom.
Coach Xu sighed, put down his pen, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
He had no way to grade someone like this, because her thought process was never even recorded on the paper.
Finally, he pulled out Chen Zhuo’s test paper.
Every single one was the same.
Clean, neat, symmetrical.
Not a single wasted word.
Every step was built upon an unassailable high-dimensional logic.
Coach Xu held his red pen, hovering it over the paper for a long time.
He tried to find even a single, tiny imprecision where he could deduct half a point.
But there was nothing.
Not even a misplaced punctuation mark.
Coach Xu capped his red pen.
He separated Chen Zhuo’s paper from the rest and set it aside.
He picked up his thermos and took a sip of the slightly bitter green tea.
He had coached so many provincial teams.
He had seen all sorts of geniuses.
Some were so hardworking it was heartbreaking, some so brilliant it inspired jealousy, and some so psychologically fragile they would shatter at the slightest touch.
But he had never seen anyone like Chen Zhuo.
The man sat there like an outsider.
He had no desire to win or lose against these problems.
He was simply completing a job.
And he was completing it with an air of absolute, crushing dominance.

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