He looked at the envelope on the table, a complex mix of emotions in his eyes.
There was happiness and pride, but also an indescribable sense of loss.
"Take it."
Old Zhao pushed the envelope forward.
Chen Zhuo reached out and took the envelope.
Without opening it, he put it directly into the bag he was holding.
Then.
Chen Zhuo opened the bag.
From inside, he took out several notebooks with slightly worn covers.
Four in total.
Two for math, and two for physics.
Chen Zhuo placed the notebooks on the desk, pushing them toward Old Zhao and Old Zhou.
"What’s this?" Old Zhao set down his cattail fan and glanced over.
"Notes," Chen Zhuo said.
Old Zhao froze for a moment.
"Yours?"
Chen Zhuo nodded.
"I’ve been compiling them over the past six months or so."
"They cover junior high, high school, and some approaches for competitions."
Chen Zhuo looked at them.
"I didn’t organize them by the textbook Chapters. I structured them by the logical flow of problem types and key concepts. They include some problem-solving methods I’ve come up with, as well as some common traps people fall into."
Chen Zhuo leaned back in his chair.
"I’m going to Huizhou, so I won’t need these anymore. I’d like to leave them for you two."
Chen Zhuo gestured at the notebooks.
"In the future, when you’re teaching new students or training promising candidates for competitions, if you think these are useful, you can show them."
"If you don’t find them useful, you can use them to prop up a table leg."
The office fell silent.
Old Zhao and Old Zhou exchanged a look.
Old Zhao reached out and picked up the top math notebook.
He opened it to the first page.
The handwriting was clear, with no corrections.
There were no long-winded explanations.
Just line after line of equations and auxiliary lines drawn with a ruler.
Old Zhao flipped through a few more pages, raising an eyebrow.
It was too direct.
This was a top-down deconstruction.
It took complex, convoluted competition problems and, using the most fundamental, essential mathematical logic, dismantled them step-by-step, as clean as disassembling a machine.
"This geometry problem..."
Old Zhao pointed to one of the pages.
"You didn’t use the usual trigonometric function conversions?"
Chen Zhuo glanced at it.
"No need. The core of that problem is a cyclic quadrilateral. Using Ptolemy’s theorem and drawing one auxiliary line gives you the answer in two steps. Using trig functions is too cumbersome; it’s easy to make a mistake in the intermediate calculations."
Old Zhao stared at the simple auxiliary line.
After a moment of silence, he closed the notebook.
Old Zhou picked up one of the physics notebooks below.
He opened it.
He read for a few minutes.
Old Zhou’s reaction was even more direct than Old Zhao’s.
He stood up from behind the desk and walked over to the small blackboard on the side of the office.
He picked up a piece of chalk.
"Chen Zhuo." Old Zhou’s back was to him.
He drew a pulley system on the blackboard with a spring and a block hanging from it.
"This force analysis model you wrote about."
Old Zhou drew a force vector with an arrow on the pulley.
"Under extreme conditions, if the spring’s deformation exceeds its elastic limit, wouldn’t the law of conservation of momentum that you listed later no longer apply?"
Old Zhou turned his head and looked at Chen Zhuo.
This wasn’t a test.
It was an instinctive question from Old Zhou, the physics teacher, upon seeing a completely new problem-solving approach.
Chen Zhuo remained seated.
He looked at the diagram on the blackboard.
"The law would no longer apply,"
Chen Zhuo said.
"But this model doesn’t require conservation of momentum."
Chen Zhuo stood up.
He walked to the blackboard.
He took the chalk from Old Zhou’s hand.
Next to the block, he drew a coordinate axis with a dashed line.
"Exceeding the elastic limit falls into the category of inelastic collisions. There’s energy loss."
The chalk tapped crisply against the blackboard.
"You can just use the concept of calculus and slice this deformation process into infinitely small segments."
Chen Zhuo wrote an integral sign on the blackboard.
"Integrate the work done by the force, and what you end up with is its final resting position."
Chen Zhuo finished writing the final step.
He tossed the chalk into the chalk box on the lectern.
He dusted the chalk off his hands.
Turning, he looked at Old Zhou.
"For the models in this notebook, I’ve broadened the boundary conditions. That way, students won’t panic when they encounter variations of the problem."
Chen Zhuo walked back to his chair.
Old Zhou stood before the blackboard.
He stared for a long time at the concise result derived using calculus.
Then, he walked back to the desk.
He closed the physics notebook.
He patted the cover lightly twice with his hand.
"Good stuff."
Old Zhou’s voice was a bit low.
"It’s a bit overkill showing this to junior high students."
Old Zhou looked at Chen Zhuo.
"Seriously, kid. How is your brain even wired?"
Chen Zhuo took a sip of water from his paper cup.
"Just have to read a lot of books,"
Chen Zhuo said.
Old Zhao gathered the two math notebooks, opened a drawer, and placed them inside.
Old Zhou also put away the physics notebooks.
They didn’t say "thank you."
For notes of this caliber, a "thank you" would have felt too light.
This was a kind of legacy.
Chen Zhuo was leaving all the thoughts from his time in this small town, from his entire junior high period, right here in this stuffy office.
With the main business concluded,
Chen Zhuo didn’t immediately get up to leave.
He sat in his chair and touched his nose.
He looked at the two teachers opposite him, his gaze shifting slightly.
He seemed a little embarrassed.
"Actually..."
Chen Zhuo began, his voice a little softer than before.
"Bringing the notebooks today... I actually wanted to ask you two for a favor."
Old Zhao, who had just been closing the drawer, stopped when he heard this.

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