The most terrifying thing was the scratch paper next to Chen Zhuo’s hand.
There were no diagrams on it.
Just line after line of equations that made his scalp tingle.
The integral symbol, ∫.
The differential symbol, d.
And the natural logarithm, ln.
He had heard about these symbols in his third-year middle school advanced math class. The teacher said it was stuff you didn’t learn until high school or even college, used to calculate the area under curves and rates of change.
But under Chen Zhuo’s pen, those symbols were combined as casually as if they were simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
The final resulting formula was so long it made his head spin.
’What is this?’
’Is this fucking middle school physics?’
Li Hao felt his entire worldview start to shake.
Just moments ago, he had been scratching his head over a problem on the Coriolis force, even needing the teacher to remind him to use conservation of energy to avoid a complex force analysis.
He had always thought he was the best physics student in the school, the one at the very top of the pyramid.
He thought the competition was just about pushing middle school physics formulas to their absolute limit, to use them in flashy, clever ways.
But in that moment, he suddenly discovered something.
The pyramid he was desperately trying to climb was perhaps just a stepping stone under the other boy’s feet.
He was solving problems.
But Chen Zhuo was doing research.
He was calculating how many centimeters a buoyant sphere would sink.
But this kid... he was calculating... rockets?
Li Hao’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.
"What the hell is he even looking at..."
He screamed internally.
Li Hao subconsciously looked up at Chen Zhuo’s profile.
Chen Zhuo still hadn’t moved.
His gaze was vacant, not focused on the book, but fixed on some point in the empty air.
It was as if a rocket was flying there at high speed, accelerating and changing shape along with his thoughts.
Just then, Chen Zhuo seemed to sense something and turned his head slightly.
Their eyes met for a second.
Chen Zhuo’s gaze was calm, even a little unfocused. It was the daze of someone interrupted during deep thought.
He didn’t speak, nor did he cover his scratch paper. He just gave Li Hao a faint glance before turning back to stare at the integral symbol.
It was as if Li Hao were nothing more than a speck of dust in the air.
Li Hao felt his face flush.
It wasn’t shame, but an indescribable feeling of powerlessness that came from having his confidence shattered.
Li Hao silently walked away.
He returned to his seat and sat down.
After sitting down, he stared at the buoyancy problem that had been driving him crazy just moments before.
’Suddenly, this problem... doesn’t seem so hard anymore, does it?’
After all, compared to that red book full of indecipherable scrawls, this was at least something a human could understand.
At least he didn’t have to look up Russian words that looked like a jumble of random characters.
Li Hao took a deep breath and picked up his pen again.
This time, the tip of his pen pressed down harder, as if to vent all the shock he had just received onto this test paper.
’Even a test-taker has his pride!’
5:00 PM.
The dismissal bell rang right on time.
"RING RING RING—"
The shrill bell shattered the stagnant air in the lab.
Li Hao and Zhang Wei let out a long breath at almost the same time, like two drowning men finally breaking the surface of the water.
The two of them slumped in their chairs, feeling completely drained.
Two hours of high-intensity problem-solving. Who knew how many brain cells they had lost.
"Papers in."
Old Zhou’s voice sounded at just the right moment.
He had already finished his newspaper and was now holding his tea mug, gazing at the scenery outside the window.
The two boys quickly got up and respectfully placed their papers on the teacher’s desk.
"Alright, get lost."
Old Zhou waved his hand.
"I’ll go over them next Tuesday. Go home and get your correction notebooks ready."
"Goodbye, Teacher."
As if granted amnesty, the two of them slung their bags over their shoulders and fled the oppressive room.
As he reached the door, Li Hao couldn’t help but glance back at the corner.
Chen Zhuo was still sitting there.
Still looking at the same page.
It seemed like he had only turned two pages all afternoon.
Only Old Zhou and Chen Zhuo were left in the lab.
Old Zhou put down his tea mug and lit a cigarette.
"Hey."
He called out.
Only then did Chen Zhuo slowly look up, as if waking from a deep dream. The haze of being lost in a mental labyrinth still lingered in his eyes.
He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his sore nose.
A deep sense of exhaustion washed over him.
It was the side effect of his brain running at full power for two hours.
His stomach felt a little empty, too.
He fished a White Rabbit creamy candy from his pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth.
The sweet, milky flavor melted on his tongue, injecting a bit of fuel into his nearly-on-strike brain.
He closed the book.
It made a soft "THUD."
It even seemed to shake some of the dust off the cover.
"How much did you understand?" Old Zhou asked, exhaling a smoke ring.
Chen Zhuo thought for a moment.
"Three problems."
Chen Zhuo answered honestly.
In an afternoon, two and a half hours.
The first problem, on variable-mass rockets, took an hour to derive the differential equation.
The second, on a nonlinear spring oscillator, took forty minutes to understand the phase diagram.
The third, on particle collision under relativistic effects, wasn’t completely solved. He got stuck on the final step involving conservation of energy.
"Three?"
Old Zhou raised his eyebrows, seemingly a little surprised.
He originally thought it would be impressive if the kid managed to chew through even one problem in an afternoon.
After all, this book was a collection of training problems for the old Soviet Union’s Olympiad national team. It was prepared for those Russian geniuses who were supposed to be building satellites.
Some of the problems inside even touched on second-year university theoretical mechanics.
"Right. Pretty fast."
Old Zhou nodded. It was impossible to tell from his tone whether it was praise or sarcasm, but a flash of satisfaction was clearly visible in his narrowed eyes.
"Can I take this book with me?"
"Take it."
Old Zhou waved his hand dismissively. "Just don’t lose it. It’s the only copy of its kind. You probably couldn’t find another one in the entire province."
"I won’t. Goodbye, Teacher."
Chen Zhuo nodded, picking up the book with one arm and his water bottle with the other hand.
He turned and walked toward the door.
He pushed open the door and walked out of the academic building.
The sun was already setting outside, leaving a magnificent afterglow stretching across the horizon, dyeing the entire campus a golden red.
Some of the sweltering heat in the air had faded. The evening breeze blew past, carrying a hint of coolness.
Chen Zhuo walked down the hallway.
The setting sun stretched his shadow long, all the way to the end of the corridor.
He squeezed the hard, red book in his hand.
He felt that this kind of afternoon—one where he didn’t have to talk, didn’t have to socialize, didn’t have to pretend to fit in, where he could just sit in a corner listening to the scratch of other people’s pens while he battled top-tier knowledge alone on the barren plains of his mind—
was absolutely perfect.
This was what you call life.
This was what a training camp should be.
Chen Zhuo pushed up his glasses, strode down the steps, and his figure blended into the twilight.
Behind him, in the window of the second-floor laboratory.
Old Zhou stood behind the curtain, watching the small, thin figure. He picked up his tea mug and drained the last of the cold tea.
"Three problems..."
Old Zhou smacked his lips, a somewhat ferocious grin spreading across his face.
"Goddamn it, we’re about to unleash a monster."

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