Free Web NovelChapter 111: Chapter 105: What a hassle to explain to children!
When Lin Xudong was shaking with anger, Zhao Yi, who was the ’culprit’, was already on his way to Jiangzhou.
From the moment he got on the car, Zhao Yi found it a bit strange.
Xue Pinggui?
Why was he here?
Normally, it would be Teacher Niu Lianhua leading the expedition with him and Sun Liang being the only students. They were simply staying overnight in Jiangzhou and would be coming back after the exam the next day.
But now, not only was there Niu Lianhua, but also an additional male teacher, Xue Pinggui.
Zhao Yi and Sun Liang felt as though they were being ’specially cared for’, for they were just two students taking part in a competition and yet two teachers were accompanying them. Such a show of respect was quite flattering.
The two students exchanged eye symbols.
Two teachers?
One male, one female?
There were rumors in school about Niu Lianhua and Xue Pinggui’s ’affairs’, but most of them were just whispers and hearsay, with no concrete evidence. However, their joint leadership was a bit unusual and could even potentially be seen as ’evidence’ of them being ’together’.
The four of them sat together in a small car.
Being the only female, Niu Lianhua sat in the front.
Zhao Yi and Sun Liang kept glancing at Xue Pinggui, the meaning of their stares glaringly obvious, which caused Xue Pinggui much annoyance.
He truly hadn’t wanted to come.
The matter was casually mentioned in the staffroom the night before, and he hadn’t thought of a way to refuse, so everyone took it as his silent consent.
A bunch of teachers even came to congratulate him?
Congratulate him for what?
By the next morning, the dean of students was congratulating him while simultaneously arranging for him and Niu Lianhua to go on a ’business trip’ together.
This was pretty much firming up the rumors!
Xue Pinggui felt as if he hadn’t done anything and yet everything seemed to be decided for him.
Moreover, his colleagues were all shockingly enthusiastic for a change.
For instance, Li Lisheng.
Li Lisheng kept emphasizing that he had communicated with Principal Wang and decided to increase the allowance for the trip; they both could get some extra money. He also mentioned that an additional hundred yuan was allocated for accommodation so they could book a better hotel.
Another senior chemistry teacher, Teacher Qian, said he would help him cover the Elite B class.
The level of enthusiasm... Xue Pinggui felt quite perplexed.
He was uncomfortable.
Merely rumors of his possible romantic entanglement with Niu Lianhua had emerged and it felt as though he had made a significant contribution to the school.
Why was that?
"Are they congratulating me or mocking me?"
Xue Pinggui lost himself in thought.
Meanwhile...
Zhao Yi and Sun Liang were studying Mathematics Olympiad materials in the car.
The preliminaries of the Mathematics Olympiad, i.e., the city-level pre-competition, didn’t exceed the scope of middle school or high school knowledge. But the official competition was different. It included some new knowledge points, formulas, and theorems.
These formulas and theorems didn’t come into play regularly. They had only gone through them after passing the preliminaries, and only used them occasionally when solving Olympiad problems.
The competition was approaching, and reviewing some seldom-used knowledge points, formulas, and theorems seemed more meaningful than solving a few more problems.
The two of them were not particularly focused.
The knowledge points, formulas, and theorems had already been memorized. Reviewing them was just to reinforce their memory so that they could recall them when needed.
While sitting in the car and observing Niu Lianhua and Xue Pinggui talking—their tone, eye contact, and so on—always revealed some information.
Zhao Yi and Sun Liang communicated with eye signals and gestures--
"Something’s going on!"
"I’m 90 percent sure!"
"Do you know what we need to watch for today? The room situation tonight!"
"Received!"
If there were two rooms for three men and a woman, that would make things all too clear.
Sun Liang even texted report to his class.
That was Zhao Linlin’s request; she had asked Zhao Yi and Sun Liang to help keep an eye on what stage Niu Lianhua and Xue Pinggui’s relationship had reached.
Sun Liang turned out to be a natural at intelligence gathering. He offered real-time updates on how things were developing, "We’ve reached the hotel. Teacher Xue and Teacher Niu went to the front desk but unfortunately... they got three rooms."
In the classroom of Elite A class.
Upon hearing her phone vibrate, Lin Xiaoqing immediately looked at Zhao Linlin. Zhao Linlin glanced at the message and showed it to Lin Xiaoqing, "Three rooms!"
"What a pity~~"
Several people around them sighed and shook their heads, their tone mirroring Sun Liang’s.
Half an hour later, another message came.
Sun Liang: "We all went to have dinner together. Teacher Niu treated us to spicy hot pot. After eating, Zhao Yi and I went back to the hotel. Teacher Niu said she and Teacher Xue were going for a walk together."
Immediately.
The Elite A class erupted into surprised whispers.
Li Lisheng was sitting on the stage, and upon hearing the noise, promptly scolded, "Zhao Linlin, no playing with your phone during self-study time! No cell phone use in school!"
"Oh~"
Behind her, Wang Jian excitedly picked up where he left off, "Teacher Li, you don’t know, Sun Liang just said that Teacher Niu and Teacher Xue left them and went off somewhere. No idea what they’re doing."
"Really? Really?"
Li Lisheng’s eyes lit up, he asked urgently, "Then what?"
"That’s all?" Wang Jian said, "That’s as far as things have gone."
Li Lisheng found it dull and scolded again, "What Teacher Niu and Teacher Xue are doing is none of your business! Start studying. If I catch anyone gossiping again, you’ll have to move your chair and desk and study on stage!"
After exerting his authority, Li Lisheng secretly picked up his phone and started to text while pretending to survey the students.
During the break.
Zhao Linlin finally dared to look at her phone and found two more messages.
The first one: "I saw it! I saw it! Huge news! Huge news! Teacher Niu and Teacher Xue are back. They went to Teacher Niu’s room together!"
Five minutes later.
The second one: "How boring, they just had a cup of tea? Teacher Xue went back to his own room."
"Phew~~~"
Zhao Linlin had just put down her phone when she noticed a classmate leaning over. She immediately shoved her phone into her pocket, "What are you looking at? Nosy!"
"So what’s the situation?"
"Linlin, tell us!"
"We all care about Teacher Niu!"
"I’m not showing you!"
Even though nothing had happened, Zhao Linlin still didn’t want anyone else to know.
At that, a bunch of people were immediately disappointed.
Jiangzhou.
Hotel, room.
Sun Liang had been ’peeping’ at the doorway for quite a while before he came in listlessly and tossed his phone on the bed, "I thought something would happen."
Zhao Yi sat in a chair, leisurely sipping his tea. "Aren’t you too bored? Besides, it’s not good to pry into other people’s privacy."
"Aren’t you curious?" Sun Liang walked over and stared at Zhao Yi in disbelief.
"I’m curious."
"Then why..."
"Even if I’m curious, I wouldn’t do that. Plus, I’m sure I’ll find out eventually."
Zhao Yi said indifferently.
He had been contemplating the ’butterfly effect’ issue. If his memory served him right, Teacher Xue got married during the winter vacation. What his wife looked like was hard to describe, but the key point was, he definitely was not with Teacher Niu.
Was this the butterfly effect?
Because he went back to his high school era, he did things differently, which led to Teacher Xue and Teacher Niu...
Alas!
Zhao Yi didn’t know if it was right or wrong, he could only pray silently, "I hope Teacher Xue would be happier than before!"
...
The next day was the Mathematical Olympiad.
The contest arrangement in Nanjiang Province was kind of rushed, with two rounds in the morning and the afternoon.
Zhao Yi entered the exam hall with his admission ticket and did not wait long before he received the test paper. After one glance, he felt a bit of a headache.
Eight fill-in-the-blank questions.
Three proof questions!
The formal rounds of the Mathematics Olympiad were all like this, possibly to align with international and world-level Maths Olympiads, multiple-choice questions would never appear.
He started to look at the questions carefully--
"What is the range of a?", "What is the value?", "What is the maximum?", "The probability is..."
None of the eight fill-in-the-blank questions included an ’finite range’ answer, which means all of them couldn’t yield a direct answer.
On the other hand, there were proof questions in the answers.
This was the only kind of question that could yield a direct answer.
Zhao Yi swiftly finished the proof questions and started to seriously answer the rest.
The difficulty of fill-in-the-blank questions was also high, and it fell short of that of the International Mathematics Olympiad, but to solve each question, one needed to have a clear thought process. Some questions even required a knack, and only by breaking through with that knack would it be easier to find the answer.
As Zhao Yi was racking his brains, it took him nearly forty minutes to solve three fill-in-the-blank questions.
This speed wouldn’t do!
The time for the first round was a hundred and twenty minutes, and more than half of that time should certainly be reserved for the bigger problems.
Even though he had finished one of the bigger problems, it was not easy at all to solve the remaining two problems.
"Forget it..."
"I’ll try using Research Coins!"
For such difficult questions, ’focus’ had become useless. No matter how diligently the concepts were thought out, without finding the knack, the attempts were futile.
The ’cause and effect thinking mode’ of the Research Coin would make it easier to find the answer.
[Research Coins: 29.]
[Use Research Coins to enhance cause and effect thinking.]
[Research Coin -1, Assist in enhancing cause and effect thinking ability, gain inspiration stimulation effect. Duration: Sixty minutes.]
Let’s officially begin.
Work on the problems!
...
Wu Youqiang worked at the Provincial Department of Education and was assigned to the competition site as an invigilator.
He invigilated in the class Zhao Yi was in.
When the students entered the premises, Wu Youqiang checked Zhao Yi’s ID, and at that moment recognized Zhao Yi. He regularly watched "Brain Power Burst" and often surfed the web for news, so he knew that Zhao Yi was the creator of the famous Rubik’s Cube calculator.
"What a coincidence, I bumped into him!"
Having recognized Zhao Yi, Wu Youqiang naturally became curious. During the invigilation process, he passed by Zhao Yi’s desk several times and paid careful attention to his problem-solving.
In the end, he shook his head.
Wu Youqiang has invigilated several Maths Olympiads and been a training teacher for a year, so he knew quite a lot about the Mathematics Olympiad. For students who could get a first-class prize in the province, they must achieve high scores in the first round.
The second round was very, very difficult.
The second round consisted of three or four essay questions, and managing to solve one would already be quite impressive.
The first round was the ’easy scoring’ test.
Zhao Yi had only done three fill-in-the-blank questions in more than half an hour, and Wu Youqiang had no idea if they were right or wrong, but his speed certainly did not meet the standard.
Wu Youqiang promptly formed his assessment, "Zhao Yi’s computing is very strong, but for the Mathematical Olympiad...maybe he hasn’t been trained? Or perhaps his mathematical ability is average."
After – pepping a few times, Wu Youqiang didn’t look again. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
About half an hour later, Wu Youqiang was slowly making his rounds in the examination room. As he passed by Zhao Yi’s seat again, he took a glance and saw that all the fill-in-the-blank questions had been filled in, and the first of the big questions was being calculated on the scratch paper.
So quick?
Wu Youqiang stopped in his tracks, surprised.
What came next was somewhat shocking.
When Zhao Yi was calculating on the scratch paper, he did it step by step, simplifying a complex function into two or three steps, as if he was directly writing down the answer.
Wu Youqiang simply couldn’t keep up with his thought process.
The process of a computational problem, which was supposed to be complex, appeared to be just a few simple steps on the scratch paper.
When Zhao Yi looked at the steps on the scratch paper and began to transcribe them onto the test paper, the situation was different again. The simple steps in the calculation became a detailed solution on the test paper.
It felt as if he could directly calculate the multiplication of two-digit numbers orally but had to calculate step by step when explaining to children, only then would they be able to understand.
Wu Youqiang...
Seemed to have turned into that child.
