Chapter 21 The Nanny's Niece's Counterattack

But Lin Wei quickly dismissed the idea. "Practicing problems is easy, I haven't had a break lately anyway, but where am I going to get these problems? Am I supposed to buy them myself?" Wouldn't that be the death of her?

She could afford ten or twenty books, but more than that would be a bit too much. Besides, she didn't think that a few dozen or a hundred books would solve her current problem. So Lin Wei thought about it and decided against it.

"The most important thing right now is to master the problems in these three books. We can look at the other problems when we have time." Because of this, she nervously selected a dozen or so problems to send to [the results she got]. Actually, she wanted to send many more problems, but wasn't she afraid of scaring him away? So she could only proceed step by step.

Posting a dozen or so today, then twenty or so tomorrow—like boiling a frog in lukewarm water, perfect.

At 7 PM, after finishing my work, I thought of the online friend I met this morning. I opened the website, glanced at it, and saw the densely packed questions she had sent me.

The mouse paused for a moment.

So many questions!

The person who was reading the document was starting to question his existence. Seeing so many questions, he regretted agreeing to the request for a moment. He wondered if he had been under a spell when he agreed.

Logically, he could have pretended not to see the questions at this point; as long as he didn't respond, no one could do anything to him. However, remembering his promise, he resigned himself to the outcome of the divination and began to look at the questions.

Lin Wei posted the questions by taking photos. He clicked on each question to take a look, and thankfully, they weren't too difficult.

Considering that typing was too troublesome and slow, he sent her a voice message instead. "The first and twelfth questions are somewhat similar in type, so I'll just give you the general idea once." Without a single wasted word, he began to explain, starting with the known conditions of the question and the methods needed to solve it, gradually unfolding his explanation. His voice was calm and unhurried, conveying a sense of command and control, yet also giving off a cold, human-computer interaction vibe.

Lin Wei ignored the faint familiarity the voice gave her and listened to the audio carefully twice.

According to the results of the divination, if she still can't understand this, then she doesn't need to waste her time. She should just focus on her studies and stop doing those competition-level questions.

Yes, he skipped many steps, but he covered the main steps. Others might not be able to keep up with his pace, but Lin Wei wasn't stupid. If he couldn't understand, he would go into the system space to think about it before coming out. His speed of understanding was no less than his speed of explaining.

However, as she continued calculating, she couldn't help but try another method. She couldn't help but pound her head and mutter, "This stupid brain of mine! There's an easy way to calculate it, but you have to make it so complicated. Are you sick in the head?" She even cursed herself.

Really, it's just that she's quick with her hands. She had been using brute force to calculate before, and although she has been given some pointers, it's not so easy to change her thinking.

This led her to get carried away with her own train of thought as she calculated, and her train of thought was clearly a bottomless pit. When she finally realized what was happening and tried to straighten it out, she unexpectedly went back to her old ways, resulting in an answer that wasn't originally very long having several unnecessary steps added to it.

Lin Wei watched this scene in silence. Sure enough, brute force reasoning suited her better.

[The Result of Divination] Not knowing any of this, seeing that she clearly understood and even had time to ask some unrelated questions, he just felt that this "student" was really easy to teach. This also gradually dispelled his initial impatience when he saw so many questions.

It would be great if she could win first place in this competition under my guidance.

Thinking of this, [the result obtained] asked, "Are you participating in the math competition in two weeks?" Because his younger brother, the granddaughter of the Su family, had both participated in that competition, he knew something about it. Furthermore, her IP address was located in City S; besides that competition, he couldn't think of anything else.

Lin Wei felt it wasn't something she couldn't say, so she nodded and typed, "Yes." She added in the chat box, "Isn't the competition coming up soon? Just cramming a little." Why would she look at competition problems if she wasn't participating? Does anyone really have nothing better to do than use competition problems as a pastime?

[The result of the divination]: "You seem to be a beginner who has just started learning competition problems. It will be a bit difficult for you to win." He knew that Lin Wei would also participate, not to mention that he knew from Qin Siyu that Fang Yihuai and Zhang Mo would also participate. It seemed that none of them had an easy problem.

[There's no food in the lunchbox]: "It's all about participation, winning or losing isn't important." However, in reality, Lin Wei immediately contradicted herself. That's not true. The point of the competition is to win. What's the point of working so hard if you don't win?

[An unexpected result] Seeing this, he didn't say anything, but started explaining the problem to her according to the competition level. He had also participated in many math competitions. The competitions in the first year of high school were difficult, but not beyond the scope of the curriculum.

As a result, Lin Wei absorbed knowledge very quickly, and she memorized almost all the techniques and methods he taught, which gave her a major breakthrough in solving problems.

When she looks at those questions now, she's not completely clueless about how to write a single sentence; she clearly has some ideas. But unfortunately, she hasn't quite grasped the concepts yet.

She knew that following this line of thought was correct, but she got stuck halfway through, unsure how to continue. Then, she started using her unconventional methods again, calculating and adapting to each situation. In the end, she actually succeeded.

It wasn't until after she solved the problem that Lin Wei realized there were other ways to solve it. On one side was a dozen or so lines of correct answers, and on the other side were over fifty lines of data. Anyone would want to be on the left.

"Sigh." She really couldn't do it, and a look of pain appeared on Lin Wei's face. It was like having a key but being unable to open a door.

That feeling is truly disheartening.

While waiting for her answer to the divination result, Qin Siyu, who had encountered another problem, ran out of the room to find him outside the study. "Brother, how do I do this problem?" If she had only signed up for the competition because of herd mentality before, she now found these competition problems quite interesting.

It's difficult, and it really is difficult.

When Qin Boyuan saw him, his head throbbed with pain. If this wasn't his own brother, he really would have wanted to punch him. Stupid, so incredibly stupid.

If someone understands immediately that there's no food in their lunchbox, then the person in front of them is like a piece of rotten wood; they won't understand even after being told several times, and you have to break it down for them.

Was he a patient person? No, so after explaining it to him three times, he still looked like he didn't understand. Qin Boyuan simply kicked him and said, "Go away." He should just focus on learning his music and stop messing around with this nonsense.

Qin Siyu was kicked and looked aggrieved. "Brother, you kicked me. Am I still your favorite little brother?"

Qin Boyuan sneered, "If you weren't my brother, I would have thrown you away long ago." How could he give him a chance to provoke him?

In comparison, having no food in your lunchbox is practically an angel.

At this moment, the angel sent a message, "Boss, if I want to change this approach, what should I do?" She sent him the answer she had written, of course, the very long one from the beginning.

Qin Boyuan didn't look, but Qin Siyu curiously glanced at it. It was clearly a message notification. Who was his brother chatting with? Then he saw a math answer and that person's message.

Then I was shocked.

"Brother, you abandoned your own brother and went to teach someone else how to solve problems?" Qin Siyu looked incredulous and accusing. If he wasn't mistaken, the person was also working on competition problems, and they were very likely competitors in this competition.

His brother actually taught other people how to beat his own brother; it felt like the sky was falling.

Qin Boyuan kicked him again, "Be normal." Anyone who didn't know better would think he'd done something heinous. It's just teaching a high school freshman a competition problem, is it really that big of a deal?

Qin Siyu felt even more aggrieved, "You won't teach me, and you even look down on me and tell me to get lost."

Qin Boyuan scoffed, "If you could understand what I'm saying after hearing it only once, like she does, I'd teach you too. But what about you? It's pointless to explain." As for why he was being so kind? Why so many questions? He just wanted to help.

Anyway, it wouldn't take him much time.

However, at that moment, he didn't know that this whim would give him a long-term online friend. Although that friend often asked him questions, their communication was limited to studying.

In the dormitory, Lin Wei noticed that he hadn't answered for a long time, and thought he was annoyed by her questions. Since she wasn't in a hurry, she took the time to do some more problems.

Then I found that it was the same problem again. The initial approach was fine, but whenever I encountered a bottleneck, the brute-force solution worked incredibly smoothly.

She discovered that what used to take her more than ten days to figure out the answers in the system space, she now only needs forty minutes in reality. If she could really think ten steps ahead for every step she takes, no, only five steps ahead for every step she takes, then her problem-solving speed could be reduced to within twenty minutes, and that twenty minutes would be enough for her to solve the problems.

I just don't know if I use this method to solve the problem, will the examiners treat me differently, will they deduct points even if I get the answer right?

[The result of the divination] At this moment, I also saw her solution. I closed my eyes and opened them again, but the result was still the same. My lips twitched.

"I've been teaching for so many days, and this is all I've taught you?" Qin Boyuan's usually calm face cracked, as if he had been taught the person who was so stupid in front of him who was using such a complicated method to solve the competition problem.

Because he didn't believe it, he even looked through their previous chat history and discovered that it wasn't that his teaching was flawed, but rather that the other person was unteachable.

How can someone be so inflexible? If you call her stupid, she actually managed to solve the problem this way; if you call her smart, even a dog wouldn't use this method. Suddenly, he was stumped.

How easy is it to change a person's mindset? If it were that easy, Qin Siyu wouldn't have been so disliked by him.

The dialog box kept showing "typing in progress." Qin Boyuan wrote a sentence, then deleted it, wrote another sentence, then deleted it again, and finally typed a few words: "Impossible in such a short time." Actually, what he really wanted to say was, "Go wash up and go to sleep," but considering that the person on the other end was a girl, he held back.

Lin Wei was somewhat skeptical. She always believed that she hadn't figured it out yet and hadn't done enough problems. So, after solving each problem using brute force reasoning, she would try to solve it again using the competition approach, striving to solve each problem in two ways. She refused to believe that she couldn't change her thinking.

Even if she can't change her approach, as long as she speeds up her problem-solving, solves a problem using two different methods, and then uses the competition's approach as the final answer, wouldn't her answer be the same as other competitors?

To achieve this, she needs to reduce her time spent on the questions, which is too difficult for her.

When the math competition arrived, Lin Wei still couldn't achieve her ambition. "Was it too much of a stretch?" she said, somewhat discouraged.

However, there is one good thing: she did what she said before, calculating five steps in one step. At least she doesn't have to worry about not finishing the questions, unless she really doesn't know how to do a particular question.

When Lin Wei arrived at the competition venue, contrary to her expectations of few participants, there were quite a few people competing, some of whom were familiar faces. She wondered how they had found out about the competition registration.

Fang Yihuai and Zhang Mo were the same; she only learned about this from them, and even the Olympic Games were learned from Gao Fuya.

Their information network is incredibly efficient.

At this point, the lack of resources became very apparent to her. Coming from a small mountain village, with no one in her family who was educated, and no one to guide her, she had to figure things out on her own. It's undeniable that the system space and the people around her played a significant role in her journey to where she is today.

Ultimately, competition and catching up are the most powerful means for strong people.

Since she didn't see Fang Yihuai, Gao Fuya, or the others, Lin Wei didn't linger. When the announcement came over the loudspeaker that students could enter, she went upstairs to find her examination room.

Meanwhile, a discussion was taking place backstage during the exam.

"Why does this competition seem more difficult than in previous years?" a teacher asked, puzzled. In previous years, it didn't seem this difficult.

Another teacher said, "Isn't the Mathematical Olympiad coming up? If nothing unexpected happens, our S province's math talent will be in this competition."

They only found out the questions for the competition after opening the package five minutes before the exam started.

To be honest, I'm a bit pessimistic about this competition; I don't think there will be any perfect scorers.