After hearing the second perfect score, Liu Zhiyuan couldn't concentrate.

He knew that the boy was Pei Zhi, and that he had always been with Lin Chaoxi. Apart from that, he seemed to have kept a low profile. Pei Zhi went on and off the stage, bowed and thanked everyone, and was calm as usual.

Influenced by Pei Zhi, the students were also very quiet. Except for some whispers between the girls, Teacher Wan gave them a procedural praise, and even Teacher Jie was very calm and didn't even raise his eyelids.

This happens once or twice, and no one thinks it's strange, but Liu Zhiyuan feels indescribably uncomfortable.

In the following class, the teacher kept explaining the test paper.

When it came to the question where he lost two points, Teacher Xie said that most people got question 11 wrong. Hearing this, he turned around involuntarily to look at Lin Chaoxi and Pei Zhi.

The two people sitting in the corner of the classroom were looking at their test papers. When they heard this, they didn't look up.

The girl wrote a line of words on the test paper very seriously, and then, as if she encountered some small problem, she poked the boy with the tip of her pen. The boy looked down at her, and the two exchanged some words. Finally, the girl nodded seriously and turned around to continue recording.

Liu Zhiyuan couldn't explain his inner feelings, but whether it was Pei Zhi's calmness or Lin Chaoxi's serious concentration, he felt that he had been severely taught a lesson by these two junior high school students. How could he be secretly happy about getting 98 points in the exam?

——

After class, everyone was packing up.

For some reason, Liu Zhiyuan deliberately packed slowly. After Lin Chaoxi and the others got up, he picked up his bag and followed behind.

The corridor was crowded with people, and Lin Chaoxi and Pei Zhi were very close to each other.

She always felt that Pei Zhi had changed a little recently: "Brother Pei, you seem to be a little low-key recently?"

"It's not bad."

"You didn't answer the questions. We haven't even had a serious discussion about why you deliberately made me the class monitor, and now you don't even answer the teacher's questions in class."

"Yes, Pei Zhi, are you okay?" Lu Zhihao asked with concern.

"actually……"

"What! Just tell me what's going on!" Lu Zhihao was very loyal.

“I never raised my hand before.”

Lu Zhihao: “…”

"Classmate Xiaolin still cares so much about classmate Pei Zhi." Jie Ran's slow voice sounded from behind them.

Lin Chaoxi shuddered and called out, "Teacher Jie."

Jie Ran nodded.

Seeing Jie Ran, Lin Chaoxi asked straightforwardly, "Can I take care of Teacher Jie?"

"I haven't found a girlfriend yet." Xie Ran said.

“……”You two have been so good at chatting lately.

"You can ask any questions you have," said Xie Ran.

"I heard that the national training team is at Yongchuan University next door?" Lin Chaoxi approached him quietly and raised his head slightly.

"How do you know that?"

"Lu Zhihao said so!" Lin Zhaoxi quickly threw the pot away, and then asked what she thought was a crucial question, "The mathematics department of Sanwei University is obviously more powerful, why did the national training team go to Yongchuan University?"

Xie Ran was silent for a moment and said, "You know too much."

Lin Zhaoxi: "Will they be silenced?"

"I'm not joking." Xie Ran said seriously, "Be careful. There will be related student exchanges in the future. Don't say this outside."

"Uh...will it cause trouble?"

“The academic world is more complicated than you think. Some things are better left to yourself. There is no need to make them known to everyone.”

Xie Ran was rarely so serious, especially when he specifically mentioned the academic circle. Lin Chaoxi wondered if this was a bit exaggerated. But she didn't ask any more questions. The information Xie Ran revealed was enough for her to find an opportunity to search for the keywords "Olympiad Sanwei University Yongchuan University".

Thinking of this, she looked at Jie Ran again. Just as she was about to open her mouth, Jie Ran interrupted her: "I don't know why this training session spans middle school and high school."

Lu Zhihao interrupted: "Is it because we have good grades that they want to use us to stimulate high school students?"

"Why do you think so?" Xie Ran asked.

"It wasn't me, it was Lin Zhaoxi who said that!"

Jie Ran's gaze drifted over, and Lin Chaoxi said, "It's just a guess, and I..." He didn't mean that.

But before she could finish the second half of the sentence, she heard someone say from behind: "And because you got a perfect score this time, you think you have done particularly well?"

Lin Chaoxi turned around and found Liu Zhiyuan looking at her coldly.

She was already intimidated by this future "blind date partner", and now being scolded, she was even more confused.

And it wasn't just Liu Zhiyuan. The other high school students following behind him also heard the conversation, so everyone looked at her with indignation and dissatisfaction.

"Why are you talking in such a weird tone!" Lu Zhihao was very direct.

"Oh."

Lu Zhihao: "Even if you don't agree, you can still get full marks!"

The high school student next to Liu Zhiyuan stood up and pushed Lu Zhihao: "How do you talk to your senior? Zhiyuan won the first prize in the national mathematics league. Pay attention, this is the high school mathematics league."

"The first prize is great, but why can't you even get into the national training team?"

After Lu Zhihao finished shouting, Liu Zhiyuan and the high school students around him became even more angry. But what Lu Zhihao said was the truth, and everyone was speechless.

Finally, the high school student said, "Now that math education has been reformed, the exams are different. It's as if you can pass just by taking the exam?"

"Just win first prize in your junior high school math competition first."

"The results will be out soon, right?"

“What if I don’t win the first prize?”

The high school students were talking to each other. Lin Zhaoxi wanted to explain, but no matter how she explained, it seemed so hypocritical. She thought for a moment and said seriously, "It's not impossible."

Liu Zhiyuan's face turned pale. After a long pause, he managed to say word by word: "The remaining training period is less than half a year. I hope you can continue to perform so well."

"We will." A light male voice sounded from beside her, and Pei Zhi was able to speak.

The whole place was silent. Lin Chaoxi realized that she must have misunderstood Pei Zhi as being deliberately low-key.

Liu Zhiyuan gritted his teeth and finally clenched his fists, bypassing them and leaving. Not only that, many high school students quickened their pace and followed Liu Zhiyuan.

Jie Ran looked at the high school students' receding backs with loving eyes.

Lin Zhaoxi suddenly realized that Xie Ran had suddenly brought up something irrelevant just now. He must have noticed that Liu Zhiyuan was behind them a long time ago...

She protested: "You are cheating me again."

"How can you say I'm cheating you?" Jie Ran laughed, "I'm obviously cheating them."

Lin Zhaoxi: “…”

——

After dinner, Lin Chaoxi did not return to the dormitory.

Lu Zhihao dragged Pei Zhi to the playground to run laps. She rejected Comrade Lu's enthusiastic invitation to lose weight together, took the phone card, and walked to the bright yellow telephone booth at the playground.

Midwinter is here. Except for some evergreens, most trees have cold branches and a desolate look.

She hung up the phone and wanted to call Lao Lin, but somehow, maybe it was because it was too quiet around her, or maybe it was because of the cold wind, she couldn't help but think about what had happened in the past few days.

From Lao Lin's disapproval of her coming to Yongchuan to study in high school, to the old book full of annotations in the library, from the unprecedented joint training sessions for junior and senior high school students, to Jie Ran's warning to her just now, the academic circle was more complicated than she had imagined.

Lin Chaoxi still felt that there was something wrong here.

In the darkness of the night, the sounds of students chasing and playing could be faintly heard on the playground.

Perhaps the biggest difference between her and children is that she is an adult at heart, and therefore does not trust the adult world.

She hung up the phone, turned and walked towards the library.

On the top floor of the library, there is only one classroom in the computer room.

The master's and doctoral students who stayed on campus occupied a few scattered seats, either looking up papers or writing emails.

Lin Chaoxi turned on one of the machines and watched the screen light up slowly. She was surrounded by the faint sound of electric current emitted by the machine, and her heartbeat involuntarily became faster and faster.

Lu Zhihao's teaching was right. She often surfed the Internet, but she never paid attention to mathematics news. Because she spent most of her time online studying university mathematics-related content. The rest of the time, she was either doing problems on the computer or studying how to save Lao Lin from the inevitable car accident.

She didn't know why she subconsciously avoided any bits of information related to mathematics, just as she avoided looking up the phone number and Lao Lin's past.

Everyone has secrets, and she wanted to respect her father's secrets, but if she was just searching for some unimportant information, it shouldn't be considered as prying into Lao Lin's privacy.

Lin Chaoxi consoled himself and entered the keywords he had just thought of into the search box: "Aoshu Sanwei University Yongchuan University"