Chapter 31

"Deadlines are the primary driving force"—this saying applies to both working professionals and students. Even those who habitually neglect their assignments and skip classes will work hard to avoid failing when facing final exams.

However, university physics knowledge is numerous and difficult, and unlike secondary school subjects, there are not a large number of supplementary teaching materials with different focuses and specific needs for reference. Teachers also leave as soon as get out of class is over, so there are not many opportunities to ask questions about difficult problems.

Professor Yan did leave his email address for the students and said they could go to his office if they had any questions, but who would dare!

Therefore, if you can't keep up with the teacher's pace in class and can't fully grasp the key points and difficult concepts through self-study after class, it will be quite difficult to cram at the last minute.

Therefore, when they heard that Ji Zhixing planned to give Lin Lang, Qiu Lan and others a review session in the dormitory, many students who were struggling academically came to listen in.

Ji Zhixing didn't care. Herding one sheep was the same as herding two, and a whole flock made little difference. He didn't need to regulate their discipline or pace, nor was he responsible for their grades; he was simply explaining the key points and difficulties. There was little difference between explaining to Lin Lang alone and explaining to a group of people.

There were only about fifty students in the second year of the Physics Department. After deducting those who were usually very hardworking and serious, and those who felt that struggling was useless and simply waited to be executed, there were actually only about a dozen students who came to Ji Zhixing's dormitory to attend classes. They could still squeeze in and stand.

However, after learning about Ji Zhixing's heroic act of rescuing a struggling student, counselor Chen Yan gave him the key to the activity room on the top floor of the dormitory building. Qiu Lan also brought over a whiteboard from the basketball club, and so Ji Zhixing's tutoring class officially started in this activity room.

Subjects like Deng Xiaoping Theory, Political Economy, and Policy Strategies, which require rote memorization, are not very meaningful to teach, so Ji Zhixing doesn't plan to teach them.

Since he didn't have the opportunity to do hands-on experiments in physics and analog electronics, he planned to only teach the theoretical parts.

In addition to subjects like mathematical physics methods, optics, and atomic physics, students have to review one or two subjects every night, making the review task quite heavy.

Therefore, it is impossible to systematically sort out all the knowledge points in the book; we can only talk about the key points, difficult points, and frequently tested points.

The key points and difficulties are easy to grasp, as the teachers repeatedly emphasized them in class; the frequently tested points are also easy to sort out, as you can easily summarize which parts they are concentrated in by flipping through the past papers.

"Equilibrium force systems and original force systems are the most fundamental test points in theoretical mechanics..." Ji Zhixing lectured while observing everyone.

This is the third day of the tutoring class, and the number of students attending has remained relatively stable at around 18. It's clear that initiative in learning determines the level of attentiveness and enthusiasm in class; these students are under immense pressure from the upcoming final exams and are giving it their all, so they've been very focused during the classes these past few days.

Looking at the eager eyes of the students, Ji Zhixing thought to himself, "Professor Yan would be very happy to see this."

In addition to summarizing the key points, Ji Zhixing also selected some representative questions as supplementary exercises.

"Using the residue theorem to calculate integrals is a key question type; it's been on the exam every year." He said, quickly writing the problem on the whiteboard. "Generally, the problem will indicate that a lemma is needed; finding the residue is actually finding the coefficient of the negative first power term in the Laurent expansion..."

After two or three hours of lectures, the review of atomic physics and mathematical physics methods was finished. After thanking Ji Zhixing, everyone got up and went back to their dormitories in twos and threes. Some stayed behind to ask Ji Zhixing some more difficult questions, which Ji Zhixing naturally answered one by one.

When Qiu Lan returned to her dorm with her textbooks, Qi Cheng, who hadn't attended class, was playing video games loudly. Qiu Lan came out after showering just as Qi Cheng finished his game.

Qi Cheng stretched and asked, "How is it? After listening for a few days, do you feel it's helpful?" If he were to fill in the gaps, it would be like Nuwa patching up the sky, so he simply stopped struggling.

Qiu Lan opened her notebook, intending to review the notes she had just copied before going to bed: "I think it's useful; at least I can understand what he's saying."

Many problems in textbooks often omit parts of the proof, writing "obvious" or "easy to prove," and then skipping to the next step or directly arriving at the conclusion. However, someone like Lin Lang, who is clearly clueless, doesn't understand why it's "obvious" or what makes it "easy to prove." Ji Zhixing, having spent so much time with Lin Lang, naturally understands his thought process and can tailor his explanations more effectively. Simply put, Ji Zhixing's teaching style is based on learning from and applying knowledge to struggling students, fully considering their cognitive weaknesses and common problem-solving pitfalls. Therefore, Qiu Lan felt he could understand the concepts Ji Zhixing taught.

Qi Cheng leaned closer to Qiu Lan and whispered, "Honestly, do you think he's easy to talk to? Could you ask him for help during the exam...?"

Qiu Lan interrupted him: "Didn't you see the notice in the college group chat? The seating arrangement for the final exams this semester will be shuffled!"

Qi Cheng had been playing games all night and hadn't looked at the exam. He said dismissively, "No matter how you rearrange the schedule, we're all taking the exam in the same classroom, right?"

"No!" Qiu Lan shook her head. "All students from all colleges in the school who need to take the final exams will be randomly assigned by computer. They will go to whichever exam room they are assigned to!"

"Has the school gone mad?!" Qi Cheng's eyes widened.

As Qiu Lan copied the notes, she said, "I heard that the school is currently working on some kind of academic atmosphere improvement project. Some teachers have suggested doing this, saying that it can prevent students from the same college from colluding to cheat and allow the exam to reflect their true abilities."

Qi Cheng kicked the ladder and cursed, "Are you crazy? So many people from different colleges are sitting in one classroom. Just distributing the exam papers is chaotic enough!"

"Therefore, this exam is a comprehensive exam, which puts several subjects into one paper, just like the science and humanities comprehensive exams in the past college entrance examination."

"The school is trying to kill us!" Qi Qi roared to the sky.

"Actually, it's not without its advantages. By using a comprehensive exam format, the number of questions in each subject is definitely reduced significantly," Qiu Lan said.

Previously, exams for each subject in the Physics Department typically lasted 1-2 hours. This time, the announcement states that all subjects will be tested on four comprehensive exam papers, each with a 4-hour exam duration. Considering the time allocation, the number of questions is definitely reduced by half. Furthermore, with only four half-days of exams, the final week won't seem so long.

Therefore, students have mixed reactions to this new testing method employed by the school, with some criticizing it and others praising it.

Seven days have passed in the blink of an eye, and the final exams are here!

Lin Lang got up unusually early, and Ji Zhixing thought he wanted to make a final push in the hour or two before the exam, but it turned out to be a last-minute cramming session.

Lin Lang stood in front of the sink and carefully washed his hands. Ji Zhixing watched as he washed his face, applying soap, toothpaste, and laundry detergent, and scrubbing his hands until they were red and raw with a brush.

Xu Dongyang tossed the towel onto the towel rack and asked, "What are you doing? Did you get poop on your hands?"

"You don't understand, this is called 'washing hands'!" Lin Lang reverently rinsed his hands several times with clean water. When he looked at his hands, well, they were very clean. He even scrubbed every crevices under his fingernails with a toothpick. He dared to say that his hands were the cleanest they had ever been since he was born!

Upon hearing the words "wash hands," Ji Zhixing began to glance at him sideways, wondering if the next step would be "burning incense."

Lin Lang neatly stacked the textbooks for the four subjects he would be taking the exam for today on the table. He then took out several bags of potato chips, dried meat, sausages, and other snacks and placed them around the textbooks. He also borrowed an apple from Xu Dongyang and placed it on top of the textbooks. Then, he squatted down, pulled out the coiled mosquito coil box from under the table, and picked up a lighter to light it.

Ji Zhixing couldn't help but ask, "The 'incense' in 'washing hands and burning incense' shouldn't be this kind of incense, right?"

"Sincerity moves mountains!" Lin Lang carefully lit the mosquito coil with a lighter, the flame reflecting in his eyes. "I've done my best. The Bodhisattva is so magnanimous; she won't hold these trivial matters against me."

Ji Zhixing and Xu Dongyang were laughing so hard they almost died.

This final exam used a new seating arrangement method. The exam room and seating arrangement were sent individually to each student's campus platform backend via in-system text message.

"Which exam room are you in? I'm in Jingming Building, room 102." Xu Dongyang peeked at Ji Zhixing's phone screen.

Ji Zhixing held up his phone to show him: "Mingde Building 301".

"Ah, right above my head! I'm 201. Please bless me from above!" Lin Lang clasped his hands together and bowed twice to him.

Ji Zhixing kicked him: "Go away!"

Upon arriving at the teaching area, the three of them went to their respective examination rooms.

Ji Zhixing walked into Mingde Building 301, glanced around, and sure enough, all the faces were unfamiliar; he didn't see a single one from the Physics Department.

He found his seat and sat down. A little while later, he saw the proctor come in carrying a large file bag.

The proctor stood on the podium and emphasized the exam rules before opening the document bag. He took out a large stack of exam papers from the bag, the top one labeled "Chemistry Department First Academic Year Final Exam Paper".

The proctor called out, "Students from the Chemistry Department, come up and collect your exam papers!"

Then seven or eight chemistry students sitting in different corners went up on stage to receive their respective college's exam papers.

"Mathematics Department..."

"Literature College..."

"The Department of Physics..."

Ji Zhixing quickly went up to the stage to collect his exam paper; sure enough, he was the only student from the Physics Department in this exam room.

The exam bell rang, and everyone picked up their pens to answer the questions.

Ji Zhixing first scanned the test paper from beginning to end. The difficulty of this test paper was not too bad, and everyone could do it. It was just that the writing in the policy section was a bit too much.

The first part was fill-in-the-blank questions, which he quickly finished writing.

The first calculation problem tested the wave function of the ground state of the harmonic oscillator in the momentum representation. Wow, this involves quantum mechanics, Ji Zhixing thought to himself.

The second year mainly focused on theoretical mechanics, with quantum mechanics only briefly mentioned. Now, putting it into calculation problems would probably stump many students. Ji Zhixing solved it with ease, but he was worried about Lin Lang and Xu Dongyang, wondering if they could remember the ground state wave function of the one-dimensional linear harmonic oscillator that the teacher had mentioned once in class.

The more Ji Zhixing wrote, the more he realized that this final exam placed a heavy emphasis on expansion and extension, covering many of the concepts he had already encountered in his junior year textbooks. What had gotten into the school this time? Their efforts to improve academic atmosphere were far too radical. He had no problem with the exams, but that was because he had already read and understood the junior and senior year textbooks beforehand. However, for most students, this level of difficulty was far too challenging; a large number of them would likely fail this time.

The exam lasted four hours. Ji Zhixing spent an hour and a half completing three-quarters of the exam paper, and then another hour writing the policy section.

"Wow, my hand is so sore! Writing this was exhausting!" Ji Zhixing shook his hand and checked the exam paper from beginning to end. "Hmm, no problem."

The short-answer questions on policy decisions have a subjective element, so he can't guarantee how many points he'll get, but he'll definitely pass. However, he can guarantee at least a 90% accuracy rate on the more challenging questions.

With more than an hour left in the exam, Ji Zhixing didn't plan to sit in the exam room any longer, so he handed in his paper and left.

When Ji Zhixing went down to the second floor, he glanced at the door of room 201, wanting to see where Lin Lang was sitting. He saw Qi Qi, a classmate, handing in his paper and coming out.

Qi Cheng saw Ji Zhixing and went over to walk with him: "No wonder you're a top student! You handed in your paper so early."

"Didn't you hand in your paper too?" Ji Zhixing said.

"I skipped the exam, what kind of rubbish questions were these?" Qi Cheng complained incessantly. "The multiple-choice questions had so much calculation involved, the teacher was deliberately trying to kill us!"

Multiple choice questions? Ji Zhixing thought back for a moment, were there any multiple choice questions on the exam paper?

Qi Qi continued to complain, and Ji Zhixing felt more and more uneasy. Were they taking the same exam?

He frowned and asked, "Do you remember what the first math problem was?"

"The friction force when the drum rolls without slipping—this is the only question on the whole paper I'm confident about. Why can't the other questions be as difficult as this one!"

No! The first question on the test he just did was about wave functions; they definitely didn't take the same test!

What's going on? Even if the exam rooms were rearranged, it shouldn't result in separate A and B papers, right? Could it be... he went to the wrong exam room?!

Ji Zhixing quickly took out his phone, opened the campus platform's internal messaging system, and looked closely: 201!

How could this be? He clearly saw it before, it was Mingde Building 301, why did it become 201! Ji Zhixing's mind went blank for a moment, but now was not the time to think about this, he had to go back to the exam!

"Hey, where are you going?" Qi Cheng watched Ji Zhixing hurriedly run back to Mingde Building. What's wrong with this top student?

Ji Zhixing hurriedly ran to Mingde Building 201, went straight to the podium, approached the proctor, and whispered, "Teacher, I went to the wrong exam room. May I get my exam paper and continue the exam now?"

"Huh? How could you be so careless!" the proctor exclaimed, quickly opening the file folder. Inside, there was indeed a physics department exam paper left. He had assumed it was from someone who had skipped the exam; every year there were always a few unmotivated, self-destructive students like that, so he hadn't thought much of it earlier.

The proctor took out the exam paper and handed it to him, urging, "Hurry up, there's only one hour left!"

"Thank you, teacher!" Ji Zhixing took the test paper, rushed to his seat, and started scanning the questions before he could even catch his breath.

One hour! I have to write a four-hour amount of content, I'm going to give it my all!

Ji Zhixing was writing furiously, and the other candidates in the classroom would occasionally glance in his direction. They couldn't whisper to each other because of the exam, but they were incredibly curious. Why was Ji Zhixing only arriving now? There was only an hour left. How could he possibly finish writing?

The students sitting in the front row vaguely heard what Ji Zhixing had just said to the proctor. They felt sorry for Ji Zhixing, thinking how terrible it was that he had gone to the wrong exam room.

Lin Lang sat at the very back, extremely anxious for Ji Zhixing. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew there was only one hour left! Would Zhixing have enough time to finish writing?!

Time ticked by, then ring ring ring! The exam was over!

Ji Zhixing threw down his pen and slumped onto his chair; his hand was about to give out!

After handing in his paper and leaving the exam room, Lin Lang ran to Ji Zhixing's side and asked anxiously, "Have you finished writing?"

Ji Zhixing closed his eyes and shook his head. His brain had been working at full speed for an hour, and his hands were also working at full capacity. This hour was more tiring than running 3,000 meters. He was so tired that he didn't even want to talk.

Lin Lang didn't dare to provoke him any further, and instead asked, "What happened just now? Weren't you in 301? How did you end up in 201 again?"

Ji Zhixing took out his phone and showed him the internal messages on the campus platform.

"201?" Lin Lang's eyes widened. "How could it be 201!" He had checked Ji Zhixing's phone that morning, and it was clearly 301!

Ji Zhixing shook his head: "I don't know what happened either." His voice was weak; he was too tired.

Lin Lang frowned, staring at his phone screen. Was it a system bug, or was someone sabotaging him? Hacking into the site's messaging backend and modifying messages was technically possible. Could someone be deliberately targeting Ji Zhixing? He voiced this suspicion.

Ji Zhixing thought for a moment with a sullen face. No matter what the matter was, he couldn't just suffer in silence.

After returning to his dormitory, he went straight to his counselor's room and told him what had happened.

"How could this happen?" Counselor Chen Yan looked at Ji Zhixing's phone screen and couldn't see any signs of alteration. "Did you take a screenshot when it showed 301?" He wasn't doubting that Ji Zhixing was lying, but he always had to bring evidence when reporting a problem to the school.

"No." Ji Zhixing shook his head. He never expected such a thing to happen, let alone think about taking screenshots as evidence.

Chen Yan pondered for a moment and said, "This is difficult... How about this, I'll talk to the school and see if we can have a technician investigate. You just focus on finishing the rest of your exams, and I'll let you know when the investigation is complete."

"Okay, thank you, Director Chen." Ji Zhixing didn't press the matter further; he knew that Director Chen couldn't immediately uncover the truth for him.

The news that Ji Zhixing had gone to the wrong exam room quickly spread among the students, and the "betting" thread on the school forum became lively again.

"Oh no, I never thought even a top student could be so careless."

"Why did I go to the wrong exam room?"

"Maybe he's too complacent and doesn't take the final exams seriously."

"Are you sure he went to the wrong exam room? I saw him in room 301 this morning and thought he was skipping a grade so he came to take the third-year exam."

"What's the point of taking the final exam in your junior year if you haven't earned enough credits in your sophomore year?!"

"He might not even die, I heard he wrote for an hour, didn't he?"

"Come on, the exam this morning was so difficult. I worked like crazy for four hours and I still hadn't finished a fifth of it. Even if Ji Zhixing is really good, he can still do it. Can he keep up with his typing speed?"

"Fortunately, we discovered it in the first game, otherwise we would have scored zero points in all of them, and we might have set another school record."

"Hehe, it doesn't matter if he fails all his subjects. His eligibility for postgraduate recommendation won't be revoked. He can just retake the exams."

"This morning's test paper was very important, and Ji Zhixing's overall final exam score is worrying."

"Fan Yongjie is really lucky, he's sure to win this time."

"I just regret that Patek Philippe. It might not have lost, but now it's certain to change hands soon."

"Hilarious! They even run tutoring classes, and he's the first one to fail."

"You don't have to say that. They're just doing this out of kindness, and they're not charging any money."

"His guessing accuracy is very high, okay? He basically covers all the testable points he talks about."

"Yes, if I hadn't listened to his lectures, I would have failed at least two of those four subjects this morning."

Upon seeing these messages, Qi Cheng turned to Qiu Lan and said, "Hey, could I borrow your lecture notes from the past few days to make a copy?"

For a moment, the sound of taking notes echoed throughout the dormitory of the second-year students in the School of Physics.

Before they knew it, the remaining exams were all over. These past few days, Lin Lang and Xu Dongyang, afraid of upsetting Ji Zhixing, dared not discuss the exams.

The counselor later told Ji Zhixing that the school had technical staff check the backend system and found nothing wrong. However, given that Ji Zhixing had just won first prize in the CUPT competition, the school did not completely refute his statement.

Technicians speculated that a system bug might have caused Ji Zhixing to receive the incorrect exam room assignment notification. Later, the program performed a timely self-check, automatically fixing the bug and correcting the erroneous notification. The school also promised to guarantee Ji Zhixing a minimum passing grade if he failed the first few subjects.

Ji Zhixing didn't really accept the idea that the system had a bug. Although there was no evidence, he always felt that someone was causing trouble.

Lin Lang was furious after hearing Ji Zhixing's guess. With his skills, he could hack into the campus platform management system, but he might not be able to find any clues. This frustration of wanting to help but being unable to ignite a desire to study that Lin Lang had never felt before. Although the final exams were over, he started cramming into his books instead.

Ji Zhixing glanced at the books and found they were all titles like "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" and "Design Patterns: The Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software." He thought about it and decided that Lin Lang had both talent and interest in this area, and this opportunity to motivate him was a good thing, so he didn't try to dissuade him.

After the exams, most students completely relaxed. They didn't have to attend classes for the last few days; they could go on vacation once the results were released. Therefore, the school forum was bustling with activity every day, with betting posts constantly trending on the first page, everyone eagerly awaiting the final odds.

A note from the author: