Chapter 2
The warm spring sunshine streamed through the old classroom windows, casting dappled light onto the worn desks. The air was thick with the unique scent of chalk dust, old books, and the sweat of the boys—a scent so familiar it made Li Ming feel somewhat disoriented.
He sat by the window, his fingers unconsciously tracing the rough wooden tabletop. On the podium, math teacher Wang Jianguo was passionately explaining techniques for adding geometric auxiliary lines, his voice booming yet carrying a simple, familiar rhythm of the school days that Li Ming had long forgotten.
"So here, we connect CE and BD to construct congruent triangles..." Teacher Wang slammed his set square on the blackboard, making a "thump-thump" sound.
Li Ming tried hard to concentrate and keep up with his teacher's train of thought. The symbols and diagrams that had once given him a headache seemed to become clearer now, thanks to his adult mindset. However, the gap in knowledge, spanning nearly twenty years, remained as vast as an insurmountable chasm. He was like a veteran who had been discharged for many years, suddenly thrown back into basic training. His body still remembered some instincts, but the specific tactical maneuvers had long since become rusty.
"Li Ming? Li Ming!"
He was jolted back to his senses by a sharp poke in the arm, and turned to see his deskmate Zhang Hao's winking face. Zhang Hao was his best friend from junior high, a lively and outgoing guy whose academic performance was about the same as his.
"Still half asleep? This is math class! Old Wang's watching you!" Zhang Hao lowered his voice, his tone carrying his usual schadenfreude. "Look at your eyes, you look like you've lost your soul. What were you doing last night?"
Li Ming looked up and, as expected, met the disapproving gaze of his math teacher, Wang Jianguo. His eyes were sharp and scrutinizing, as if to say, "It's you again, the one who drags us down."
"Some students, don't think you can just give up now that the high school entrance exam is coming up!" Teacher Wang said pointedly, glancing at Li Ming. "Every minute you sleep now will mean another tear you'll shed in the exam! You won't even have time to cry then!"
A few suppressed chuckles echoed in the classroom. In his past life, Li Ming's grades had always hovered in the lower middle range, especially in math, which was practically his nightmare; he always struggled to pass the exam. He had experienced this kind of public "roll call" far too many times, each time leaving him blushing and utterly humiliated.
But at this moment, Li Ming simply looked away calmly, his heart unmoved. Having experienced the ups and downs of the business world and the coldness of human relationships, this level of reprimand was like a gentle breeze to him. He took a deep breath, ignoring those gazes, and turned his attention back to the blackboard, trying to salvage any useful information from the fragments of his memory.
"Alright, close your books and take out your scratch paper." Teacher Wang patted the chalk dust off her hands, interrupting the explanation with a "let's see what they're made of" expression on her face. "We'll do a short quiz, just one question, to check how well you've grasped the material from last lesson."
The classroom was immediately filled with wails.
"Huh? Another test?"
"What did we talk about in the last class? I have absolutely no recollection of it!"
"Oh no, I'm doomed! My mom's going to make me eat 'bamboo shoots with pork' again..."
Li Ming's heart sank slightly. The content of the last lesson? He had no recollection of it. The advantage of being reborn was a vague grasp of future trends, not an instant retrieval of all forgotten junior high school knowledge. He pulled out a slightly rough draft paper and quickly dug into the depths of his memory, trying to find any clues related to the current situation.
Teacher Wang scribbled a geometry proof on the blackboard. The problem was long, the conditions were complex, and the diagram was tangled, requiring at least two unconventional auxiliary lines to solve. Just understanding the problem required considerable patience.
The moment Li Ming saw the question, his pupils contracted sharply!
This question!
The long-buried memories surged forth like a Pandora's box opened by a key! He remembered the problem clearly! Not because he was good at it, quite the opposite, but precisely because this problem had almost wiped out the entire class in that year's pop quiz! No one, including the math class representative, got it completely right! This problem was thus used as a typical example by Mr. Wang, who repeatedly explained and criticized it throughout the following week, leaving a very deep impression! Even more coincidentally, later in high school, he found three ingenious solutions to this problem in the corner of a chance-obtained Olympiad math tutoring book, and was amazed by the cleverness of the solutions, remembering them vividly!
A surge of ecstasy coursed through his spine like an electric current, causing his knuckles to turn slightly white from the force of his grip on the table, and he nearly lost control of his expression. He forcibly suppressed the gasp that was about to escape his lips, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.
An opportunity! This is the first excellent chance after my rebirth to prove my "uniqueness" and change the image I have in the eyes of my teachers and classmates!
The surrounding area was shrouded in gloom and despair.
"What kind of question is this? I can't understand it at all!"
"Auxiliary lines? Where do we add them? This drawing looks like a complete mess!"
Zhang Hao scratched his head, his pen almost piercing the draft paper, and sighed softly, "Damn it, Old Wang is deliberately trying to kill us! This question is way beyond the syllabus!"
Li Ming no longer hesitated. He took a deep breath, clearing his mind of all distractions. The pen tip landed on the rough draft paper, making a steady, continuous scratching sound. He didn't choose the tedious, half-finished method used by the math class representative from his previous life. Instead, he directly used the most efficient, concise, and aesthetically pleasing third solution from his memory! His thinking was frighteningly clear, as if the math Olympiad textbook were right in front of him, each step of the proof interconnected, logically rigorous, and flowing smoothly.
In less than five minutes, he had completed the entire proof process on the draft paper. His handwriting was neat, the steps were clear, and it was even more perfect than the standard answer.
He gently put down his pen, exhaled silently, and looked calmly at the blackboard, as if he had just done something insignificant.
At this moment, most students were still staring blankly at the questions, or scribbling messy lines on their scratch paper, looking distressed. Zhang Hao had even scratched his hair into a mess.
Teacher Wang paced back and forth in the classroom, observing the students' answers. His brow furrowed deeper and deeper, and his face grew increasingly dark. Clearly, the situation was far from ideal. When he reached Li Ming's row, his gaze habitually swept over him, but he stopped in his tracks.
His gaze fell on Li Ming's draft paper filled with the solution process. He glanced at it casually at first, then suddenly froze! He leaned forward slightly, his eyes changing from doubt to surprise, and then from surprise to disbelief!
He practically snatched the draft paper from Li Ming's desk, adjusted his thick glasses, and brought it close to his eyes to examine it closely. The more he looked, the more shocked he became, and his hand holding the paper even began to tremble slightly uncontrollably. His lips moved silently, as if he were repeating a key step in the proof.
The other students in the classroom also noticed Ms. Wang's unusual behavior, and they all looked up, curiously peering around, not understanding what had happened.
"Time's up!" Teacher Wang suddenly called out, her voice trembling with excitement, even cracking. "Put down your pens!"
He suddenly held up Li Ming's draft paper, facing the whole class, his voice trembling with barely suppressed excitement: "Classmates! Quiet! Look here! Look! This is the standard answer! No, it's even more ingenious and concise than the standard answer in the reference book! The thinking is simply boundless!"
The entire class fell silent; you could hear a pin drop. All eyes were fixed on the thin sheet of paper containing the astonishing answer, and then turned in unison to Li Ming, whose face remained calm (at least outwardly).
Zhang Hao's mouth was agape in an "O" shape, and his eyes almost popped out of their sockets, as if he were seeing his deskmate for the first time.
"This question involves a variation of Ceva's theorem that we haven't systematically covered yet, and the addition of the auxiliary lines is a stroke of genius!" Teacher Wang strode over to Li Ming's side, staring intently at him like a geologist discovering a rare mineral vein, filled with the excitement and curiosity of a treasure trove. "Li Ming!"
He took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice steady, but his excitement was still hard to hide: "You...you tell the teacher, how did you solve this problem? Who taught you this method? Did you take some kind of math Olympiad training class outside?"
Instantly, all eyes were focused on Li Ming like spotlights, filled with shock, curiosity, doubt, envy, and, like Zhang Hao, pure and undisguised disbelief.
Under the watchful eyes of the entire class, Li Ming slowly stood up. He knew that the most crucial moment had arrived. He couldn't act too strangely; he had to come up with a reasonable, even somewhat mystical, explanation in order to both showcase his potential and avoid being labeled a "freak" too early.
He looked up, meeting Teacher Wang's piercing gaze, a hint of youthful nervousness and shyness at being publicly questioned by his teacher showing on his face. He pursed his lips, lowered his head slightly, and spoke in a tone tinged with uncertainty and hesitation:
"Teacher... I... I think I dreamed about a similar shape before I went to sleep last night. I was half asleep, and I just... I thought of adding auxiliary lines like this... I don't know if it's right, but I tried writing it down."
His voice wasn't loud, and even had a slight stutter, but it was clearly audible to everyone in the quiet classroom.
Did you dream about it?
This bizarre, almost absurd explanation plunged the entire classroom into a deathly silence. Almost every student wore a "Are you kidding me?" expression.
Teacher Wang's facial muscles twitched, and his eyes became incredibly complex and profound. He looked at the almost perfect, even artistically beautiful, answer sheet in his hand, then at the student in front of him with clear eyes (which he was trying hard to fake), a hint of nervousness and helplessness, and for a moment he didn't know how to respond.
He had been teaching for over a decade and considered himself to have seen all sorts of students—some exceptionally gifted, some incredibly hardworking—but he had never encountered anything like this! Solving problems in a dream? That was simply a fantasy!
Is it an unbelievable coincidence? Is it the sudden awakening and burst of this child's mathematical talent? Or... has something truly happened to him that cannot be explained by common sense, giving him unimaginable intuition and potential?
"You..." Teacher Wang opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to sternly refute this absurd claim or press for further questioning, but looking at Li Ming's "unfaithful" expression and his honest, impeccable answer, all his words stuck in his throat. In the end, he just gave Li Ming a deep, enigmatic look, waved his hand, and said in a tone that was difficult to describe as complex: "You...you sit down first."
He didn't comment on the interpretation of the "dream" again, but he didn't deny it either. He carefully smoothed out the draft paper, folded it solemnly, and put it into his lesson plan folder, as if it weren't a draft of a pop quiz, but a research document worth treasuring.
"For the rest of this lesson, we'll focus on reviewing Li Ming's solution..." Teacher Wang's voice regained its surface calm, but as he explained, his eyes kept glancing uncontrollably in Li Ming's direction, his gaze filled with scrutiny, inquiry, and a trace of lingering shock.
For the rest of the class, Li Ming could clearly feel the gazes from all directions, like searchlights, constantly sweeping over him. Surprise, curiosity, disbelief, envy, jealousy... a complex mix of emotions mingled in those gazes.
Zhang Hao, who sat next to him, couldn't contain himself any longer. He practically leaned half his body over, lowered his voice, and asked with a mixture of amazement and gossip, "Holy crap! Li Ming! When the hell did you unlock your full potential? You can even solve problems in your dreams? What kind of dreams did you have? Did you dream of gods? Or your future self? Teach me! Let me have a dream too!"
Li Ming simply turned his head and smiled at him, a smile tinged with youthful shyness and a hint of barely perceptible aloofness, without replying. He turned his gaze back to the blackboard, seemingly listening attentively, but his heart was in turmoil.
This first step, seemingly risky, was actually part of his calculations, and its effect even exceeded expectations. A dreamlike, slightly fantastical explanation not only showcased a certain elusive "talent" to the fullest extent, avoiding the trouble of being questioned about the specific learning path, but also successfully dropped a bombshell in the minds of the authority (Teacher Wang) and his peers, completely shattering their inherent, negative perceptions of themselves.
He knew that from this moment on, he was no longer the unknown, average-performing Li Ming who could be easily ignored. A completely new image, imbued with a touch of mystery, was beginning to take shape. And this was merely the starting point of his journey to success.
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