Chapter Eleven: The Beginning of the School Year

Jin Xin accepted the test paper Wu Tong handed him in a daze, went to school in a daze, and sat at his desk in a daze, relying almost entirely on instinct, as if he’d just been struck by lightning.

“Hey... hey, hey, hey...” Zhao Lei waved his hand in front of his deskmate and good friend’s eyes. Seeing Jin Xin still unresponsive, he grinned mischievously and tugged at Jin Xin’s Chinese textbook, which was upside down. “The homeroom teacher’s here!”

Startled, Jin Xin snapped back to reality and reflexively tried to jump up, but Zhao Lei quickly held him down—otherwise, he would have alarmed the entire class.

“What’s wrong with you today? Why are you like this?” Nearly scared out of his wits, Zhao Lei asked in a low, concerned voice, “Did something happen at home?”

He hadn’t heard anything. They lived in the same alley—if something had happened in Jin Xin’s family, there’s no way his own wouldn’t have caught wind of it. In their neighborhood, even the slightest commotion was common knowledge among the old ladies.

“Tell me, what’s it like to wake up and suddenly realize your little sister is a super genius?” Jin Xin muttered dreamily.

“Damn... It’s like you’re about to ascend to immortality!” And what is ascending? It’s a calamity, swift and sudden.

If they had a genius little sister, then they’d instantly become the ones everyone compared! With such a stark contrast in grades, the mountain of books and sea of exercises would drown them, turning them from a salted fish into dried salted fish!

“What happened to our little sister?”

Zhao Lei knew that the only one Jin Xin ever called “little sister” was his cousin from his aunt’s side, the one he’d grown up with, who now attended the same school.

“Nothing, just realized my sister’s pretty amazing!” Jin Xin confided everything about himself to his childhood friend, but as for his sister, he’d rather not go into detail just yet. He needed time to process—Tongtong had really given him a huge shock today!

“Let’s study, let’s study!” Jin Xin turned his Chinese textbook right-side up and began reading with unusual seriousness. If he didn’t work harder, his grades would be too embarrassing to show, and he’d never be able to hold up his head as a big brother in front of Tongtong again!

Meanwhile, Wu Tong, being considerate, gave her brother plenty of time to react and didn’t chase after him to tutor or review with him immediately.

She launched into her problem-solving mode. She’d mastered the knowledge points, but to excel in exams, absolute mastery wasn’t enough—she needed true familiarity.

By practicing more problems, gaining broader exposure and encountering a variety of question styles, she’d be able to face any unusual or challenging questions in the exam room without fear.

During the three days before school started, Wu Tong finished all the math materials on Jin Xin’s bookshelf, as well as all the comprehensive math mock exams and supplementary books she’d bought. She thoroughly consolidated her foundation in high school mathematics.

Once she’d mastered all the high school concepts, working through problems became a genuine pleasure. Every problem in the materials fell before her one after another, and she felt a surge of confidence and pride, as if she stood at the mountaintop, looking down on all the mountains below.

No matter how unpredictably the question-setters tried to innovate, in the end, the questions always revolved around the core concepts in the textbooks.

Some of the more advanced problems caught Wu Tong’s interest—these must have been competition problems. Some were labeled with their sources, others not, but they all challenged divergent and logical thinking to the extreme, digging deep into every aspect of high school mathematics.

When she first started, Wu Tong inevitably took a few detours. She hadn’t encountered this type of question before and lacked the specific mindset for them. With careful thought, she solved them, but she could tell her methods were sometimes overly complicated. There must be simpler, more direct ways to approach them.

Wu Tong planned that once she’d finished self-studying all her high school subjects after the semester began, she’d seek out more advanced mathematics textbooks. She wanted to know: Where did those rigorous mathematical formulas come from? How were they derived? What conditions were needed to derive them?

These unanswered questions deeply fascinated Wu Tong and drew her to explore. She felt she was gradually finding a direction for research that truly suited her.

Wu Tong stayed at her grandfather’s house until the night of the thirty-first. After dinner, her uncle drove her home.

At her grandfather’s, she stayed on the third floor. She could meditate and exercise on the indoor balcony in the mornings. Most buildings in the area were low, three stories at most. Facing south, her room was sunny and unobstructed. Studying and training were just as undisturbed as at home, with all her familiar things around her. Wu Tong adapted perfectly.

September first marked the official start of the school year.

As a second-year high school student, the beginning of term was straightforward: walk into the classroom with her backpack and find her seat.

When class time arrived and all the students were present, the homeroom teacher would take charge, and everyone would pay the required fees together.

Although this was the era of nine-year compulsory education, high school still required miscellaneous fees—one thousand per semester. Top students could have these fees waived and even receive awards, though Wu Tong had never enjoyed those benefits. This term, she was determined to earn them—not because her family needed the money, but for the honor that would make her parents proud.

Xincheng No. 1 High School, the best school in the county, had about twenty classes per grade. Classes one and two were the honors classes; classes three to seven were Tsinghua classes, and the rest were regular parallel classes, each with about a hundred students.

After the second-year division into science and humanities, classes one and two remained as science honors classes—the so-called elite fast track—and a new key humanities class was formed.

Wu Tong was in class seven, previously one of the Tsinghua classes. Her entrance exam scores were decent—around 300th or 400th in the county—but not high enough for the honors class, so she was placed in this second-tier group. The main subject teachers—Chinese, math, physics, and chemistry—were all top-tier, with no lack of resources.

Class seven was a science class. Those who chose humanities transferred to the appropriate classes, while those who chose science stayed. Wu Tong didn’t need to switch.

Their desks were not the refined single desks of later years but the old-fashioned, worn double desks with backless square stools. There were seven desks per row, two on each side and four in the middle, separated by aisles—a ten-row classroom, now mostly filled. Day students lived nearby in the county; most boarders had arrived the previous afternoon.

Those who arrived early were mostly helping each other madly copy summer homework. At this time, those with high rankings who had finished their homework were in high demand.

Wu Tong sat at the innermost desk by the wall in the fourth row. Her deskmate, Zhang Shumei, was a familiar face who had also chosen science and was already there, busily filling out homework.

Usually, Wu Tong was one of them too. The two of them had similar standings in class, hovering around the middle, somewhere between 30th and 50th place.