Chapter 7: I Am the Model Answer

The teachers supervising each session of the college entrance examination were always different. As two female teachers entered the classroom carrying the sealed exam papers, their eyes scanned the students, searching. In the second-to-last seat of the row against the wall in Class Seven, Grade Eleven, a student had already become famous among the proctors—everyone was eager to see what results this student would achieve.

Fang Yuan, an English teacher at Jiangcheng Experimental High School, had never before realized that such a person existed in her own school. After the morning exam ended, the teachers’ group chat was flooded with news about Zhang Chu.

She was somewhat surprised that she would be supervising his exam. “I suppose I’d better remind him to double-check his answers later,” she thought.

At this moment, Zhang Chu paid no mind to the teachers’ glances. He was preparing to activate the “In-Exam Assistance” function in his system.

“Anyone within a hundred meters can have their knowledge linked to mine by thought, allowing me to obtain all their knowledge for a short time. A hundred meters should be quite far in this building…”

A virtual map appeared on the system’s panel, with Zhang Chu’s current position at the center and a circle with a hundred-meter radius drawn around it. The various dots represented different people. The area around him was particularly dense, since the academic building had six floors, each filled with classrooms and examinees.

With so many dots, Zhang Chu had no idea which to choose, nor did he know who among them excelled in mathematics. Having been thrust into this strange world, his memories were blurred.

Suddenly, he spotted the gate of Jiangcheng No. 2 High School on the map. The gate, just inside the circle, included several parents and companions waiting outside.

“Mr. Tao! You truly are my savior!”

A smile curved Zhang Chu’s lips as he located Tao Zhixin at the edge of the map and quickly selected to connect.

“Ding! Thought connection successful. Time remaining: 59 minutes, 59 seconds!”

As the system notification sounded, a torrent of complicated thoughts flooded Zhang Chu’s mind. He struggled to dispel the irrelevant information, keeping only the content related to mathematics.

Compared to other examinees, a teacher like Tao Zhixin was a far more reliable source. Tao was the mathematics teacher at Jiangcheng Experimental High, and though not a nationally renowned expert, his knowledge was solid—more than enough for the college entrance exam.

“If I do well in math, I’ll be sure to thank you properly, Mr. Tao,” Zhang Chu vowed. Brimming with confidence, he opened the test paper and his eyes swept over the questions rapidly, both mentally and with his pen.

The problems on set intersection and union were simple; the eccentricity of the ellipse posed no issue; the projections of geometric solids seemed straightforward; graphing functions came as second nature; arithmetic and geometric sequences were easy.

Ten multiple-choice questions were solved with ease, and seven fill-in-the-blank questions presented no obstacles.

Even the short-answer and comprehensive problems, though requiring calculations, posed little trouble for Zhang Chu now that he possessed Tao Zhixin’s thought process. His scratch paper was filled with flowing calculations, and his answer sheet displayed detailed and concise steps.

It was like using a cannon to shoot mosquitoes—a waste of firepower, perhaps, but effective.

For a few questions, Zhang Chu almost used advanced calculus methods, but worried that using out-of-scope solutions might not be accepted by the graders, he carefully reverted to high school-level proofs and answers.

...

Meanwhile, Lu Yu was on the verge of a breakdown. Stuck on the last fill-in-the-blank question, he simply could not calculate the correct range of values for ‘a’. He tried several methods, but none yielded consistent results.

“Ugh, maybe I should just skip it,” he muttered to himself helplessly. But when he looked up by chance, he saw Zhang Chu in front of him drawing a diagram with ruler and pencil on the answer sheet, already working on the final question!

It had only been forty-five minutes since the exam started, and that guy was already at the last problem?

Lu Yu’s hand trembled uncontrollably, his thoughts a tangled mess, to the point where he even forgot how to prove that a line segment was parallel to a plane—a basic question practically handed out for free.

His nerves were shot. Lu Yu kept whispering to himself, “If you can’t do it, just skip it.”

Yet this skipping seemed endless. He left the first part of several major questions blank, and before he knew it, he too had reached the final problem!

“It’s all that damned Zhang Chu’s fault,” Lu Yu fumed, glaring hatefully at Zhang Chu’s back as if his eyes could burn a hole through him.

“Student, you are not allowed to look around during the exam!” proctor Fang Yuan said sternly, walking over to Lu Yu, suspecting he was trying to peek at Zhang Chu’s answers.

Now, all eyes in the room were on Lu Yu. His face flushed red, and inwardly he tallied another grievance against Zhang Chu.

At that moment, Zhang Chu was experiencing a mix of pain and joy, unaware that someone had posted the midday news online. His reputation score was steadily climbing, already reaching 3,137!

Precisely timing himself, and seeing that only thirty minutes remained, Zhang Chu raised his hand again. “Teacher, I’d like to submit my paper!”

As they were from the same school, Fang Yuan spoke gently, “It’s still early—why not check it over one more time?”

“No need. I’ve already checked it several times,” Zhang Chu replied. With no other choice, he handed in his answer sheet, test paper, and scratch paper, then walked out with his bag—once again, the first to leave the exam room!

Outside the school gates, parents dressed in qipaos and red clothes, waiting under the shade, hurried out and craned their necks as soon as someone emerged.

“That child from this morning is out again!”

“It really is him.”

“I even saw him on the news at noon. He sure is a handful.”

“But this was the math test! Didn’t he check his answers?”

“What school is he from? Don’t they have a homeroom teacher or parent to keep an eye on him?”

It was past four in the afternoon, and the sun was scorching. As Zhang Chu strode quickly past the school gate, he was immediately surrounded by parents and reporters.

“Student, was today’s math test difficult?”

“Were the questions off the usual track?”

Unruffled, Zhang Chu answered, “This time’s questions were of a certain difficulty. The multiple-choice section had quite a few traps, and the later problems included both routine and differentiating ones.”

“We heard you were the first to finish the Chinese exam this morning too. How many marks do you think you’ll get this time?”

“Nearly full marks, I suppose—perhaps I’ll lose a point or two on the short-answer steps,” Zhang Chu replied confidently. After all, he was linked to the mind of his math teacher, and many of these question types were familiar.

The reporter clearly didn’t believe him. “Nearly full marks? That’s impressive!”

Zhang Chu thought for a moment, then recalled, “When the official questions and answers come out, you can compare them to mine. The answer to the first question is A, the second is B—I can’t remember the rest clearly, but the last three are A, B, and C. One of the fill-in-the-blanks is 660. For the short answer, the monotonic increasing interval for f(x) is…”