bookrebus Chapter 41 An Unprecedented Scandal
Chapter 41 An Unprecedented Scandal
The match day arrived as scheduled.
Early in the morning, the entire Xia Guo team had already gathered at the restaurant.
"Hey, these guys have pretty good mental fortitude. Looks like no one's having insomnia."
Professor Hu, who was leading the group, had a keen eye, subtly scanning the eyes of each student...
Seeing that there were no red veins caused by extreme anxiety, he breathed a long sigh of relief and nodded to himself.
This made it impossible for him not to be nervous!
Last year, the Xia Guo team had a key player who was highly anticipated and considered a sure-fire gold medal contender.
However, in the examination room, that genius couldn't even perform at half of his usual level.
What defeated him was not the difficult algebraic geometry, but simply the severe insomnia caused by excessive stress.
In the ultimate battle of wits, even the slightest lapse in concentration can be fatal.
It's worth mentioning that today's English breakfast received surprisingly excellent reviews.
After all, in this country full of terrible food, having a normal carb bomb meal is a blessing from God.
The aroma of caramelized bacon, juicy sausages, golden-brown and crispy hash browns, roasted tomatoes, tender mushrooms, rich tomato-based soybeans, uniquely flavored black pudding, fried bread, toast with slightly charred edges, and a variety of colorful jams.
Everyone was wearing smiles to hide their pre-exam tension, carefully choosing the food they wanted.
It was Su Hao's turn.
The woman serving the food looked at the handsome young man with a smile.
Su Hao blinked, looking at the rows of food. Not quite understanding the numerous English names, he quickly came up with a solution and blurted out a sentence in plain language:
"Everything!"
The woman paused for a second, then her hands moved with lightning speed!
When the plates were piled up into a rickety little mountain, he was startled.
……
After breakfast, the journey to the examination hall seemed especially long.
The national teams moved quietly through the morning mist, like parallel lines that did not interfere with each other.
Everyone was walking quickly with their heads down, as if facing a formidable enemy.
Someone was muttering to themselves, reciting the final formulas from memory, as if they were chanting some forbidden incantation;
Some people closed their eyes and gasped for breath, trying to push their wildly beating hearts back into their stomachs.
Only Su Hao was burping as he walked.
Stepping into the auditorium, a sacred yet oppressive academic atmosphere immediately greets you.
Hundreds of solitary tables are neatly arranged under the huge dome, creating a spectacular scene, much like a large-scale imperial examination.
The contestants clutched their thin admission tickets, searching for their own coordinates within the vast matrix.
Su Hao also strolled around and found his seat.
[CHN-1]
His position is number one on the Xia Guo team.
On the cold, hard desk, there was only a glaringly white answer sheet, a sharpened pencil, and a spotless eraser.
Su Hao pulled out a chair and sat down, looking around listlessly.
Right behind him on the right, a sharp, cold gaze, even carrying a hint of inexplicable hostility, pierced through him!
It's Lucas, the ace of Team USA!
Noticing Su Hao's gaze, Lucas glared at him coldly before looking away.
However, Su Hao looked at him as if he were looking at a cabbage, without any emotion.
In the vast ocean of mathematics, we are all just fellow travelers picking up seashells on the beach. What's the point of arguing?
In his cognitive framework, hostility and hostility are considered extremely wasteful and meaningless emotions.
"Ah, that's not quite right either. Historically, it doesn't seem to be entirely like that?"
Two brilliant names suddenly popped into his mind: Newton and Leibniz.
That was a momentous scandal in the late 17th century.
These two geniuses almost simultaneously developed the theory of calculus.
Modern scholars, after rigorous research, believe that although Newton proposed the concept in the manuscript about ten years earlier...
But Leibniz, too, relied on his extraordinary intellect to independently construct the system of calculus.
But what about back then?
The two of them were tearing each other apart so fiercely it was almost deafening!
Until the moment Leibniz closed his eyes on his deathbed, all of Europe pointed fingers at him and called him a plagiarist!
The old man must have felt incredibly wronged at that moment.
Su Hao rested his chin on his hands and sighed softly to himself. In the world's highest-level mathematics examination, the IMO, he actually daydreamed about historical gossip!
Just then, heavy kraft paper envelopes containing the exam papers were distributed to everyone's desks.
The air inside the arena seemed to have been sucked out at that moment.
The examiner was a serious-looking middle-aged man. He raised his wrist and stared intently at the second hand of his watch.
"You may begin!"
The chilling announcement echoed through the microphone beneath the massive dome.
"Sizzle—"
The sounds of hundreds of geniuses tearing open envelopes simultaneously blended together, like the beginning of a storm.
The war has finally begun!
.......
For Lucas, mathematics was an unparalleled blessing from God, but also an invisible wall that completely separated him from ordinary people.
"Your IQ test result is 158. Starting tomorrow, stop wasting your talent by going to public school."
His father, a first-generation Chinese elite who served as the chief architect at a top Silicon Valley tech giant, issued the order in an extremely matter-of-fact tone.
In the United States, the families of top Chinese American elites never need whips and shouts, because they know the limits of cramming education.
Lucas's childhood was filled with a deluge of popular science books, Lego models, and fun, brain-teasing logic board games.
This is a greenhouse designed specifically to incubate "super brains," relying on top-tier wealth and intellectual resources.
His father never forced him to do a single math problem, but he was instilled with a deeply ingrained, fundamental logic from a young age:
Facing challenges head-on and solving problems, much like mastering a AAA game, is a dopamine feast that only the elite can enjoy.
When I was 10 years old.
When he swept the national junior high school math competition with an absolute advantage and brought home a report card that would drive an ordinary family crazy.
The father simply looked away from his work computer, his tone completely flat:
"Remember, as an Asian American, a perfect score in math is as cheap as inflation."
Lucas, if all you can achieve is "excellent," then in this environment you're not even as good as the lowest level of mediocrity.
In his father's logic, the elementary math competition was just a beginner's village that Lucas was supposed to pass through.
When Lucas turned 14, his world underwent a complete "ascension".
The Super Bowl, Marvel movies, even school dances...
These entertainment elements that constitute "American youth" appear as ridiculous as ape acrobatics in Lucas's eyes.
He plunged headlong into AoPS (American Mathematical Arts Community), an online dark web exclusively for the world's top geniuses.
There, no one forces you to clock in.
But it was a world of MMORPGs filled with fervor and carnage.
His eyes were bloodshot from staring at the screen all night, battling with anonymous MIT geeks on forums using high-dimensional topology.
In the brutal selection process comprised of the AIME (American Invitational Mathematics Examination) and USAMO (United States Mathematical Olympiad)...
He witnessed firsthand how countless geniuses, cultivated through their parents' "forced cramming," were ruthlessly eliminated during competitions due to a lack of genuine mathematical talent, shattering his resolve.
And he, stepping over the corpses of these "diligent mediocre talents," proudly entered the final six-man roster of the US national team.