Chapter 211
Mu Shi'an set down the documents in his hands.
“At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong, but there are a few places that don’t look right to me. Could you give me a pen and a few sheets of paper?” Mu Shi'an asked.
“You found something wrong?” Tian Daqing raised his brows slightly.
“Yes.” Mu Shi'an nodded.
“You only looked at it for ten minutes. I doubt you even understood the contents,” one of the analysts said, unable to hold back any longer.
“I’ve finished reading everything in these documents,” Mu Shi'an said in a low voice.
The others burst into even louder laughter.
“Did you hear that? He says he’s already finished reading it. I’ve seen people brag before, but never anyone who bragged this shamelessly. Every page is filled with calculation formulas. Even when we took part in the rechecking, it took us more than ten minutes just to get through a single page.”
“Captain, who exactly are these two? Did they come here just to make fun of us?”
“…”
“All right. You’ve come, and you’ve seen the documents. I won’t pursue the matter any further. Leave now,” Tian Daqing said. He only wanted to put an end to this farce as quickly as possible.
“Captain Tian, like you said, since we’re already here, surely you can spare us a pen and a few sheets of paper?” Song Nianchu stepped forward.
“I’m trying to save you some face.” Tian Daqing hadn’t expected them to argue back, and he immediately grew irritated.
“But you haven’t seen our calculations yet. How do you know we’ll embarrass ourselves?” Song Nianchu countered.
Tian Daqing was so angry that he actually laughed. He turned to the people beside him.
“Give him a pen and a few sheets of paper.”
“All right.” One of them eagerly handed them over, a teasing smile on his face.
He seemed impatient to witness what was about to happen.
Mu Shi'an neither grew angry nor tried to defend himself. He took the paper and pen, bent down, placed them on the table, and lowered his head to begin calculating.
His pen moved quickly, without the slightest hesitation.
Tian Daqing nearly rolled his eyes. Could this fellow be scribbling nonsense on the paper? Even when he did the calculations himself, he couldn’t work this quickly.
Tian Daqing cast a casual glance over, but the moment he did, his gaze froze.
The formulas Mu Shi'an was writing looked extremely familiar, and not a single step was wrong.
After watching for a few seconds, the expression on Tian Daqing’s face abruptly faded. He quickly walked over to Mu Shi'an’s side.
Mu Shi'an remained completely immersed in his own world, paying no attention to whether anyone was standing beside him.
The more Tian Daqing watched, the more shocked he became. By the time he reached the later steps, his pupils were trembling behind his glasses.
This… He wasn’t scribbling randomly at all. He was genuinely checking the calculations.
And he hardly needed any scratch paper. He was doing almost everything mentally.
“Give me some paper and a pen,” Tian Daqing called quietly to the person beside him.
The others didn’t understand why Tian Daqing had suddenly become so agitated, but they obediently handed them over.
Tian Daqing took the paper and pen, then leaned over beside Mu Shi'an and began recalculating the steps he had just written.
Seeing Tian Daqing like that, the others hesitated for a moment before gathering around as well.
At first, none of them took it seriously. But when they saw the dizzying array of formulas on Mu Shi'an’s scratch paper, they all sucked in a sharp breath.
What was going on?
Could he really know what he was doing?
At first, Tian Daqing was still able to keep up with Mu Shi'an’s calculations. But as they progressed, Mu Shi'an left him far behind, until he could barely understand the steps anymore.
Twenty minutes later, Mu Shi'an finally raised his head.
“Captain Tian, my feeling was right. You made a very serious mistake here.” Mu Shi'an picked up the document Tian Daqing had given him earlier, flipped to a page, and pointed at a particular calculation.
“The formula and the figures on this part are both wrong. I’ve corrected them for you. This is the correct result.” Mu Shi'an handed over the scratch paper beside him.
Tian Daqing took it and examined it carefully. Although there were some parts of the process he couldn’t understand, he could make sense of the final result.
The data Mu Shi'an had calculated was far smaller than the figure they had arrived at.
“You… wait a moment.” Tian Daqing was stammering slightly. He took the sheets of paper and led his team in recalculating everything from the beginning.
There were several steps they couldn’t figure out, so Tian Daqing had no choice but to ask Mu Shi'an.
“Did we leave something out here? How did it suddenly become this?”
“Oh, I skipped a few steps. You can’t follow them?” Mu Shi'an asked with genuine curiosity.
Tian Daqing felt as though several arrows had struck him in the chest.
“I’m sorry. I thought you’d be able to understand it. I’ll fill in the missing steps for you.” Mu Shi'an picked up his pen again and wrote out all the steps he had skipped.
This time, Tian Daqing and the others could truly understand the calculations—but by then, they had already lost nearly all their dignity.
Fortunately, the rest of the calculations proceeded much more smoothly. Even so, it took five or six of them nearly an hour just to verify the result Mu Shi'an had obtained.
Looking at the final figure they had calculated, Tian Daqing saw that it was virtually identical to Mu Shi'an’s result.
“How could this be? We really… made a mistake?” Tian Daqing stared at the final result, utterly unable to believe it.
But everything was right there before their eyes, leaving them no choice but to accept it.
“Captain, if we were wrong at this step, then almost everything after it is wrong too.” The team members finally realized the implications.
Tian Daqing’s face turned deathly pale in an instant.
“It’s wrong. Everything is wrong!” he murmured.
“Captain Tian, you don’t need to panic. I’ll leave my husband here to help you. Work out the final result as quickly as possible. I’m going to the rescue effort first.” Once Mu Shi'an’s result had been confirmed, the worry weighing on Song Nianchu’s heart finally eased.
“That’s right. With your husband’s help, we can save a tremendous amount of time.” Only then did Tian Daqing fully grasp the situation.
“Shi'an, stay here and help them with the calculations. I’m going to help with the rescue.” Song Nianchu spoke gently.
“All right. Be careful.” Mu Shi'an nodded.
“Mhm.” Song Nianchu nodded as well, then turned and strode away.
She knew that after Mu Shi'an had displayed such an impressive skill, Tian Daqing and the others would treat him like a priceless treasure. There was no point in her staying behind.
And she was right. The moment Song Nianchu left, Zhao Yuanshan immediately invited Mu Shi'an to sit in the very center.
“Mu… Comrade Mu, right? We were ignorant before. Please don’t hold it against us.” This was the first time Tian Daqing had ever humbled himself so thoroughly before someone younger than him.
But it was true that he had been the one to look down on Mu Shi'an first.
“Captain Tian, there’s no need to be like this. I didn’t take it to heart. Your work is specialized, so it’s only natural for you to be cautious,” Mu Shi'an said gently.
“Good. As long as you’re not offended, let’s begin recalculating now.” With time pressing and the task urgent, Tian Daqing didn’t want to waste a single second.