My IQ Increases Year by Year

Since the experiment began.

Barely five minutes had passed.

At the third lab bench.

Chen Zhuo was still standing in place.

He didn’t rush to pick up the multimeter probes.

He had just blindly tested twice along with everyone else.

A to B, C to D.

But he immediately stopped.

Chen Zhuo shook his right hand.

The intense note-taking from this morning had left his wrist still faintly sore.

Equivalent circuits and resistor networks filled his mind.

He stared at the multimeter needle’s readings, which jumped around erratically with no discernible pattern.

He came to a clear realization.

’Blindly probing is pointless. I can’t keep track.’

Chen Zhuo thought to himself.

’The more I test, the more confusing it gets.’

’When the brain is fatigued, the error rate for processing this kind of disordered information is nearly one hundred percent.’

He didn’t try to rely on intuition to catch minute voltage drops like Lin Yi.

He didn’t trust his intuition when he was tired.

He decisively gave up on the method of testing and guessing as he went.

Chen Zhuo pulled the cap off the black gel pen with its transparent barrel.

He spread out a clean sheet of white paper.

He pressed the gel pen firmly onto the paper.

There was no ruler.

He relied purely on the control of his wrist.

Cleanly and crisply, he drew a horizontal line.

Then, a vertical one.

A very simple 4x4 grid.

Appeared on the paper.

He didn’t call it a truth table.

It was just a clumsy grid to make recording easier and prevent him from forgetting.

In the four cells of the top row, he wrote A, B, C, D.

Next to them, he drew a + sign.

In the four cells of the leftmost column, he wrote A, B, C, D.

Next to them, he drew a - sign.

He crossed out the diagonal.

That left 12 empty cells.

Representing all 12 possible energized combinations for the four terminals, taking polarity into account.

After finishing the table.

Chen Zhuo set the uncapped gel pen aside.

He reached out.

And picked up the external dry cell battery and wires.

He wasn’t guessing anymore.

Or gambling.

He began a mechanical and methodical process of elimination.

Red to A, black to B.

The multimeter needle deflected.

Chen Zhuo glanced at the reading.

He picked up the gel pen and wrote a resistance value in the first row, second column of the table: 50.

Black ink stained the white paper.

Red to A, black to C.

Read.

Write: 120.

Red to A, black to D.

Read.

Write: ∞.

First row tested.

Chen Zhuo’s expression remained calm.

He was unhurried and patient.

Switch wires.

Red to B, black to A.

The needle didn’t move an inch.

In the second row, first column of the table, he drew an infinity symbol: ∞.

CLICK, CLICK.

The sound of alligator clips biting onto brass terminals echoed rhythmically from Chen Zhuo’s lab bench.

Accompanied by the rustle of the gel pen recording data on paper.

He completely cleared his mind.

Not thinking about circuit structures, not thinking about series or parallel connections.

He did only one thing: apply power, take a reading, fill in the grid.

This was an old-school, brute-force exhaustive logic.

It seemed tedious, it seemed clumsy.

But in a state of extreme fatigue, it was precisely the method that required the least inspiration, conserved the most mental energy, and guaranteed with one hundred percent certainty that no information would be missed.

Ten minutes.

Twelve measurements.

All complete.

Chen Zhuo put down the wires and probes.

He shook his slightly sore right hand.

And picked up the gel pen.

The black box on the table.

For him, it was no longer a blind spot filled with unknowns.

Chen Zhuo looked at the grid on his scratch paper, filled with black numbers and infinity symbols.

And began the final step.

There was no need to touch the equipment anymore.

A-positive B-negative has resistance; B-positive A-negative is infinite.

Clear unidirectional conduction.

A diode was on a path between A and B, with its positive pole oriented toward A.

Between A and C, regardless of polarity, the resistance was identical.

A purely resistive branch.

Chen Zhuo’s gel pen moved quickly below the table.

He drew a node.

Connected a resistor.

Marked the arrow direction of a diode.

With comprehensive data providing full coverage,

the once-chaotic topological structures fell like a row of dominoes.

Smoothly and without any obstruction, the one and only truth was deduced.

After drawing the last connecting line.

And labeling the calculated resistance values.

CLICK.

Chen Zhuo snapped the cap back on the gel pen.

It made a crisp, soft sound.

In the quiet, anxiety-filled laboratory, the soft sound was particularly jarring.

He picked up the scratch paper and gently blew on the not-yet-dry ink.

Only fifteen minutes had passed.

Chen Zhuo strode toward the lectern at the front of the lab.

Chen Zhuo placed the scratch paper, with its 4x4 table and final circuit diagram, neatly in front of Professor Wang.

He gave a nod to the old man sitting in the chair.

Then turned and walked back to his seat.

In the lab.

The remaining four boys heard Chen Zhuo’s departing footsteps.

The stopwatches in their minds instantly began to tick frantically faster.

They knew Lin Yi was a genius. They had long heard of his heaven-defying intuition, so they accepted it when he turned in his paper early and flopped onto his desk to sleep.

Chen Zhuo was only ten years old and even more of a genius; they could accept him finishing before them, too.

But the remaining three were their own age. They couldn’t beat the geniuses, but could they not even beat their peers?

A fine layer of sweat beaded on Miao Shian’s forehead.

He stared at the unsolvable nonlinear algebraic equations on his scratch paper.

His breathing grew somewhat ragged.

He turned his head and glanced at Chen Zhuo, who was also resting on his lab bench.

Suddenly.

Miao Shian took a deep breath.

He picked up his pen and decisively crossed out all the complex equations on his paper.

He forced his feverish brain to calm down.

’There are only four terminals in total.’

’What the hell am I even calculating?’

Miao Shian took a new sheet of paper.

Like Chen Zhuo, he obediently began to draw a test grid.

Test A against the other three, then B against the other three.

He abandoned the mathematical equations and switched to a solid, one-by-one process of elimination.

He Gui, in the corner.

He hadn’t even considered such complex equations.

Because he was a bit timid and afraid of making mistakes, after the initial panic, he had instinctively chosen the most primitive testing method.

Fix one probe in place and test the other three.

After testing a set, he wrote it down.

Then moved on to the next set.

He too, without realizing it, was using this clumsy method that most closely resembled a brute-force approach.

Slowly piecing together the internal truth.

「At the twenty-eighth minute.」

Miao Shian let out a long breath.

He shook the sweat from his hands and handed the scratch paper with the completed diagram to Professor Wang.

Immediately after.

He Gui also submitted his sketch, which was covered in corrections but had the right answer.

"Time’s up."

Professor Wang’s voice rang out right on time.

He picked up the paper tube in his hand and tapped it on the desk.

"Stop testing. Hand in your papers."

Wang Huashao let out a wail.

He tore off a sketch that looked like a spiderweb, one that even he couldn’t understand.

Zhou Kai shook his head and submitted a half-finished paper filled with incomplete equations.

The thirty-minute experiment was over.

In the end, only Zhou Kai and Wang Huashao had failed to produce a diagram.