My IQ Increases Year by Year

He had come to treat it as a complex, post-class Rubik’s Cube for his mind.

Occasionally, after a shower, or in a lull like this while listening to Dayong fix something, he would turn it over in his head a couple of times.

Chen Zhuo took a blank sheet of scratch paper from his drawer.

He didn’t look at the specific text of the paper. That massive chunk of renormalization formula had already been disassembled into individual variables in his mind.

He wrote an integral sign on the scratch paper.

Following the original line of thought from the Princeton paper, he attempted to go down this path using traditional continuous calculus.

The tip of his pen glided smoothly across the paper.

Step one, define the manifold. No problem.

Step two, boundary convergence. No problem.

Step three, substitute parameters.

Then came step four.

Chen Zhuo’s movements slowed.

He watched the variables on the paper accumulate. As the calculation deepened, the value in the denominator began to approach zero at a geometric rate.

In a continuous mathematical model, a denominator that infinitely approaches zero means the entire result will inevitably lead to an abyss.

Infinity.

This was the dead end.

It was also why those people at Princeton had to slap a bloated patch right here, using complex renormalization to forcibly cancel out this infinity.

Chen Zhuo stopped his pen.

Dayong had just finished fixing the portable cassette player. He snapped the plastic casing shut and pressed the play button.

Faint music trickled out of the headphones.

"All done."

Dayong clapped his hands in satisfaction, then turned to look at Chen Zhuo, leaning over to glance at the scratch paper on his desk.

The paper was covered in nested integrals and limit symbols.

Although Dayong was a hands-on fanatic, his foundation from Keda’s gifted youth program was solid. He followed the path of Chen Zhuo’s pen with his eyes and immediately saw the crux of the problem.

"Your calculation gets to this point, and the denominator just heads straight to zero."

Dayong frowned, pointing at the variable.

"In terms of circuitry, isn’t that like blowing a capacitor and causing a direct short? The current becomes infinite in an instant. The board would burn through on the spot."

"Yep, it definitely burned through."

Chen Zhuo capped his pen, his tone casual.

"So how did the guys who wrote this paper handle it?"

Dayong pointed at the English-language paper tucked under the glass desktop.

"They didn’t cut the power."

Chen Zhuo smiled.

"They found a whole bunch of incredibly tedious compensation parameters and, at the point of the short circuit, forcibly added an enormous heat sink to suppress the overflowing energy."

Hearing this, Dayong, out of pure hardware geek instinct, showed an expression of utter disgust.

"TSK."

Dayong curled his lip.

"If a motherboard shorts, wouldn’t any normal person’s first thought be to quickly add a resistor in series before it, or just take a blade to cut that section of copper foil and run a jumper wire around it? Who would deal with a short by adding such a heavy heat sink? Would the case even close?"

A glint of amusement flashed in Chen Zhuo’s eyes as he listened.

Dayong’s crude hardware repair theory had perfectly pierced the mathematical obsession of those Princeton professors.

"You’re right, it wouldn’t close. It’s ugly, and it severely slows down the whole system’s operating speed."

Chen Zhuo leaned back in his chair, looking at the scrapped draft on the paper.

"So, right now, I’m trying to cut the copper foil in this equation and run a jumper wire straight past this Singularity."

"Then just run the wire. You’ve got a steady hand."

Dayong picked up the rosin from the desk nonchalantly, preparing to pack up his tools.

"I’m still looking."

Chen Zhuo stretched, not a hint of anxiety in his posture.

"Looking for what?"

"The right tool."

Chen Zhuo wasn’t one to bash his head against a wall.

’If the path is blocked, it means you’re using the wrong tool.’

Chen Zhuo crumpled the half-finished sheet of scratch paper into a ball and tossed it into the trash can beside his desk.

He opened a basic physics textbook next to him.

That unique sense of relaxation, so characteristic of Chen Zhuo, seemed exceptionally calm under the winter night’s lamp.

「Mid-January.」

The first snow of winter fell on Huizhou.

It wasn’t a heavy snow. It quickly melted into slush on the ground, making the damp cold feel even more intense.

Finals were approaching.

Keda’s old library was filled with students cramming for exams, the air thick with the stuffy scent of revision.

Chen Zhuo walked up to the circulation desk, cradling several foreign-language books as thick as bricks.

Su Wei’s head was bowed as she stamped a stack of newly arrived journals for archival.

Her movements were mechanical but highly efficient.

The sound was neither too loud nor too soft, and very rhythmic.

Chen Zhuo placed the books in his hands on the wooden countertop.

Su Wei stopped and looked up.

She glanced at Chen Zhuo without a word, took the library card from his hand, and swiped it through the card reader.

Then she opened the title pages of the books and expertly stamped the due dates.

"That Russian edition of *Basic Algebraic Topology* you were looking for is in a corner of the East District reading room. No one has checked it out yet."

Su Wei pushed the books and library card back to Chen Zhuo, her tone as flat as if she were giving a weather report.

Chen Zhuo was a little surprised.

He had only asked about it casually a couple of days ago; he hadn’t expected her to remember.

"Your brain is much more useful than the library’s search system."

Chen Zhuo put away his library card and said with a smile.

"The search system runs on electricity. That costs money." Su Wei picked up her stamp again, her gaze falling back to the journals on the desk.

"I run on cafeteria steamed buns. I’d say that’s a bit more economical."

Chen Zhuo chuckled.

"Exams are soon. Aren’t you going to study?"

Chen Zhuo asked casually.

"Just finished reading. It’s all memorized."

Su Wei turned a page without looking up.

Chen Zhuo gave her a thumbs-up.

"Impressive."

He didn’t linger, turning with his books and heading toward the East District reading room.

They left each other undisturbed, content in their own worlds.

Back at the dorm.

The atmosphere of the freshman final exams had completely taken over the floor.

The hallway was filled with the mumbling sounds of students reciting politics and English.

Even Chu Ge from across the hall pushed open the door to Room 215, a politics textbook in hand and a miserable look on his face.

"Dayong, can I borrow some Brain Platinum to drink?"

Chu Ge plopped down on Dayong’s bed and tossed his book aside.

"This stuff is way harder to understand than code. Why do we even have to take this exam? When was this guideline established? What policy is this? Why do we have to be tested on this stuff?"

Dayong was checking his answers on an electrical engineering exam sheet and didn’t even turn his head.

"Aren’t you a geek with an eidetic memory? Just build an index for it and you’re done."

"Holy crap, code follows logic! This stuff has no logic!"

Chu Ge ruffled his hair in frustration.

He turned his head to look at Chen Zhuo, who was sitting at his desk.

Chen Zhuo was reading the copy of *Basic Algebraic Topology* he had just borrowed from the library.

"The advanced math exam is tomorrow." Chu Ge leaned in, glancing at the book full of Cyrillic letters.

"Aren’t you reviewing? What’s this, some kind of divine scripture?"

Chen Zhuo tore his eyes from the page, flipped to his advanced math textbook, and casually picked up a pen.

"The key topics for the advanced math exam? Didn’t Professor Zhou mention them during class last week?"

Chen Zhuo’s tone was calm, as if stating the obvious.

"The inversion and existence of Taylor expansions, and complex integrals involving parameter variables and limit interchange. As long as you remember those two routines, the rest is just grunt work."

Chu Ge was stunned.

He tried to recall last week’s advanced math class.

’What was I doing then? I think I was trying to figure out how to debug a software interface?’

"When did he say that? Wait, you were there that day?"

Chu Ge was on the verge of a breakdown.

"In the ten minutes before he took his second sip of water and erased the blackboard. I just dropped by that class to see what would be on the exam. It was simple."

Chen Zhuo looked at him.

"You, on the other hand, looked like you were about to fall asleep."

Chu Ge gasped.

He silently picked up his politics textbook and walked out of Room 215.

"You’re all freaks."

He muttered under his breath before leaving.

The dorm room fell silent once more.

Dayong finished checking his answers, yawned, and went to bed.

Chen Zhuo sat at his desk.

He closed the advanced math textbook and pushed it aside.

His gaze fell once again on the Princeton preprint off to the side.

For the past month or so, he had been like a passerby who spots a complex nine-linked ring puzzle by the roadside.

Every day, as he passed by, he would pick it up and fiddle with it for a bit.

If he found a ring he couldn’t release, he’d just put it down and go do something else.

He was waiting.

Waiting for some circuit in his brain to, in a single instant, naturally connect to the right wire.

Chen Zhuo tapped his fingers lightly on the desk.

Outside the window, the snow in Huizhou had stopped.

Winter break was almost here.