I was a top student in America.

Hyde Park, University of Chicago.

Li Ao squeezed the brakes, braced himself with one foot, and locked the bicycle against the iron railing before looking up at the open space in front of him.

It's been bustling here for a while now.

A row of yellow buses were parked along the roadside, with the names of various schools printed on their bodies.

Li Ao had heard of many of them; they were top public and private high schools in Illinois, ranking among the best in the United States.

Beside the car door, the teacher in charge was calling out names one by one from the roster.

The students waiting in line wore matching lettered hoodies and plastic name tags pinned to their chests, forming two rows of at least ten people each.

At the registration point not far away, the teachers in charge of the groups lined up, holding thick stacks of student ID cards, and were talking in hushed tones.

"New Trier High School, teacher Wang Hailun, 24 students."

"Stevenson High School, teacher Steve Carlson, thirty students."

"Illinois School of Mathematics and Science, Professor Paul McGariger, eighteen students."

……

After the teachers in front of him finished signing and left, it was finally Li Ao's turn. He glanced at the densely packed records in the register and got a general idea of ​​what was going on.

The staff behind the table were clearly taken aback when they saw that it was a student. They looked him up and then peeked behind him.

After confirming that the boy had indeed come alone, he pointed to the "School" column on the sign-in sheet.

"Which school are they from? And who's their teacher?"

"Wyndham High School," Li Ao answered calmly. "There's no teacher leading the group, just me."

The staff member gave him a surprised look, pushed the sign-in sheet over, and pointed to a blank space: "Then write your name."

Li Ao took the pen and wrote the message in the blank space:

Wyndham High School, Li Ao.

Compared to the long lists of names following the other teachers, his column was the only one with a single, solitary name.

The staff member pulled out a stack of documents and handed them over, which included the candidate's number and exam room instructions.

After receiving the documents, Li Ao didn't rush to leave. He confirmed that the exam number was correct, stuffed the materials into his bag, zipped it up, and then turned around.

As I left, several curious glances fell on my back.

He didn't turn around, and walked straight towards the examination hall with his bag slung over one shoulder.

The exam venue is in another teaching building.

Li Ao followed the flow of people up to the third floor, where the corridor was already full of students waiting to go.

He chose a secluded corner and stood against the wall, placing his schoolbag at his feet, where he could see everything happening in the entire corridor.

The corridors were packed with delegations from various schools.

They each formed a circle, with the teacher in the middle holding a booklet of past exam questions, giving the students a final review.

Some teachers are fixated on the mistakes made in last night's mock exam; others are busy having students review the steps for establishing a coordinate system; and some meticulous ones have even allocated time to each type of question.

The students surrounded in the middle were wearing uniforms and looked tense.

In the noisy waiting area, Li Ao leaned against the wall, looking down as he pulled out his error notebook from his bag and flipped through it.

As soon as I turned to the second page, a few hushed whispers drifted into my ears.

"Who is that? Why is he here alone?"

"Wyndham High School on the hoodie? Never heard of it."

"There isn't even a teacher to guide them; they probably signed up themselves. It's really rare these days."

"He's probably from the South District, don't mess with him."

Li Ao didn't look up and continued scrolling down.

After glancing at a geometry problem he knew by heart, he simply closed his notebook of incorrect problems and stuffed it back into his bag.

When he looked up again, he saw a familiar figure at the other end of the corridor pushing through the crowd toward him.

It's Ryan.

After several workshops with Professor Green, the two became somewhat familiar with each other.

Ryan, still wearing his crisp Oxford shirt, finally managed to squeeze to the front and looked him up and down: "What a coincidence, we're in the same exam room. Did you come by yourself?"

Li Ao nodded.

Ryan glanced around behind him to make sure no one else was there before bumping fists with him: "Are you the only one at your school? No teacher even in charge? How are you going to manage the team competition?"

"Our school doesn't participate in team competitions; I only compete in individual events."

Li Ao spoke the truth.

Ryan was speechless for a moment. He already knew that Li Ao came from an inconspicuous high school in the South District, but he didn't expect that he would actually be a lone wolf.

"Alright, see you in the exam room then."

Ryan waved his hand, turned around, and disappeared back into the crowd of people at his school.

Li Ao didn't pay much attention, leaned back against the wall, took out a pencil from his bag, and quietly began to sharpen it.

Shortly after, the bell rang, and the Illinois Mathematics Competition officially began.

After receiving the exam paper, Li Ao quickly flipped through the entire paper.

The overall difficulty of this year's questions was higher than in previous years, mainly because the questions were more convoluted and the question types were more complex, while the pure calculation part was reduced.

This is actually an advantage for him, who is used to breaking down logic by drawing inferences from one instance to another.

When I finished solving the last challenging plane geometry problem, there were still more than twenty minutes left in the exam.

Li Ao flipped the exam paper back to the first page and carefully reviewed it from beginning to end.

After confirming that there were no careless mistakes, he put down his pen, looked up and surveyed the examination room.

Most candidates are still writing furiously.

Some people were rubbing their hair in frustration, while others were staring at their test papers and biting their pen.

Apart from him, almost no one in the examination room looked up.

Sitting idly is a waste of time, so Li Ao thought he might as well try a different approach and redo a few problems.

Now, not only is there nowhere to go after handing in the exam, but it also seems too disorganized.

Besides, the registration fee was specially approved by Mrs. Paterson, so it would be unreasonable to slip away early. It would be better to stay until the bell rang and hand in the paper.

He flipped the exam paper back to the middle and his gaze fell on a plane geometry problem.

Although he solved the problem using purely geometric methods, he added seven or eight auxiliary lines, making the process less than elegant.

If we simply build a coordinate system and solve it hardware, it might be more intuitive.

Without hesitation, he quickly redrawn the original image in the blank space to set the origin point, and then extended the two perpendicular sides to form the X-axis and Y-axis.

Meanwhile, in the back row, Ryan was racking his brains to tackle the last big question.

This test paper was difficult and had complex question types. He started to struggle from the middle, and he spent an entire page of drafts on the last question.

With the time running out, he was so nervous that his palms were sweating. Afraid of wetting the exam paper, he could only wipe them on his trouser legs every now and then.

He glanced around during a break and saw that everyone else was also struggling with their papers, which made him feel a little more at ease.

Especially Li Ao in the distance—he also had his head down, his pen still moving rapidly across the draft paper.

Ryan wrote his final answer almost as the bell rang to signal the end of the exam.

He let out a long sigh and slumped back in his chair.

"Holy crap, I've finally finished writing it all."

As soon as his tense nerves relaxed, his first reaction was to look at Li Ao diagonally in front of him again.

Upon seeing this, he was immediately stunned.

Li Ao hadn't stopped writing yet.

Ryan was taken aback at first, but then realized what he meant and shook his head to himself:

"He's still writing even after the bell rang; he definitely hasn't finished the questions. Looks like he won't be able to beat me this time."

In his view, Li Ao's talent was indeed extremely high.

Especially when I heard from Mr. Green that this kid had only been self-studying for competitions for a month or two.

Ultimately, he had only been in the workshop for a few weeks, and his foundation in practicing past exam questions and his experience in real-world situations were not as good as mine.

If you actually go to the regional competition and encounter a test paper with many twists and turns and high difficulty, you will definitely be at a disadvantage in terms of time allocation.

Considering that Li Ao had been dominating the previous workshops, Ryan had only hoped that he wouldn't lose too badly in the regional competition, but he didn't expect to be able to turn the tide.

In a great mood, he pushed the test paper to the corner of the table with much more ease.

On the other side, Li Ao also placed the test paper and draft paper together on the corner of the table.

While the proctor was collecting the papers, his mind was still racing, working out the last step of the question he had just answered.

After establishing the coordinate system, he gradually transformed the geometric conditions of the original problem into algebraic expressions.

After simplifying to the end, he found that the middle sets of relations could be combined into a more universal conclusion.

If we apply this conclusion back to the original question, we can get straight to the point, which is much more elegant than forcibly finding auxiliary lines.

Just then, a notification popped up on the semi-transparent panel in front of me:

[Deriving new academic conclusions... Intelligence +0.1]

Li Ao was slightly taken aback.

These days he's been frantically practicing ICTM past exam questions, but his intelligence score has long since hit a plateau and hasn't changed at all.

The jump just now wasn't because of "intensive coding practice," but because the system recognized the new conclusion he derived.

Strictly speaking, this is not a useful mathematical theorem, but merely an algebraic combination technique that is effective for a specific type of problem.

However, the system still considers this as "new knowledge" that it has independently discovered.

"So the system can be used like this?"

Li Ao's eyes lit up.