From child prodigy to chief scientist

Xu Xiao originally thought that as long as he put in a lot of effort before the exam, he could at least learn about 70-80% of the basic knowledge required for the competition, if not completely master it.

However, in an hour, Xu Xiao only managed to study a few pages of the content.

Because the content here is very difficult, it cannot be understood at a glance, but requires you to stop and think often.

At this rate, I probably won't even finish studying one set of materials before the selection exam begins.

It's important to know that the students at Yucai School who are preparing for math competitions have been preparing for at least a year, and some have even started preparing for the competitions in junior high school.

Compared to this, Xu Xiao probably has no chance of passing the selection exam at all.

"If it doesn't work out... let's just strategically give up on math competitions for now."

Xu Xiao naturally didn't want to give up halfway, but now it seemed that his chances of getting a spot in the competition were indeed too slim.

But considering that Liao Qiuju had gone to great lengths to help her borrow the materials, Xu Xiao felt that if she didn't achieve good results in the exam, she would really be letting her down.

Just as Xu Xiao was struggling with this, he suddenly had a completely new idea.

"Wait a minute... if I can complete the previous entry's task first, it seems there's still a chance."

After these days of hard work, Xu Xiao is less than one percent away from completing the entry for "photographic memory".

If all goes well, this task can hopefully be completed within two or three days.

While improved memory does not directly help in understanding numerical knowledge.

However, with this entry's effect, Xu Xiao could quickly memorize the contents of these materials.

In this way, when participating in the school's selection exam, one can rely on memory to find relevant knowledge in the brain, which is equivalent to an open-book exam.

This will allow him to spend more time thinking during the exam, but it's still much better than taking the exam without any preparation.

With this in mind, Xu Xiao put aside the math competition materials and started reviewing and filling in the gaps in his basic high school knowledge in various subjects.

After reviewing for the past few days, Xu Xiao has basically reviewed all the knowledge, but there are still some things that he doesn't remember well enough, or that he has forgotten after remembering them.

"You haven't memorized these words very well yet... Write each word down from memory ten more times!"

"I haven't memorized these chemical equations well enough yet; I must memorize them thoroughly this time."

"I don't think I've completely memorized 'Li Sao'... I sigh deeply and wipe away my tears..."

Thanks to Xu Xiao's efforts, the progress of the entry task is slowly improving little by little.

One day later, the task was 99.8% complete, almost within reach.

However, the closer you get to 100%, the more difficult it becomes to continue pushing forward.

Xu Xiao needs to accurately identify the knowledge she hasn't memorized, which will take a lot of extra time and effort.

Sometimes, because some knowledge has just been forgotten, progress may even decrease instead of increase.

However, Xu Xiao still tried her best to keep her composure and was not affected by it, and continued to patiently repeat the process.

Finally, after spending more than a day, Xu Xiao received a message notification from the system.

[Host has completed the task: memorizing all core formulas, classical poems, vocabulary, and other basic knowledge required for the high school exam syllabus]

[Congratulations, host, you have obtained the entry "Photographic Memory"]

[It will take a few minutes for the entry to integrate with the host. Please experience the entry's effects later.]

Upon seeing this news, Xu Xiao could finally breathe a heavy sigh of relief.

The task was much more difficult than Xu Xiao had imagined. It was easy to get frustrated because he couldn't find any missing knowledge points, and the progress bar's rewind mechanism was even more frustrating.

Fortunately, Xu Xiao's emotions were stable enough; otherwise, it was very possible that he would not have been able to complete the task even after another month.

"It should be about time now. Let me try out this photographic memory effect."

After waiting for nearly ten minutes, Xu Xiao took out the "High School Mathematics Competition Training Course" that he hadn't finished reading before and started reading it.

After watching for only a short while, Xu Xiao immediately felt the changes in herself.

"My memory... seems to have improved quite a bit compared to before."

When Xu Xiao closed her eyes, the content she had just watched was still clearly visible in her mind.

The feeling is as if one's eyes are a camera, processing what one sees into photographs, and one's brain is able to store these photographs.

Even after some time has passed, these photos will only be less clear and will not affect the recording of the main content.

"No wonder he has a photographic memory... If I had this ability earlier, it would have been so much easier for me to memorize words and texts."

However, considering that there must be some connection between the effects of the terms and the tasks, one certainly cannot gain anything without going through these processes.

With the school's math competition selection exam drawing ever closer, Xu Xiao dared not delay any longer and quickly resumed reviewing the competition materials.

When he stopped consciously thinking about this knowledge, his learning speed immediately increased several times over.

He could read each page in less than a minute or two, just like reading a novel.

Another thing that Xu Xiao found very helpful was that the "photographic memory" entry didn't require much extra effort.

This memory process is like directly engraving the content into the brain without requiring the brain to think, which is completely different from the high concentration of attention in a focused state.

This makes "photographic memory" a permanent term, without worrying about any negative impact.

On their way back to the dormitory that evening, Yang Dun and Xu Xiao chatted about the competition.

"Xu Xiao, you're reading the competition book really fast today. Can you really understand it at that speed?"

Yang Dun was also preparing for the competition, but he was still very surprised after seeing Xu Xiao's learning speed.

He knew just how difficult the competition content was; sometimes, a single difficult point in the knowledge could take him more than half an hour to figure out.

Hearing Yang Dun's question, Xu Xiao smiled helplessly.

"There's no other way, there's not enough time. I can only try to memorize the main points first; there's definitely no time to review them carefully."

"Is it just rote memorization? That's fast enough. But for science subjects, just memorizing isn't very useful. If you let someone who doesn't know how to do problems bring the textbook into the exam room, they still won't be able to solve the problems."

Youngton's point of view is not wrong. In subjects like mathematics and physics, formulas are just the most basic things. Many problems cannot be solved by simply memorizing formulas.

However, Xu Xiao's situation was indeed somewhat special, and she didn't explain anything further to Yang Dun.