From child prodigy to chief scientist

Even He Muzhou was somewhat downcast. He had spent a full hour on the fourth question, but still couldn't solve it.

After calming themselves down at their seats, everyone went to the school cafeteria for lunch.

Xu Xiao came out a little later. After getting his food at the cafeteria, he was about to find a seat when he heard someone next to him say:

"Xu Xiao, there's an empty seat here!"

Xu Xiao looked over upon hearing the voice and discovered that the speaker was He Muzhou.

During this period, Xu Xiao participated in training camp with He Muzhou almost every day, but they didn't have much direct communication and were only nodding acquaintances.

But seeing that He Muzhou had taken the initiative to invite her over, Xu Xiao did not refuse his kindness.

As Xu Xiao placed the plate on the table, he noticed that the two students sitting with He Muzhou were the same ones who had spoken to him before the exam.

"He Muzhou, is this your classmate?"

"Yes, he's a classmate of Yucai Math Competition Team. Xu Xiao is very talented; he just started in the gifted youth program this year and has already secured a spot in the Math Competition League."

"Really? No wonder you look so young. You must be only eleven or twelve years old. It's quite remarkable that you can participate in high school math competitions at such a young age."

After a conversation, Xu Xiao gained a basic understanding of the two students.

The boy's name is Dai Kun, and the girl's name is Luo Yinqiu. They are both second-year students at the Provincial Experimental High School.

Dai Kun and He Muzhou were elementary school classmates, while Luo Yinqiu was Dai Kun's classmate and also got to know He Muzhou through Dai Kun.

Last year, when they were in their first year of high school, all three of them participated in the math competition. He Muzhou and Dai Kun won first place in the province, and Luo Yinqiu won second place.

To achieve such a result in one's first math competition is already quite impressive.

This year, their goal is to enter the provincial team and then strive for the national award or even the national training team.

After finishing their meal, He Muzhou and the other two did not intend to leave immediately.

"Let's reproduce the questions now and see how many points we can get."

"No problem, let's assign tasks now."

"Dai Kun, you'll be in charge of the fill-in-the-blank questions for the first test. Luo Yinqiu, you'll be in charge of the problem-solving questions for the first test. I'll take care of the rest of the second test."

The ability to reproduce past exam questions is a basic skill for an outstanding competition student, just like professional chess players review their games after each match.

In fact, the competition questions are not directly released to the public each year. The reason why they can still be found is because the candidates reproduce them from their memories.

Since the teacher will ask them questions when they get back anyway, they might as well write down the questions while their memory is still clear, so they can estimate their approximate scores as soon as possible.

Just as the three of them took out their notebooks to prepare to reproduce the problem, Xu Xiao suddenly said:

"If you want to reproduce the problem... I can help you too."

Upon hearing Xu Xiao's words, the other three looked at him with some surprise.

Actually, the reason He Muzhou didn't invite Xu Xiao to come along wasn't because he didn't think highly of Xu Xiao, but because he felt that this matter would be too difficult for him.

But since Xu Xiao said so, He Muzhou was happy to let Xu Xiao participate as well.

If more people join, they can reproduce past exam questions even faster.

"That's great, Xu Xiao. I'll leave the first four fill-in-the-blank questions for that test to you."

He Muzhou specifically assigned Xu Xiao a relatively simple task, because the first four fill-in-the-blank questions were the first types of questions they encountered, so they would remember them more vividly.

Xu Xiao didn't mind that the task was simple, and immediately picked up a pen to write it down.

He Muzhou, Dai Kun, and Luo Yinqiu all have good memories. Of course, it's unrealistic to expect them to memorize the questions word for word. They just need to remember the core conditions.

Xu Xiao, on the other hand, seemed much more honest, believing that reproducing the real exam questions meant copying every single word of the question.

Fortunately, thanks to the ability to memorize words at a glance, Xu Xiao had already deeply imprinted these questions in his brain, making it as easy as finding a photo on his phone.

Within ten minutes, all four had completed their assigned tasks.

Afterwards, everyone looked at the questions that each person had reproduced.

"That's right, those are indeed the questions."

"This question... seems a little different from what I remember."

"The diagrams for the geometry problems need to be supplemented."

But after they saw the questions that Xu Xiaofu had presented, their expressions became somewhat subtle.

"Xu Xiao, you reproduced this question so accurately, it's like it was actually the original exam question."

"Yeah, I feel like this is basically the same as the original question."

"Is it possible that this is the exact same problem we just solved?"

Even though Xu Xiao wrote down the questions that left the deepest impression on them, it was still quite unbelievable that he could reproduce them to this extent.

Hearing their comments, Xu Xiao realized that she might have taken this matter a little too seriously.

"Hehe...did I write too much detail? I'll definitely be more concise next time."

"No, Xu Xiao, it's good to write in more detail. We also want to write as carefully as you do, but there are some details that we just can't remember clearly."

During the exam, their attention was focused on how to solve the problems, and memorizing the questions was just a side effect.

Even if they really make memorizing the questions their primary goal, it's still difficult for them to remember them word for word.

He Muzhou then realized that Xu Xiao not only had extremely strong mathematical talent, but also an incredibly strong memory.

In retrospect, my decision not to have Xu Xiao reproduce the past exam questions together in the first place was indeed somewhat laughable.

"Xu Xiao, look at this problem. Did you forget to add some conditions?"

"Hmm, let me see."

By searching his mind for corresponding memory fragments and comparing them, Xu Xiao immediately found the problem.

"Yes, there is indeed one missing condition: in addition to P and Q being moving points on edges AB and AC respectively, it is also allowed that they are located at the endpoints of the edges."

"Yes, that's it. I was just saying it felt like something was missing."

Although this condition is not that important, the problem would not be rigorous enough without it.

After witnessing Xu Xiao's powerful memory, they simply had him review all the questions from the beginning.

This time, Xu Xiao wasn't as rigid as before. As long as the core conditions of the problem were correct, he didn't make any changes.

After reviewing these questions, Xu Xiao only made minor modifications to a few details and added some geometric figures.