From child prodigy to chief scientist

Seeing this, the team members looked at Ma Junfeng nervously, silently praying that their scores would be higher.

"Du Yuan, 21 points."

"Wang Diwen, 33 points."

"Zhao Kai, 27 points..."

The scores of the first few students were mostly in the range of 20-40 points.

Although none of their scores were outstanding, fortunately none of them had particularly dismal scores.

"He Muzhou, 42 points."

Upon hearing his score, He Muzhou showed no joy, only a slight sigh of relief.

He knew he had done well on the first two questions, but 42 points also meant he probably didn't get any points on the third question.

The national finals have very low tolerance for errors. If the proof of the process is not rigorous enough or the structure is incomplete, it is entirely possible to deduct all the points.

"Tao Kewei, 51 points."

Tao Kewei's score truly amazed his teammates.

They are well aware of the difficulty of achieving a score rate of over 80% on national-level competition questions.

Tao Kewei, however, maintained a cold expression, seemingly still not satisfied with his result.

At that moment, Ma Junfeng paused slightly, then continued reading:

"Xu Xiao, 54 points."

At that moment, time seemed to stand still in the entire training room, and almost no one reacted immediately.

Immediately afterwards, everyone's faces showed extreme surprise. If it weren't for their fear of Ma Junfeng, they probably would have exclaimed in astonishment.

Even Tao Kewei frowned, completely surprised that someone on the team would score higher than him.

Tao Kewei was used to being number one, and even as a freshman in high school, he was still able to get first place in the province in the math competition league.

But this time, he actually lost to an 11-year-old child, a result he never expected.

"54 points...that seems higher than expected."

Xu Xiao was worried that she might not get any points on the third question, but now it seems that Ma Junfeng's grading standards are not that strict.

After receiving the graded test papers, Xu Xiao looked at her score for each question.

"I didn't expect to get 12 points on the third question... Luckily I persevered at the end, otherwise I would have missed at least one point."

If Xu Xiao had given up even a little earlier, his score would have been at most the same as Tao Kewei's, and he might have only gotten a score similar to He Muzhou's.

"The next mock exam is scheduled for the morning after tomorrow, and the difficulty will continue to increase. Let's go over the questions on the exam now..."

When Du Yuan returned to his dorm that evening, he couldn't help but bring up his exam results from that day.

"Xu Xiao, your test score today was absolutely amazing! Even Tao Kewei didn't get as high a score as you. You've really made Yucai High School proud!"

Although Du Yuan's own score wasn't high, when he heard that Xu Xiao had scored 54 points, he naturally felt happy for Xu Xiao.

He Muzhou wasn't in as good a mood as Du Yuan. This was the first time Xu Xiao had surpassed him in scores since they met.

However, he also understood that this day would come sooner or later, since in terms of talent, he and Xu Xiao were on completely different levels.

He just hadn't expected this day to come so early, which left He Muzhou somewhat unprepared.

But it's still better for Xu Xiao to get first place than for Tao Kewei to get first place. At least Yucai won't have to be overshadowed by Bincheng No. 24 Middle School anymore.

"Xu Xiao, I feel that you're the only one in our year who has a chance of making it to the national team. Last year, our Liaoning Province math competition team didn't get a single player selected for the national team. If it's the same this year, we'll really be laughed at by the other provinces."

Tao Kewei is indeed very talented this year, but he can probably only compete for the International Gold Team this year, and there is still a gap between him and the standard of the National Team.

However, Xu Xiao's progress was too fast, making it impossible for He Muzhou to see where his limit was.

Xu Xiao naturally also wanted to enter the National Team this year and obtain the guaranteed admission qualification of Tsinghua University.

That way, he won't have to go back to prepare for the college entrance exam.

But he also knew just how difficult it was; with his current skill level, there was still a considerable gap between him and the national team's standards.

"I'm still far from it. To get into the national team, I need at least 90 points to be on the safe side."

The format of the National Mathematical Olympiad Finals is three questions each day for two consecutive days, with a total score of 126 points.

Although Xu Xiao scored 54 points with only three questions this time, it seems that if he does three more questions, it won't be difficult to get 90 points.

However, the difficulty of the questions on the second day was actually much greater than that of the first day.

However, the fourth question at the very beginning of the second day will be no less difficult than the third question on the first day.

The difficulty of today's practice questions is only equivalent to the difficulty of the first day's questions in the national finals.

Therefore, even if Xu Xiao were to answer three more questions of the same difficulty as the second day of the national finals, he probably wouldn't be able to get many more points.

"Based on past experience, this is indeed the case. Even in years when the overall score is lower, you need at least 80 points to get into the national team."

Based on the pattern of past national high school math competition finals questions, the first two questions are generally of medium difficulty, the middle two are of high difficulty, and the last two are extremely difficult final questions.

This means that students must be able to answer all the medium and difficult questions correctly and get some points on the final, most challenging questions in order to have a chance of qualifying for the national team.

The subsequent training camp proved that Xu Xiao's concerns were not unfounded.

As Ma Junfeng gradually added some challenging questions, such as the fifth and sixth questions, everyone clearly felt that they were falling behind.

Let alone being able to solve problems of this level independently, even just understanding the solution process is extremely difficult.

Xu Xiao's situation was slightly better; thanks to his longer period of focused concentration, he was able to basically understand the solutions to these problems.

Even so, when Xu Xiao was working on these kinds of problems on his own, he still found it difficult to get a clue.

Because these challenging questions are mostly open-ended, there are no fixed patterns. They rely more on inspiration and in-depth observation to find a solution.

This kind of question arrangement is also intended to truly select students with exceptional mathematical talent, rather than just selecting some "problem-solving machines".

Xu Xiao believes that his mathematical talent is not particularly high, and there is still a certain gap compared with those true mathematical geniuses.