From child prodigy to chief scientist

As the afternoon training session drew near, Xu Xiao stopped memorizing vocabulary and headed to the training location.

On the way, Xu Xiao controlled his consciousness to open the system interface, preparing to check how much progress the entry task had made.

But when he saw the numbers on the screen, he looked puzzled.

"Still zero?"

Xu Xiao just spent about an hour memorizing words. Even if the actual time spent using her brain was reduced, she still made some progress.

As for the possibility that the task progress is calculated in whole hours, Xu Xiao quickly denied it.

Previously, other entry tasks that were measured in hours all used 0.1 hours as the minimum statistical standard.

If we calculate it this way, the actual brainstorming time during that hour of memorizing words was probably less than 6 minutes.

Upon arriving at the training room, seeing that the afternoon's practical simulation was about to begin, Xu Xiao temporarily put the problem aside and started working on the test questions.

Although she didn't take a lunch break today and her energy wasn't as high as before, Xu Xiao still managed to finish all three questions in less than two hours.

After submitting the paper, Xu Xiao reopened the system interface to check the progress of the entry task and finally noticed the change in progress.

"It finally moved this time, but unfortunately it only added 0.2 hours."

Even compared to the previous "effective learning time" task, the conversion rate of this task is far too low.

Fortunately, there is no time limit for this entry task, so Xu Xiao doesn't need to be too anxious. He can develop a strategy for the task after figuring out the more detailed patterns.

…………

After the first phase of the 10-day training camp concluded, the first selection competition for the national math competition training team officially began.

This selection competition was extremely brutal. Out of all the sixty-digit national training team members, only fifteen could ultimately enter the second stage of training.

Of course, students like Xu Xiao, Pan Hong, and Ge Xijie, who usually get full marks in tests, won't feel too much pressure in this selection exam.

As long as they can perform at their usual level, advancing to the second stage is a sure thing.

The day after the selection exam, Fei Ran gathered the team members together.

"Now I will read out the list of team members who have advanced to the second stage—"

"Xu Xiao".

"Pan Hong".

"Ge Xijie..."

After reading the names of the fifteen students, Fei Ran put down the list and looked up at his teammates.

At this moment, everyone's expressions were different. Some were glad that they could still stay in the team, some were disappointed because they were eliminated, and some had expected this result and quickly felt relieved about it.

Regardless, the team suddenly lost 45 members, which would be very difficult for anyone to adjust to.

In Xu Xiao's dormitory, only he and Ge Xijie remained with the team.

And this is considered a relatively good situation. Some dormitories only had one person left, and there were even dormitories where the entire team was wiped out.

After the meeting, the eliminated team members returned to their dormitories one after another to pack their belongings and prepare to leave the team.

After spending these days and nights together, everyone had developed feelings for each other, and it was somewhat sad to say goodbye.

After seeing off the eliminated team members, Fei Ran reassigned the dormitories.

To allow the remaining team members some respite, a week of rest was allocated between the first and second phases of training.

However, since most of the team members are not from Yanjing, they will basically stay in the team to train on their own during this period, preparing for the next stage of training camp and selection competition.

Xu Xiao, however, was not worried about the second phase of training at all, and took advantage of this break to focus on his own things.

In the past few days, Xu Xiao has not yet had time to memorize all the mathematical vocabulary, but he has almost memorized the more commonly used professional terms.

Thinking that the remaining vocabulary did not appear very frequently, Xu Xiao was not in a hurry to memorize the entire book. Instead, he turned to reading some original English academic papers.

Previously, the papers Xu Xiao read were either in Chinese or translated using Kingsoft PowerWord.

After all, his English level wasn't that good back then, and if he were to read the original paper directly, the language conversion alone would take a lot of time.

After acquiring a sufficient vocabulary of specialized terms, Xu Xiao found it much easier to read English papers.

"It seems that even without the help of language-related vocabulary entries, I can still learn foreign languages ​​quite quickly."

Compared to science subjects like mathematics and physics, learning languages ​​is much easier. Even an ordinary person can master a language if they put in enough time and effort.

As Xu Xiao delved deeper into reading the papers, he gradually became more focused.

Xu Xiao originally only wanted to focus on the writing format of English papers, but as he looked at them, he couldn't help but start thinking about the research content of the papers.

This led him to spend a considerable amount of time on a paper without realizing it, until he automatically snapped out of his flow state and realized that a long time had passed.

"No... once I start reading a paper, I can't help but want to think about its contents."

Xu Xiao's immediate priority is to master some of the norms and techniques of English academic writing, but sometimes, her brain does indeed become somewhat out of control.

But after glancing at the data on the system interface, he noticed a change that surprised him greatly.

"The progress of the thought entry task... has suddenly advanced by an hour?"

The speed of this progress was something Xu Xiao had never anticipated.

After all, the progress over the past few days had only accumulated to a little over an hour.

This means that the period just now was recognized by the system as a highly efficient "brainstorming" state.

"I see... I understand now!"

After a quick analysis, Xu Xiao had basically figured out the system's definition of "brainstorming".

This requires Xu Xiao's brain to be in a very high state of thinking, even to the point of pushing the brain to its limits.

The reason why the task progress was not advancing when I was memorizing words was because memorizing and thinking are two different states.

There is indeed a connection between the two, but the thinking is more rational and requires a greater mental effort.

While solving competition problems requires mental effort, Xu Xiao's level of thinking is mostly below his mental limit.

That's why his progress on the task was so slow when he was working on it.