At the end of November, the weather had completely turned cold.
It had rained on and off for a week, and only on the day the competition started did the sky finally clear.
The Qiu Chengtong University Student Mathematics Competition was initiated in 2010 by Professor Qiu Chengtong and is open to all university students in mainland China, Hong Kong Island, and Taiwan.
It mainly examines students’ abilities in four aspects: “Analysis and Differential Equations,” “Geometry and Topology,” “Algebra, Combinatorics and Number Theory,” and “Computation, Statistics and Applied Mathematics.”
Accordingly, the “Hua Luogeng Award,” “Chen Shengshen Award,” “Zhou Weiliang Award,” and “Xu Baolu–Lin Jia Qiao Award” are established.
Participating students may choose to compete in one or more subjects. The organizing committee will select the best three results of each participant to determine the individual all-around award, which is the “Qiu Chengtong Award”!
The day before the exam, when Jiang Fuyue logged into the examination system to print her admission ticket, she discovered that Xiao Shan had actually registered her for all five categories!
Ruthless move.
…
A total of 18 exam sites were set up nationwide, and just so happened that there was one in the capital, sparing Jiang Fuyue the trouble of traveling.
On the day of the written exam, Xie Dingyuan drove her there.
When they arrived, quite a few students had already gathered outside the exam site.
Most of them were participating as teams organized by their universities, so they were wearing T-shirts printed with their respective school logos.
Among them, the most eye-catching were the teams from Q University and B University.
First, they had many contestants. Jiang Fuyue roughly counted, Q University had 12 people, and B University had 25!
Second, one team wore bright yellow while the other wore dark red, making it impossible not to notice them.
In the crowd, Jiang Fuyue also saw Q University’s president Zhou Zhengqi. Not only had he personally come to send them off, he was also earnestly reminding each student one by one.
Like an old father sending his son off to war.
Of course, from another angle it also showed how seriously Q University regarded this competition.
The one who came from B University was the director of the mathematics department, this man was a major figure in China’s mathematics community.
In contrast, Jiang Fuyue had neither teammates nor a president or director personally sending her off.
She looked rather lonely and neglected.
At least that was how it appeared to outsiders.
However, she herself didn’t feel anything.
Because she had her boyfriend with her!
Xie Dingyuan handed her a bottle of mineral water with the label already removed. “Take it into the exam room to drink later.”
“Okay.”
“Are you cold? I’ll go get your scarf from the car…”
“No need.” Jiang Fuyue grabbed his hand.
The man’s brows furrowed, and he held it back. “Why is it so cold?”
“Cold?” She felt it was fine.
The next second, warmth covered the back of her hand, and Jiang Fuyue was slightly startled.
She saw that Xie Dingyuan had already wrapped her hand in his palm, rubbing it while blowing warm air onto it.
“…Is it better?”
Jiang Fuyue curved her lips. “Warm.”
The corners of his mouth lifted, and he smiled too.
This intimate interaction, as if no one else existed, had long been quietly noticed by the surrounding students.
“Holy, Isn’t that Professor Xie and Sister Yue?!”
“Don’t joke. Why would Sister Yue come here so early in the morning? It’s not like she’s going to take the written exam with us, right? Haha, ”
The person laughed halfway, only to find his teammates staring at him expressionlessly.
His wide-open mouth slowly returned to normal. “N-no way? She’s really here to take the written exam? She’s already won the Lasker Award and she’s still competing with us for Qiu Chengtong?”
“You can never have too many awards. Do you complain about having too much money?”
“Uh! That’s true…”
“I only know her achievements in physics and medicine are very high. Is she also that amazing in mathematics?”
Those who could register for the Qiu Chengtong competition were basically the best mathematics students among university students. Ordinary people wouldn’t even have the courage to step into the exam hall.
“Remember that year’s IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad)? Sister Yue not only won a gold medal but also took the special prize. That paper of hers published in Advances in Mathematics, ‘Deformation of the J-Equation and the Supercritical Hermitian–Yang–Mills Equation,’ was supposedly inspired while she was solving problems.”
“Th-that’s too terrifying.”
“Jiang Fuyue’s comprehensive interdisciplinary ability crushes everyone here, including the teachers.”
“I’m already trembling before the exam even starts.”
“So this is the legendary intimidation from the Great Demon King? What should I do? I want to kneel immediately.”
The boys focused on how strong Jiang Fuyue was.
The girls, however, were different.
Most of them were sighing,
“Ah! Sister Yue is holding Professor Xie’s hand!”
“Oh my god! Professor Xie is holding Sister Yue’s hand!”
“Heavens! They’re such a perfect match! Every time I see them I can’t help but ship them.”
“You’re a CP fan?”
“Yeah! I even joined the group chat!”
“D*mn! Me too! I found a fellow sister. Come on, let’s add each other on Q first, after the exam we can pick up some sugar together…”
“I used to read news reports and thought professors naturally had poker faces. Sob, I didn’t expect him to be this gentle in front of Sister Yue.”
“Passing her water, warming her hands, rubbing them, blowing on them, fixing her hair, wah… is there anything Professor Xie can’t do?”
“Hmph! What’s so impressive? We came here to take an exam, not to show off affection outside the exam hall. Just grandstanding and attracting attention!”
Amid a wave of happy squeals from people enjoying the “sweetness,” this sentence sounded especially harsh.
“Ji Xiaoya, can you speak properly?”
“Say something normal for once instead of that sarcastic tone.”
Ji Xiaoya: “Who are you calling sarcastic?”
“Whoever responds.”
“Y-you all are simply crazy!” Just for an unfamiliar Jiang Fuyue, they actually united to attack her!
“The one with the problem is you, right?”
“I’m not going to argue with you. There are too many of you bullying me alone. Let’s see the real results in our grades!”
Isn’t it just Jiang Fuyue?
Some Lasker Award winner, genius girl, once she steps into a mathematics exam hall, she’s all trash!
Different fields have different specialties. She didn’t believe that she, a mathematics major, would lose to someone who studied a little bit of everything.
All those praises online, Ji Xiaoya believed they were exaggerated. Where in the world is there such a thing as an “all-around genius”?
…
At 8:30, the candidates began entering the exam hall.
Xie Dingyuan took off his own scarf and personally put it around her.
Jiang Fuyue’s small face was piled up inside the cashmere scarf. If the occasion were not inappropriate, Xie Dingyuan would have long been unable to resist kissing and hugging her.
“Go.”
Jiang Fuyue: “Wait for me. It won’t take long.”
Just how fast?
Less than thirty minutes after the exam started, Jiang Fuyue came out.
Ji Xiaoya was in the same exam hall as her. When she heard the words, “Teacher, I’d like to hand in my paper,” she was completely stunned.
She blankly watched Jiang Fuyue’s departing back as she left the exam hall, then lowered her head to glance at her own test paper, she had completed less than one-third.
H-how was that possible?
Her problem-solving speed was already considered top level among students in the same major, yet someone was even faster than her?
And by this much…
Ji Xiaoya could only comfort herself by thinking that Jiang Fuyue probably didn’t know how to solve many questions and had left them blank.
When the bell signaling the end of the exam rang and the candidates filed out, Jiang Fuyue and Xie Dingyuan had already left long ago.
Zhou Zhengqi stood under a big tree sighing.
A teacher from Q University’s academic affairs office who had come with him walked over. “President, what’s wrong?”
“I’m thinking about the two gold medals in the Qiu Chengtong individual competition and what probability we have of getting the remaining one.”
The teacher didn’t understand. “…Remaining?”
Zhou Zhengqi curled his lips. Jiang Fuyue would take one, so wouldn’t there only be one left?
After hearing this, the teacher comforted him: “Only the first subject has been tested, and the results aren’t even out yet. Jiang Fuyue might not necessarily win an award.”
Zhou Zhengqi shook his head. A sigh escaped, carrying the helplessness of someone who had seen it all, with a hint of resigned bitterness. “Little Liu, you know nothing about the power of geniuses…”
“?”
…
The five exams lasted two and a half days.
In each one, Jiang Fuyue controlled her time to submit the paper within half an hour.
Xie Dingyuan personally picked her up and dropped her off, accompanying her throughout the exams.
On the last day, they even trended on social media.
Netizens first went crazy shipping them, shouting that it was explosively sweet.
Then the focus shifted to,
At Sister Yue’s level, does she even need to participate in the Qiu Chengtong competition?
【I seriously suspect Sister Yue is just doing this to add conduct points】
【Sigh, she’s just playing around~】
【She probably went to give this group of university students a lesson】
【Inside news says Sister Yue handed in her paper in less than half an hour for every exam, completely destroying the mentality of people in the same exam hall】
【That’s right. Students from Linan No.1 High School who were in the same class year as her still remember the fear of being dominated by the Great Demon King’s “handing in the paper” during exams】
【I heard that during a high school physics competition back then, a girl fainted on the spot because the pressure of being in the same exam hall as Sister Yue was too great】
【Legends of the Goddess Yue are everywhere in the martial world…】
【Alright then, yyds (eternal god), I’m tired of saying it】
…
On December 4, the written exam results for the five subjects were released.
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