News that the mysterious student had a chance to enter the USTC Young Scholars Program spread among the students present. Before long, it would likely spread throughout the entire grade.
Beside the small blackboards, Liu Bin said to Chen Liang, "Director Chen, how about this? I'll put up another problem tomorrow, and during the time the seniors are eating, we'll come over and see with our own eyes whether that student shows up again."
"And while we're at it, we'll see whether he can solve the problem I put up tomorrow."
Chen Liang asked doubtfully, "Didn't you say you had class tomorrow?"
Liu Bin waved a hand. "I'll come right over after class."
Chen Liang could not help laughing.
Well, he could see it now. Professor Liu had developed a competitive streak against that mysterious student. Unless he found the student himself, he probably would not let this go.
Of course, that worked out perfectly, because Chen Liang also wanted to find that student in person and see who he really was.
So he nodded. "All right!"
Another day quietly passed.
Friday, 6:30 p.m., Affiliated High School cafeteria.
"Old Xiao, it's Saturday tomorrow. Want to go to an internet café?"
Several second-year students sat together, eating and chatting.
"No." Xiao Yi answered.
"Damn, what's gotten into you these past two-plus weeks since school started? How long has it been since you last came gaming with us? Aren't you the number one Yasuo at our Affiliated High School?" his roommate Chen Wei, who sat beside him, said.
"I need to study!" Xiao Yi shrugged. "In less than a year and a half, it'll be our turn to take the college entrance exam."
Another roommate, Zou Yu'an, laughed and teased, "Old Xiao's living the senior year life ahead of schedule."
"I can't take this." Chen Wei shook his head.
Xiao Yi shook his head and did not argue with his roommates.
Because they had no idea what had happened to him.
More than ten days ago, on the very day school started, a voice had suddenly appeared in his mind and told him that he had obtained a buff called Ruthless Continuous Study.
Seeing that name reminded him of Jax's passive skill, Grandmaster's Might, in League of Legends.
As for the effect...
It was not completely unrelated. All he could say was that the effect was not only similar, but even more overpowered.
Ruthless Continuous Study: For every hour spent studying continuously, study efficiency doubles, up to a maximum of 10 times efficiency.
For a student, this BUFF could absolutely be called god-tier. Ten times study efficiency meant, simply put, that something which had previously taken him ten hours to understand could now be understood in just one.
Of course, that was only the most superficial way to put it. Based on Xiao Yi's own experience, this tenfold increase in study efficiency did not merely speed up how quickly he understood knowledge; it also improved his ability to understand it.
Well, how should he put this "ability to understand knowledge"? It was roughly equivalent to intelligence.
Like that well-known joke: "Beat me to death and I can do anything." "Come on, then. Try this math problem."
So, there was some mathematical knowledge that Xiao Yi probably would not master even if given a whole year. Even with his comprehension speed increased tenfold, there was no way he could figure it out in a short time.
But now, as long as he stacked Ruthless Continuous Study to ten layers, that kind of knowledge would probably become as simple as one plus one to him.
Of course, the BUFF was incredibly powerful, but there was one problem: it could expire.
When Ruthless Continuous Study had not reached ten stacks, if he did not study within one hour, all stacks would disappear. When it had reached ten stacks, if he did not study within 7.5 hours, all stacks would disappear. Once the stacks disappeared, Ruthless Continuous Study would enter a seven-day cooldown.
That meant that if he went 7.5 hours without studying, all the stacks he had spent ten hours building would vanish, and he would then have to wait a full seven days before he could activate the effect again.
That was a whole seven days!
Having experienced the effects of Ruthless Continuous Study for so many days, Xiao Yi absolutely could not tolerate spending seven days back in that state where he could not solve anything even if beaten to death.
So what else could he do?
He could only grind!
His sleep absolutely could not exceed 7.4 hours. He had to spend 0.1 hours studying to refresh the BUFF.
The good news was that as long as he began thinking through problems in his head or reviewing what he had learned before, it counted as studying. So refreshing the buff was neither particularly easy nor particularly difficult.
However, if that were all, he would not need to grind so hard. Once he had stacked it to ten layers, he could simply study a little in his mind every 7.4 hours and be done with it.
But there was another line in the buff's description: if the utilization rate of Ruthless Continuous Study was below 60% within 24 hours, the BUFF would disappear.
That meant that out of every twenty-four hours, he had to study for 14.4 hours to maintain the BUFF.
Basically, aside from the permitted 7.4 hours of sleep, he only had 2.2 hours each day to relax.
At first, Xiao Yi had not been used to such a schedule. After all, he had previously been the kind of student who believed in balancing work and rest. Whenever he was briefly allowed to leave school on weekends, he would often go to an internet café with his classmates.
But after experiencing the joy of studying with ten full stacks, there was no going back.
The main reason people disliked studying was that they could stare at books for ages without learning anything, receiving no positive feedback.
But now, after reading for a while, Xiao Yi could not only absorb all the knowledge, but also connect it all together and solve all kinds of difficult problems with ease. How could he not be happy?
So 14.4 hours of studying every day was completely effortless for him!
After quickly wolfing down the rest of the food on his tray, Xiao Yi asked, "Are you guys going to play some basketball before evening self-study?"
"Yeah." Chen Wei nodded. "You're not planning to come again, are you?"
"Nope. I'm going back to the classroom to study." Xiao Yi waved a hand, then stood up. "I'm heading out first."
"Dog, you've really changed!"
Several roommates raised their middle fingers at Xiao Yi.
After putting his tray in the return area, Xiao Yi left the cafeteria and headed back to the teaching building.
To return from the cafeteria to the second-year department, he had to pass through the Senior Year Department. As he walked, he arrived at a corridor in the senior-year area.
Suddenly, his gaze swept over the area. "Oh? There's another small blackboard here?"
He looked toward a corner of the corridor, where three small blackboards had been neatly placed side by side, each bearing a math problem.
The difference was that the answers to the math problems on the first two blackboards had already been written down.
The third blackboard, however, had no answer.
As for why, Xiao Yi knew very well, because—
The problems on those first two small blackboards were the ones he had solved!
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