Shen Qi fetched some fast-acting heart-saving pills and helped Cadre Liu take one.
The commotion was so loud that Xiao Wen, an assistant in the neighboring office, came running over.
Seeing the situation, Xiao Wen could only look to the heavens in exasperation. "Cadre Liu, you... Shen Qi, you again!"
Shen Qi looked completely bewildered. "Why 'again'? I just got here to report for duty. It's only been an hour."
Cadre Liu weakly waved his hand and stammered, "No... let's not talk about it..."
Xiao Wen helped Cadre Liu catch his breath and said with great concern, "Cadre Liu, you took your medicine, right? I'll drive you home."
"N... no need..." Cadre Liu shook his head. "Xiao Wen... take him... to the dorm... I want... some peace and quiet..."
"All right. You've just had an attack, Cadre Liu, so you should rest in the office. Just call if you need anything. I'll come right away." Xiao Wen picked up Shen Qi's suitcase, led him out of the office, and headed toward the training team's dormitory.
"Cadre Liu has a heart condition. He can't be startled," Xiao Wen told Shen Qi.
"Got it. I'll be careful from now on. You scared me half to death just now," Shen Qi said, still shaken.
Xiao Wen asked, "By the way, what did you do to upset Cadre Liu?"
"Right after we met, he made me solve a problem and said I couldn't eat until I did. Then I..." Shen Qi briefly explained what had happened.
"Hey, Shen Qi, I don't even know what to say about you. Forget it, I won't go on. I'll take you to the dorm to drop off your things, then we'll go eat in the cafeteria." Xiao Wen was young, short, and ordinary-looking, with an easygoing disposition.
"Brother Wen, you're in college, right?" Shen Qi, a high schooler who stood five foot nine, was a little taller than Xiao Wen, who was five foot seven.
"Beijing Institute of Technology. I'm a junior now, and I'll be a senior when classes start in September. I'm currently interning at the Chinese Mathematical Society to gain some work experience."
"Oh, Brother Wen, are you in the Mathematics Department?"
"No, I study information engineering. Mathematics isn't one of Beijing Institute of Technology's strengths."
"You have to take Advanced Mathematics and Linear Algebra for information engineering, right?"
"Of course. Advanced Mathematics and Linear Algebra are required courses. But I'm ashamed to admit that my math skills might not even measure up to yours, Shen Qi. I don't understand the boundary conditions for the maxima and minima of Lagrange's indefinite integrals, but you do. Heroes have always emerged in youth. We college students have to admit we're getting old."
"You're too modest, Brother Wen. I'm only good at math. I'm pretty average at all my other subjects."
The two chatted as they walked and soon arrived at the dormitory building.
There was a small cafeteria on the first floor, with dorm rooms on the floors above.
The rooms were doubles, each with a bunk bed, a private bathroom, a balcony, a water heater, air conditioning, a wardrobe, and a computer desk. The whole building had Wi-Fi coverage. It had just about all the necessary amenities, and was quite comfortable.
When Shen Qi entered Room 307, he found it clean and tidy, with no one else staying there.
"Where's my roommate?" Shen Qi asked.
"You don't have a roommate. You're staying by yourself. There are twenty-one people in this year's training team, and you were the last to report in, so you don't have a roommate for now." Xiao Wen set down Shen Qi's suitcase.
"That's fine. It'll be quiet living alone." Shen Qi put his backpack on the bed, took the dormitory key from Xiao Wen, picked up a meal card, and went downstairs to eat.
That evening, Shen Qi read by himself in the dorm.
"My Math Level is at Level 5. According to the system, Level 5 counts as professional. I'll try a professional-level problem and see how it goes."
Shen Qi found a problem he had never dared touch before. Tonight, he decided to give it a try.
"Some numbers have a special property: they cannot be expressed as the product of two smaller numbers. Examples include 2, 3, 5, and 7. Such numbers are called primes.
"Primes play an important role in both pure and applied mathematics, yet their distribution does not follow any discernible pattern.
"One hundred and fifty years ago, the German mathematician Riemann proposed a conjecture. He said that the frequency of primes was closely related to a complex function called the zeta function. Riemann believed that all primes could be expressed according to a certain pattern by the zeta function. To this day, the Riemann Hypothesis has yet to be fully proven."
Shen Qi tried to crack the Riemann Hypothesis, one of the world's seven great unsolved mathematical problems. Of course, calling them "the six" would now be more accurate, since Russian mathematician Perelman had solved the Poincaré conjecture in 2006.
Faced with the Riemann Hypothesis, Shen Qi stared blankly for three hours. Then he took a shower and climbed into bed, feeling like an idiot.
"I got carried away. I really did get a little carried away." Shen Qi lay on the lower bunk, staring at the wooden boards of the upper one.
It was true that lately everything had been going smoothly, and he had won every battle. But in the face of a genuine mathematical challenge, Shen Qi felt utterly helpless. He couldn't even reach the threshold.
Trying to solve a thousand-year-old problem like the Riemann Hypothesis with Level 5 math skills was like a toddler who had just learned to walk racing Bolt—and winning. It simply wasn't going to happen.
"I wonder what it would be like to reach Level 15. Maybe only someone with Level 15 math skills could solve a thousand-year-old problem..." Shen Qi drifted off to sleep.
The next day, all twenty-one members of the 20XX Olympic Math National Training Team gathered for the first time.
Their young faces still held a trace of childishness, yet they looked more mature than most middle schoolers. All twenty-one team members were boys—not a single girl. It was an all-male team.
"Team members, in fifteen days we'll be heading to the UK to represent the Chinese Olympic Math team at this year's IMO," the deputy head announced loudly.
"You should know what the IMO means and how much it matters. That's right: the International Mathematical Olympiad. It's the Olympics of the Mathematics Community."
"But not everyone will get to go to the UK. The six strongest among you will shoulder the responsibility of bringing honor to our country and bask in unparalleled glory."
"No one gets an opportunity for free. You have to fight for your own dreams. Over the next fifteen days, we'll hold a test within the team every day and record your scores. The six people with the highest total scores will become official members of this year's Olympic Math national team."
"That's all I have to say. Next, Teacher Su, our geometry coach, will take over."
The deputy head handed the session over to Teacher Su, who specialized in intensive geometry training.
The IMO competition generally covered algebra, geometry, number theory, Combinatorics, Probability Theory, and other fields. The Chinese Olympic Math National Team had a specialized coach for each branch of the competition.
Teacher Su, who taught geometry, lectured all morning. The team members had just one hour for lunch and a break, and in the afternoon another coach took over to teach number theory.
The training was extraordinarily intense. The coaches didn't care whether the team members understood or absorbed the material. They just taught, leaving it to the students to figure out whether they could keep up.
Shen Qi didn't like the national team's force-feeding approach to teaching. He preferred the style of his provincial team.
The day's intensive training ended at 6:30 p.m., followed immediately by that day's test.
The test lasted two hours. At 8:30, the exhausted young men could finally have dinner.
Around midnight, one of the team members came down with a fever of 39.7 degrees. He foamed at the mouth and was delirious, and had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment.
The next day, another team member couldn't withstand the hellish training. He grew dizzy and fainted, and was rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment.
Watching two teammates leave one after another, Shen Qi realized there was a conspiracy. "I get it! Why are we doing fifteen days of hellish training? Because there are twenty-one members in this National Training Team. One will drop every day, and the six left alive will represent China at the IMO..."
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