Who Is This Guy?

Ye Fan sneered inwardly. He decided to head back to the office and write an article lambasting this bad habit.

If he could get a topic trending and drum up a lot of buzz, he might even boost his own profile in the process!

He already had the title in mind—<The "Heads-Down Tribe" on the Subway—A Look at the Culture of the Masses>

With that thought, he stealthily aimed his phone at Zhang Yuan, planning to use the photo of this counterexample to illustrate his article.

He glanced at Zhang Yuan's phone screen again and frowned.

"Huh, he's not dating an anime girl. He's doing Super Brain."

"I guess I can't use that as an illustration..."

Of course he'd seen this wildly popular TV show. The Super Brain app had been specially developed to select contestants.

Contestants confident in their intelligence could answer questions on their phones. The top thousand performers each season qualified for the preliminary round. After that, they could show off their abilities on the actual show.

Since the selection was conducted online, many people used computers to cheat, making the overall scores unreliable. But those cheaters would inevitably give themselves away during the preliminary round.

"Quick mental arithmetic? I can do that too!"

Ye Fan watched with curiosity, itching to give it a try. He'd studied mental arithmetic as a child, and now he instinctively wanted to compare himself with Zhang Yuan.

"88.8*8+88.88*8-8.99/8.88=...(round to 4 significant digits)"

Zhang Yuan thought for a few seconds, then wrote down the answer.

"1420"

"That fast?" Ye Fan was surprised. "He only had to round to 4 significant digits, so he could just drop the decimals... Still, that's an interesting question."

But he didn't think much of it. He assumed Zhang Yuan had been calculating for a while already.

For the next question, Zhang Yuan tapped the screen.

"ln(40) (round to 3 significant digits)"

This time, they were starting on equal footing.

Ye Fan put all his effort into it, racking his brain.

"Wait, how are you supposed to calculate logarithms? What was the change-of-base formula again?"

His thoughts were a muddle.

He tried his best. "ln(40)=ln(4)+ln(10), and then... Oh, no, I still can't work it out. Do I have to memorize some kind of logarithm table?"

Zhang Yuan wrote down the answer on the screen again.

"3.69"

"Correct!"

Ye Fan's eyes widened as if he'd seen a ghost.

He still hadn't figured out how to calculate logarithms. He hadn't a clue.

By then, the other guy had already moved on to the next question.

"sin(24°) (round to 3 significant digits)"

What was this? How did you calculate trigonometric functions again? The double-angle formula? No, that wasn't right.

There was no way you could work out sin(24°) by hand!

He watched as the guy wrote down another answer: "0.407"

"Correct!"

"..."

After suffering one invisible blow after another, Ye Fan felt like he'd been left with a head full of lumps. He could only give up.

Too embarrassed to ask, he searched on his phone for the answer.

"So that's how it works. To calculate logarithms or trigonometric functions by hand, you need to use a Taylor series expansion... Sigh, it's only natural that I can't keep up with people who've trained for a long time!"

He pursed his lips, thinking resentfully, What's so impressive about being good at mental arithmetic? That skill is completely useless. No matter how fast a person can calculate, can he beat a computer?

Maybe I could write another article criticizing those educational institutions that teach mental arithmetic. There's no need to burden children with learning something so trivial.

As he thought this, he quietly pulled out his phone and opened the calculator app. Let's see if you can do mental arithmetic faster than I can use a calculator.

Zhang Yuan vaguely sensed a gaze on him, as if someone were watching. He looked around, but didn't spot anyone.

He didn't pay it much mind.

A pickpocket? Hah, he hadn't brought any cash. His only valuable possession was his phone, and he was holding it.

Besides, there was nothing particularly private on his screen. Someone could glance at it without any harm done.

After finishing a whole set of questions, a final score popped up on the screen: "Congratulations! Final time: 312.42 seconds, SSS, today's ranking: 28!"

"Keep up the good work!"

A two-dimensional girl appeared on the screen, looking at him with admiration.

Only 28th place.

That was a little worse than he'd expected.

Zhang Yuan thought, There are still plenty of geniuses in this world. It's no surprise I got this ranking.

With a bit more training, he might improve his score again. But there was no need. He wasn't entering any competitions, and his arithmetic skills were good enough.

He casually opened the rankings.

"First place, Final Eternity, time: 0.01 seconds."

"Second place, Writing Novels Makes Me Eat Dirt, time: 0.07 seconds."

"Third place, Can You Support The Official Release, time: 0.11 seconds."

"Third place, When Can I Take A Leave, time: 0.12 seconds."

Zhang Yuan smiled. It was impossible for anyone to finish 20 questions in 0.01 seconds. They had to be using a screen-reading program to extract the information and solve the questions with software.

Some people just liked showing off with cheats, as if that made them look impressive.

There was no way to compete with cheaters, so he lost interest in trying.

"Longdaqiao Station. Please exit the train. Yuanda Industrial and Commercial Bank reminds you: Be careful when you leave, and watch your step..."

Ye Fan watched Zhang Yuan leave, still feeling bewildered.

For longer equations, he really couldn't match the other guy's mental-arithmetic speed, even with a calculator!

Who the hell was this guy? A calculation champion?

Ye Fan tried hard to remember the time taken by the champion of the previous season of Super Brain to finish 20 questions.

"How long was it...?"

Three hundred seconds? Two hundred seconds? That didn't seem right.

He searched it up again, and a thousand alpacas galloped through his mind.

313.6 seconds!

That was exactly one second longer than the time he'd just seen.

Intelligence consisted of three factors: memory, reasoning ability, and language ability. Being good at arithmetic didn't necessarily mean someone was intelligent, but it undoubtedly indicated that their reasoning ability was higher than average.

Throughout the training, Zhang Yuan's astonishingly rapid progress had also left him thrilled.

He'd gone from a rusty mind to a nimble one in just a single night!

He even had another suspicion: Maybe I can learn other subjects just as quickly...

But deep down, he felt that was wishful thinking.

Becoming an all-around scientist like Newton was no longer possible in this era.

There had never been another Newton or Einstein in history because the body of knowledge that made up civilization had grown far too vast—so vast that the human brain could hardly contain it.

No, it couldn't contain even one ten-thousandth of that knowledge!

Throughout history, countless brilliant figures had laid the foundations of the knowledge that made up civilization.

In the centuries since the First Industrial Revolution, the world had undergone earth-shaking changes.

But humanity's innate intelligence hadn't improved much. People were still using very primitive brains.

Universities had been teaching calculus two hundred years ago, and they were still teaching calculus now. It wasn't that science hadn't progressed; it was that ordinary people's intelligence was what it was.

So modern humans weren't any smarter than people in the twenty-first century, but they had far more knowledge to master.

To create new knowledge, you first had to climb onto the shoulders of giants. How difficult was that?

"If it really is possible..."

Zhang Yuan hoped to find the subject he was most interested in, then add something useful to this mountain of knowledge. That alone would be a great achievement.