Recitation Speed Skyrockets

The math class had dragged on for so long that only a few minutes remained. Chen Zhao was lost in a daze when the bell finally rang.

The second period was Chinese. The teacher had arrived early and was already writing notes on the blackboard, so Chen Zhao rummaged through his desk to find his textbook.

After searching for a while, he pulled a Chinese textbook out from the depths of his desk.

The top students in the front rows also pulled out their books and opened them; the pages were covered in dense markings, red and black ink lines crisscrossing like a messy battlefield that had seen repeated combat.

Chen Zhao opened his book to find it cleaner than his own face—pristine, spotless, and looking entirely brand new.

Well, it wasn't completely unmarked; Chen Zhao had drawn a motorcycle on Du Fu, complete with a heavy machine gun mounted on the handlebars, looking quite dashing.

To be honest, Chinese was the subject Chen Zhao studied the most.

However, he never actually listened to the teacher!

Every class, he would just take his textbook and read it aimlessly to himself.

As he read, he would start to drift off, imagining himself as an ancient scholar, waiting for a beautiful snake-spirit to pop her head over the wall and call his name. If it were an evening class, he would stare into the darkness outside the window, imagining demons wandering about.

Lost in these wild fantasies, he found Chinese class to be quite cozy and pleasant.

But his grades were abysmal; he would start daydreaming before he even finished reading the text, and as for the passages he was supposed to memorize, he didn't know them at all.

Every exam, his score for the memorization and dictation section was basically zero!

Since memorization and dictation were fundamental questions, it was easy to imagine how his overall Chinese grade turned out.

Just as Chen Zhao was feeling depressed, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind:

Since his IQ had increased, couldn't his memory have improved as well?

He had already tasted the sweetness of solving those math problems; some that were once incredibly difficult now looked like child's play to him. If his high IQ worked for math, it should work for other subjects too, right?

The system had given him a full 400 IQ—he was several times smarter than Einstein!

To test the theory that his memory had improved, Chen Zhao opened his Chinese textbook, found a long, mandatory classical essay, On the Six States by Su Xun, and began to memorize it!

He hadn't read this text much before, so learning it now felt like a first preview, and it felt quite unfamiliar as he read:

"The destruction of the Six States was not because their weapons were inferior or their battles poorly fought; the defect lay in bribing the Qin. Bribing the Qin depleted their strength, which was the path to destruction. Some say: 'Did the Six States perish one after another because they all bribed the Qin?'"

"The territories lost by the feudal lords, compared to those lost in battle, were actually a hundred times greater. Thus, what the Qin greatly desired and what the feudal lords greatly feared did not lie in battle. Think of their ancestors, braving frost and dew, cutting through thorns and brambles, to possess a few inches of land..."

"Later, when the Qin attacked Zhao twice, Li Mu repelled them repeatedly..."

"The Six States and the Qin were all feudal lords. Their power was weaker than the Qin, yet they still had the potential to win without resorting to bribery. If, with the vastness of the world, one follows the old story of the Six States' destruction, then one is even worse off than the Six States!"

As he read, he felt something strange.

In the past, when he read such classical Chinese, he didn't understand the meaning, and the sentences left no impression, like water droplets falling into parched soil, vanishing in an instant.

But now, every sentence he read felt like laying a brick; each line was a brick, slowly taking shape in his mind.

Finally, he finished reading the long text.

Just as he finished, he heard the Chinese teacher say from the podium:

"I assigned you to review and memorize this text last night. Did you all do it?"

A group of students in the back row answered weakly, "Yes."

The top students in the front row all held their heads high, "Yes!"

The Chinese teacher was calm and composed: "Then I'll pick a student by their roll number—number 26!"

Chen Zhao froze, his face immediately turning pale with terror.

Number 26 was none other than himself!

Xu Lanlan whispered from the side, "Can you recite it? Were you hiding your strength in Chinese class?"

Chen Zhao cursed, his face deathly pale, "I don't know a damn thing!" He stood up shakily and looked at the teacher.

Just as he was about to say he couldn't do it, the Chinese teacher gave the prompt directly:

"Recite On the Six States!"

The whole class turned to look. Seeing Chen Zhao's pale face, everyone understood that he really didn't know these classical poems and essays; he wasn't hiding any talent. Chen Zhao had been called upon many times in Chinese class before, and nine times out of ten, he couldn't recite the text and was often punished by having to stand.

Chen Zhao thought for a moment and realized he could still remember the first sentence, so he spoke with great difficulty, making a desperate final struggle:

"The destruction of the Six States was not because their weapons were inferior or their battles poorly fought; the defect lay in bribing the Qin. Bribing the Qin depleted their strength, which was the path to destruction. Some say: 'Did the Six States perish one after another because they all bribed the Qin?'..."

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