Jealousy Made Me Undergo Plasmolysis

As the days passed, the Advanced Mathematics 2 exam arrived as scheduled.

"Students, please turn off your phones and place your student IDs and national IDs in the upper-left corner of your desks. Let me emphasize the exam rules once again: if anyone is caught cheating, there will be no leniency. You will be referred to the Academic Affairs Office. You'll be sophomores soon, so I hope no one causes this kind of principled problem at such a critical time. There are always one or two who refuse to believe it every year. I hope everyone can help uphold the rules."

An unfamiliar elderly professor stood at the podium and glanced down at the room before lifting his chin at the graduate student beside him. "Xiao Wang, start from the right."

"Okay." The man called Xiao Wang nodded and began checking the students' IDs from the right side.

The old professor set his thermos on the lectern and began checking from the left.

Lu Zhou stretched, turned off his phone, stuffed it into his backpack, and, like everyone else, placed his reference books and electronic devices on the desks in the first row.

The day had finally come!

Once exam week was over, he would have plenty of time to work on his own things.

After returning to his seat, Lu Zhou showed his national ID and student ID to the graduate student, then sat there in a daze, waiting for the papers to be handed out.

After all, Jin University was a top-tier university. Its exam discipline was quite strict.

Don't let the old man's reading glasses and kindly smile fool you. If you dared glance at a cheat sheet or check your phone, no matter how well you hid it, he would spot you immediately.

A few students who had prepared cheat sheets were sitting there pale-faced and restless, wanting to copy but not daring to make a move.

Lu Zhou sighed inwardly, offered a moment of silence for those unlucky souls, and then began writing furiously.

He had heard that Old Tang had written the paper, but no matter who set the questions, the knowledge tested in a final exam could not possibly go beyond the syllabus. At least, to Lu Zhou, the questions were easy.

The first section was fill-in-the-blanks. The first question asked for the general solution to a differential equation. He just had to follow the standard procedure. Although the expression was a little complicated, the principles remained the same. To Lu Zhou, it was a free point.

The second question asked for the equation of a line parallel to a given line through a point in three-dimensional coordinates. There was nothing much to say about it; another free point.

The third question was differentiation, and the fourth was a line integral. Free points.

The fifth question was rather interesting. Given the equation f(x)=... and its Fourier sine series expansion with a period of 3/2π, where the function was S(x), find the value of S(-5/2π).

Emmm...

It was a little challenging.

His pen tapped lightly on the scratch paper three times, but Lu Zhou quickly worked out the answer.

The question looked rather complicated. In particular, while testing knowledge related to Fourier sine series, it also combined it with integration from the equation, and the equation itself was not simple. But once he understood the method, the seemingly complex calculations were not difficult at all. Everything simply fell into place.

At least, that was the case for Lu Zhou, who had thoroughly mastered both textbooks.

Next came the multiple-choice questions. They were all free points too, so he quickly checked off the answers.

Then came the long-answer questions. Now it was time to get serious!

Lu Zhou cracked his knuckles. His warm-up was over, and he was ready to begin. But the moment he saw the questions, he was dumbfounded...

Not because they were too difficult.

But because...

Emmm...

Was this really all there was to it?

Lu Zhou secretly glanced to the side and saw the guy next to him biting his pen cap with a miserable expression.

When he looked farther back, someone had even folded a die out of scratch paper and was actually using mysticism to solve the questions.

At that moment, one student stood up, walked to the podium, set down his paper, and swaggered out of the room.

Lu Zhou was filled with respect.

Great minds thought alike!

Sure enough, I wasn't the only one who thought this paper was too easy!

With that thought, Lu Zhou no longer hesitated. He began writing, swiftly solving the questions on the paper. Aside from the final question, which took him five minutes, he finished the rest in under two minutes each.

He picked up the paper and checked it over, making sure he had not missed anything. Then he glanced at the scratch paper, which was not even one-quarter full, packed up his things, stood, and went up to submit his exam.

The elderly professor sitting beside the lectern sipped his tea and paid no attention to Lu Zhou as he came up to hand in his paper.

But the instant he caught sight of that exam paper from the corner of his eye, his eyes narrowed.

Oh?

It was completely filled out?

And only half an hour had passed?!

With a soft exclamation, he reached out and picked up the paper, adjusted his glasses, and began reviewing the answers line by line.

The first question was correct.

The second question was correct.

The third question...

The farther he read, the graver and more serious his expression became.

The graduate student standing nearby was curious about what was written on the paper, but when he saw the old professor's stern expression, he ultimately gave up the idea of leaning over for a look. He silently stepped down from the podium and began patrolling toward the back of the classroom.

Time passed second by second. When he reached the last line of the final question, Lu Fangping's tightly furrowed brow instantly relaxed, and he nodded faintly in approval.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

"Looks like Old Tang has taught a fine student..." Professor Lu Fangping mused to himself as he unscrewed his teacup and took a sip, his face remaining expressionless.

The other students in the examination room did not react much to the two students who had left early. At most, they sighed inwardly and comforted themselves: Two people had already given up treatment. Sure enough, I'm not the only one who thinks this is difficult...

Except for Liu Rui, who was seated behind Lu Zhou.

He had personally seen Lu Zhou fill up the entire exam paper.

Although he had not clearly seen what Lu Zhou had written, that neat answer format obviously did not look like random scribbling...

...Probably?

Looking at his own paper, he was still racking his brains over the final fill-in-the-blank question, unable to come up with any clue.

Normally, he should have skipped a question he could not solve and returned to it after finishing the ones he could. But when he thought of how even Lu Zhou had been able to solve it, Liu Rui simply could not swallow that frustration.

Jealousy made me undergo plasmolysis.

Jealousy made me factorize.

Aaaaah...

My mentality had exploded!

Liu Rui grabbed his hair, feeling as though his entire world had gone wrong.

After leaving the examination room, Lu Zhou did not wander around outside. He first returned to his dorm, copied his paper onto a USB drive, then went to the laboratory building and found Professor Tang's office.

The office was quiet. Aside from Professor Tang smoking by the window, there were only two senior students focused on their respective projects at their computers. They did not even raise their eyelids when Lu Zhou entered, as if they had not noticed him at all.

Noticing Lu Zhou standing in the doorway, Professor Tang gestured for him to come in. When he saw the USB drive in his hand, he chuckled. "Oh? You finished your paper that quickly?"

Lu Zhou smiled politely. "Yes, I finally finished it. Both the Chinese and English versions are on there. Could I ask you to take a look?"

"Hand it over. Isn't that why you came here?"

Professor Tang took the USB drive from Lu Zhou, walked over to his desk, turned on his laptop, plugged it in, and opened the paper.

"How did the exam go?"

"Not bad... The questions didn't seem very difficult."

"Heh, quite the confidence. I'll be grading your paper myself."

"Please go easy on me, Professor!"

"Don't even think about it, kid."

Tang Zhiwei smiled and opened the paper. If anyone else had pleaded with him like that, he would only have found it irritating. But when Lu Zhou said it, he did not feel anything was wrong. He simply took it as a joke.

He knew the level of the student he had taught. Making Lu Zhou take a paper written according to the syllabus was indeed wasting his talent.

The stage for a student like him was never meant to be a university final exam. It was meant to be national competitions such as the Challenge Cup University Student Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Works Competition, or the China Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling.

Focusing his attention on the paper, Tang Zhiwei put on his glasses and began reading from the abstract.

To be honest, when Lu Zhou had entered his office carrying that paper, he had been filled with surprise.

Doing academic research was like carrying a wooden bucket of water from the sea to a reservoir.

The journey was bumpy, and one had to tread carefully and work diligently... crossing mountains, enduring wind and sun, and finally arriving at the vast reservoir of academia. If one could pour even a single drop from that bucket into the reservoir, then the journey had not been in vain.

Anyone who wished to pursue academia first had to possess a devout heart. Those who sought quick success and immediate gain were destined to accomplish nothing.

Even if an undergraduate student was extraordinarily gifted in mathematics, how much water could his bucket possibly hold?

Forget reaching the vast reservoir of academia. He probably would not even make it half a mile before that little bit of water evaporated along the way.

Therefore, Professor Tang Zhiwei was calm. As he read the paper, he was not thinking like a mathematician, but like an educator nurturing a flower whose tender shoot had just emerged from the soil.

Before he had even begun reading, he had already been considering how to gently persuade Lu Zhou to take the paper back and redo it. That way, he could teach him not to aim too high in academic work while ensuring that he would not become so discouraged that he lost his confidence and interest...

But at that moment, Professor Tang suddenly froze. Then his brow furrowed as he fell into thought.

This...

Was this really a paper written by an undergraduate student?

Could he have copied it from some reference book?

With that thought, Professor Tang, half-believing and half-doubting, casually copied a section and pasted it into Baidu to search.

There were no matches.

Still unconvinced, the old professor logged into a plagiarism-checking website and uploaded the entire paper this time...

As he stared at the search results, his eyes widened.

How was that possible!?