Before True Geniuses, Everyone Else Was Trash

In the end, reason prevailed over greed, and Lu Zhou abandoned that unrealistic idea.

There was nothing remarkable about a freshman publishing in an SCI journal. After all, domestic mathematical SCI journals had quite a serious problem with padding papers. As long as your English was decent and your padding looked convincing enough, it might just get accepted.

This phenomenon of filling space with subpar work had even led some busybody to rank several domestic journals notorious for padding. At the top was Applied Mathematics & Computation (AMC), which was famous in the field of padded publications.

Take Shanghai University alone. In just four years, it had published hundreds of mathematics papers in AMC. Some prolific paper-padders churned out more than twenty a year as if it were nothing!

To ensure academic quality, reputable old journals with integrity often strictly limited their yearly publications to fewer than a hundred papers. But this "behemoth journal" was shamelessly bold, publishing over a thousand papers a year. Coupled with cross-citation practices, its impact factor shot upward! There were even numerous cases of fake peer review, with one editorial board member publishing more than a hundred papers there!

Lu Zhou was not necessarily confident about getting into other SCI journals, but AMC...

Call it confidence or call it overconfidence.

In any case, Lu Zhou felt it would not be a problem.

However, publishing the Zhou's Conjecture Proof Method in an SCI journal would be a huge problem. It was not a question of whether it would pass review—it definitely would. The key was whether he could handle the consequences after it did.

In the end, although Lu Zhou still chose the third task, he did not intend to use the Zhou's Conjecture Proof Method. He would just write some random padded paper to complete the task.

With his current understanding of Advanced Mathematics and Mathematical Analysis, he was already no worse than a graduate student. Combined with his CET-4-level English, the only thing separating him from writing an English paper was some technical vocabulary, and that could all be solved with a dictionary.

As for the other two tasks, he lacked the connections for the first one and did not think his emotional intelligence was high enough either.

As for the second, freshmen had not even started General Physics yet. The system would probably generate nothing but high school physics exercises, and who knew how many points their difficulty rating would be worth. Besides, the physics level did not appeal to him that much. From the name alone, it sounded like something useful only in the late game. It would not be too late to train it when he actually needed it.

After choosing the task, Lu Zhou brushed the grass clippings off his butt, got to his feet, and hummed a tune as he headed back toward the dormitory.

He had been out for so long that if he did not go back soon, Liu Rui would probably have a mental breakdown.

That guy was strange. He was usually quite generous, but when it came to studying, he was so petty it left people speechless. Glance at his notes and he would chase you down two streets; ask him a question and he would roll his eyes at you a dozen times. He was probably exactly that kind of person. In his eyes, the whole world seemed to be his competition, and what he pursued was probably not academic excellence, but simply being first in the eyes of teachers and classmates—or, more precisely, the status of "top student."

Did that kind of person count as a top student?

Lu Zhou did not think so.

In the eyes of a real genius, every ordinary person was trash. So what if I let you read my notes? Could you solve Zhou's Conjecture? Even if I put it right in front of you, you still would not understand it!

In Lu Zhou's mind, there seemed to be only one person who met the requirements of a true top student.

Yes, that was right.

There was no need to doubt it.

He was talking about himself.

When he pushed open the dorm room door, it was exactly ten o'clock.

Liu Rui was working through an exercise book. The other two were not in the room, probably playing cards next door. Shi Shang was the sort who listened during class as usual and did not make a special effort to review at the end of term. As for Huang Guangming, he was probably the legendary academic god: someone who never listened in class, crammed briefly before exams, yet still scored absurdly high.

After tossing his backpack onto the desk, Lu Zhou reached into the drawer to look for his shower card.

At that moment, Liu Rui put down his exercise book, glanced in Lu Zhou's direction, and asked.

"Zhouzi, working that hard?"

"I have to. I haven't touched a book for nearly half a semester. If I don't start working now, it'll be too late." Tossing his bath towel over his shoulder, Lu Zhou rose from his chair.

Seeing that Lu Zhou was about to shower, Liu Rui suddenly said, "There's a question here I can't solve. Can you take a look?"

Well, that was rare.

There were actually questions that the great Liu Rui could not solve?

"Let me see it."

Lu Zhou held out his hand. Liu Rui adjusted his glasses, handed over the exercise book, and pointed at the circled question. "This one."

"An integration problem? This shouldn't be difficult..." He glanced over the problem twice. To his surprise, it was a type he had never seen before. Lu Zhou became interested and no longer rushed to shower. Holding the exercise book, he sat back down and began scribbling calculations on scratch paper.

In the past, he definitely would not have been able to solve a problem that stumped Liu Rui. Yet for some reason, not a trace of the thought I can't do this entered his mind now.

Watching Lu Zhou calculate for a while, Liu Rui quietly breathed a sigh of relief. He secretly sneered that a bad student was still a bad student. No matter how much he put on an act, he was still trash.

It was true that he could not solve this problem, but there was actually a reference answer, complete with a detailed solution. The reason he had asked Lu Zhou was not because he humbly sought guidance, but merely to "probe the enemy's strength."

Even if he really wanted to ask someone a math question, there was no way he would ask Lu Zhou, that underachieving student.

With that in mind, Liu Rui said, "Why don't you copy the problem down and work on it? I'll think about the next one first."

What he really meant was, since you probably can't solve it anyway, I won't waste your time.

However, Lu Zhou's response was completely beyond Liu Rui's expectations.

"...No need. I solved it."

S-Solved it?!

Liu Rui's eyes widened so much that they nearly popped out.

"Yeah, you heard me right." Spinning the ballpoint pen in his hand, Lu Zhou explained the expression on the scratch paper. "It's a very typical double-integral problem. First, convert the Cartesian coordinates into polar coordinates and begin calculating. Because of the symmetry of the interval, this part can be simplified to cot x²..."

"Then it becomes the integral of csc x²! And then substitute the antiderivative!" Liu Rui's pupils contracted slightly. He instantly grasped the core idea behind the solution. From there, the remaining steps followed naturally; he only had to calculate downward, and there was no difficulty at all.

Damn it, why hadn't I thought of that...

"Bingo! Correct." Lu Zhou nodded with a smile, thinking that the kid was teachable after all.

"Thanks... Let me borrow the scratch paper. I'll take it back and study it."

"Take it. You're welcome!" Lu Zhou waved generously, got to his feet, and headed for the bathroom.

Returning to his seat with Lu Zhou's scratch paper, Liu Rui adjusted his glasses and stared at the problem, his brow faintly furrowed as he sank into thought.

The approach was novel, but the solving process was clearly written, and none of the knowledge involved went beyond the syllabus. Even without Lu Zhou's explanation, he could understand it easily.

What he could not understand was how Lu Zhou had come up with it.

And in such a short time, too...

Had he done this type of problem before?

Liu Rui thought about it, and that seemed to be the only possibility. Otherwise, he truly could not imagine that this underachiever, who spent all day doing part-time jobs, had crushed him—the acknowledged top student of Class One—in solving speed.

He flipped to the answer section at the back of the exercise book and looked at the provided solution. His entire body froze as he muttered to himself.

"Impossible..."

The answer was completely correct... but that was not the point.

The point was that Lu Zhou's method was actually simpler than the standard solution! The answer had not considered the unconventional approach of converting Cartesian coordinates into polar coordinates at all. Instead, it directly applied formulas to split the integral a second time, making the calculations look enormously complicated.

And that had been one of the methods Liu Rui had considered...

How was this possible?!

Liu Rui bit his lip.

All of a sudden, he began to doubt his entire life.