Hooked on Studying!

Qi Hao looked up and saw Teacher Qi watching him, wearing a portable microphone.

Although Teacher Qi's gaze lingered on him for only a few seconds before moving away, and the teacher didn't call him out by name, the voice from the microphone immediately rang out across the classroom:

"Some students have their bodies in Cao Cao's camp but their hearts with the Han. They're in English class, yet their eyes are glued to a math book. What, you think English class isn't important anymore?"

Teacher Qi walked back to the lectern and rapped on the blackboard. "Students, face reality. This is the age of English. Whoever masters English conquers the world! Even if you math majors go into research and publish papers, all the most cutting-edge literature is in English."

"If your English foundation is poor, you won't even be able to understand the titles and abstracts of those papers. Are you planning to spend your whole lives reading nothing but Chinese papers on CNKI?"

The students around him burst into laughter.

Teacher Qi was about to continue, but fortunately, the bell rang just then.

Teacher Qi didn't keep the class late, merely sighed, gathered the lesson plans, and left the classroom without delay.

As Qi Hao stuffed his book into his backpack, he silently weighed his options.

Teacher Qi wasn't wrong.

The Soviet System treated English as capitalist dross, but he wasn't a Cold War antique like the system.

As a college student willing to take advice, he was very open-minded. If something benefited him, he would learn it as long as it was useful!

Besides, English counted toward his GPA. As a student at a university in neither the 985 nor 211 Project, he already lacked that halo. If his GPA was lousy too, he wouldn't even make the cut for the graduate entrance exam interview.

Just as he zipped up his backpack and prepared to get up, a notification suddenly popped up before his eyes:

[Notification: Tovarishch, your treasure chest has yet to be opened.]

Only then did Qi Hao remember that he still hadn't drawn from the treasure chest the system had given him earlier.

He stayed in his seat and opened the faintly glowing treasure chest in his mind.

[Congratulations! You drew a white treasure chest!]

[Obtained passive learning talent: Reverse Analysis · Problems (48 hours)]

[Talent description: Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth! During the 48 hours this talent is active, whenever you personally solve a problem in full and complete the logical chain, your brain will automatically reverse-engineer the problem. All the core theorems, formulas, and underlying logic involved will be stamped into your cerebral cortex like an ideological brand, until you have permanently mastered them.]

Permanently mastered?!

That meant anything he learned while the talent was active would stay with him for the rest of his life!

For a math student who needed to memorize vast amounts of material and reason with rigorous logic, this was undoubtedly a god-tier cheat!

Before he could recover from his shock, the system panel changed again.

[Main quest triggered: How the Steel Was Tempered-Reforging the Foundation!]

[Quest description: A true Soviet scholar never toys with those feeble, toothless problems! True steel must be forged in a blazing fire!

Seek out the immortal monument of Soviet mathematics, Demidovich's Problems in Mathematical Analysis. Within 48 hours, grind out the first 100 proof problems independently, without using any answers or outside help!]

[Quest rewards: 1. Subject experience points (exact amount determined by quality of completion) 2. Purple treasure chest ×1 3. 200 points]

[Points can be exchanged for higher-level challenges, unlocking reward quests you would not encounter in your everyday studies. They can also be used directly to overcome technical difficulties. When a bottleneck exceeds your current knowledge framework, you can spend a certain number of points to obtain a solution.]

[Note: A Bolshevik who does not sweat is no good soldier. Go forth and fight, tovarishch!]

This old Russian system really laid it on thick.

Even so, Qi Hao's heart began to race.

He had just opened a white treasure chest and gotten a talent like "48-hour Reverse Analysis for problems." Whatever was inside the purple treasure chest would most likely be better than what came out of the white one!

And this time, there were points to earn too.

Points had so many uses; he had to get his hands on them!

He owned a copy of Demidovich's Problems in Mathematical Analysis. Known as the math department's newbie village nightmare, it contained over five thousand problems, every one of which could make a normal human being question why they were doing the exercises.

On the first day of school, his teacher had said that math majors might need two things.

A copy of Demidovich and a bottle of anti-hair-loss shampoo.

Remembering that joke from the start of the semester, Qi Hao quickly calmed down.

Wait, 100 proof problems in 48 hours?!

Qi Hao rapidly worked the abacus in his head. Even counting every last minute of those 48 hours, and even if he didn't eat, drink, or sleep, and held it in instead of going to the bathroom, he would have less than half an hour per problem on average!

Half an hour to solve one problem sounded like plenty of time?

But this was Demidovich!

These weren't freebies where you plugged in a formula, calculated a derivative, and got an answer.

In pure mathematics, a single classic proof problem involving bounds was enough to leave a college student of normal intelligence sitting blankly in front of scratch paper for an entire afternoon, tearing out a great handful of hair, and ultimately lacking even the confidence to write "solution."

The "48-hour Reverse Analysis for problems" talent was indeed overpowered, but Demidovich was what he had to face.

Besides, the system quest stated it plainly: "grind them out independently, without using any answers or outside help." That meant he wasn't even allowed to flip through a book and look at example problems for inspiration. He had to tackle this hard bone head-on and gnaw his way through it.

It was Friday, and he had no classes scheduled for the afternoon.

It looked like this weekend would be devoted entirely to Comrade Demidovich.

Qi Hao slung on his backpack, went to the cafeteria with his roommates Wang Jun and Chen Yuan, and wolfed down a few bites of braised chicken and rice before hurrying back to the dorm.

The dorm room housed four people.

Besides the three of them, their other roommate, Li Hui, had gone to see his girlfriend and hadn't come back.

After they pushed open the door, Wang Jun couldn't wait to turn on his computer and launch a game, ready to slaughter enemies in every direction. Chen Yuan, the roommate whose bed was closer to the door, leaned against his headboard, leafing through a book on real analysis with a deeply furrowed brow.

This was a true picture of an ordinary dorm at a university in neither the 985 nor 211 Project: students were either enjoying the sweetness of romance or looking for fun in games, or else studying hard amid uncertainty.

A day ago, Qi Hao most likely would have pulled up a stool beside Wang Jun and watched him play a couple of rounds, or simply started a game himself.

But today, he walked over to his desk, opened the bottom drawer, pushed aside a few secondhand textbooks, and pulled a book as thick and heavy as a brick from the very back.

Demidovich's Problems in Mathematical Analysis!

He held in his hands the problem collection that could be called the collective nightmare of math students around the world.

Wang Jun had just finished a game. When he turned around and saw Qi Hao stuffing the hefty tome into his backpack, his eyes widened as if he'd seen a ghost.

"What are you doing?"

"Going to the library for a while after eating."

Wang Jun pointed at the book's cover. "Taking that thing with you?"

"Holy shit, what happened to you?"

Wang Jun yanked off his headphones, ignoring even the notification that his game had found a match. "We don't have class this afternoon, man! When other people have Friday afternoon off, they go on dates or go to internet cafés. At the very least, they lie in bed scrolling through videos."

"Is that thing you're carrying even meant for carbon-based life-forms to read? Come clean. Were you secretly dating someone behind our backs and got dumped, and now you want to hide somewhere outside and cry your eyes out?"

Wang Jun couldn't be blamed for making a fuss. In a dorm at an ordinary university in neither the 985 nor 211 Project, taking this Soviet masterpiece to the library on a Friday afternoon was about as absurd as booking a private room at an internet café just to watch Xinwen Lianbo.

Qi Hao calmly zipped up his backpack and replied casually, "What romance? I don't even have a girlfriend. I just suddenly felt my math foundation hasn't been solid enough lately, so I want to go to the library and get some practice."

"Practice? With Demidovich?!"

Wang Jun spoke in a tragic tone. "It's over. You're hooked on studying too. So I'm the only one in the whole dorm who plays games, huh?"