The Goddess Has the Day Off Today

The academy was so quiet.

It had been a long time since the academy had been this quiet.

Everyone's reactions at that moment were interesting.

Question: The teacher asks a difficult question in class that no one can answer. What should you do?

Answer: Lower your head, refuse to make eye contact, and pretend to be busy...

All the students looked everywhere but at him.

Even the teachers in the front row were writing equations in their notebooks. So busy, so busy...

Only that fool Matthew did the exact opposite.

He stared intently at Li Mo! So brave!

Of course, there was a reason he was so brave.

Matthew had spotted Charles Bowen beneath the trees.

And Charles was mouthing something to him.

He couldn't make out what Charles was saying, but Matthew guessed he was telling him to muster his courage and go for it!

After waiting a moment, Li Mo noticed that only Matthew was looking at him.

A little surprised, he said, "Matthew, would you like to come up and solve it?"

Everyone turned to look at Matthew.

Helen wasn't there. She didn't dare attend a gathering with so many people.

But Matthew knew she had to be secretly peeking down from a classroom window.

Everything had come together so perfectly.

Surely this was the stage Charles had prepared for him to show off!

Even though he had no idea how to solve it right now, that was fine. As long as he stepped onto the platform, the mystical would descend of its own accord.

The Goddess of the Moon would cram the answer straight into his head...

Matthew firmly believed it. He rose calmly and said, "I'll do it. It looks pretty simple."

With that, he gave Charles a thumbs-up in the distance.

Charles: "?"

What he had been trying to mouth was: Come over here. The plan's off. Let's talk about a refund.

What did this idiot think I meant?

Matthew walked up with confidence.

As he passed Li Mo, he gave him a slight, dashing nod.

Then, in his signature fashion, he picked through the chalk box, taking his sweet time before choosing a long, slender piece.

Matthew pressed the chalk against the edge of the blackboard, his gaze unfathomably deep.

He was waiting.

Waiting for that cool divine power from the boundless starry sky.

Waiting for the vast, mysterious whispers of the Goddess of the Moon to pour straight into the top of his head!

Come on! Let a miracle descend at this very moment!

The entire audience was frozen in place.

Everyone,

remained motionless for twenty seconds.

Matthew was still looking cool.

But the students below... were starting to crack.

Wayne curled up in agony and said to Anna beside him, "I can't take it... Anna, I'm getting secondhand embarrassment again... My toes have dug out the entire Mondel Cathedral inside my boots..."

For once, Anna agreed with him. The girl buried her head deep against her chest and said, "I can barely stand it either, ugh..."

The platform remained quiet for a few more seconds.

Nothing happened.

Li Mo finally couldn't hold back and asked in puzzlement, "Go on, write."

Matthew frowned.

He was just as bewildered. What's going on? Where's my ritual?

Or is the feng shui on this lawn bad, blocking my divine connection to the goddess?

Matthew turned his head and quickly scanned the shade beneath the trees.

It was empty.

Charles seemed to have... run away!

Matthew: "?"

He instantly grew a little nervous.

Why did he run off?!

What happened to the Mystical Ritual we agreed on?!

Or...

Could it be...

Did I misunderstand?

Cold sweat broke out instantly.

Matthew gritted his teeth and resolved to hold out a few more seconds... Argh, I can't take it!

It was like thorns in his back, a lump in his throat, and needles beneath his seat!

He figured this wouldn't do. He couldn't just slink back down like this. Tomorrow, he'd be so utterly humiliated that his whole family would have to move out of Mondel Town!

He had to preserve his dignity!

In a flash,

Matthew pressed a hand to his forehead and said:

"Damn... did it have to happen now of all times... I'm so dizzy..."

Li Mo: "?"

All the teachers and students: "?"

Matthew clutched his forehead weakly and rushed down from the platform, swift as the wind:

"Sorry, Mr. Harrison, Teacher Walter... I might need to go lie down in the infirmary right away..."

Are you coming back for dinner?

Li Mo really wanted to ask him that.

But Matthew ran so fast that he vanished into the crowd in the blink of an eye.

The students didn't quite understand what Matthew's little performance had been about.

In any case,

even the wind seemed to grow boisterous today because of this little episode.

In the dead silence, only the sound of a whistle from the distant docks could be heard...

"All right." Li Mo decided not to ask any more questions. To save time, he said, "I'll write it out."

He wrote:

[a₁₂-a₃>0]

Then he substituted the data and wrote down the final critical threshold for mechanical damping:

[b>(K_v)/(J·ω₀)]

Li Mo said:

"When the mechanical damping coefficient is greater than this critical threshold, the real parts of all the system's characteristic roots must be negative. No matter how abruptly the load on the main shaft changes, the governor's self-excited vibrations will decay, and the rotational speed can be kept within a safe range."

After saying that,

Li Mo put the chalk back.

In truth, no one there today had been able to fully understand what Li Mo had taught.

Even the teachers only half understood.

But that didn't stop everyone from seeing in Li Mo's lecture-

the power to propel the industry and science of an entire era forward in great strides.

Li Mo said, "That concludes today's mathematics salon."

As soon as he finished speaking,

Clatter-

Mr. Harrison sprang to his feet.

He clapped vigorously!

Teacher Collins, Teacher Vance, and Teacher Walter stood up one after another beside him.

Teacher Vance was mischievous. While the others clapped, he whistled.

Then the other students came to their senses as well.

Those who should stand stood, and those who should clap clapped.

"My God... he really redefined calculus..."

"That engineering example was terrifying. I understood every symbol, but once they were put together, I couldn't understand it at all."

"Me too!"

"A genius really is a genius wherever he goes..."

"Do you think this could have something to do with the Mystical Rituals he encountered in the capital?"

"Perhaps the Goddess of the Moon took away his Mysticism Perception but gave him a new talent?"

"Whoa, that's possible..."

The discussions and applause continued for a long time.

Li Mo bowed slightly and nodded to the teachers and students below.

When the applause died down a little,

he turned around and wrote a line on the blackboard:

[Mondel Academic Salon, day two: Continuity, the intermediate value theorem, and the Cauchy convergence criterion]

Li Mo said, "We'll be here again tomorrow. I'll be covering new material."

A stir ran through the crowd.

Everyone was thinking: There's more?!

"Continuity gets a lecture of its own? And what are the intermediate value theorem and the Cauchy convergence criterion?"

"My God... how much more does he have in his head? He hasn't finished explaining this whole system yet?!"

Mr. Harrison's eyes lit up, and he immediately called out, "Li Mo! Is tomorrow's salon at the same time?"

"Yes, Mr. Harrison, four in the afternoon again. Teachers, I'll be off now."

"All right, all right, go get some rest!"

The crowd on the lawn began to disperse.

Matthew was hiding in the infirmary when Wayne knocked and came in.

Looking concerned, he said, "Brother, are you all right?"

Matthew quickly clutched his stomach and put on an act. "I feel awful. What is it? Need something?"

Wayne shook his head dejectedly. "Sigh, brother, did you really understand it?"

Matthew said, "What do you mean?"

Wayne let out a long sigh. "I didn't understand a thing, anyway. Oh well, ordinary people can't compare to a mind like Li Mo's. I'll go ask him about it in detail at the observatory later."

Hearing this, Matthew's temper flared again. He snorted and said:

"How do you know I didn't understand? It's just substituting symbols in a set of inequalities. Anyone could figure it out if they spent a little time on it."

Wayne turned to look at him, blinked, and thought, The fish took the bait!

He said, "Oh, so you understood it? Then let me ask you, what's special about the number 1729?"

Matthew froze. "1729? What 1729?"

Wayne stood up and said leisurely, "If you can't even figure out what's special about 1729, don't pretend you understood. Brother, go back and give it some serious thought."

With that, Wayne turned gracefully and left.

Matthew sat there, stunned.

1729, what the hell is that?

Did Li Mo talk about that just now? Damn it!

After leaving, Wayne hurried to catch up with Li Mo and Anna ahead of him.

"Li Mo, that was so cool! We won a complete victory today. Let me treat you two to a visit to the teahouse!"

Li Mo stopped in his tracks.

Wayne said, "What's wrong? Come on?"

Li Mo said, "Wait, let's go back to the classroom first."

"What for? There's no one left in the classroom by now."

As it turned out,

there was still someone in the classroom.

Helen sat alone at a desk.

She clutched her skirt tightly, her head lowered, without moving.

Li Mo had guessed this would happen.

The kidnapping had left her traumatized.

So she was afraid to go home alone after school.

But she was also very shy and afraid of troubling others. She didn't want to ask Anna for help, didn't want Li Mo to make a special trip to take her home, and wanted even less for her father to worry about her again.

So she sat blankly in the classroom, not knowing what to do.

That was the kind of person Li Mo was.

When it came to unimportant things, he could be very perfunctory.

But when something mattered, he could show an extraordinary degree of thoughtfulness.

Someone had once said Li Mo had no emotional intelligence. In truth, Li Mo simply couldn't be bothered to use it around him.

When Helen saw someone coming, her shoulders trembled slightly, and she began to shrink back.

When she saw that the person approaching was Li Mo, she clenched the hem of her skirt. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

Li Mo stopped, held out his right hand to her, and said gently:

"Come on, Helen. Let's go home together."

The golden light of dusk fell on Li Mo's fingers.

Helen instantly blushed.

She was at a bit of a loss.

She pressed her lips together, her hands clenching and relaxing, then relaxing and clenching again.

After hesitating for five or six seconds, she slowly raised her hand and carefully grasped one of Li Mo's little fingers.

Her head was still lowered, and her voice was as soft as a breeze brushing across a lake:

"...Thank you."