Chapter 168 Friends Back Then

"You walk fast."

Old Zhao watched the tea leaves unfurl in the cup, let out a long sigh, and leaned back on the sofa.

"Those bastards from your first year of junior high are now in their final year. Before you know it, the high school entrance exam is just around the corner."

Old Zhao shook his head, tapped his knee twice with his fingers, and frowned again.

"The results of the first mock exam for the first semester just came out before the new year. Ugh, it's so worrying."

"Liu Fei and the others?"

Chen Zhuo ate an orange and casually asked a question.

"Isn't that the little monkey?"

When Old Zhao heard this name, his voice rose eight octaves, both annoyed and amused.

"That Liu Fei has grown to over 1.8 meters tall. He sits in the last row of the classroom like an iron tower. He's still as mischievous as ever and can't sit still in class. But now that he's in the third year of junior high, he's starting to get anxious looking at the countdown on the blackboard."

Old Zhao laughed and cursed.

"After the final exams, I did poorly in politics, so now I recite it at the top of my lungs in the hallway every morning during self-study. My face turns red from reciting, and people downstairs can hear me."

"This kid was bragging in class just a few days ago."

Old Zhao leaned forward slightly, looking at Chen Zhuo.

"The pressure is high in the third year of junior high. I thought I would play some light music for them during evening self-study to help them relax. But he went up to the classroom and told the students below, 'What do you mean by relaxing?' He said that when he was in the first year of junior high, he followed me and covered all the classroom windows with old newspapers and discarded test papers, and watched movies in the classroom in broad daylight using pinhole cameras."

Old Zhou chimed in from the side.

"That's a very basic optical phenomenon. What's so special about it? You didn't even use a lens. The resulting image is all blurry at the edges." "You don't understand. To students, it's fun and exciting."

Old Zhao ignored Old Zhou and continued talking to Chen Zhuo.

"I still remember that afternoon when I was patrolling the corridor. When I got to the door of your class, it was dark inside. I thought you were up to something, so I pushed the door open, ready to yell at you."

As Old Zhao spoke, his gaze became distant, as if he were seeing that day again.

"As soon as I went in, I saw upside-down plane trees from our playground on the back wall of the classroom, and the fat guy from Class 2 playing basketball. All fifty-odd students in the class were sitting quietly in the dark watching."

Old Zhao couldn't help but laugh.

"That kid still thinks it was the most impressive and awesome thing he did in his three years of junior high. Every time he brags to people from other classes, he brings you up, saying that when the prodigy Chen Zhuo directed me to put up the newspaper, I stood in the highest position. Now, the junior high students from other classes think that you guys conducted some kind of large-scale scientific experiment in class back then."

Chen Zhuo listened quietly, his eyes softening.

That sweltering autumn afternoon involuntarily came to mind.

The air was filled with the strange smell of chalk dust and scorched plastic book covers.

Liu Fei, shirtless, stood on the desk pasting newspapers, shouting "tape!" as he sweated profusely. On the white wall, there was an upside-down world, and the tomato-flavored potato chips and AD calcium milk with straws that the girls secretly slipped to him.

Compared to the high-dimensional topological matrices in the USTC labs now, those things were extremely crude and lacked any rigor, yet they were so vivid that they made people want to laugh involuntarily.

"It's not just Liu Fei."

Old Zhao picked up his teacup to moisten his throat, his tone tinged with emotion.

He pointed at Chen Zhuo.

"And Li Xiaoya, and your old deskmate who wore braces."

"These girls used to fawn over you, they adored you. Now that they're in their final year of junior high, they sit at their desks biting their pens and looking miserable when it comes to solving complex geometry and challenging physics problems."

Old Zhao imitated the tone of a young girl, speaking in a affected manner.

"Before the final exam, Li Xiaoya came to my office and asked me, 'Teacher Zhao, is Chen Zhuo coming back for the holidays? This quadratic function problem with circles is too difficult. If he were here, he would have explained it to us in ten minutes.'"

After Old Zhao finished speaking, he laughed at himself.

"Look at you, you're already in college, but in their hearts, you're still just a younger brother who explains problems to them. They really miss you," Chen Zhuo said with a smile.

He put the orange peel on the table and took a tissue to wipe his hands.

"Teacher Zhao."

Chen Zhuo looked at Lao Zhao, his tone very serious.

"I've taken some time these past few days to organize some things."

"I've compiled some common mistakes I made in junior high school math, physics, and chemistry, as well as some notes that I think they can still use now. I've summarized and reorganized them, especially those tricky questions that are easy to get stuck on. I'll categorize them and send them to you when I get back."

Chen Zhuo spoke gently.

"Could you please make copies for me and send them to them? Consider it a small favor from my younger brother to help them before their high school entrance exam, and hopefully it will save them some time on math problems."

After listening, Old Zhao nodded repeatedly, his smile deepening.

"That's great! Your notes are like a martial arts manual to them now. With your ready-made problem-solving strategies, they can save at least ten minutes on multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions!"

When the topic turned to notes and error collections, Lao Zhao's tone suddenly changed.

He sat up straight, his smile fading slightly, replaced by a serious expression imbued with a strong sense of responsibility.

"Speaking of error notebooks, your childhood friend, Zhang Qiang..."

Old Zhao emphasized the word.

"This is in my class now!"

"When you graduated and left, you specifically came to my office and personally instructed me on things. How could I not take your instructions seriously? How could I not keep an eye on him?"

Old Zhao picked up his teacup, as if trying to suppress his anger, and then put it down heavily.

"This kid is honest and loyal; he's always the first to run when it comes to class chores. But his math brain just won't work!"

Old Zhao stared wide-eyed, making a triangle shape in the air with his right hand.

"I've drawn the auxiliary lines for that isosceles triangle on the blackboard three times already! I told him that when he sees an isosceles triangle, he should first think about the three lines coinciding! Draw the altitude, and all the problems are solved!"

Old Zhao had a look of disappointment on his face.

"During the exam, he stared at the paper for twenty minutes, and then drew a circle outside the triangle! I asked him why he drew a circle, and he said it looked better to him!"

Chen Zhuo imagined Zhang Qiang's bitter face and the inexplicably round marks on his exam paper, and couldn't help but smile, rubbing his forehead. "I've really gone to great lengths to keep an eye on him."

Old Zhao leaned closer and lowered his voice, as if they were exchanging some tactical secrets.

"Now during morning self-study, I do nothing but stand by the glass door at the back and stare intently at him."

Old Zhao pointed to his eyes, giving them an extremely stern, death stare.

"If he dares to secretly read 'Comic Fans' magazine, or play with his beat-up four-wheel drive car motor, or even yawn, I can call on him to answer questions three times in one class. After class, I'll drag him straight to my office, put him on a small stool next to me, and make him do two sets of test papers by himself. He's not allowed to go to the cafeteria for meals until he finishes them!"

Chen Zhuo couldn't help but cough lightly, half-covering the helplessness on his face.

He couldn't even imagine the kind of miserable life Zhang Qiang was going through.

Every day, I am subjected to the death stare of my homeroom teacher, who is also the grade leader.

Zhang Qiang estimated that he called Chen Zhuo's name in his heart no less than eight hundred times a day. No wonder he was still bothered by why he kept sneezing after going to USTC. Old Zhao didn't notice Chen Zhuo's actions and got more and more excited as he talked, even taking on a bit of a Versailles-like tone.

"I made that statement in front of all the teachers at the eighth grade meeting a couple of days ago."

Old Zhao patted the armrest of the sofa, his voice loud and clear.

"I, Old Zhao, have mentored prodigies like Chen Zhuo, who only appear once every few decades. If I can't even get a stubborn rock like Zhang Qiang into the high school division of our city's No. 1 High School, then my reputation as Old Zhao will be ruined! I'll have no face to show my face in school!"

"Zhang Qiang is like a piece of raw iron; I'll have to forge him into steel over the next two years!"

Chen Zhuo sat there, maintaining a smile, silently lighting a candle for Zhang Qiang in his heart.

Old Zhou, who had been listening silently to Old Zhao's long-winded speech, finally couldn't take it anymore.

He placed the teacup on the coffee table, making a sound.

"Come on, Lao Zhao."

Old Zhou curled his lip, mercilessly exposing Old Zhao's self-pity.

"Although Zhang Qiang's foundation was weak, Chen Zhuo tutored him for who knows how long in elementary school, and who knows how long he studied before getting into the top high school?"

Old Zhou glanced at Old Zhao, his face full of disdain.

"Don't take all the credit for other people's children's progress and try to mold them into steel. Just don't make them depressed. Your 'sea of ​​questions' approach will eventually wear down their talent."

"How did I take the credit? How could he learn if I didn't keep a close eye on him?"

Old Zhao stiffened his neck and retorted.

"Is that what you call stalking? That's just training a hawk!"

"What's wrong with cramming? The high school entrance exam is all about scores; as long as the results are in, that's all that matters! How can he get points if he doesn't memorize formulas?"

"Memorizing formulas by rote is useless; you have to understand the physical diagrams!"

The two old men, whose combined age was nearly a hundred, started their usual bickering again in the living room because of Zhang Qiang's studies. Chen Zhuo sat on a small stool, watching the two teachers arguing with each other, listening to the slightly echoing noise in the room, and always felt a sense of relaxation.

This kind of relaxation was absent when discussing high server concurrency with Chu Ge at USTC, and it was also absent when Su Wei and I were deriving probability theory by flipping through foreign journals in the old library.

This is Zeyang.

It was his most stable anchor point after his rebirth.

Old Zhao drank several rounds of tea, and then it gradually got dark.

Chen Zhuo glanced at the clock on the wall and stood up.

"Teacher Zhou, Teacher Zhao, it's getting late, my mom is still waiting for me to have dinner at home."

Old Zhao immediately stood up. He wanted to invite him to stay for dinner, but then he thought that Liu Xiuying must have already prepared a meal and was waiting at home, so he didn't insist. "Okay, then hurry back. Drive carefully and put your hat on."

Old Zhao saw Chen Zhuo to the door, watched him change his shoes, and couldn't help but grumble a bit more.

"When you get back to Huizhou in a couple of days, study hard and call often when you have time. Don't worry about Zhang Qiang; I'll keep an eye on him, nothing serious will happen." Old Zhou didn't come out to see him off; he was still sitting on the sofa fiddling with his unfinished chess game.

As Chen Zhuo changed his shoes and opened the door to leave, Lao Zhou's voice drifted from the living room.

"Kid."

Chen Zhuo turned around.

Old Zhou held a chariot in his hand, not looking at him, but just looking down at the chessboard.

"Take a break after you finish working in the wind tunnel. Don't push yourself too hard. Physics is like holding sand in your hand; the tighter you hold it, the faster it leaks out."

Old Zhou pushed the car to the bottom line.

"If your brain is tired, you need to rest. Go on."

Chen Zhuo stood at the door, looking at Lao Zhou's messy hair and Lao Zhao's neat sideburns.

"Okay, Teacher Zhou, Teacher Zhao, please take care of yourselves. I'm leaving now."

The door closed gently.

The warmth of the room, the aroma of tea, and the faint sounds of bickering lingered inside.

As Chen Zhuo walked down the stairs, a gust of cold wind blew in, and he pulled his jacket zipper up.

With his hands in his pockets, Chen Zhuo walked out of the residential compound, his footsteps rustling over a few withered leaves. The image of the death stare Old Zhao had just described flashed through his mind. Chen Zhuo sighed softly in the cold wind, a slight smile playing on his lips. Tomorrow, he had to go to Zhang Qiang's house.

Old Zhao's methods of keeping the eagles busy are not enough; with Zhang Qiang's single-minded thinking, it would drive him crazy.

I still need to go and take a look myself.