Chapter 272: Chapter 116: The Youngsters Without High Spirits_2

Yu Wei glanced at Yu Yongjun and, unusually, took the initiative to say, “Actually, it was already different a month ago.”

Gong Jiatao was taken aback and asked, “You met a month ago?”

“In the group.” Yu Wei explained succinctly.

Yu Yongjun nodded in agreement and said, “Yes, before, my big brother even offered paid problem-solving services, but since that time, he stopped charging me.”

After speaking, he immediately realized he had spoken faster than he thought, and quickly glanced at Yu Wei.

He then met Yu Wei’s inquisitive gaze.

“Ahem… well…” Just as Yu Yongjun was about to explain, Yu Wei directly said, “I get it. In the summer, the questions I posted in the group were all solved by Qiao Yu, and you paid him for it, right?”

“Haha…” Yu Yongjun chuckled dryly and decisively changed the topic, “Let’s not talk about this. I thought about it; we shouldn’t just let Qiao Yu affect our mindset! Not many are better than us at problem solving, but out of sixty people, we should be able to find a few who are good at gaming, right?”

Yu Wei glared at Yu Yongjun again but said nothing.

After all, he agreed with the sentiment of the chubby one’s words in his heart; he really didn’t want to experience this kind of defeat again. But he didn’t mind if everyone had a taste of it.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s best if we can barely win against Qiao Yu in a game and experience what it’s like for someone to solve an Olympic problem while gaming. Is this even human? Even a beast isn’t this strong!”

Gong Jiatao chimed in from the side.

Actually, he was the most affected today.

Watching Yu Yongjun play, he thought it was just the chubby guy being bad, thinking he might have a fighting chance.

Who knew that when he actually tried it, he couldn’t think of those problems in his head; once he started thinking, his hands slowed down.

Really, Gong Jiatao thought that if the exams started today, with his current mindset, he might actually fail miserably and not even make the top fifteen.

“How about we find four more people to challenge Qiao Yu tomorrow. We’ll do a round-robin battle, I won’t believe it. I’ll be responsible for convincing two from our side, each of you find one, no problem, right?” Yu Yongjun said, patting his chest.

Yu Wei shook his head and said, “I’m not familiar with the others from Linhai, can’t find anyone.”

Yu Yongjun rolled his eyes, but upon thinking of Yu Wei’s personality, he understood.

This guy not being able to find people is normal.

“No worries, we have a lot of people from Beijing this time, I’ll bring two more!” Gong Jiatao said, patting his chest.

…

After the opening ceremony, the first stage of the training mainly involved four activities: exams, self-study, problem analysis, with three lectures interspersed.

If you exclude the first day’s registration and the last day’s departure, the actual time used for the first stage of training is only eight days. The sixty competition champions before the national CMO finals participated in four exams here.

The exams took place on the third and fourth days, and then on the eighth and ninth days. In between, there were three lectures, and a three-hour problem analysis session.

The first two exams can be roughly understood as assessing the students and addressing knowledge gaps. The latter two exams would select fifteen people to participate in the final competition, fighting for the opportunity to represent Huaxia in the IMO during the second stage of training.

This time, the team leader for the IMO, Professor Zhou Liang from the Yanbei University’s Academy of Sciences, clearly sensed on the fourth day that something seemed off. Many students’ conditions were poor, which was evident from the first two exams.

Many students who did well in the previous CMO collectively performed poorly in these two exams.

He specifically observed everyone’s spirit during self-study classes, noticing that those with significantly declining grades exhibited visibly low spirits and emotions.

Professor Zhou Liang wasn’t leading the IMO team for the first time, and among sixty students, it’s not unusual to occasionally have one or two in such states, but such widespread problems were highly abnormal. Moreover, there seemed to be certain regional characteristics.

For instance, students from Beijing generally had declining grades, even Gong Jiatao, who scored full marks in the CMO, wasn’t exempted.

You have to know that this is not just any Rocket Class, but a gathering of the most mathematically gifted students of this age group in all of Huaxia, each one in ten thousand. Their psychological adjustment capabilities should naturally be stronger than those of ordinary peers.

In the past, if these overachievers claimed to have not done well, it was mostly humble talk, not to be believed. But this time, they genuinely didn’t perform well, and a large number of them had a sudden drop in grades.

Whenever there is such a widespread problem, something must be amiss.

So during the evening self-study following Exam (2), Professor Zhou Liang called all the students with significantly declining grades one by one into the office for a talk, which included both Gong Jiatao and Yu Wei.

Initially, the conversations did not go smoothly, as very few were willing to speak up.

But, as they say, with teenagers, if you are patient enough, you can always get the truth out. Once one starts talking, the rest become easier to talk to.

After the conversation, Professor Zhou was stunned…

No wonder they collectively underperformed. They were all discouraged?

Goodness… just wow, can it actually happen like this?

Qiao Yu single-handedly demoralized all the IMO training kids? There were even students fixated on the fact that someone managed to solve problems while playing games, and could still beat them in the game?

The influence extended not only to those who went to challenge Qiao Yu, but also the mindset of kids who went to watch the commotion.

There were even dorm rooms where four people couldn’t sleep at night, discussing this matter until two or three in the morning?