Chapter 4: The Calm Before the Storm

The sycamore leaves on the campus rustled softly, and the morning sunlight slanted through the glass windows, casting light on the desktop of the Political and Educational Affairs Office. Principal Li Rong clutched a challenge letter, his knuckles turning white.

"The Mathematics Exchange Competition with Baofeng University..." He stared at the gilded title, and beads of sweat seeped out on his forehead. The memory of last year's crushing defeat was like a thorn, making him restless.

"Principal, here is the list of participating students." Teacher Wang from the Academic Affairs Office handed over a form. Behind the three names were dense records of awards. "But the ones sent by Baofeng University this year are members of the Provincial Olympiad Mathematics Training Team."

Principal Li Rong's round face wrinkled like a bitter gourd. Suddenly, there was a commotion outside the corridor.

"Are you crazy? This question can't be solved with Lagrange's theorem at all!"

"Try substituting the parameters in the third quadrant into the Fourier transform."

He pushed open the door and saw Lin Fan leaning against the railing, twirling a piece of chalk between his fingertips. Three top students in the Department of Mathematics were gathered around him, and the draft papers fluttered in the wind like white butterflies.

"So that's it!" The girl wearing glasses suddenly screamed. "Reconstruct the dimensionality of the equation using topology!"

Li Rong's pupils suddenly shrank. The final problem that had made the professors argue for three days was being dissected piece by piece on the tiles with chalk by Lin Fan.

"I need you to participate in the competition on behalf of the school." Li Rong slammed his coffee cup on the table, and the milk foam splashed onto the challenge letter.

Lin Fan looked out of the window at the people playing football on the playground, but his spiritual consciousness caught that under the ginkgo tree three hundred meters away, Chen Hao was making a throat-cutting gesture to his lackeys. He chuckled softly. "What can I get in return?"

"Exemption from all attendance checks," the principal gritted his teeth and pushed over a stack of documents. "You will have unlimited access to the ancient books area of the library."

At the bottom of the documents, there was a "Permission to Borrow the Only Existing Copy of the Alchemy Classic from the Ming Dynasty".

Gu Yajing threw her sportswear into the locker. During the cheerleading team's rehearsal today, the blurry video on her best friend's phone had made her feel as if she had fallen into an ice cave. The image of herself dashing out of Lin Fan's room, accompanied by the eye-catching title "A Certain School Beauty Meets a Violent Man at Night" on the school forum, was spreading like wildfire.

"Surprised?" Chen Hao's shadow engulfed her. "If you don't want the high-definition version of the video to be released, bring Lin Fan to the old laboratory building at 8 o'clock tonight."

The metal edge of the locker door left red marks on her palm. When the bell rang for the seventh time, she finally dialed that number. "Lin Fan, I... I need your help."

The voice-controlled lights in the corridor of the laboratory building flickered on and off. Lin Fan sniffed the faint smell of ether in the air and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. Ten heartbeats were hidden in Classroom 205, and there was one more behind the distribution box at the corner—it was Chen Hao's trembling breath.

"Close your eyes." He suddenly covered Gu Yajing's eyes.

The sound of the steel pipe swinging down, the crackling blue light of the stun gun, and Chen Hao's distorted howl of "Beat him to death!" all froze at the moment he raised his hand. Thirty silver needles shot out from his cuff and precisely nailed into the Huantiao acupoint of each attacker.

When the police sirens resounded through the campus, people only saw more than a dozen gangsters kneeling on the ground wailing, and Lin Fan was wrapping his school uniform jacket around the shivering Gu Yajing. When his fingertips brushed across her phone, all the video backups turned into data dust.

"The exchange competition is tomorrow," Li Rong wiped the sweat from his forehead and made tea for Lin Fan. "Professor Liu from Baofeng University is best at psychological warfare. You..."

However, Lin Fan was staring at the churning dark clouds outside the window, and his spiritual consciousness penetrated through the clouds. Three hundred miles away, the lightning-struck wood on a certain mountain peak was accumulating the spiritual energy of heaven and earth—it was the perfect material for refining a protective magic weapon.

"I'll come up with the questions." He suddenly chuckled. "Remember to prepare fourteen sheets of verification paper."

The pendulum of the clock in the principal's office stopped at 23:59, and Lin Fan's pen tip was already moving like a dragon on the draft paper. When the first raindrop hit the window lattice, he wrote down the last function problem. In the equation with the ink still wet, the arrangement track of the Big Dipper was hidden.