Chapter 28: Brother, you cannot act out of character.
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Niannian excitedly called out the answer: “There are thirty-five chickens minus twelve, which makes twenty-three!”
“Perfect!” Chen Yu said proudly. “My daughter really is a little genius!”
【Ding! Congratulations, Host, on completing the hidden mission: The Dignity of Fatherhood】
【Mission Description: Successfully maintain your majestic, all-knowing image in front of your child.】
【Mission Reward: Grandmaster-level scientific knowledge!】
At the very moment Niannian cheered, a torrent of knowledge surged into Chen Yu’s mind.
Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, geography… Every branch of scientific knowledge.
He had mastered it all!
The entire process took only an instant.
Chen Yu merely froze for a fraction of a second.
He felt as if he had suddenly grown a brain!
The sensation was… utterly marvelous!
“Dad! Dad, you’re amazing!”
Niannian threw her arms around Chen Yu’s.
“I thought about that for such a long time and still couldn’t figure it out. The moment you explained it, I understood! You explained it even more clearly than our teacher!”
A daughter’s admiration was the finest spiritual nourishment any father could receive.
Chen Yu was thoroughly pleased.
“Of course!”
“From now on, if you run into any difficult problem—whether it’s from the heavens or beneath the earth—just ask your dad! There’s nothing I can’t solve!”
After a brief heartwarming interlude, the comments in the livestream began to stir again.
【Here we go! The familiar boasting segment is back!】
【Hahahaha! He just looked up an elementary-school math competition problem in the bathroom, and now he dares to claim he can solve problems from the heavens? God Yu, do you even know how many stars there are in the sky?】
【I’ll bet a packet of spicy snacks that the next time he encounters a difficult problem, he’ll use the “stomachache” excuse again!】
【Don’t be so harsh. Maybe next time it’ll be “a headache,” “an eye ache,” or “I need to take a dump.” Even excuses need to keep up with the times!】
【God Yu: I’m not the creator of knowledge. I’m merely the porter. Place of pickup: the bathroom.】
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The viewers all assumed that Chen Yu’s “万能” persona was nothing more than an act for the sake of the show—an attempt to bluff his way through despite lacking the ability.
Just then, Niannian seemed to become the mouthpiece of everyone in the livestream. She turned to the next page of her workbook and pointed to an even more complicated problem involving a diagram. Tilting up her little face, she asked:
“Dad, what about this one?”
It was a problem concerning the area of a geometric figure. An irregular shape, formed by several overlapping semicircles and triangles, was shown, and the task was to calculate the area of the shaded portion.
The problem was clearly several levels more difficult than the previous chickens-and-rabbits problem.
The livestream audience immediately perked up.
【Good question, Niannian! What an assist!】
【Look at God Yu’s expression. Is that smile on his face starting to stiffen?】
【I can almost hear his stomach growling already!】
【Bathroom: I’m ready whenever you are!】
Everyone craned their necks, waiting to see Chen Yu use the same old trick and perform another “bathroom escape.”
Yet, contrary to everyone’s expectations, Chen Yu merely glanced at the problem. Without even a tenth of a second’s hesitation, he smiled with complete understanding.
“Oh, this one? It looks complicated, but it’s really just a paper tiger. It’s not testing your ability to calculate. It’s testing your sense of geometry and your ability to transform logic.”
“Look here.” He lightly tapped one corner of the diagram with the tip of his pen. “The area of this semicircle is exactly the same as that of the blank semicircle over there, isn’t it?”
Niannian followed the direction he indicated and nodded. “Yes. They have the same radius.”
“Exactly. So we can ‘dig out’ this semicircle from the shaded area and ‘fill it in’ over there in the blank semicircle. See? Once we perform this little spatial transformation, what happens to the entire figure?”
As he spoke, he rapidly sketched a diagram on a sheet of scratch paper. The irregular, headache-inducing shaded region was shifted and rearranged beneath his pen, instantly transforming into a neat rectangle.
The entire process was smooth and effortless, while his reasoning was so clear it was almost infuriating.
Niannian’s little mouth formed a perfect O.
“Wow… It turned into a rectangle!”
“That’s right.” Chen Yu smiled. “Now, isn’t the problem simple? All you need to do is calculate the area of the rectangle. The length and width are both given in the problem. You can work out the answer yourself.”
Niannian picked up her pencil and quickly calculated the result on the paper. When she compared it with the answer at the back of the book, it matched perfectly!
【??????????】
【What the hell??? What’s going on???】
【What is happening? Why isn’t he following the script this time? Where’s the bathroom? Where’s the homework-solving app?】
【Wait… this method… I’m a middle-school mathematics teacher, and I can say with complete responsibility that this dissection-and-rearrangement approach is exceptionally clear—and unquestionably the optimal solution! He isn’t reciting an answer. He’s explaining the underlying method of solving the problem!】
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【Are you sure about that, Teacher? Didn’t he just memorize it in the bathroom?】
【You try memorizing one yourself! For this kind of advanced math problem, rote memorization is useless. The key is the method! His explanation just now—from identifying figures of equal area, to introducing the idea of “digging out and filling in,” and finally completing the transformation—was seamless! Without a solid foundation in geometry and strong spatial imagination, it would be impossible!】
【Holy crap… I’m completely stunned. Could we all have misunderstood him? Is he… is he actually a top student?】
The viewers were utterly bewildered.
Only a moment earlier, they had been mocking Chen Yu as a clueless amateur who knew nothing beyond looking things up online.
The next moment, he had slapped every one of them in the face with a dazzlingly ingenious solution.
The extreme reversal left everyone dizzy, with a profound sense of unreality.
Just as the livestream descended into utter chaos, a phone began to ring.
“Ring, ring, ring—”
Chen Yu was basking in his daughter’s admiring gaze. Hearing the ringtone, he casually pulled his phone from his pocket.
A name appeared on the screen: Zhao Yueru.
Chen Yu’s brow furrowed slightly.
The name was somewhat hazy in his memory, but the memories of the original host, integrated by the system, soon supplied the answer.
Zhao Yueru had been the original host’s classmate at university. She had served as the class’s cultural activities committee member, and her relationship with the original host had been neither close nor antagonistic. After graduation, they had barely kept in touch.
Why was she calling?
Chen Yu wondered to himself as he swiped to answer.
“Hello, is this Chen Yu?”
“It’s me. Zhao Yueru?”
“Oh, you still remember me! That’s wonderful!”
“Old classmate, where are you making your fortune these days? It’s been so many years since graduation, and there hasn’t been a word from you. It’s as though you vanished from the face of the earth!”
Chen Yu replied blandly, “I’m not making a fortune. I’m just at home. Did you need something?”
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