ABMSI Chapter 21

The Next Day

“Hm… ‘Unspoken sorrow and hidden resentment arise; at this moment… silence speaks louder than words.’”

Duan Wei held the book facing away from himself, looking up at the ceiling as he squeezed out a few lines of poetry. It was today’s assignment from old Qin — he couldn’t go home until he finished it.

Sitting across from him, Fu Duqiu wasn’t even looking at the book Duan Wei was holding up. His eyes simply stayed fixed on Duan Wei, calm and watchful. Yet even like that, every time Duan Wei made a mistake, Fu Duqiu would interrupt him with pinpoint accuracy.

Duan Wei didn’t like being stared at that way, so he tilted his head back, reciting while staring at the ceiling — it looked suspiciously like he was rolling his eyes at Fu Duqiu.

“Silver bottle,”

After a long silence, when Fu Duqiu saw that Duan Wei couldn’t force out the next line, he prompted him.

“Silver bottle… Silver bottle shatters, water bursting out…” Duan Wei thought hard for a long time, then guessed, “…like a waterfall plunging three thousand feet?”

Fu Duqiu: “…”

Right at that moment, Duan Wei suddenly froze.
He saw someone walking behind Fu Duqiu, holding a book in one hand and paper and pen in the other, writing as he passed:
“Iron cavalry breaks through, blades and spears clashing.”

It was Peng Yan.

Thanks to that timely reminder, Duan Wei finally managed to recall the next line.
But for a hopeless student like him, knowing one line didn’t mean the rest would suddenly flow out smooth as Dove chocolate.

Stumbling through the rest, Duan Wei made so many mistakes that Fu Duqiu finally frowned, turned slightly to the side, and pulled out another test paper.
“Read for an hour, then come back to recite,” he ordered.

At that, Duan Wei closed his book, cursed Fu Duqiu silently in his heart, then turned away to force more knowledge into his reluctant brain.

Last night, after a long and desperate argument, he’d finally persuaded Qiao Ying to let him have his iPad and phone back — if he could move up a hundred places in this month’s exam rankings.

But just this one simple poem, “The Song of the Pipa,” had already taken him from morning till noon to memorize. His brain was a scrambled mess, and on top of that, he had to endure Fu Duqiu’s barely-there smirk the whole time.

As for Fu Duqiu — the group leader — he was the very picture of cold impartiality. At first, Duan Wei thought he was taking revenge on him personally. Later he realized Fu Duqiu treated every group member exactly the same: stumble three times on one poem, and you’d be sent back immediately.

And with that oppressive aura of a born academic top student, he made everyone in the group so nervous that when it came time to recite, they didn’t even dare look him in the eye.

Infuriating. Absolutely infuriating.

Duan Wei let out a long sigh, pushed the Chinese book aside, and pulled out his unfinished math exercises.
Honestly, for him, subjects like Chinese or history could still be brute-forced by rote memorization — but math? Math was hell itself.

On his desk lay an exercise book full of problems he’d stared at for half the day without solving. He lowered his head, locking eyes with the jumble of familiar yet foreign symbols, until finally he buried his face in the book.

At that moment, he thought: Maybe a Nokia isn’t so bad. It’s tough — and doesn’t break easily.

Just then, the bell rang right on time.
After nearly a full day of studying, the classroom instantly erupted into chaos — some students running off to bask in the sun, others to play games — leaving only Duan Wei sitting there, staring at his exercises like he was trying to divine their secrets.

When Peng Yan turned around, he nearly popped his eyes out.

“Duan-ge, I meant to ask you yesterday — why have you suddenly… reformed yourself?”

Duan Wei flattened his exercise book, gave him a look, and said,
“I promised my mom I’d move up a hundred places this exam.”

As his lifelong partner-in-crime, Peng Yan naturally knew that Qiao Ying was a force of nature in the Duan household. He nodded knowingly.
“Got it. For a second I thought you were aiming for the top three for the sake of love.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Duan Wei looked utterly baffled.

Peng Yan didn’t answer. He just gave a sly laugh and glanced at Duan Wei’s notebook.
At the moment, the exercise book lying open in front of Duan Wei was pristinely white — four math word problems, each with a lonely little “Solution:” written beneath it… and absolutely nothing else.

After pondering for a moment, Peng Yan couldn’t help but say, “Duan-ge, maybe you should just cheat.”

Duan Wei: “…Go to hell.”

“I’m just saying, this isn’t realistic,” said a classmate sitting next to Peng Yan, turning his head and speaking softly. “The midterm’s the day after tomorrow. There’s no way you can finish all these problems one by one. Even if Leonhard Euler came back to life, he wouldn’t finish them.”

“What the hell are you laughing at?” Duan Wei frowned.

The classmate: “…”

Actually, Duan Wei thought he had a point. Time was short, subjects were many, and his brain could only hold so much. Especially math—there was no way to cram that overnight.

So he scratched his head, looked at the classmate, and asked, “Got a plan?”

The guy nodded. Over the past few days, he’d noticed that Duan Wei seemed like a whole new person—his temper improving, his attitude softening. He even put Li Shao in his place recently, so the classmate relaxed and said, “The midterm questions are usually modified from the ones in the practice book. You should just find a top student to highlight the important ones for you. Maybe you’ll hit the jackpot. It’s better than you squeezing your brain dry like this.”

“That’s not bad,” Peng Yan chimed in.

Duan Wei frowned instinctively and thought it over. “But is that reliable? What if none of the questions come up? Wouldn’t I be handing in a blank paper then?”

As soon as he said that, Peng Yan picked up the practice book from under his elbows and flipped it open. Pointing at the “Solution:” written under each question, he said, “Well, you could hand it in like this too. Maybe the teacher will give you a few sympathy points for your sense of ritual.”

“…”

Duan Wei was speechless. But after staring at the empty problem sets for a while, he had to admit… the plan sounded doable. “Then who should I ask to mark the important ones?”

“There’s a genius sitting right next to you,” the classmate said matter-of-factly. “Ask Fu Duqiu.”

“No way!” Peng Yan blurted out immediately. “Absolutely not!!”

“Why not?” asked the classmate.

Peng Yan opened his mouth but couldn’t say anything. For some reason, the mere image of Duan Wei asking Fu Duqiu for help gave him a chilling sense of “a lamb walking into a tiger’s den.”

Since Peng Yan stayed silent, Duan Wei started seriously considering the idea. To be fair, the only obstacle wasn’t logic—it was pride.
After all, just yesterday, Fu Duqiu had mocked him mercilessly.

But honestly? There was no one better to ask.

The class bell rang just then. It was self-study period. Everyone was in their seats, heads buried in unfinished assignments.

Duan Wei glanced at Fu Duqiu, who had just sat down beside him. After a moment’s hesitation, he put on his best ingratiating smile.
“Group leader…”

Fu Duqiu slowly turned his head, meeting the eager gaze of the same Duan Wei who’d been glaring daggers at him not long ago. Now he was smiling up at him, math workbook in hand, expression full of pleading sincerity.

“You’re not going home until you’ve finished reciting,” Fu Duqiu cut him off coldly before he could even speak.

Duan Wei clicked his tongue and shook his head. Then he plopped the math workbook down on Fu Duqiu’s desk. “Top student, can you mark the key points for me?”

The Beta and Peng Yan, sitting in front, were immediately alert, ears pricked up.

Fu Duqiu gave him a look, flipped through a few pages, then met Duan Wei’s almost pitiful eyes and said flatly, “I don’t know what’s important.”

“?” Duan Wei blinked. He thought Fu Duqiu was just refusing to help. “That can’t be right. Just pick the questions you think might appear on the exam and mark them!”

But seeing that Duan Wei clearly wasn’t going to give up until he got something, Fu Duqiu sighed, pulled out his own workbook, and said, “Here. You decide what’s important and mark it yourself.”

Maybe there’s just a natural communication gap between geniuses and the hopeless. Fu Duqiu didn’t understand what Duan Wei wanted, and Duan Wei couldn’t understand a thing Fu Duqiu said.

The workbook lay quietly on the desk. Duan Wei figured there was no harm in taking a peek, so he flipped it open—and froze.

That workbook had been distributed at the start of term for evening self-study. They were supposed to finish up to a certain page before the midterm, and the exam questions would come from there.

But Fu Duqiu, the transfer student who joined halfway through the semester, had already caught up completely—and even written several pages ahead into topics they hadn’t been taught yet.

Looking at Fu Duqiu’s calm, unbothered face, Duan Wei realized he wasn’t showing off—he was just built different.

So Duan Wei grabbed both workbooks and started flipping pages, clearly planning to copy.

“You’re just gonna copy them?” Fu Duqiu asked.

“Yeah,” said Duan Wei. “I’ll memorize them.”

Fu Duqiu frowned. “You don’t actually think memorizing them will make you able to solve them, do you?”

“…” Well, that was exactly what Duan Wei thought.

Fu Duqiu sighed, took Duan Wei’s workbook, found one of the problems he’d “memorized,” glanced at the question, scribbled something on scratch paper, and slid it back.

“Solve it,” he said curtly.

Duan Wei looked at the problem. Something in his academically challenged soul sparked with the urge to perform. He grabbed his pen, dramatically wrote “Solution:” on the page, and carefully read the problem.

It was one of the ones he’d memorized—but Fu Duqiu had changed a few numbers. Still, he could do this!

Ten minutes later… he finally moved his pen again.

Peng Yan, unable to resist, turned around to look.

After “Solution:”, Duan Wei had written a colon and then… stopped.

Peng Yan: “…”

“Group leader…” Duan Wei turned to Fu Duqiu, grabbing the hem of his sleeve like a dying man begging for mercy. “Save me!”

The faint scent of his pheromones filled Fu Duqiu’s senses as he leaned in. Looking down, Fu Duqiu saw Duan Wei’s furrowed brow and pitiful expression.

If not for the genuine thirst for knowledge in his eyes, that look would have seemed like something else entirely.

Fu Duqiu looked away and asked, “What’s in it for me?”

Hearing that, Peng Yan felt his heart drop. I knew this guy was bad news!

Before he could speak, Duan Wei noticed a half-written self-criticism essay on Fu Duqiu’s desk. Remembering that Monday was just two days away, he blurted, “I’ll write your reflection letter for you, how about that?”

Fu Duqiu hesitated for a moment, and Duan Wei immediately added, “I’m a pro at it! I can make the school leaders feel my remorse, and the students weep with empathy! It’s an art form!”

“…Fine,” Fu Duqiu said, clearly amused. He hadn’t planned to make things hard for him anyway.

He took a scrap paper, quickly wrote down a few basic math problems, and handed it to Duan Wei.

Duan Wei stared at them for a while. Math had never been his strength—back in his own time, he’d barely scraped by in the college entrance exam—and years later, he’d forgotten most of it.

After much hesitation, he finally scribbled a few formulas and handed it back.

“You should set the investment as x ten-thousand yuan,” Fu Duqiu said, drawing a line through all of Duan Wei’s answers. “Let product A’s profit be f(x), and B’s be g(x).”

Fu Duqiu pointed here and there with his pencil, explaining calmly, while Duan Wei’s eyes followed the movement of the pencil like a lost puppy. He kept nodding along. “Mm-hmm… yeah… right… mhm…”

“Then this part—if A invests x, how much does B invest?” Fu Duqiu asked, looking up.

Duan Wei stared hard at the paper, squinting. Then he dramatically perched his glasses on his nose, thought deeply, and finally said, “y?”

Fu Duqiu lowered his pencil. “And where exactly did y come from?”

“…It just… came to me,” Duan Wei muttered.

Fu Duqiu looked at him for a long time, then exhaled deeply and explained the entire problem-solving process from beginning to end—so thoroughly that nearby classmates started glancing over.

When he finally wrote down the answer and turned his head, Duan Wei had practically leaned his whole head against his arm. The messy strands of his hair brushed close to Fu Duqiu’s jaw, gently swaying in the breeze.

“Understand now?” the top student asked, eyes lingering on him.

Duan Wei sat up straight, adjusted his glasses, and said seriously, “I think… we’re going about this the wrong way.”

Fu Duqiu put down his pen. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Duan Wei began solemnly, “if solving the problem is like cooking noodles, then what you’re teaching me is how to cook the noodles so they’re edible.”

Fu Duqiu nodded. “Okay. So?”

“But I think…” Duan Wei paused dramatically. “…I’m still stuck on figuring out how to make the dough.”

“…”

After a beat, Duan Wei held up the scratch paper where Fu Duqiu had written the solution and asked earnestly, “So could you teach me why this formula works? Like, what’s its charm? Why did you look at it and just—know it was the one?”

The classroom, which had been pin-drop silent, suddenly filled with the sound of stifled laughter.

Fu Duqiu didn’t answer. He calmly took back the paper from Duan Wei’s hands and said faintly, “It’s not about the dough. I think you need to start from planting the wheat.”