Old Man Tang laughed and shook his head. He pointed at the paper in front of Cheng Nuo and said, "Come and take a look at what problem he is solving."
Curious, the other math teacher leaned over for a closer look.
"Sss… Mr. Tang, are you serious? You are actually asking your student to solve this problem?!"
The man drew a startled breath when he saw what Cheng Nuo was working on.
That was a famous problem!
It was the second to last problem of the IMO last year.
It was said that only one person out of the ten members of the Chinese national team was able to solve it. Among all the participants, only five people could do it.
After the IMO, one of the teachers in the math department managed to get the problem.
Hence, all of the math teachers had attempted it.
However… it was a disastrous experience! Three days had passed and none of them had made any meaningful progress.
Therefore, it was perfectly natural for this teacher to be surprised that Old Man Tang was testing a student with this problem.
Those who represented China to participate in the IMO were the cream of the crop students from across the entire country. They were the top few math geniuses competitively selected from millions of smart brains. However, only one of those geniuses had solved the problem.
That problem was very challenging indeed!
"Is Mr. Tang expecting his student to be as smart as the math genius?"
The teacher wanted to stop Old Man Tang. It all seemed too ridiculous to him.
But Old Man Tang stopped him before he could speak another word.
"Shh, be quiet. He's getting there. Don't distract him."
Meanwhile, Old Man Tang's eyes were glued to the string of formulas Cheng Nuo had written down on the paper. He had reached the crucial step for the first part of the problem.
The teacher who was standing behind Cheng Nuo had thought that this student was simply fooling around with the numbers. But Old Man Tang's words soon made him realize that this young man sitting in front of him was making real progress on the problem!
He started to read Cheng Nuo's work from the beginning. The more he read, the more amazed he became. After that, he was unable to shift his attention away.
As more math teachers arrived at the office, all of them were drawn to Old Man Tang's desk, curious about what was going on.
Just like the first teacher, they were initially surprised that Old Man Tang had asked a student to do that problem, but all of them were dumbfounded after they had witnessed the two A4 pages of work written by Cheng Nuo.
Before long, five math teachers had gathered behind Cheng Nuo.
Meanwhile, Cheng Nuo was fully concentrated on the problem. He had not noticed the people around him at all. His attention was highly focused and his brain was running rapidly like a perpetual motion machine. Countless numbers were combined and calculated in his brain.
"Yes! Finally!"
After ten minutes, Cheng Nuo stopped writing and had a good stretch in the chair.
Then he turned and met the eyes of the five teachers behind him.
It became awkward all of a sudden.
"Haha, haha… Why are you standing behind me, teachers? You can have a go at this problem!" Embarrassed, Cheng Nuo stood up and scratched his head.
He wondered when all of them had appeared.
"What… What's your name?" a teacher in his 40s asked. His voice was trembling slightly.
"My name is Cheng Nuo. I'm Mr. Tang's student," Cheng Nuo answered honestly.
"How did you solve this problem?" the teacher asked as he pointed at the five pages of work Cheng Nuo had written. He had yet to recover from the shock.
Incredible! That was genuinely incredible!
Cheng Nuo had solved the problem from scratch before the eyes of all the teachers.
There's an old saying that goes "seeing is believing", and they had seen with their own eyes how Cheng Nuo had completed such an astonishing feat.
"How did I solve it? I did it step by step, then I got the answer," Cheng Nuo replied calmly. "Actually this problem isn't that hard. It's just tedious. I think most students should have no problem solving it within an hour! As for you teachers, I believe you can do it in less than 10 minutes!"
Pfft!
Old Man Tang spurted tea on himself again. But when he saw that the other teachers all looked like they had constipation, he felt less embarrassed.
Cheng Nuo was baffled by the strange looks he received.
"Did I say something wrong? Did I underestimate their mathematical abilities?"
He then explained that he had solved the problem using his gut feeling. In his opinion, although the problem was by no means easy, it was purely algebraic work after one got the general direction right. However, the calculation process was extremely lengthy and difficult. That was why Cheng Nuo had taken more than ten minutes to solve it.
Judging from the teachers' responses, he guessed that those teachers should be as good at doing calculations as him. That made perfect sense, actually, since all of them had more than ten years of teaching experience. A mere student like himself was no match for them.
"Haha… I mean, you can probably do it in under five minutes," Cheng Nuo said in an attempt to lighten up the atmosphere.
But the teachers all looked at Cheng Nuo bitterly in response.
Old Man Tang then waved his hand. That was his signature move that signaled people to leave.
"Class is starting soon. Cheng Nuo, you may go back to class now. I'll keep your work. Get it from me if you need it!" He then glanced at other teachers with an embarrassed look on his face. "I'm afraid my colleagues won't be comfortable if you continue to stay here. Haha, alright, see you in class."
"Oh, okay. Bye, Mr. Tang," Cheng Nuo replied and hastened away. Although he still had not figured out why those teachers were looking at him that way, he knew that he should leave now.
As soon as Cheng Nuo had walked away, a teacher picked up his work from the table and started to study it line by line.
He marveled at Cheng Nuo's ingenious approach as he read on. "Oh! I didn't think of this method here. And here, this is the correct formula to use. Genius. He's a true genius! He could even think of this unique method!?"
Not only him, but other teachers were also amazed by Cheng Nuo's solution too.
"Mr. Tang, your student Cheng Nuo is a prodigy! But why have I not heard of him before?" a teacher asked, perplexed.
They had always known all the other smart math brains in the school, no matter which class they were from.
"Tang, this is your fault. You've been hiding a genius for so long. You should give him more opportunities to shine!"
"Yes! Ask him to participate in the IMO this year. He may win a championship for our school!"