Chapter 21 The Fierce Tiger Sheds Tears.

The light in the water room was dim. The water-heating machine let out a low rumble like a steam engine.

From somewhere came a dripping sound, stirring the indoor atmosphere into something strange and unpredictable.

Luo Yi’s fingers were as tender as scallion stalks, carrying a slightly cool temperature as they pressed against Ye Xiaoyang’s slightly parted lips.

Her dark eyes were like stars sunk into a cold pool, trembling in the rippling light.

A faint flash of surprise passed through Ye Xiaoyang’s eyes. He sucked in a breath of cool air.

The breath brushed her fingertips. Luo Yi immediately pulled her hand back as if shocked by electricity.

She lowered her head at a loss and hid that hand behind her.

Ye Xiaoyang said in a low voice, “I make you feel afraid?”

Luo Yi shook her head in panic and confusion. A moment later, she lightly nodded.

Her fingers pinched the cup. Her thin jade-like nails turned slightly white.

“I…” She opened her mouth, but in the end said nothing.

Ye Xiaoyang restrained his expression and held his breath. His face was as cold as frost.

He couldn’t figure out where he had made her uncomfortable. Her performance was less like shyness than timid fear.

Just as he was concentrating and thinking, the class bell rang.

Luo Yi slipped out from under his arm like a nimble goldfish and fled through the door.

Ye Xiaoyang looked at her retreating back, then at the empty water room. An unprecedented sense of defeat climbed onto his heart.

Even though he hadn’t said anything, he had already detected Luo Yi’s resistance toward him.

She wasn’t putting it on. He could tell. That was what made him feel dejected.

He walked out of the water room in a daze, his thoughts tangled into a ball of hemp.

When he reached the classroom doorway, he absentmindedly called out “Reporting,” then started walking toward his seat.

Math teacher Cai Yong saw Ye Xiaoyang return and said, “Ye Xiaoyang, come up to the blackboard and do Example Four.”

Ye Xiaoyang looked up. The blackboard had been divided into four areas with white chalk. Each area had a math problem written on it.

The classmates below were all calculating on assignment paper. On the platform there were three other classmates like him who had been pointed up by the teacher to do problems.

He saw Luo Yi standing under Example Three with a piece of chalk, staring blankly at that problem. The two people in front were writing rapidly.

She had probably been pointed up by Cai Yong to do the problem because she had come back late.

Ye Xiaoyang strolled onto the podium, took a piece of white chalk, and walked to Luo Yi’s right.

When Luo Yi glimpsed him coming over, she instinctively shifted a little to the left.

Cai Yong paced below the podium, looking at the classmates’ solutions one by one, and didn’t pay attention to the answering process of the few classmates on the platform.

All four problems were trigonometric simplification and evaluation problems, increasing in difficulty one by one. The Example Four Ye Xiaoyang had been assigned was the hardest. Cai Yong was afraid the other students couldn’t calculate it, so he pointed him up to do the problem.

But Luo Yi’s Example Three wasn’t small in difficulty either.

She wrote and drew on the blackboard for a while, then wiped away that pile of messy symbols with her palm.

She clearly had no idea at all.

Actually she could have asked Ye Xiaoyang for help, but after what had just happened, she would rather die than open her mouth and say a single word.

Ye Xiaoyang looked at Luo Yi’s pale face. That look of hers as if she were facing death made his heart ache for no reason.

Even though she had resisted him in every way just now, he couldn’t bear to watch her be embarrassed.

Ye Xiaoyang started doing the problem with chalk. He wrote very fast, almost without thinking.

On both sides was the tap-tap of chalk. Luo Yi felt ashamed of her own inferiority.

Everyone else could do it. Only she was being publicly executed like a little fool.

She stood there dazedly, then suddenly heard Ye Xiaoyang say, “Look once. I’ll erase it in a moment.”

Luo Yi looked up and only then discovered that what Ye Xiaoyang had written was her problem.

His method of solving it was extremely clever. Even if Luo Yi stood here all morning, she might not necessarily think of this kind of simplification method.

Luo Yi was very ashamed. By comparison, his outstanding talent only set off how much more humble and tiny she was.

Her eyelashes trembled lightly. Her fingers gripped the chalk, yet she still wouldn’t put it down to write.

Ye Xiaoyang was a bit anxious. He wished he could write this problem for her.

The answer had been delivered right in front of her eyes and she still wouldn’t copy it. Did she hate him that much?

But when he turned his head, he saw her looking as if she were about to cry, light rippling in the depths of her eyes.

Ye Xiaoyang only felt that his entire heart had collapsed for her, soft to the point of almost melting.

“I’m too stupid.” Luo Yi wanted to cry. It wasn’t because she couldn’t do this problem, but because someone as stupid as her truly had no strength to accept his goodness toward her.

“You’re not stupid,” Ye Xiaoyang said softly. “Don’t cry. It’s only one problem.”

Luo Yi desperately held back her tears, then finally started writing the problem.

She was so nervous the chalk broke. Her nail scraped the blackboard, producing a piercing sound.

She hurriedly changed to another piece and started writing again.

Ye Xiaoyang let out a breath. At least she was still willing to listen to him speak.

Seeing she had written halfway, Ye Xiaoyang only then erased the upper half and started doing Example Four.

By the time Luo Yi finished writing everything, he had also finished.

Luo Yi returned to her seat like a ghost. Not many classmates were paying attention to the situation on the blackboard, but Qian Jiayun had seen it all clearly.

Seeing the red around Luo Yi’s eyes, she couldn’t help asking, “What’s wrong with you?”

Luo Yi shook her head and refused to say more.

Qian Jiayun’s gaze swept back again and landed on Ye Xiaoyang.

Just now Ye Xiaoyang had been helping Luo Yi do the problem, but the atmosphere between the two of them was especially stiff.

Her intuition told her that some unspeakable story had definitely happened between her dear deskmate Luo Yi and Ye Xiaoyang.

When Cai Yong saw that the four classmates on the blackboard had all finished writing, he told everyone to stop their pens and look up. He was going to start explaining the problems.

For each problem he explained, he would have classmates raise their hands to indicate how many people had solved it.

When he got to the third problem, Cai Yong looked at Luo Yi’s solution process and asked, “Luo Yi, how did you think of using substitution to calculate this problem?”

Luo Yi startled and silently stood up.

The surrounding classmates were all looking at her. Luo Yi hesitated for a moment, then said, “Because several factors inside the parentheses were related, I thought I’d try it.”

“This line of thinking is very good.” Cai Yong signaled her to sit down. “Just now I saw quite a few classmates directly using formulas to split it open and calculate. The amount of calculation is huge, and it’s not easy to get it right. The simplest method is to use substitution.”

“The answer to this problem is the square root of two. How many people got it right? Raise your hands and let me see.”

In the entire classroom, fewer than ten people raised their hands.

Luo Yi sat on pins and needles. With her ability, she couldn’t have done this problem at all. If everyone treated her as a top student now, that would be disastrous.

Not to mention anything else, at the next monthly exam her true form would immediately be revealed.

Ai. She really shouldn’t have copied Ye Xiaoyang’s solution process just now.

Now she was truly riding a tiger and finding it hard to get off.

Cai Yong paced over to Example Four that Ye Xiaoyang had done, concentrated and looked, then couldn’t help breaking into a smile.

Ye Xiaoyang was Ye Xiaoyang. Just now he had walked around below for a long time and hadn’t seen a single classmate solve it.

As a result, Ye Xiaoyang not only solved it, but the method he used was even simpler than what was written in his teaching plan.

High-level, overarching thinking was good, of course. It was just that writing it this way during an exam had too few steps and might get points deducted.

Ye Xiaoyang liked skipping steps when doing problems. Many things that were “easy to prove” in his mind were actually scoring points.

This was the difference between an academic god and ordinary people.

Just as ordinary people wouldn’t go prove that 1 + 1 = 2, he also wouldn’t go prove this sine function’s process of change. Because this was something he could see at a glance.

Cai Yong first praised Ye Xiaoyang for a while, then wrote out the method from his teaching plan again.

He said, “Ye Xiaoyang’s method jumps too much in thinking. I don’t recommend everyone learn it. We ordinary classmates should still follow this method and do problems step by step. It’s more reliable.”

Everyone cast envious gazes toward Ye Xiaoyang. Ye Xiaoyang’s expression was cold.

He wasn’t putting on a aloof act. He was still thinking about the small friction that had just happened with Luo Yi. The situation was not optimistic.

Zhou Jiahang saw Ye Xiaoyang’s reaction and always felt it was strange.

These past few days, Ye Xiaoyang had been more silent than usual. Although he didn’t talk much on ordinary days, these past few days he was even more sparing with words.

In Zhou Jiahang’s view, eight or nine out of ten, his progress on Luo Yi’s side wasn’t going smoothly.

Just now on the podium, he had helped Luo Yi do a problem. That should have fiercely gained a wave of goodwill.

Reasonably speaking he had a double harvest in career and love. So why did Ye Xiaoyang’s expression look like he was about to be dumped?

After class, Ye Xiaoyang didn’t move either. He just sat in his seat, expressionlessly flipping through the math competition book in his hands. Who knew whether he was actually reading it.

Zhou Jiahang knew Ye Xiaoyang wanted to go the recommendation route. The college entrance exam was left for ordinary people. Academic gods didn’t need it.

The recommendation exams for competition students at Tsinghua and Peking University only tested math and physics, so he only chose these two subjects.

With his ability, getting a first prize at the provincial level in both competitions was more than enough.

“What’s going on?” Zhou Jiahang sneakily moved closer, wanting to inquire into Academic God Ye’s teenage boy secrets. “If you have something unhappy, say it and let me be happy?”

“Go away. Don’t bother me.” Ye Xiaoyang spoke unhappily, his temper very big.

“Did you confess and get rejected?” Zhou Jiahang stuck to his side like a piece of cowhide candy, wanting to give him advice.

Ye Xiaoyang didn’t say a word. The book was flipped with a rustling sound.

The army set out but died before success. She hadn’t even given him the chance to confess.

He had just been about to speak when his mouth was blocked.

The plots in TV dramas and novels were indeed deceiving. She had blocked it with her fingers, not her lips.

Of course, with her height, wanting to block his mouth with her lips was probably not very possible.

But Ye Xiaoyang couldn’t see that she had any thought of wanting to do that.

The pride he had maintained for sixteen years had hit a wall with her. His heart was shattered into dregs. He was just short of a fierce tiger shedding tears.