Ye Qianying discovered that a person's capacity for endurance grows step by step.
During the afternoon self-study session, she had thought Teacher Ma truly deserved the title of "Tang Sect Leader"—otherwise, how could he assign homework that was both voluminous and difficult?
But the workload of those competition papers paled in comparison to the brain-teasing problem Teacher Zhong had left for her.
Teacher Ma's questions, though challenging, still followed logical patterns. Even if Ye Qianying couldn't solve them, she could at least grasp some of the underlying reasoning.
As for the geometry problem Teacher Zhong had modified...
Ye Qianying spent a full hour pondering it, teaching herself two new theorems in the process, yet she had only managed to advance halfway through.
"There's still one crucial condition missing to connect the two parts," Ye Qianying murmured, exhaling slowly before setting down her pen and stretching.
Teacher Ma had assigned three test papers in total, which Ye Qianying finished in four hours. Three problems touched on gaps in her knowledge, leaving her stumped. She could only hope Teacher Ma would explain them tomorrow.
If he didn’t, she could always seek Teacher Zhong for extra tutoring in the evening... or perhaps Dou Xinran might know the answers. She was confident she could pay him to explain.
Sitting in the learning space, she glanced back at the mechanical clock hanging in the library.
Unbeknownst to her, five hours had already slipped by. Ye Qianying let out a long breath, realizing she hadn’t noticed the passage of time at all.
The library in the learning space negated all negative states, meaning Ye Qianying could theoretically pull an all-nighter without rest. Still, to maintain better mental clarity, she took occasional ten-minute breaks.
She stood up, stretching her limbs before lifting her leg high in a graceful, ballet-like spin.
This was why Ye Qianying loved the learning space so much—not only because of its serene and beautiful environment, which allowed her to focus freely, but also because, within this realm, she was healthy, whole, and unmarred.
She clung to this state of wholeness with near-obsessive fondness.
The system interjected just in time to divert her thoughts: "During the six hours and forty-two minutes you’ve spent in the learning space, I’ve monitored your physical body as requested. Your mother entered once with a new caregiver, but upon seeing you 'asleep,' she left quietly."
A new caregiver...
Ye Qianying chuckled dryly. "The previous one was perfectly fine. I don’t need a new one."
"Perhaps your mother assumed you were dissatisfied with the last caregiver," the system pointed out with uncanny perceptiveness. "After all, you’ve consistently refused her assistance."
It had been three months since Ye Qianying first engaged with the system.
Yet, according to its records, apart from the initial period when her injuries were most severe, she had managed nearly all aspects of her life independently. She only accepted help from caregivers for unavoidable tasks like bathing, medical checkups, and rehabilitation exercises.
With a determination her family couldn’t comprehend, Ye Qianying insisted on dressing herself, using the bathroom alone, and getting into bed unaided. To accommodate her, the family had installed disability aids throughout their villa, ensuring she could maintain her independence.
When school first started, Ye’s father had arranged for a caregiver to accompany her, but Ye Qianyang rejected the idea with the same unwavering resolve.
"I don’t dislike her," Ye Qianying sighed, smoothly exiting the learning space.
The moment her eyes opened, her vision filled with the intricate lever system installed to help her move effortlessly around the room. She pressed a button by the bed, feeling the backrest rise gradually to support her spine at a comfortable angle.
With the mechanical bed’s assistance, she sat upright and reached for her phone on the nearby table. She transferred 100,000 yuan to the caregiver who had once helped her with math problems—a parting bonus, a token of gratitude for her care.
"I just don’t need anyone to look after me. I want to take care of myself—I even enjoy the process..." Here, Ye Qianying smiled faintly. "As a system, I don’t know if you can grasp this subtle psychology. If not, just chalk it up to human pride."
The caregiver had been gentle and attentive; there was nothing lacking in her service.
Ye Qianying’s resistance wasn’t about the caregiver’s competence. It wasn’t solely about dignity, either—it was also haunted by shadows of the past.
The Ye Qianying of ten years later hadn’t wheeled herself into the blood-red sea at sunrise solely because of her paralyzed legs or disfigured face.
If she hadn’t chosen death at fifteen, when her life had first been upended, why would she—after earning degrees abroad, mastering foreign languages, and writing an outstanding thesis on folklore—suddenly embrace oblivion upon being reborn?
Because back then, Ye Qianying hadn’t just been disabled from the waist down.
And the reborn Ye Qianying feared repeating that fate.
A single accident—a momentary lapse in the caregiver’s attention, a careless slip—had sent Ye Qianying crashing to the floor.
It was less than a meter’s drop onto smooth marble, with no sharp edges in sight. Yet, her spine suffered irreversible damage.
Had she been whole, she might have regained her balance or at least avoided such severe injury.
Or if her legs hadn’t been paralyzed for a decade, leaving her core muscles weakened, recovery might not have been so grueling.
But there were no "what-ifs." Ye Qianying had no choice but to endure fate’s cruel blow, left writhing in agony she couldn’t escape.
Not long after, during a cruise ship disaster, she sank beneath the dawn-stained waves, as crimson as blood.
The system hadn’t initially scanned Ye Qianying’s full condition, so it didn’t know: the autopsy report listed her cause of death as high-level quadriplegia.
For Ye Qianying, that existence had been unimaginable. Even now, three months after her return, she refused to dwell on those memories—except in the depths of nightmares.
Losing control over even the most basic bodily functions was a humiliating chapter she’d rather forget.
As she’d told the system earlier, it all came down to that laughable thing called human dignity.
Ye Qianying placed her phone back on the table and let the mechanical bed flatten again—as if smoothing out the creases of her past life along with it.
She casually remarked to the system, "Compared to human caregivers, I trust these machines more. After all, humans are far too prone to accidents... Well, you could say it's just a personal preference of mine."
"Alright, let’s return to the learning space. Please continue monitoring the room for me... Ugh, I still haven’t finished that problem Teacher Zhong left me."
The next day, during the math competition class, at Ye Qianying’s request, Dou Xinran walked up to the podium and handed the modified geometry problem to Teacher Ma.
Teacher Ma was meticulously adjusting the straps of his backpack. His legs were pressed tightly together, the sides of his leather shoes perfectly aligned, their tips flush with the edge of the podium—not a millimeter out of place. His posture could only be described as serene and refined.
When Dou Xinran handed him the problem, Teacher Ma barely glanced at it.
Half a second later, his feet abruptly splayed apart. If not for his need to maintain a teacher’s dignity, he might have dropped into an enthusiastic horse stance right then and there.
Dou Xinran instinctively took a step back. Under the sudden, laser-focused intensity of Teacher Ma’s gaze, even the sharp, chiseled lines of his face seemed to stiffen.
He watched helplessly as his slightly balding teacher reached out with two claw-like hands—each adorned with a metallic wristwatch—and affectionately smoothed his hair, perfectly parting Dou Xinran’s bangs down the middle.
"Did you add these three lines to the problem yourself?" Teacher Ma asked, rubbing his hands together eagerly.
"...No, I’m just turning this in for Ye Qianying," Dou Xinran replied, taking another step back.
Perhaps because Teacher Ma had just manhandled his bangs into a center part, Dou Xinran felt an odd chill on his newly exposed forehead.
Hearing that the problem wasn’t his work, Teacher Ma’s demeanor instantly shifted. The warmth in his eyes vanished as he bluntly remarked, "I thought so. You’ve never been at this level before."
Dou Xinran: "..."
Teacher Ma’s gaze swept across the classroom, his expression softening again with paternal kindness as it lingered on each unfamiliar face. "Ye Qianying—who’s Ye Qianying?"
When he spotted Ye Qianying raising her hand from the front row, his face lit up with even more warmth. "Ah, it’s you."
This student had left a lasting impression on him—not because of her appearance, but because of her mathematical progress.
A student who leaped from rank 1,348 to the top 50 in just one vacation? He’d never seen anything like it in his life.
Teacher Ma stepped down from the podium, casually nudging Dou Xinran aside when he noticed the boy wasn’t perfectly aligned with the classroom’s central axis.
"Did you add these three lines?"
"I solved the problem myself, but I didn’t add the lines," Ye Qianying answered truthfully.
"Of course you didn’t. You couldn’t have," Teacher Ma said dismissively, holding up the paper to admire the geometry problem once more. "This was how I originally intended to present the question. Look at it—what a perfect problem."
Ye Qianying: "..."
Teacher Ma leaned down, his tone gentle as he asked, "How long have you been studying competition-level math?"
"...Two months?" Ye Qianying paused, then added, "Or you could say four."
Thanks to her all-night study system, she had a natural advantage—effectively doubling her study time. So claiming four months wasn’t entirely inaccurate.
Teacher Ma’s expression mirrored the one he’d worn the day before upon hearing Ye Qianying’s ranking. It was as if time and space had collapsed to recreate the same stunned disbelief.
Having his worldview shattered twice in two days—and by the same person—was a hard pill to swallow.
"...Four months."
Abruptly, Teacher Ma turned on his heel, strode back to the podium, and rummaged through his backpack for a stack of test papers.
He spread them out in front of Ye Qianying, his gaze burning into her as if it could sear through her veil.
"I’ll give you five minutes. You don’t need to solve these—just tell me your first instinct for how to approach them." He tapped her desk impatiently. "Quick, I want to see your problem-solving intuition."
Spurred by his urgency, Ye Qianying sped through the questions, rattling off one approach after another: "Let s be an arbitrary fixed non-negative real number, then solve for the minimal value of N... Prove the contradiction between k and n under square-free conditions..."
Teacher Ma listened without confirming or denying her answers. Instead, he stared at the papers, as if struck by a sudden realization.
"Are you signing up for this year’s math competition?"
"Yes."
"Good." He flipped through her previous homework, noting the three unsolved problems. "It does look like you’ve only been studying for four months—your foundation’s still shaky. But your talent and instincts are exceptional. You have a mathematical mind. Here’s what we’ll do."
He nodded decisively.
"In June, sign up for the CGMO (Chinese Girls' Mathematical Olympiad) as well. Just based on you solving this problem, I’m making it my mission to get you into this year’s national training team."
