Chapter 27

After this absorption, Zhuochuan felt as if his entire being was in a state of ethereal clarity, as if his consciousness had transcended his body, making everything he did effortless, and his overall abilities seemed to have improved.

The last time he absorbed the soul power emitted by two people on the brink of death, he discovered unintentionally while reciting the source code that he could also achieve "photographic memory." Now, after absorbing the soul power from another person on the brink of death, he began to consciously search for which of his abilities had improved.

"What is the result of 9887423 multiplied by 9843243?" He recalled a question he couldn't answer before, and even after someone else answered it, he didn't remember the result.

"???" This time, the answer still didn't appear in his mind.

"Why?" Zhuochuan didn't understand why he still couldn't calculate it. Was there something missing?

He carefully recalled that the last time he gained the ability of "photographic memory," it was in the New World, specifically in the body of the New World, and then he brought it back to the modern world.

Thinking about this, he checked the time and realized he could go to the New World again.

He immediately returned to his bed, and as before, his eyes turned into spirals, and the memories of the New World's body appeared in his mind, bringing his entire soul to the body in the New World.

"The answer is 97324307232789." This time, Zhuochuan got the answer in less than a second, whereas just over a month ago, he was stumped by this question and embarrassed.

"Is it really like this?" Zhuochuan felt a mix of joy and a strange sensation.

He understood that to reach a new level of intelligence, it wasn't just about the total amount of soul power; the physical condition also needed to reach that level.

His physical condition in the New World was at the top, requiring no further improvement. As long as his soul reached a certain level, he could possess ordinary abilities.

He found the practice problems from his previous classes and, as expected, completed them effortlessly, no longer needing to calculate slowly by hand or seek help from a computer.

"Returning to the modern world, I should still be able to retain this ability, right?" Zhuochuan thought. After all, his photographic memory from the New World still existed in the modern world; otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to easily retype the thousands of lines of intelligent ECG analysis software source code.

Since he still needed six hours to return to the modern world, Zhuochuan couldn't waste this time. He thought for a moment, checked the time, and realized it was almost morning. He couldn't waste the entire morning, so he went to school.

The school he attended had no name, just a complicated alphanumeric code, which he never bothered to remember. In the past, he would just let the self-driving car find it for him by saying, "Go to the school I'm currently attending," and it would never make a mistake.

Now, he remembered it easily. The school's name was "ZX77692432," and it served the residents of the fifty underground levels.

When he arrived at the school, Zhuochuan's expression remained calm. After all, he wasn't a child and wouldn't become overly excited by a little progress, even though this progress was unparalleled for people on modern Earth. However, his subtle excitement didn't escape his classmates, who were all young and perceptive.

"Uncle, you look so happy. What new progress have you made recently?" Wang Xin asked curiously. Zhuochuan rarely came to school these days. "If you need our help with something, just say it."

"Nothing much, I just wanted to try attending a class. I'll be back this afternoon, and I only have a little over a month left, so I need to be more focused," Zhuochuan said nonchalantly. In the first month, he had been ridiculed many times during class, but with his broad-mindedness and the urgency of time, he wouldn't waste time on face-saving matters.

But he needed to test his new abilities and gain experience from them, so he decided to do both at once.

"Ah, Uncle, you never used to look forward to any class except physical education. It seems you must have made some special progress," Wang Xin said, more curious than ever, automatically ignoring the latter part of Zhuochuan's statement.

"Um, a bit of progress. I'll tell you in class," Zhuochuan said casually.

Soon, Feng Lan entered the classroom. There were only two teachers in their class: Feng Lan, who taught cultural knowledge, and Old Xu, who taught physical education.

She naturally saw Zhuochuan but didn't say anything, just opened her lesson plan and started teaching.

"This class will be a numerical thinking training exercise. We'll start with the simplest addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and then move on to advanced algorithm design and analysis."

Zhuochuan listened. He had been in this class for over a month, but whether it was the simplest addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division or advanced algorithm design and analysis, he couldn't solve any of them. The addition problems involved hundreds of digits, which he couldn't even remember, let alone calculate. The advanced algorithm design required solving real-world problems using various advanced mathematical concepts in just a few minutes, which was like listening to a foreign language to him.

Soon, students were called up one by one to answer Feng Lan's questions.

Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division were basic primary school lessons, but here, the difficulty was magnified tenfold or even a hundredfold, turning them into a form of mental training.

Zhuochuan listened to each question, and whether it was addition, multiplication, subtraction, or division, the equations and results instantly appeared in his mind.

This made him unable to hide his excitement.

"Zhuochuan, answer this: what is the result of 33333 squared, and then the cube root of that result?"

"1035.737263678..." Zhuochuan recited over ten decimal places, but Feng Lan didn't signal him to stop. He was a bit stunned but continued reciting.

At first, Wang Xin and the other students listened to Zhuochuan's answers with interest, though they were surprised, they weren't too shocked, comparing his answers with their own real-time calculations.

But as Zhuochuan continued, by the fifth minute, at his speaking speed, which was slow for clarity, he had already recited over 350 digits. Some students couldn't keep up anymore.

"I can't do it, I can't do it. If I keep following, my brain's memory won't be enough. I can only get an approximate number," a male student said, giving up and holding his head.

Feng Lan still didn't signal Zhuochuan to stop, so he continued reciting.

Unlike reciting thousands of digits of pi, which is static memory, this required real-time cube root calculation. If Zhuochuan wrote down the result, even if it was ten thousand pages, no one here could memorize it, but following the real-time calculation process required not just memory but enormous computational power and storage space.