Chapter 4: IQ 300

"I didn't want you to worry. Maybe you're the only friend I have in this school, but I just don't know how to explain it. Tell you what, do you have your phone with you? Could I borrow it for a moment?"

Yang Liu-shan wasn't sure what he intended, but handed over her phone anyway.

"May I turn on mobile data?"

"It's fine, go ahead."

She watched Wen Xiao-cheng tap around the screen. Since they were facing each other, she couldn't see exactly what he was doing. After about three minutes, Wen Xiao-cheng handed the phone back, his face wreathed in smiles.

Yang Liu-shan took the phone and saw the screen displaying: "Congratulations, your IQ is 162, a true genius!"

"Just a random IQ test I found online. It's hardly objective—the questions focus too much on logic, the language component is shallow, and there's almost nothing on memory," Wen Xiao-cheng explained.

Yang Liu-shan was dumbfounded. As one of the school's top students, she'd taken such IQ tests herself, scoring only about 130, which already counted as high. If you reached 140, you were a genius. Einstein's IQ was said to be only 200, and Wen Xiao-cheng had scored a staggering 162!

"It's not accurate," Wen Xiao-cheng said modestly, smiling. "The test doesn't correlate answers with time taken, and the maximum score is only 162."

Wen Xiao-cheng's innocent smile, "Yes, I seem to have gotten a little smarter."

When someone across from you becomes smarter, the gap in intelligence makes you feel like a fool. Right now, Yang Liu-shan felt exactly that. "The maximum is 162, and you finished in only three minutes... My god! What must your IQ really be?"

Wen Xiao-cheng thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't know. If the test were twice as hard, I could still finish in three minutes—so if it were at that level, I suppose a score of 300 would be possible. But none of this matters; it's all unreliable."

Yang Liu-shan was at a loss for words. Most people wouldn't know how to converse with someone whose IQ might be over 300.

"I'm not saying this to boast, only so you won't worry. Today, when I hit Zhang Pei-yue in class, it wasn't a moment's impulse; I'd already calculated the outcome. I won't be expelled. Maybe my behavior will seem a bit different, but you have to know I'm still Wen Xiao-cheng from before—the one who was grateful to you, but too afraid of causing you trouble to say much. I've just become a little smarter, that's all."

Yang Liu-shan's mind was a jumble. She didn't know how to face Wen Xiao-cheng now that he was smarter. She thought for a moment and asked, "What's it like, becoming smarter?" Maybe asking this wouldn't make her seem too foolish.

Wen Xiao-cheng considered, then replied, "I don't really know how to describe it. It's like someone with severe myopia suddenly regaining perfect vision—the world opens up. Things that were blurry and overlooked now seem crystal clear, and from these clear facts, you can deduce so much more."

With known facts, you can deduce all kinds of possible outcomes, then choose the one you want most.

Among them were the school's kingpins, the rich heirs, the children of officials. They ran the school like a fortress. And he—he was just the son of a murderer, his father in prison, no mother, only a grandmother selling candied hawthorns. Completely asymmetrical conditions—how could he win?

Since there's nothing left to lose, there's no need to worry so much. As the old saying goes, those with nothing on their feet fear nothing from those with shoes.

Yang Liu-shan blinked her big eyes, unsure what to say. Standing before someone with an IQ over 300, she felt she had no right to offer advice.

"Let's go back. If we don't, people will start talking," Wen Xiao-cheng said gently. "We can talk again later."

"What about you?"

"I'm supposed to be standing outside as punishment. It's a good time to think. Oh, and about this—please keep it secret for me!" Wen Xiao-cheng pointed to his head.

Yang Liu-shan nodded, reluctantly standing up. "I will. Take care of yourself. If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask. We... we're friends, right?"

Wen Xiao-cheng smiled, "Yes! We're friends!"

As he watched the girl walk away, the corners of Wen Xiao-cheng's mouth slowly lifted. With a friend like her, school life didn't seem so unbearable after all. He was no longer that silly boy; no matter how hard she tried to hide her feelings, he could see through them. It was true that he was driven by a sense of justice, but the more he cared, the more unusual his feelings became.

Friends are a wonderful thing.

About an hour earlier, Wen Xiao-cheng had just woken up. It was as if a door had opened in his mind—a strange, indescribable sensation flooded his brain, like a clear spring nourishing his neurons, leaving his body perfectly comfortable. The world became sharp and lucid. So many things he'd long forgotten, every detail, came back to him in vivid clarity. He traced his past, discovering he even remembered things from before he could walk, when he was only seven or eight months old.

Further back, there were some fragmented scenes, hard to place in order, but still recallable—feeding, diaper changes, rolling over, adults shouting encouragement. Being held by his mother was always more comfortable than by his father; his father's arms were too hard.

Even earlier, there was that terrifying scene in the nursery. Two blurry figures, a strange conversation, and an injection. If he calculated, he'd been less than three days old at the time. A three-day-old child shouldn't have memories—could it all be related to that injection?

"Most people muddle through life, rarely getting a chance to change their fate. You're giving them that chance, do you understand? If this serum works, each of them will be a one-in-a-million genius! Their lives will be transformed. By then, they'll thank you for it!"

Serum? Genius?

Those words came from the memory of that scene; he replayed them in his mind to translate their meaning. When he remembered it, he couldn't speak yet, and of course couldn't understand, but the astonishing thing was that he remembered every syllable they uttered.

If this memory was reliable, then a lot could be explained. The sudden leap in his IQ was due to the effect of that so-called serum injection at birth.

Genius? That remained to be seen, but fate would certainly be altered from now on. It's not just character that determines destiny—IQ matters even more.

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Four chapters in—by now, there should be some conclusions. Feel free to bookmark, friends.