Awakening Elementary School System in University
Chapter 1: The System That Arrived 14 Years Late

Chapter 1: Chapter 1: The System That Arrived 14 Years Late

Yannan University, Department of Mathematics.

In a study room tucked away in a corner, the digital clock on the wall showed that it was 11:30 AM on May 14th.

There were only 37 hours left until the final submission deadline for this year’s Higher Education Press Cup National College Mathematical Modeling Competition.

But right now, the few young women in the study room were still fiercely debating something.

"No! This definitely won’t work!"

A long-haired young woman’s brows were tightly furrowed. She had a very pretty face, but her hair was now a mess.

"Compressing the value for the incubation period isn’t an optimization at all! Our foundation is the SEIR epidemic model. If we do this, we’ll have to scrap everything and start over!"

"Yanyan, the value of a mathematical model is to approximate reality, not to replicate it."

Another young woman with short hair and glasses immediately retorted, "With the current parameters, the model’s goodness-of-fit for the historical data has already reached 0.92, and the predicted curve matches the actual reported cases with over 85% accuracy. Given our limited time and data dimensions, this *is* the optimal solution."

"Optimal solution?"

The long-haired woman stood up abruptly, as if she’d been burned by the words.

"You’re basically just fudging the parameters to fit the answer! With this current model, if you plug in any new set of data, the margin of error will be as wide as West Lake!"

"Our goal is to provide hospitals with a practical early warning system for peak medical resource allocation, not to write a thesis!"

"You..."

The short-haired woman was at a loss for words, her face flushing slightly red.

Seeing that a huge fight was about to break out, the other two young women beside them quickly tried to smooth things over.

"Hey, you two, don’t fight."

"Yanyan, don’t get so worked up. We can discuss it calmly. There’s always a solution."

"Zihan, don’t you be angry either. You know what Yanyan’s like. She’s not targeting you personally."

"Both of you, sit down first. Lunch should be here any minute. Let’s eat first and talk after."

Each of them grabbed one of the arguing women. After a few words of persuasion, the short-haired one calmed down, sighed, and sat back down.

But the long-haired woman was having none of it. Without a word, she went back to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and started furiously revising the formulas written on it.

The sharp, hurried scraping of chalk against the blackboard, like metal scratching glass, perfectly mirrored her current frustration.

"Sigh."

The other three exchanged helpless glances.

But they were all aware of the long-haired woman’s obsession with mathematics, so in the end, they didn’t dare say anything more.

The atmosphere remained awkward for a while.

Until a young man walked in, carrying several disposable food containers.

"Hey, your food’s here."

"Same as usual: one meat and one vegetable dish for each of you, a serving of rice, and one order with no spice."

"The non-spicy one is on the bottom. It’s 48 yuan in total. You can just transfer it to my WeChat."

Placing the containers next to the short-haired woman, the young man spoke quickly, as if he could already sense this was a powder keg and wanted to leave as soon as possible.

’This is absolutely terrifying.’

’Math plus women... it’s simply the most terrifying combination in existence!’

...

Chen Lin didn’t actually know these four women.

He was from the Chinese Language and Literature department, a major jokingly known as "pay tuition to self-study."

If there was a pecking order among academic disciplines, then literature and mathematics would definitely be at opposite ends.

One looks down on all the others.

And one is looked down on by all the others.

As a literature major, Chen Lin completely agreed with this sentiment.

So, even though he was only a sophomore, he was already focusing all his energy on making money.

One of his ventures was fetching meals from the cafeteria for students who were too lazy to go themselves but didn’t want takeout.

He charged a two-yuan delivery fee per order. It wasn’t much, but with high volume and low profit margins, he could still make four or five hundred yuan a month.

He had started delivering food to these four women a few days ago.

Through their chats, Chen Lin learned that the four were roommates who had teamed up to enter this year’s national mathematical modeling competition.

The pretty, long-haired one who wasn’t very talkative was named Shen Yan, the academic core of the group.

The one with short hair and glasses was Li Zihan, the second-in-command, who seemed to be mainly in charge of logistics.

She was the one who had contacted him on the campus forum and asked him to deliver their meals.

Finally, there were two unimportant NPCs whose names Chen Lin had never asked.

He only knew that one’s surname was Zhang and the other’s was Sun.

In short, although his interactions with them were brief, Chen Lin had a general idea of the group dynamic.

The reason he knew so much was mainly because the atmosphere here had been quite harmonious for the first couple of days.

Every time he came to deliver their food, the four of them would be talking and laughing.

Not only did they pay promptly, but they would also send him off with a "Thanks for the trouble."

Under those circumstances, it was normal to exchange a few pleasantries.

But starting yesterday, the whole vibe had suddenly changed...

The four "sisters," once as close as family, had suddenly become adversaries.

Especially Shen Yan and Li Zihan, who both looked thoroughly displeased with each other.

Based on Chen Lin’s experience, a situation like this could only be caused by one of two things.

One: fighting over a guy.

Two: fighting over who’s right.

And regardless of which it was, he couldn’t solve it.

’So, it’s best to get out of here quickly.’

After putting down the food containers and receiving the 48 yuan transfer from Li Zihan, Chen Lin was about to bolt.

But right at that moment...

[Host detected to be over 6 years of age!]

[Growth System activated!]

[Host detected to be facing a mathematical problem!]

[Mathematics is nothing more than a combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division!]

[Task Requirement: Fluently recite the 9x9 multiplication table.]

[Reward Title: Little Mathematician]

[Little Mathematician: When facing any math problem, you will always arrive at the most correct answer!]

"..."

???

Staring at the screen of light that had suddenly appeared in his mind, Chen Lin was completely dumbfounded.

’A system?’

’Over 6 years of age?’

’Recite the 9x9 multiplication table?’

His eyes widened. Chen Lin was completely stupefied.

And before he could even react, just a few seconds later, two more messages popped up from the system.

[It has been determined that the host can already fluently recite the 9x9 multiplication table!]

[Task complete! Reward has been distributed!]

"..."

’Distributed?’

’Where is it?’

Feeling no change in his body or brain, Chen Lin’s mouth twitched. He silently resolved to never read web novels again.

However, just as he was about to leave to continue his deliveries, his peripheral vision accidentally caught the dense cluster of formulas on the blackboard.

In the next instant, he froze completely.

Data prediction, differential equations, coupling terms, fitting...

"Are you guys worried that a gamma (γ) disturbance will cause a system cascade?"

Without any warning, Chen Lin suddenly asked this question.

Li Zihan and the other two women immediately turned to look at him, their expressions surprised.

Even Shen Yan, who was standing in front of the blackboard, turned her head.

As the four women stared at him with growing astonishment, Chen Lin continued speaking as if to himself:

"Someone here wants to solve it by adjusting the incubation period parameter."

"While that would prove the model’s effectiveness, it’s actually putting the cart before the horse. The model would lose all its real-world application value."

"Actually, this problem isn’t hard to solve."

"You might not have noticed, but this coupling term doesn’t just connect the incubation and infectious periods; it’s also linked to the asymptomatic transmission coefficient."

"The fluctuation in gamma directly interferes with the transmission coefficient, and that coefficient is the biggest black box in your model."

"Now..."

His gaze swept over the four dumbfounded women, finally landing on Shen Yan. Chen Lin carefully confirmed,

"You should get it now, right?"