He then said to all the students, “Samuel Bennett is a new student and has never attended school before. In the future, if he encounters any difficulties, everyone should help each other. If he comes across questions he can’t solve, students who are good at studying should help tutor him.”

“Alright, now let’s begin class. Today’s lesson is about sets…”

Samuel Bennett found it a bit hard to understand Mr. Grant’s lecture. He had never been exposed to this kind of modern mathematics before; he had only seen books like “Number Theory” and “Arithmetic.” The math books written by ancient people might be a bit outdated for today’s world. He could only start from the beginning and read slowly by himself. At first, he could understand what was written in the book. It started with the classification of numbers—positive numbers, negative numbers, natural numbers, integers—all explained very clearly, with lots of examples. Combining what he had read in other books, he picked it up quickly.

The content in the textbook progressed from easy to difficult, from simple to complex. He understood the earlier parts, and as it got harder, he was able to gradually comprehend it as well. With so many examples in the book, he read faster and faster. Before he knew it, he had reached the section Mr. Grant was currently teaching, and now he could understand what was being said.

This was the fourth class of the morning. After class, it was time for lunch. Since Samuel Bennett hadn’t brought any rice, he went to a snack shop in the market to eat something. The school’s lunch break was an hour and a half, and students who lived nearby would go home for lunch. After eating, Samuel Bennett strolled around the market, bought some daily necessities, noticed that his classmates all used fountain pens or ballpoint pens, so he bought one of each at a shop in the market, along with a bottle of carbon ink and some notebooks, then returned to school.

The first class in the afternoon was geography, the second was PE, and the last was history. Just now, Samuel Bennett had seen his class schedule on the blackboard and memorized what classes he had each day. At that time, there were six days of classes a week, with only Sunday off. The morning classes were generally the important ones, while the afternoon classes were simpler—geography, history, PE, music, and self-study were all in the afternoon.

He had originally planned to use the lunch break to continue reading his math book, but time passed quickly and it was already the fifth period. The geography teacher was quite old, with a lot of white hair. After asking his deskmate Andrew Bennett, he learned that the geography teacher’s surname was Deng, and his name was Jason Cooper. Taking out the geography textbook, he saw that first-year geography mainly covered Chinese geography: which provinces China has, what features different places have, where various minerals are distributed. Samuel Bennett listened with fascination. He had always been interested in books like “Records of Mountains and Rivers,” and had read some travel diaries written by ancient people. He longed to see the beautiful mountains and rivers of his homeland, and while reading, he thought to himself that he would definitely travel all over the country one day.

Geography was relatively easy to understand. No matter where the class was, it was easy to jump in; all he needed to do was memorize everything, which was no problem for Samuel Bennett. While listening to the teacher, he also flipped through the earlier parts of the book, and before long, he had finished reading the entire book and memorized it. When the bell rang and the teacher left the classroom, he was still recalling the content of the book, determined to visit those places someday.

Next was PE class. In rural schools, PE was very simple. The PE teacher would gather all the students on the playground and have them line up. Then the PE monitor would go to the school activity room to get some volleyballs, basketballs, badminton rackets, ping-pong paddles, and so on, and distribute them to the students—that was it.

Samuel Bennett didn’t join in. He didn’t know how to play any of those ball games, and he didn’t have any playmates yet—he only knew his deskmate so far. Mainly, he focused all his energy on his books, so he went back to the classroom. There were also some students who didn’t go to the playground, either because there wasn’t enough equipment for everyone or because some students, especially the girls, simply didn’t want to exercise. He didn’t pay much attention to that. He took out the math book he hadn’t finished earlier and continued reading the section on sets.

Maybe Samuel Bennett had a real talent for math, or maybe it was because he had studied step by step from the beginning, but the further he went, the faster he read and the better he understood. Before PE class was even over, he had finished the entire book. When he turned to the last page, he realized there was nothing left. Wanting to test what he had learned, he took out the school-issued basic math exercises and did the final comprehensive test. After finishing, he checked his answers against the reference answers at the back of the book—they were all correct. He was very happy, but then he wondered if others would think he was a freak: finishing in two class periods what others needed a whole semester to learn, and mostly by self-study. Thinking of this, he decided not to tell the teacher or let other students know for now. He’d wait a while; at least by then, people might just think he was smart, not a weirdo.

Although PE class was over, the students were still reluctant to give up the balls they were playing with, dragging it out until just before the next class before hurriedly returning all the sports equipment to the PE monitor. By the time they got back to the classroom, it was already time for the seventh period.