When intelligence is on the same level, the only thing that can decide the outcome often lies in these seemingly insignificant, minute details.
Xie Feng finished speaking, and the entire class fell silent.
Some had been unconvinced before, but now they were speechless.
Everyone here was smart—Xie Feng didn’t need to say everything outright; they already understood in their hearts.
Perhaps what determines success or failure isn’t just the details.
Most of them had been "other people’s children" praised by neighbors since childhood—exceptionally gifted, never giving their parents reason to worry about their studies, and thus carrying a subtle sense of pride in their personalities.
But now they were in this class, surrounded by the brightest students from across the country. Perhaps what was once the "head of the chicken" now felt like the "tail of the phoenix," and the psychological gap was hard to accept all at once.
Compared to Shen You’an and Liu Runxi, was what they lacked truly just the details?
Gu Bichen, after all, was cultivated by the Gu family. Why didn’t he achieve a perfect score either?
Maybe that single point represented a gap they could never bridge, even if they poured their entire lifetime into it.
Admit it—what they thought was brilliance was merely average. There will forever be people who are smarter, just like in the world of dimensions: they lived in a three-dimensional world, but higher dimensions already surpassed human understanding. Yet those dimensions still existed, waiting for scientific advancement to uncover them.
Xie Feng picked up a piece of chalk and turned to draw a straight line on the blackboard, marking a dot on the line.
"What is this?"
Cheng Xuyuan quickly answered, "A straight line."
Gu Bichen replied, "A one-dimensional world. The point on the line is a one-dimensional object."
Xie Feng showed a look of approval. "Good, quick thinking."
Cheng Xuyuan smiled awkwardly—what was wrong with his brain to make such a big mistake?
Xie Feng then drew a vertical line intersecting the original straight line, using two points as the intersection basis to form a rectangle on the plane.
"What is this?"
Someone rushed to answer this time, "A two-dimensional world."
"A two-dimensional world is an infinite flat plane. In this world, if you want to locate a point, you use X and Y to determine it."
Xie Feng used X and Y to represent the coordinate axes.
Then he drew a circle at the bottom right corner. "If you want to calculate the area of this circle, how would you do it?"
Gu Bichen replied, "It’s impossible to calculate because our vision is confined to the plane. All we can see are line segments without thickness."
"Exactly, our vision restricts our thinking."
Xie Feng picked up a sheet of paper from the lecture desk, folding it in half before reopening. "Suppose there’s an ant on the right edge of this paper. Let’s consider this ant as a two-dimensional creature. To travel from one edge of the paper to the other, the ant has to traverse the entire surface. But if we roll the paper..."
Xie Feng rolled the paper into a cylinder, transforming it into a three-dimensional object. Pointing to the seam, he explained, "Now the ant only needs to cross this seam to reach the destination. The two-dimensional space curves, creating a three-dimensional space."
"Curvature generates new dimensions—this is the wormhole theory in physics."
Shen You’an, who had been silent all along, suddenly looked up.
Xie Feng smiled faintly, set down the paper, picked up the chalk, and turned to the blackboard. On the intersecting lines, he drew another intersecting line, using three lines as a basis to sketch various objects.
This time, before Xie Feng could ask, someone answered, "This is three-dimensional space, composed of three mutually perpendicular axes. All of us, as humans, are three-dimensional beings."
"Excellent. The multifaceted three-dimensional objects form this complex world. They can be as delicate as clouds or as solid as iron. On this basis arise chemical rules and physical laws. Do you feel satisfied and proud about this?"
Cheng Xuyuan said, "Of course. Humans have spent tens of thousands of years evolving to the top of the food chain, mastering the laws of the world’s operation. Our lives have been continuously improving, so why shouldn’t we feel proud?"
Xie Feng shook his head with a smile, "Your pride ultimately stems from your ignorance."
Cheng Xuyuan froze for a moment. Then Gu Bichen spoke up, "Because there are even higher-dimensional worlds."
Xie Feng turned back to the blackboard and drew two simple stick figures. Pointing to the left figure, he said, "This is me one minute ago."
Then he pointed to the right figure. "And this is me now."
He drew a line connecting the two figures. "From birth until now, we’ve always lived in the same space. We often say, ’as time goes on,’ but in truth, we are moving along a timeline. And this timeline..."