Chapter 3

I looked right past Anthony, fixing my eyes on the director and the panel of experts seated among the audience.

"Go ahead and verify my answer."

Unsure of what to do, the director turned to the experts for help. One of them was Dawn Clark, an elderly woman with graying hair and reading glasses perched on her nose. She was a leading authority in the world of physics and the one who'd designed this challenge.

Clearly, she hadn't expected this situation either. After being briefly caught off guard, she quietly whispered something to her assistant, who immediately began the verification process.

Less than five minutes later, the assistant's face turned pale. He stumbled over to Dawn, his lips trembling as he exclaimed, "D-Dr. Clark! The coordinates… are right, with the margin of error being on the order of millimeters!"

All at once, every camera turned toward me yet again.

The marker Charlotte was holding fell onto the floor with a loud clack while she mumbled, "No… That's impossible! How can someone do the calculations in such a short time without the computing power of a supercomputer…"

The smile on Anthony's face had frozen stiff. He abruptly screamed, "He cheated! He must have cheated! He got the answer in advance!"

"That's right! It has to be rigged!"

"We've been working our asses off here, and he, a high school dropout, solves it in five minutes? Who does he think he's fooling?"

Thanks to Anthony's outburst, everyone in the livestream chat also turned against me.

Pointing at me, Anthony protested in front of the cameras, "The production team owes us all an explanation! He has to prove his innocence! Make him write out his calculations. If he can't, then it means he stole the work of everyone here. He has made a mockery of the integrity of science!"

Pressure from all sides came bearing down on me. The director, who was sweating profusely, ran up on stage to calm everyone down, but to little effect.

Under the stress of knowing that the game show was being broadcast live nationwide, the director turned to me with a pleading look in his eyes, his expression torn.

"Well, Noah… For the sake of proving the fairness of the game show and addressing everyone's doubts, do you think you could show us how you arrived at the answer?"

But Anthony seized this opportunity to shout toward the cameras, "What's the use of letting him show us how he got the answer? Who knows if he memorized it beforehand?

"If he wants to prove his innocence, let him solve a new challenge from Dr. Clark on the spot! Give him something no one could've possibly prepared for in advance."

Everyone's eyes turned toward Dawn.

She sighed, rose from her seat, and slowly walked up to the whiteboard in the center of the stage. She picked up a marker and stood with her back to everyone. After a moment of silence, she asked without looking back, "Are you ready, young man?"

"I am," I calmly replied.

After a nod, she began scribbling on the whiteboard, her hand moving rapidly. A dizzyingly complicated string of symbols and equations appeared.

At first, Charlotte stood there with her arms crossed, studying the whiteboard with a scrutinizing gaze. But before long, her indifferent expression morphed into a frown. She even stepped toward the whiteboard without realizing it.

"The graviton turbulence model?" she mumbled to herself, her voice barely audible and her face going pale. "Dr. Clark is actually using it as the challenge?"

Anthony didn't understand what was on the whiteboard, but he understood Charlotte's expression. His smug grin widened as he eyed me with malicious delight.

"The solution for this model has eluded the international physics community for a full decade now." Dawn put down her marker and turned to address the entire studio. "To this day, no one in the world has been able to produce a complete mathematical model for it. The person who can solve it today will be the winner."

Once she finished speaking, she eyed me thoughtfully before returning to her seat.

Meanwhile, the crowd was abuzz. Did she seriously just use a problem that stumped the entire world of physics as a game show challenge?