Deep Space Wandering Fleet

```

After being excited for a few minutes, the same question popped into his head.

"7812378 * 7812378 = ..."

???

??

Still couldn't do it within a second, what was going on?

As... ahem, a genius, he shouldn't be stumped by such a problem!

Zhang Yuan frowned, a vertical multiplication problem appeared in his mind. He stumbled through it for half a minute before finally coming up with the result.

"61033250014884."

Not bad, still got it.

Thinking it over carefully, a look of realization appeared on his face.

"So that's it... the old me would have solved such problems directly on a computer, which caused my calculation skills to degrade significantly. If you don't use your brain, even geniuses can't instantly pop out answers..."

"Calculating slowly now is just because of a lack of proficiency and not mastering the relevant techniques. If I use mental arithmetic long-term, I can definitely improve."

The next day...

Zhang Yuan woke up bleary-eyed and rubbed his groggy head.

Maybe it was because he was too excited last night, constantly testing his IQ, that he just couldn't fall asleep. By the time he finally managed to doze off, it was nearly dawn.

He looked, and it was already 10 o'clock.

"Darn!"

Zhang Yuan rolled off the bed, quickly washed up, then hurriedly rushed out the door.

"I hope I'm not late, otherwise Auntie will nag me for ages..."

The 30-day vacation was tight, with every day planned out clearly, and he had already scheduled to have lunch at his aunt's today.

July in Donghua City was like a furnace, with heat waves rolling over, and the roadside plants were caught in the inferno.

Zhang Yuan hurried to the subway station, where there was always a comfortable air conditioner.

This era did not lack energy, and the power generation of each large fusion nuclear power plant was comparable to the Three Gorges Hydroelectric Power Station of the past, with domestic electricity priced as low as 3 cents per degree.

Thanks to this, apart from plastics and other traditional petroleum-derived products that remained expensive, high-energy-consuming industrial products like steel and cement had become unusually cheap.

In particular, the vigorous development of nanotechnology had resulted in generation after generation of upgraded building materials. For example, adding 6% nano-silicon dioxide to cement could double its compressive strength and improve the overall working properties of concrete.

The widespread availability of cheap, new materials had led to increasingly taller surface buildings in the city, with kilometer-high skyscrapers being commonplace.

Two hundred years ago, the 828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa was the tallest building in the world, but now, it was merely the tallest building in a village.

Moreover... the same construction cost could now build at least five!

Some transportation tracks were even placed thousands of meters high, with skyscrapers as the rail pillars.

These became very popular in almost all large cities, making aerial rails the face of big cities.

"So many people."

Donghua City was one of the five first-tier cities in Xia Country. Even though he had missed the morning rush hour, the subway station was still crowded.

"Passengers, please give way to the elderly and children."

"Please refrain from smoking or begging inside the carriages."

Completely solving traffic problems was impossible.

Critics always found the most comfortable angles to attack the government, if the transit was too crowded, the government would definitely catch flak. But if there were too many subway trains, with lots of empty seats, it would be considered a "waste of taxpayers' money." No matter what, they would get criticized, so they just made do.

Zhang Yuan stood at the back of the line, hearing someone constantly complain about "not adding more trains" and so forth. He chuckled to himself, not thinking much of it, and instead picked up his phone to start doing exercises.

This was a very popular app called "Super Brain" that could test a person's memory, arithmetic skills, and reasoning ability. Since he was bored anyway, doing a few problems wasn't a bad idea, and he could also test his IQ.

IQ was currently the most important issue to him.

Every time he found his IQ to be high in a test, the satisfaction was indescribable.

The subway station was noisy, making it hard to concentrate, but somehow, doing exercises always produced a peculiar sense of accomplishment, giving him a sensation like eating chocolate candies.

Maybe it was because after using that elixir, he acquired a trait called "workaholic"?

"I finally understand why someone would want to work all day long, turns out it's so darn enjoyable. Using my brain has become an unexpectedly fun thing!"

Ding-dong...

The subway arrived, and the crowd surged in, clearing the earlier waiting area.

Zhang Yuan entered the subway, found a random place to stand, and continued doing another problem.

With increasing proficiency, he reduced the time for seven-digit basic arithmetic from half a minute per problem to 10 seconds per problem, and his calculation speed kept improving.

That feeling of the answer almost jumping out was finally slowly emerging.

The more he used his brain, the sharper it became, and this result pleased him greatly.

Soon, he was no longer satisfied with ordinary basic arithmetic and moved on to square root calculations.

"Let's start with something simple, √7812 (keep four significant figures)."

Zhang Yuan gave himself a difficulty boost.

There are many different methods to manually find the square root of an integer. The most conventional one is called trial and division, a bit like division, and if your mental arithmetic is good enough, you can indeed calculate it directly.

Some algorithms are a bit more troublesome, like continued fraction expansion, bisection, Newton's iteration, etc.

Fifteen seconds later, he got the specific conclusion.

"√7812 = 88.38…"

Correct answer!

"√444"

"21.07"

Correct answer!

Ha ha!

Is this... what it feels like to be a genius?

Gosh... it feels awesome!

The carriage was very quiet, except for the subway's electronic prompts, everyone else was busy immersing themselves in their own little world.

Occasionally, a few people, whether they were reading a novel or watching a video at a peak moment, would burst into laughter like fools...

"Subway time should be used for self-improvement, not entertainment!"

A "well-informed" guy who had returned from studying abroad frowned, lamenting this poor social trend.

The phenomenon of "phone addicts" was often criticized by major media outlets, but criticizing it didn't do much good; people still played on their phones and kept their heads down. You can't expect the government to legislate, banning playing phones in public, can you?

This man's name was Ye Fan, and in his perception, foreign subways had everyone reading newspapers instead of playing on phones, and the social climate was a hundred times better than in Xia Country (though it was just that there was no internet).

Anyway, no matter what, in his opinion, young people abroad lived much healthier lives than young people in Xia Country!

"No wonder these folks can't get into space, it's because they're putting learning time into entertainment... No wonder they aren't making it to space!" Ye Fan thought secretly.

"There's a saying, what's it again? I just used the time others spent drinking coffee on work..."

Especially the young guy next to him in a short sleeve shirt, who had a mysterious grin on his face.

Tsk tsk, must be dating a 2D girl, huh?

Hopeless!

(By the way, let me explain the book's title. Originally, I wanted to call it "Deep Space Era," but it was too serious, and the click rate would be low.)

(It's sci-fi, you know how it is, even though "Wandering Earth" was a hit, that doesn't mean other sci-fi can hit too. Most people would see "Deep Space Era" as a title and probably wouldn't even want to read it, not even want to click it.)

(After thinking it over, I decided to change it to this, "Deep Space Captain," even though it sounds kind of corny, the click rate should be a bit higher...)

```