America: I came here to study, not to show mercy.

Chapter 240 A General Education Lesson Afterwards

The following day, Monday morning at eight o'clock.

Sean Lee still yawned as he walked out of the room, startling Daniel when he bumped into him.

"Sean, what's wrong?"

Daniel looked Li Xiaoen up and down, who seemed rather listless, and asked with wide eyes, "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"It's okay, don't worry."

Li Xiaoen waved his hand, yawned, looked down at his phone, and saw that Victoria had finally replied, so he couldn't help but smile.

Why not make the trip? And after returning, he used the "Anywhere Door" to travel to every imaginable place in the world, including active volcanoes, polar ice caps, and even the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the torch in the Statue of Liberty at night—he was so curious that he didn't realize the time until midnight, which is why he was so tired when he woke up today.

"I'll make breakfast today."

As soon as I walked down the stairs, I could hear Daniel's voice coming from the kitchen.

"OK."

Without making excuses, Li Xiaoen raised her hand, took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, and sat down on the sofa.

Although he drank a lot of coffee in the morning while spending time with several girls, he personally hadn't developed a habit of drinking coffee. Besides, it would be too much trouble to make coffee himself.

On a whim, Li Xiaoen snapped a photo and typed a reply on his phone.

Victoria, I miss your coffee...
Daniel's breakfast was very simple, even more so than his. He didn't even fry an egg; it was just hard bread with butter, some ham slices, and cheese. It was a bit better with coffee, but it was rather dry on its own.

Tasting the food, Li Xiaoen gritted her teeth and gave him a look that said, "Is this how you make breakfast?" She then opened the refrigerator, took out a few leafy greens, washed them, crumpled them into a ball, and swallowed them whole.

Sure enough, studying abroad doesn't necessarily guarantee a better academic background; instead, many people's culinary skills actually improve significantly. He now deeply understands this amusing anecdote he had heard in high school.

After quickly tidying up, Li Xiaoen chatted idly with Victoria as they headed to Professor Sedgewick's lab.

After briefly overseeing the progress of the project in the lab, Li Xiaoen got up and went to the professor's office just before the end of get out of class.

One, two, and naturally three. He nodded honestly to Professor Sedgewick's few suggestions and left satisfied five minutes before the end of get out of class, heading straight to the general education classroom.

"Sean..."

Just as he stepped out of the laboratory building, a call made him raise his head.

"Sufiel?"

Li Xiaoen paused for a moment, then swiped her phone screen back to the home screen and locked it. "Why are you here?"

As they spoke, the two had already walked up to each other.

"I didn't have class this morning, so I came to find you so we could go to the Language and Thinking Class together."

Sophie answered with a smile.

"Oh……"

Li Xiaoen nodded and walked side by side with the girl, a subtle feeling stirring within him.

They all came to ask him to go to class together. It seemed that he only saw Suffer being so affectionate when the other person was confused or in certain situations.

Sure enough, Suffer's next words made him momentarily lose his composure.

“Sean, I told Serafina and Mary that we’re dating.”

"..."

Looking up, Sufiel carefully observed the changes in the young man's expression. Seeing that he paused for a moment and did not respond, Sufiel narrowed his eyes.

"What's wrong? You don't want to go public? You don't still have ulterior motives towards them, do you?"

"That's not true."

Li Xiaoen rolled his eyes. He was already overwhelmed by just two girls. If there were more, he would be driven crazy. Besides, it seemed that none of the girls he knew were easy to deal with.

"From the beginning until now, I have never objected to you making anything public."

Li Xiaoen took a deep breath and reiterated to Su Feier with a sense of helplessness, "This is your freedom and right."

"Um……"

Looking up and back at the road ahead, Suffer nodded and snorted softly, "I wonder who was it that was making such a mess of the school the other day..."

“You never tell the truth, and I think it’s a wise choice to remain skeptical of what you say.”

"Not objecting doesn't mean I won't react, does it?"

This was the first time Li Xiaoen had brought this matter up in public, and he felt somewhat helpless. As for Su Feier's slander that he hadn't told a single truth, he could only refute it in his heart.

"Ah……"

He couldn't help but chuckle, and Suffer didn't reply. Suffer's expression left him feeling quite helpless.

"correct."

When get out of class ended, students poured out of the various teaching buildings. As the young man escorted her along the wall, Suffer suddenly remembered something, bent down and took out a thermos from her bag and handed it to him. "This is the coffee I made this morning. I made just enough for two people. Here, take this."

"..."

Reaching out to take it, Li Xiaoen looked up at Su Feier, who was again looking carelessly ahead, and his expression gradually became strange.

"Sophie, if I had said no just now, would you still have given it to me?"

Upon hearing this, Suffer turned her head to look at it, then turned back.

"will not."

Is the purpose really that clear?

Li Xiaoen raised an eyebrow, both amused and exasperated.

Suffer did not respond further; he could only nod and sigh.

“Sophie, I’m different.”

"Even if you don't give me coffee, I will still agree to your request and support you."

"is it?"

Nodding meaningfully, Sophie reached for the thermos in the young man's hand, "In that case, I'll leave this coffee for Serafina and the others..."

"Hey……"

Quickly withdrawing his hand to dodge, Li Xiaoen couldn't help but exclaim in surprise, "Suffolk, how can you be so self-righteous about taking back something you've already given away?"

As soon as he finished speaking, he was met with a sidelong glance. Li Xiaoen blinked, quickly unscrewed the bottle cap, took a sip, and then let out a long hiss.

"Ha ha……"

Li Xiaoen took the water bottle down, his face contorted in pain as he gasped for air. The girl's barely suppressed laughter reached his ears.

"Sophie, do you know that I have discovered a new type of hard material?"

Despite the burning sensation in his mouth, Li Xiaoen looked at Su Feier, who had a smile on her face, and slowly started talking to her again.

"what material?"

Slowly suppressing her smile, Sophie glanced sideways at the young man.

She knew that Li Xiaoen was probably joking with her, but she just wanted to know what the other person was thinking and saying.

She received no answer, only the young man's silent gaze upon her. Just as she was beginning to have doubts, she suddenly realized that, following the direction of his gaze, she saw her own lips.

"..." "Hiss—"

Finally managing to utter a sound, Li Xiaoen quickly reached behind him and grabbed Su Feier's hand that was clamped there, "I didn't say anything."

Sophie gritted her teeth and snorted softly, "You didn't say it, but your whole body has already told me the answer."

"Next time, I'll just say it directly."

Li Xiaoen shook his head helplessly, while Su Feier's eyes hardened, and the hand placed on the young man's lower back began to rotate.

"Be gentle, don't move, okay..."

Li Xiaoen quickly grabbed him firmly, saying, "You'll leave a mark if you do that."

"Isn't this better?"

With a slight smile, Suffer was about to say something when a call from ahead drew their attention.

“Sophie, Sean…”

It was Serafina and Marie.

"Seraphina, Mary, good morning..."

Naturally letting go, Suffer smiled and greeted the two, subtly moving closer to the young man beside her.

"Oh, good morning..."

Nodding blankly, Serafina's gaze unconsciously drifted to the young man on the other side, her face carrying a complex mix of emotions.

"Let's go into the classroom, so we don't block people in the hallway."

Without explaining anything, and without needing to explain, Li Xiaoen gestured to the classroom not far ahead.

The group sat down in their usual spots, just as they always had when Victoria was there, with an empty seat to Li Xiaoen's left.

With the matter and relationship now clear, the silence among them created an inexplicably strange atmosphere.

Class had already started, so Li Xiaoen unscrewed the cap of the thermos and put it aside to cool down, then took out his laptop and started typing.

In comparison, among the three girls, Suffer was the most natural, her gaze fixed on the projector on the podium, occasionally glancing at Li Xiaoen's computer screen, and sometimes exchanging a few words with Serafina on the other side.

Hey, by the way.

At that moment, Serafina suddenly exclaimed with delight, a simple sentence that made Sophie's face freeze, "Let's chat with Victoria..."

A single sentence drew everyone's attention. For the first time today, Serafina smiled, leaned over to look at Sophie and Sean Lee, and pointed to the iPad in front of her, "You can check the group chat now, Victoria has replied."

They paused for a moment, then nodded and opened the chat group they had created earlier on their computers or iPads.

It mostly talked about the current situation here, and Victoria's daily life after transferring back to University College London in England.

Suffer's expression remained unchanged. To avoid causing any trouble, Li Xiaoen simply said a few words in the group chat before immediately returning to his task.

For some reason, the atmosphere among the group improved slightly after the topic was brought up.

After class, Li Xiaoen said goodbye to a few girls and drove to the school's entrepreneurship incubation base. On the way, he stopped at a Japanese restaurant and packed two large boxes of lunch to take with him.

Unlike yesterday's afternoon tea, this time as soon as I walked into the studio with my lunch, several people immediately jumped up from their chairs and rushed over, snatching it all up as soon as the box was placed on the table.

Fortunately, they had bought a lot. Li Xiaoen took a salmon rice bowl from the few remaining food containers and stared blankly as the others wolfed it down like starving ghosts. He couldn't help but nod at Haskel.

"What's wrong with them? Have they overexerted their brains?"

"Last night, we strolled around the neighborhood for a bit, and I don't know who suggested it first, but we decided to spend the night here."

Turning his gaze away from the group of people sitting at their workstations, Haskel shook his head with amusement. "It's just that the state of being clear-headed, sharp-thinking, and alert is so invigorating that you can't help but keep immersing yourself in it."

"..."

"Is that right?"

Li Xiaoen didn't know what expression to make at this moment. This was voluntary; there was no way to stop him.

While eating, Li Xiaoen began to ponder.

He immediately rejected the idea of ​​giving up applying the aura effect at night before leaving.

He has to teach classes and also keep track of the overall project progress in Professor Sedgewick's lab, so he can't come to the studio early and leave late like he would for work.

Moreover, considering the state of affairs maintained by the group and to avoid unnecessary suspicion, he had better maintain the studio's aura of favor at all times.

Well, maybe if they continue in this highly efficient mindset, they'll naturally return to a normal routine after becoming desensitized—if all else fails, he can force them to take a vacation.

Back in high school, Li Xiaoen had heard about the "blessings" of programmers working so hard. Since he had decided to pursue computer science in college, he naturally went through a process of convincing himself. Putting himself in their shoes, he couldn't bear to see them working so hard.

After a quick lunch, Li Xiaoen sat down at her workstation and got to work.

Time flew by and it was already 7 p.m. The group of people stood behind Li Xiaoen, their eyes fixed intently on the computer screen as the script process rapidly progressed and disappeared in front of them.

Pedal.

Suddenly, a sound rang out, as if a switch had been flipped, and the script writing process immediately stopped at one of the commands.

ERROR!

“What the f**k…”

Haskel took a deep breath and couldn't help but curse out loud. At the same time, everyone's tense expressions instantly collapsed, and they let out a deflated breath, supporting their waists and looking around helplessly.

"Could it be that it's not necessarily our problem?"

Compared to the others' discouraged reactions, Li Xiaoen frowned slightly and said meaningfully, his hands moving non-stop as he packaged the script to stop the lag, created a virtual IP, and tried to run it on the other party's server again.

It was just a short string of server access code, which ran successfully very quickly, stopping at the last "PASS" message.

Only then did Li Xiaoen chuckle and lean back in his chair.

It was just a simple test, and everyone behind him saw the prompt on the webpage and immediately understood.

"That's outrageous! That's shameless!"

Michelle angrily shouted, "Are they afraid of our attacks, so they've blocked all the IP addresses in this area?"

Network addresses follow a pattern, but they are not absolutely uniform. However, they are located in the school's incubation base and use the school's network. Locking down the IPs in this area is not a difficult task for an arms company.

The current situation is equivalent to them being disqualified from the competition by the organizers.

"Sean, let's rerun our script using a virtual IP address."

Haskell was still not giving up and quickly added, which drew a chorus of agreement from the others.

By the time the script is run again for the attack and penetration, the other company should have patched the system by then, right?

Thinking to himself that he hadn't placed much hope on it, Li Xiaoen still decided to try the experiment again as they suggested.

As expected.

Upon seeing the final result, the group couldn't help but erupt in angry grumbling.

"Everyone has worked hard today. It's getting late, so go back and get some rest."

Standing up and looking at the group, Li Xiaoen still had a faint smile on his face, which surprised them all. He then comforted them, "Take a good rest. Consider this a success for everyone. Tomorrow I will transfer the $20,000 bonus to each of you."

Upon hearing this, everyone was stunned.

(End of this chapter)