My IQ has been increasing year by year.

In early June, there was no cool breeze in the air at USTC.

Dayong, wearing a vest, with a towel draped over his shoulder and a freshly washed lunchbox in his hand, pushed open the door to dormitory 216. The door hinges creaked open.

Chu Ge, who had been staring at the computer screen, suddenly tapped his finger on the keyboard.

With a snap.

The computer screen flickered briefly before quickly switching back to the compilation interface filled with white code.

Da Yong walked in carrying a lunchbox, threw it on his desk, and turned to look at Chu Ge suspiciously.

Chu Ge didn't turn around. His hands were on the keyboard, his fingers unconsciously tapping the space bar, his eyes fixed on the static code on the screen. "What are you looking at?"

Da Yong walked over, pulled up a chair, and sat down next to Chu Ge.

"Check the logs of those at the bottom."

Chu Ge answered casually.

Forget it.

Da Yong pursed his lips and patted Chu Ge's chair back.

"When I first opened the door, your screen was clearly a white webpage with lots of colorful graphics. You switched screens as soon as I came in. Your typing speed is pretty fast." Chu Ge paused for a moment while typing.

He turned his head and looked at Dayong, his eyes bloodshot.

"There's a pop-up ad, GG." Chu Ge said without changing his expression.

"I accidentally clicked on it, I quickly closed it."

Da Yong stared at Chu Ge's face for a while, then suddenly laughed.

He leaned closer and lowered his voice.

"Old Chu, we're all brothers. You're staying up until two or three in the morning every night. Are you secretly chatting with some girl online?" Chu Ge was taken aback.

"or..."

Seeing that Chu Ge remained silent, Da Yong's smile became even more lewd.

"What inappropriate websites are you looking at? You're getting a bit too angry."

"Get lost."

Chu Ge cursed irritably and pushed away Da Yong's face that was leaning in.

"My server architecture is stuck here, it won't run. I don't have time to deal with all that nonsense. Go back to your room and stop bothering me." Dayong stood up and wiped the sweat from his face with a towel.

"Fine, I'll get out of here. You can continue checking your logs."

Da Yong left with a half-smile, uttered a single sentence, and turned to leave.

Back to 215.

Da Yong closed the door behind him and went to the sink to wash his hands.

Chen Zhuo was sitting in a chair, looking down at a thick book called "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils", with a glass of water that had long since gone cold beside him.

"Xiao Zhuo, let me tell you, Lao Chu definitely has a problem."

Dayong shook the water droplets off his hands, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

Chen Zhuo didn't even raise his head.

"What's the problem?"

"I had just gone in when he switched the webpage over in a second."

Da Yong said with great confidence.

"That hand speed, he's definitely practiced. He even lied to me that it was a pop-up ad failure. Looking at his dark circles, he definitely hasn't been doing anything productive these past few nights," Chen Zhuo said casually, turning a page of his book.

"They're probably looking at the elective course schedule for senior year."

"Why are you looking at that thing?"

Da Yong waved his hand.

"I bet he's either having an online romance or he's up to something. He's been quieter lately, always staring at the computer." Chen Zhuo closed the book in his hand and turned to look at Dayong.

His eyes were gentle, but there was a faint smile at the corner of his mouth.

"Eighteen years old is an age when people are easily restless and irritable."

Chen Zhuo picked up his water glass and took a sip.

"I understand."

Da Yong slammed his fist on the table.

"That's right! He's about to turn eighteen, he must be feeling emotional. We have to make his birthday celebration a grand affair, get him out for some fresh air, so he doesn't get sick from being cooped up at home." Chen Zhu put down his water glass and smiled noncommittally.

It's 11 p.m.

The workshop in the basement of the Physics Department.

The air was filled with the smell of a mixture of engine oil and coolant.

Zhao Peng, dressed in greasy work clothes and holding an enamel mug, stood beside the lathe, watching Dayong busy himself in front of the control panel. The lathe's chuck spun rapidly, emitting a piercing roar.

Da Yong wore large goggles and held the knife-feeding handwheel firmly in both hands.

The blade touched the gray metal, instantly sending out a long burst of blinding sparks.

"Dayong, take it easy."

Zhao Peng took a sip of water and looked at the knife with heartache.

"This is aerospace-grade titanium-aluminum alloy, much harder than ordinary steel. You're cutting too hard; my blade will be ruined by tomorrow morning." Da Yong stared intently at the metal on the chuck, without turning his head.

"Senior, this scrap is useless to you after you've done the tensile test anyway, it's just gathering dust."

"That's not for you to use as a toy car."

Zhao Peng sighed.

"What exactly do you want to carve? It looks so square and boxy."

Da Yong turned the handwheel, and the blade slowly retracted.

The chuck stopped.

Dayong took off his goggles and wiped the iron filings off the metal surface with a rag.

It was a rectangular metal casing, with rough lines and no fancy decorations, but it exuded a heavy sense of power. "A lighter casing."

Dayong took the metal casing off and weighed it in his hand.

"Windproof."

Zhao Peng's eyes widened.

"You're using aerospace materials to make lighters?"

"Is that not allowed?"

Da Yong grinned.

"A buddy of mine will turn eighteen in a few days. When he's eighteen, he'll always need to have something solid to carry around if he gets into trouble. This thing can't be smashed or burned, so it's perfect." Zhao Peng shook his head and walked out with his teacup.

"You kids in the gifted youth program aren't exactly normal, so remember to turn off the power when you leave."

Da Yong ignored him.

He took a file from the toolbox next to him and began to smooth out the burrs on the edges little by little.

Metal shavings fell down in a rustling sound.

Da Yong blew a breath and looked at the titanium alloy that gleamed coldly under the light.

He thought the gift was amazing.

216 Dormitory.

It was already 1 a.m.

Chu Ge went to wash up.

Lu Jia sat at her desk, the light from the lamp shining on a thick notebook.

The notebook was filled with all sorts of curves and coordinate axes.

He pushed up his glasses, held a pen in his hand, and wrote quickly on a piece of paper.

This was not his major course assignment.

At the very top of the paper was a line of neatly written characters.

"Prevention of Synaptic Degeneration in Adult Brain and Nutritional Intervention Model for Code Workers"

Lu Jia wrote down a set of parameters for the decay function.

According to biological principles, the prefrontal cortex of the human brain reaches basic maturity around the age of eighteen, followed by the pruning of neural synapses and an extremely slow decline. Chu Ge spends more than fourteen hours a day in front of a computer screen and sleeps less than six hours.

Lu Jia plugged these data into the model and came to a conclusion that made him frown.

The probability of Chugo experiencing early hair loss and memory decline within three years is as high as 73%.

Lu Jia put down her pen and took out a piece of white paper from the drawer.

He started making a list on a blank sheet of paper.

B vitamins, fish oil, lecithin, and a strict sleep schedule.

He tucked the blank sheet of paper into his notebook.

He felt that, as a roommate, this was the most scientific and rigorous care he could provide.

Eighteen is a watershed moment, and he couldn't just stand by and watch Chu Ge's physical functions deteriorate rapidly due to an unreasonable lifestyle.

Chu Ge pushed open the bathroom door and came out, a towel around his neck and a washbasin in his hand.

"Still not asleep?"

Chu Ge placed the basin on the ground.

"I am refining a probability model in the life sciences."

Lu Jia calmly closed the notebook and put it in the drawer.

"I'm going to sleep right away."

Chu Ge yawned and walked to his computer to sit down.

"I'll watch for a little longer, you go to sleep first."

Two days later.

There are no classes in the afternoon.

Chen Zhuo took the lunchbox to room 216 and called Lu Jia and Chu Ge to get food from the cafeteria.

When he pushed open the door, Chu Ge was holding his head in his hands, staring intently at the screen.

The screen was blank except for a dense stream of data, cascading down like a waterfall, finally freezing on a screen with a glaring red error message. "Another deadlock?"

Lu Jia stood to the side, watching the screen.

"nonsense."

Chu Ge grabbed a handful of hair in frustration.

"Once the concurrency increases, this retrieval logic becomes a dead end. All data nodes are queuing up, and resources are completely blocked." Chen Zhuo walked over and stood behind Chu Ge.

He doesn't know much about programming languages.

In his eyes, those if, else, and while statements were just a bunch of meaningless English letters.

But as he looked at the red error lines and the messy flowcharts Chu Ge had drawn on the paper, something else came to his mind. Not code.

It is a point in space, and a path that is mapped.

Chen Zhuo watched for a while.

Those seemingly chaotic nodes automatically shed their computer-like appearance in his mind, transforming into discrete algebraic groups. Under the existing rules, these groups could not form closed loops, so they collided.

"Stop looking."

Chu Ge slammed his pen down in frustration.

"This architecture needs to be rewritten, otherwise I won't be able to deliver. You guys go eat, I'm not going."

Chen Zhuo remained silent.

He turned and walked out of 216, closing the door behind him.

After finishing his meal, Chen Zhuo went to the old library.

He found a window seat in the foreign language reading room on the third floor and sat down.

There is an old locust tree outside the window. Sunlight shines through the gaps in the leaves onto the table, creating dappled light and shadow.

Chen Zhuo took a book out of his bag and opened it.

He watched for about half an hour, then stopped.

He pulled a piece of paper from the book's inner compartment and laid it flat on the table.

Chen Zhuo picked up a pen.

He thought about the code on Chugo's screen.

The pen tip landed on the paper, writing down a simple formula.

This is not an instruction to tell the computer what to do.

These are the rules that tell the universe how this data should be processed.

Chen Zhuo's handwriting is very neat.

He used topological mapping of discrete matrices to redefine the paths of those nodes on paper.

There's no need for exhaustive nesting, and no need to let data get stuck in dead ends.

Simply by substituting the data into this algebraic group model, the congestion disappears directly from a mathematical perspective.

Chen Zhuo wrote half a sheet of paper.

He put down his pen and looked at the matrices and symbols on the paper.

He didn't understand how computers implemented these things, but he put the underlying logic of the optimal solution here.

Chen Zhuo picked up the paper.

He folded the paper in half, then in half again, until it formed a neat little square.

He stuffed the piece of paper into his pocket.

Time slipped to June 14th.

The weather was getting increasingly hot and humid, with not a breath of wind.

As evening approached, the clouds on the horizon were tinged with a dark red by the setting sun.

In dormitory 216, the computer case fan was making a huge roar, like an old car that was about to fall apart.

Chu Ge sat in a swivel chair, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep.

He took a deep breath and moved the mouse to a green running icon.

He pressed the left mouse button.

A black compilation window immediately popped up on the screen, and white code began to scroll wildly.

This is the final full compilation test.

If this project runs smoothly, the architectural issues will be initially resolved, and he will be able to receive the crucial final payment.

The progress bar appears at the bottom of the screen.

Like a snail, it moves forward extremely slowly.

Chu Ge stared intently at the progress bar, not daring to even blink.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor.

Da Yong, wearing a flashy short-sleeved shirt and carrying a bunch of old keys he'd somehow acquired, swaggered in. Chen Zhuo followed behind Da Yong, his expression calm.

As soon as Da Yong entered the room, he saw Chu Ge looking as if he were facing a formidable enemy.

He walked over and glanced at the screen.

"Running code?" Dayong asked.

"Don't speak."

Chu Ge stared intently at the progress bar, his voice slightly strained.

Da Yong ignored him and turned to look at Chen Zhuo.

Chen Zhuo took a step forward.

He glanced at the slowly moving percentage on the screen, then listened to the whirring of the fans inside the computer case, which sounded like they were about to explode.

Chen Zhuo glanced at Chu Ge.

"Look at the processing speed of your computer case."

Chen Zhuo's tone was very calm, revealing no emotion.

"It will take at least an hour and a half for this process to complete."

Chu Ge was taken aback.

He turned to look at Chen Zhuo.

How did you know?

"Just a guess."

Chen Zhuo said calmly.

Upon hearing this, Da Yong immediately laughed.

He grabbed the T-shirt draped over Chu Ge's chair and threw it directly at Chu Ge's head.

The T-shirt covered Chu Ge's face.

"Did you hear that!"

Da Yong ripped off his T-shirt and wrapped his arms around Chu Ge's neck.

"An hour and a half! Even if you type now, it'll just be gibberish."

Chu Ge struggled for a moment, trying to push Da Yong away.

"Stop messing around, I have to keep an eye on it, just in case there's a mistake..."

"What error are you reporting!"

Da Yong didn't give him a chance to refuse. He pulled his arm and lifted Chu Ge off the swivel chair.

"The computer's running code, let's go grill some kidneys!"

"No, I really don't have time..."

"I have to make time today, even if I don't have it."

Da Yong put his arm around Chu Ge's shoulder and pulled him towards the door.

"Stop just standing there staring, let's go!"

Chu Ge stumbled a couple of steps as Da Yong pulled him along.

He glanced back at the screen, and the progress bar was indeed stuck at five percent, not moving at all.

Lu Jia was already standing at the door, holding a lock in her hand.

Chen Zhuo leaned against the door frame, looking at him.

He just stood there quietly.

Chu Ge sighed.

He knew he couldn't break free from Da Yong, and he also knew the progress bar would indeed take time.

He reached out and grabbed the T-shirt, then pulled it over his head.

"Okay, okay, okay."

Chu Ge's voice came from inside his T-shirt, tinged with a hint of helplessness.

"I'm only eating for an hour; I have to come back and finish up."

"One hour is not enough."

Da Yong grinned and pushed Chu Ge out the door.

Lu Jia walked last.

With a click.

The door to room 216 was locked.

The hallway was somewhat dim, with only a sliver of the setting sun's afterglow filtering in through the window at the far end.

Da Yong put his arm around Chu Ge's shoulder and strode down the street, humming an unknown tune.

Lu Jia followed behind, while Chen Zhuo walked at the very back.

He put his hand in his pocket, his fingers touching the neatly folded piece of paper.

The air outside was hot, and the smoky aroma from the barbecue stalls seemed to have drifted into the campus on the wind.

Chen Zhuo looked at the backs of the three people in front of him.

He smiled and walked down the stairs.