My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Princeton.

The second floor of Van En Building.

This building is imbued with countless sacred meanings in academia, but in the eyes of Woolley, the administrative officer, it is essentially a concentration camp for highly intelligent mental patients. Woolley is currently standing beside that large, dark-colored desk.

Today he was wearing an extremely well-tailored dark gray suit, with three pens tucked diagonally into his breast pocket.

Black, red, blue.

The pen clip's curvature is so precise it's as if it were measured with a protractor.

He raised his right hand, and his index finger slowly slid across the table.

There is no dust.

"Great, those guys in the logistics department who only know how to drink coffee at the union have finally kept their bonuses today."

Woolley silently gave his assessment in his mind.

But then his gaze fell on the junction between the table legs and the floorboards.

As a coordinator who has worked at the Institute for Advanced Study for many years, Woolley's eyes are like a walking vernier caliper.

He noticed that the table and the wood grain on the floor were not perfectly parallel.

The deviation was by an almost imperceptible amount.

What might be just a visual illusion to an ordinary person was, to Woolley, a piercing scream.

He took a deep breath and extended his right foot, which was wearing a custom-made leather shoe.

The edge of his leather shoe rested against the bottom of the table leg; he didn't kick it forcefully—that would be too uncouth—he simply applied a steady, elegant push. "Squeak~"

After a very slight scraping sound, the edge of the tabletop and the texture of the floor finally achieved a perfect harmony.

Woolley pulled his foot back, stood up straight, and habitually pushed up his thin-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose with his middle finger.

A feeling of comfort.

Before dealing with those geniuses whose minds are filled with multidimensional space but who can't even tie their shoelaces, he must first ensure that his physical environment is under absolute control. He ran through the name that was about to appear in his mind once more:

Chen Zhuo.

At fourteen, a young Chinese boy solved a tough problem in Hodge's conjecture.

Fourteen years old.

Woolley sighed inwardly as that familiar pressure, accompanied by the premonition of a migraine, washed over him again.

In Princeton's administrative archives, the word "genius" usually means the highest level of trouble.

Woolley still remembers the Russian prodigy from 1998.

That kid had to drink skim milk at exactly 65 degrees Celsius every morning at 7:15. One degree too hot and he'd be speechless all day; one degree too cold and he'd feel like Princeton was slowly murdering his academic research. And then there was that physics genius a few years ago who tried to remove the dorm radiators just to prove that the laws of thermodynamics break down under certain extreme conditions. Woolley has spent years developing an administrative probability model:

A person's mathematical talent is often inversely proportional to their self-care ability and directly proportional to the frequency of their explosive destructive behavior. For the soon-to-be fourteen-year-old Mr. Chen, Woolley had already drafted two plans in his mind.

One set is "An Intervention Guide on How to Gracefully Prevent Underage Scholars from Making Unconscious Graffiti on Corridor Walls".

Another set is a "contingency plan for dealing with scholars' emotional breakdowns due to the lack of specific flavored food in the cafeteria".

God bless you.

Wu Li muttered to himself.

"I hope this Mr. Chen won't try to run a private internet connection in the corridor of Fan En Building, and he won't call the principal at 2 a.m. to harass him because he can't find a specific brand of draft paper." Just then, footsteps came from outside the corridor.

Woolley straightened his back instantly.

"They're here."

He silently recited it in his mind, like a meteorologist about to face a hurricane.

The sound of the doorknob being pressed was exceptionally clear in the quiet office.

Dean Cyril and Professor Pierre were the first to walk in.

Immediately afterwards, a thin figure appeared behind them.

Woolley's internal threat assessment program instantly activated.

Woolley's gaze swept quickly over the boy's hands.

Her nails were neatly trimmed, and she didn't habitually scratch the corner of her clothes, nor did she exhibit the hurried movements often seen in anxious people.

More importantly, he had no Rubik's Cube, no game console, and no distractions that would give the administrator a headache. The boy's gaze was steady; he was observing the room with a curious yet restrained look.

He didn't display the arrogance of "I'm a genius, you're all trash," nor did he exhibit the excessive excitement that comes with being in a new environment, the kind that could trigger asthma. Respiratory rate: stable.

Emotional state: Excellent.

"First impression...actually not bad?"

Woolley muttered to himself, but he remained vigilant.

After all, many madmen look like normal people before they have an episode.

Professor Pierre was already eagerly heading towards the huge dark green blackboard on the left.

This blackboard is the soul of Van En Building, and also the crematorium where countless administrative funds were burned.

"The first time I faced such a large blank blackboard, I stared at it for an entire afternoon, but I couldn't even write a single punctuation mark."

Pierre smiled and looked at Chen Zhuo.

"You can fill it with scraps and mess around with it however you like afterward. If you have any questions or need to discuss anything, I'm at the end of the corridor, feel free to knock on my door anytime." Woolley keenly caught the word "mess around with," and his eyebrows behind his glasses twitched almost imperceptibly.

"In fact, Professor Pierre."

Woolley maintained his most polite professional smile and calmly cut to the chase.

"If you could remind Mr. Chen to use our low-dust soft chalk instead of the cheap kind that's hard enough to leave permanent physical scratches on a matte finish, the logistics department would be extremely grateful. After all, the repair cost for fixing the blackboard in your office last quarter is enough for us to buy two more top-of-the-line coffee machines."

Pierre waved his hand, clearly ignoring his words.

Wu Li sighed inwardly and silently added the blackboard panel wear and tear to Chen Zhuo's list of hidden costs.

Dean Cyril turned around and introduced Chen Zhuo.

"This is Woolley, specially selected for you by the administration... your personal coordinator. You can think of him as your personal assistant at Princeton." Woolley bowed slightly, his movements so perfect they were flawless.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Chen. In terms of the strict definition of personnel establishment, my title is Coordinator of Higher Academic Affairs."

Woolley's pronunciation was smooth and had a rigid, professional feel to it.

"To put it simply, aside from the Hodge conjectures that I don't quite understand, I should be able to help you with most of the procedural obstacles in all the other trivial matters, from filling out forms to getting reimbursed, from traveling to fixing water pipes."

He silently added a sentence in his mind.

"On the condition that you don't cause any unexpected problems."

"Hello, Mr. Woolley, I'll be in your shoes now."

Chen Zhuo smiled and nodded, his tone gentle, without lengthy small talk or the eccentricities of a genius.

Woolley quickly recalculated the communication costs in his mind.

"Concise language, positive feedback, that's good. At least I don't need to spend time deciphering his metaphors or dealing with his social anxiety." The two professors left satisfied after completing their task.

Only Wu Li and Chen Zhuo remained in the room.

Woolley returned to his desk and began to go through the procedures he hated most.

Item handover.

He pulled a magnetic stripe card from the first file folder and handed it to Chen Zhuo.

"Here is your meal card, Mr. Chen."

Wu Li looked into Chen Zhuo's eyes, his tone serious.

"Dean Cyril has repeatedly emphasized at the administrative meeting that we must provide you with the highest level of treatment, but in the administrative sense, the word 'highest' actually has a considerable degree of ambiguity." Chen Zhuo took the card and looked at him curiously.

"Because our main restaurant is located on the basement floor of the Van Een building."

Woolley pushed up his glasses, his expression as serious as if he were reading a will.

"So, in terms of pure physical altitude, you are actually experiencing the lowest level of treatment in the entire hospital."

He paused for a moment, then slowed his speech slightly.

"I don't recommend that you have too many academic expectations for the onion soup there. The chefs there seem to know more about the molecular structure of onions than about their texture. The taste... is hard to accurately assess with existing sensory data."

After listening to his personal assistant's long description, Chen Zhuo paused slightly to make sure Woolley had finished speaking. He then put the card in his pocket and smiled.

"Thank you for your honesty. I will try to avoid that onion soup at the lowest altitude."

Wu Li mentally gave Chen Zhuo an extra five points.

"A normal sense of humor is very important. I don't want to work with someone who has to explain a joke three times."

Then, Woolley pulled out his ultimate weapon.

A thick, forty-two-page booklet, well-bound, with the cover bearing the title "Princeton Institute for Advanced Study Code of Conduct and Safety Manual." In Woolley's view, this manual was nothing more than a disclaimer cobbled together by those bastards in the legal department to prove they weren't being paid for nothing—a bunch of nonsense. "Mr. Chen, according to the rigid procedures of the administration building, this manual needs to be kept by you..."

Woolley wanted to say he was studying it, but he felt guilty about it.

Chen Zhuo glanced at the thick handbook, then at Woolley's hand, which was hanging in mid-air, clearly not intending to let the other person actually finish reading it. "Is there a closed-book exam?" Chen Zhuo asked casually.

Woolley's hand froze in place.

He quickly reviewed the legal department's terms in his mind.

"On a technical level..."

Woolley gave his most iconic answer.

"There is no such requirement."

"Since there is no exam."

Chen Zhuo smiled slightly, his voice gentle yet carrying an irresistible power.

"Then I'll leave it to you for safekeeping."

He looked into Woolley's eyes and added a sentence.

"I believe that with your professional judgment, if I am about to violate one of the rules, you will definitely stop me in advance and with precision, right?" There was a three-second silence in the office.

Woolley let out a long, relieved sigh in his heart.

"This kid... he's a true genius!"

Wu Li mentally gave Chen Zhuo a huge thumbs up.

He had seen countless ways of dealing with manuals in his life.

Some people tore it up on the spot to make paper airplanes, some threw it in the trash, and others nervously pointed to Article 15 and asked him why he couldn't keep goats in the office. "A very reasonable arrangement, Mr. Chen."

Woolley retrieved the manual with the efficiency of someone taking back a top-secret document.

"I will fulfill my duty to remind you. Believe me, as long as you don't intend to illegally brew wine in the office or tamper with the nuclear reactor, this manual is transparent to you." At this moment, Woolley's expression towards Chen Zhuo had become more genuinely appreciative.

"Compared to those professors who are clueless about life and can even button their shirts wrong, dealing with this kind of logical and efficient brain is a godsend for the administration office." Woolley silently canceled his budget for antidepressants this year.

Chen Zhuo walked to the blackboard and looked at the huge, clean, dark green area.

"Also, Woolley."

Chen Zhuo turned around and casually put one hand into his pocket.

"Speaking."

Woolley stood ramrod straight, ready to fight at any moment.

"I'm treating my friends to dinner tonight."

Chen Zhuo put forward his first practical request.

"Do you have any recommendations for a quiet place?"

Woolley's mind instantly activated the Princeton map and business database.

"That depends on your friend's noise tolerance."

Woolley began precise screening.

"It's Friday. If you want to experience the artificial noise generated by undergraduates during their dopamine surge, those bars near the campus gate are perfect. You basically have to shout to talk there." Chen Zhu shook his head, clearly indicating that it didn't sound very pleasant.

"If you want your vocal cords to vibrate at a normal frequency while you are talking."

Woolley provided the optimal solution.

"I recommend the Oak Barrel Restaurant in the middle of the street. It's about 400 yards away from the undergraduates' alcohol evaporation zone, and the lighting there is always at a level that makes noisy people feel sleepy." "Sounds good. Let's go there. 6:30 pm, are there any seats available?"

Woolley pulled the black pen from his breast pocket and quickly jotted down the time on a sticky note.

"On a technical level, they usually need to book a window seat 24 hours in advance."

Woolley tore off the sticky note, a slight smile playing on his lips.

"However, given that I happened to help their manager clarify a misunderstanding about the definition of a parking ticket with the campus police last month, I think they'll magically make room for you at a good table tonight." Chen Zhuo raised an eyebrow.

"Then I'll have to trouble you."

"My job, Mr. Chen."

Woolley put the pen back in his pocket, and the three pens were once again perfectly parallel.

He picked up the undelivered code of conduct manual, bowed slightly, and made an elegant and efficient exit.

"Have a pleasant afternoon. I will send the specific room number and table information to your mobile phone."

Woolley walked out of the office with steady steps and closed the heavy door quietly without making a sound.

Walking down the quiet corridor of Van House, Woolley looked at the thick handbook in his hand.

"That kid..."

He muttered to himself.

"I hope he can stay this normal. If he can always be this easy to talk to, I'd even be willing to help him apply for an extra storage room in the administration office specifically for storing draft paper." He strode towards the administration building.

Now, he has to deal with that magical table.

As for the matter of needing to waste time and effort talking to that stubborn restaurant manager or doing him a favor behind this table, "It's alright."

Woolley thought to himself.

"Nothing is easier than explaining why a genius teenager tries to keep a sheep in his office."