My IQ has been increasing year by year.

The door to dormitory 215 was open for ventilation.

The ceiling fan overhead was on its highest setting, its blades spinning rapidly, the buzzing sound echoing in the quiet corridor.

Wang Dayong came out of the bathroom shirtless, holding a towel in his hand.

"It's really hot today."

Wang Dayong draped a towel over his shoulder and glanced at Chen Zhuo, who was lying on the bed with a book in his hand.

"Aren't you going to sleep a little longer? You have to go to the Red Mansion at two o'clock for that placement test, you can still get some sleep for half an hour."

"No, I'm awake now."

Chen Zhuo replied without turning his head.

The door to room 216 next door slammed shut, and Chu Ge, with his messy hair, sauntered in.

Without any hesitation, he pulled out the chair in front of Wang Dayong's desk, plopped down, and quickly twisted a Rubik's Cube in his hand.

It kept making a clicking sound.

Wang Dayong glanced at Chu Ge and casually asked a question.

"You've come at the perfect time. I was just about to knock on your door. It's almost two o'clock, and I'm getting ready to go to the classroom for that diagnostic test."

"Exam my ass."

Chu Ge tossed the Rubik's Cube onto Wang Dayong's table and reached into his pocket for the coins.

"He didn't even give us anything, just a blank sheet of paper to write formulas on. This old man is just bored."

"Who cares if he's free or not?"

Wang Dayong was wringing out a towel in the basin when he casually replied.

"Just write it, it won't count towards your grade anyway. Even if you hand in a blank paper, what can he do to kick you out of school? By the way, what are you doing in our dorm?" Chu Ge twirled a coin between his fingers, pointed to room 216 next door, and rolled his eyes.

"I don't care whether the old man is free or not, what I don't understand is the lunatic who lives in the same room as me."

"Just now, I was getting a little sleepy and was about to take a nap when he suddenly started pacing around the room like he was having a seizure, muttering something under his breath!" Chu Ge said, looking utterly bewildered.

"After wandering around for a while, he picked up his backpack and turned to leave. I asked him where he was going, and he actually told me he was going to reserve a seat in the classroom?! At this time of exam, he's going to reserve a seat?" Wang Dayong laughed as he wiped his back with a towel and asked.

"Now that he's gone, your room is quiet, you can catch up on your sleep. What are you doing here?"

"What a load of crap."

Chu Ge let out a sigh of annoyance.

"His sudden, startling antics completely banished my sleepiness. I tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall asleep, and the more I lay there, the more annoyed I became, so I decided to come and kill some time with you guys." "That blank sheet of paper had no standard answer, which made him very uncertain."

"Perhaps only when he's sitting in the classroom can he feel a sense of security."

Chen Zhuo, lying on the bed, quietly replied.

Chu Ge paused for a moment, pursed his lips, and said nothing more.

The afternoon sun shone brightly on the asphalt road, almost blinding people. The leaves of the trees on both sides of the road were curled up and drooped listlessly. A group of people strolled slowly along the trees toward the management committee's red building.

Upon arriving at the multimedia classroom on the second floor, I pushed open the door and was immediately greeted by a blast of cold air.

The classroom was already quite full.

It was the same group as last night, about forty freshmen, sitting in twos and threes in their respective seats.

Chen Zhuo walked to the spot from last night.

Lu Jia was already there.

He was wearing a light blue short-sleeved shirt today, with the buttons still fastened tightly.

Seeing Chen Zhuo approaching, Lu Jia stopped what she was doing and nodded.

"They're here."

Lu Jia's voice wasn't loud, and it still carried a hint of rawness.

Chen Zhuo pulled out a chair, sat down, and hummed in agreement.

He glanced at Lu Jia's desktop.

The thick, lined notebook was gone; only two sharpened pencils and a white eraser lay neatly arranged on the table. Chen Zhuo looked away without saying a word.

In the last row of the classroom, in the corner near the back door.

Su Wei sat there quietly.

She didn't look around or talk to anyone next to her; she just kept her head down, her gaze fixed on the clean, light-colored wooden tabletop. Her presence was so minimal, like a wisp of air.

One fifty-eight.

The classroom door opened.

Xue Boyong walked in.

He wasn't wearing his gray jacket today; instead, he was wearing a slightly damp white shirt and a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose.

He held the thermos in one hand and a small sheet of A4 printing paper in the other.

The classroom fell silent.

Xue Boyong walked to the front of the classroom and placed the blank paper on the table.

He unscrewed the thermos, took a sip of water, and glanced down through the lenses of his reading glasses.

"Hey, time for the test."

Xue Boyong pointed to the paper on the table.

"Give each of you a sheet, write your name, and then write down the formula that you think looks best and is most beautiful. Add a sentence or two below and explain your reasoning." He waved his hand, signaling the students in the first row to come up and hand out the sheets.

"No subject restrictions: math, physics, chemistry, computer code, even just writing out the proportions of a recipe—as long as you can explain what makes it appealing, it counts." "One hour. Once you're done, just put the paper on the table and you can leave."

After speaking, Xue Boyong pulled over the wooden chair and sat down next to him.

He took out a folded copy of the day's newspaper from his pocket, unfolded it, and began to read it by himself.

The blank sheets of paper were quickly passed to everyone.

Wang Dayong stared at the blank white paper in front of him, looking somewhat worried.

He is a very honest person.

From childhood to adulthood, he has taken apart more radios and repaired more televisions than he has done test papers.

The meshing of gears is beautiful, the soldering of circuit boards is beautiful, even a freshly steamed meat bun is beautiful.

A formula is just a calculation tool, isn't it?

Wang Dayong scratched the back of his short hair.

He turned his head, wanting to see what Chu Ge was writing.

Chu Ge covered the paper tightly with his hand and glanced at him sideways.

"What are you looking at? Figure it out yourself."

Wang Dayong scoffed and turned back.

"A tool is a tool," he muttered to himself. "There's nothing fancy about it."

He picked up his pen and wrote a line of large characters in the middle of the paper with a crisp and decisive stroke.

Newton's Second Law.

After finishing writing, he quickly added a line below.

"There aren't many detours. We push forward with quality, and we get as much done as we put in. It's reliable and easy to use."

After writing his name, Wang Dayong threw the pen down.

Get it done.

Chu Ge sat beside him, twirling a coin in his hand, not writing anything for a long time.

He looked out the window at the somewhat glaring sunlight.

Physics is too old-fashioned, and mathematics is too slow.

His mind was filled with forums, code, and underlying protocols.

That's another world.

Chu Ge stopped spinning the coin and placed it on the table.

He picked up a pen and, with a mischievous provocation, wrote a simple equation on the paper.

Binary.

He wrote a line of words below in cursive script.

"The world is too chaotic, and people's hearts are too complicated, but in this set of rules, everything is just 0 and 1, there is no gray area. This is the language of creating a new world, cleaner than anything else." Chu Ge looked it over and capped his pen with satisfaction.

The seat is on the left side of the middle.

Lu Jia placed both hands on the table.

He knew there were no scores for this test.

But what's ingrained in one's bones can't be changed.

He still longed for order, for rules, for things that could never go wrong.

The real world is full of uncertainties: parents' expectations, teachers' evaluations, and classmates' gazes.

Only in mathematical derivation is right simply right, and wrong simply wrong.

Lu Jia picked up the mechanical pencil and gently pressed the cap.

He kept his head down and wrote each stroke very neatly.

ei = cos() + isin()

Euler's formula.

After he finished writing, he carefully examined the symbols.

He wrote below:

"It connects the five most fundamental constants—the natural base, pi, the imaginary unit, 1, and 0—into an equation. It transforms all chaos into absolute order. Looking at it makes one feel safe." After writing the last word, Lu Jia put down the pencil.

He let out a long sigh of relief.

in the corner.

Su Wei didn't even pause for a moment.

The moment the paper was handed to her, she uncapped the water-based pen.

In her life.

Only survival.

Survival requires careful planning.

Every penny, every bite of food, even every memory space in my mind.

Waste is the original sin.

She placed the pen tip in the very center of the white paper.

The characters are written very small, out of habit that I don't want to take up too much space.

A line of formula appeared clearly on the paper.

H(X)=-Ip(_i)logp(_i)

Shannon's information entropy formula.

After writing the formula, she wrote a sentence in the same tiny handwriting right below it.

"It provides the minimum amount of data needed to eliminate clutter, with no redundancy and not a single bit of space wasted."

Su Wei capped the pen and put it back in her pocket.

Chen Zhuo sat in his seat and turned to look out the window.

The leaves swayed gently in the wind.

He looked away and stared at the paper in front of him.

Chen Zhuo picked up his pen.

There was no pause, no planning.

With a casual flick of his wrist, he left a minimal equation on the paper.

The principle of least action.

He wrote only a very short sentence below.

"The universe is lazy; everything is looking for the easiest path."

After finishing writing, Chen Zhuo put down his pen.

The sound of chairs being pulled out could be heard from time to time in the classroom.

Someone finished writing and walked to the front of the class with the paper.

Xue Boyong didn't even look up, still reading the newspaper.

The student put down the paper, turned around, and tiptoed out the back door.

Wang Dayong stood up and picked up the paper.

"Are you coming or not?"

He nudged Chugo's arm.

Chu Ge stuffed the coins on the table into his pocket and picked up a piece of paper.

The two walked to the lecture hall one after the other and handed in their papers.

Chen Zhuo also stood up.

Lu Jia had just finished writing and followed him over.

They placed the paper on top of the already piled-up answer sheets and left the classroom.

The heatwave outside suddenly enveloped us.

"Want to go play ball?" Wang Dayong stretched his shoulders. "The sun's gone down a bit now."

"I'm not going."

Chu Ge took a lollipop out of his pocket and put it in his mouth.

"It's so hot I can't breathe, I'm going back to my dorm to lie down."

Chen Zhuo didn't say anything and walked down the steps.

After half an hour.

Everyone in the classroom has left.

Su Wei was the last to hand in hers. She placed the piece of paper with tiny writing on top and quietly left through the back door.

Xue Boyong put down the newspaper in his hand.

He took off his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

I picked up the thermos and finished the remaining half-sip of tea.

He stood up, tidied up the A4 paper on the screen, and slowly walked out of the classroom.