My IQ has been increasing year by year.

The room fell silent for a moment.

Chu Ge opened his mouth, looked at the tree diagram in his hand, and then looked at Lu Jia standing at the door.

Chen Zhuo sat in the chair, looking at his roommate who had come to his door on his own initiative.

He sighed helplessly.

Chen Zhuo simply stood up, and casually pulled over an empty chair from in front of Wang Dayong's desk, placing it next to his own desk.

He picked up the thermos on the table and poured a cup of hot water into the cup.

Chen Zhuo placed the water glass on the corner of the table.

"Since my mind just keeps racing, I might as well sit down and finish calculating it."

Chen Zhuo looked at Lu Jia, his voice calm.

After all, I am quite experienced.

"Once I finished calculating, my mind was at peace."

Lu Jia stood at the door, still clutching those few sheets of draft paper tightly in her hand.

He glanced at Chen Zhuo.

He glanced at Chu Ge, who remained silent beside him, and Wang Dayong, who was squatting on the ground, covered in sweat.

He moved and walked over.

Sit down in the chair.

The steam from the water cup hit his face, easing his tense nerves a little.

Lu Jia picked up the pen.

There were no unnecessary words, and not a single complaint was uttered.

He lowered his head, the tip of his pen falling on the blank spaces of the draft papers, the rustling sound echoing in dormitory 215.

Chu Ge watched this scene and silently turned away.

He laid out the inverted tree diagram drawn by Chen Zhuo next to the keyboard.

My fingers landed back on the keycaps.

Wang Dayong squatted down and adjusted the angle of the small ceiling fan to make the airflow more evenly over the heatsink on the motherboard. "I modified the coil of this fan; it has a strong airflow."

Wang Dayong lowered his voice and said to Chu Ge.

"Keep running the data, but if the temperature gets too high, I'll eat this motherboard."

Chu Ge didn't look up, but just hummed in response.

The sound of keyboard typing started again.

This time, the previous impatience and haste were gone, replaced by a regular, steady rhythm.

Chen Zhuo sat back in his seat.

He opened the printed English document and picked up his pen.

The only sounds in the room were the whirring of the fan, the tapping of the keyboard, and the swishing of Lu Jia's pen on the paper.

Occasionally, Chugo would stop.

"Chen Zhuo." Chu Ge stared at the screen, his brows furrowed. "When we reverse the topology to the second layer, the data interface becomes narrower. How do we calculate the overflow?" Chen Zhuo didn't look up, still looking at the document in front of him.

"Don't calculate the overflow. Just create a null pointer, put the overflowed data into the cache pool, and let the underlying loop retrieve it itself."

Chu Ge paused for two seconds, then quickly typed a few lines of code on the keyboard.

"It's connected."

Chu Ge didn't say anything more and continued to tap.

After a while, Lu Jia stopped writing.

He pushed a sheet of paper covered with writing to Chu Ge's side.

"Half-life variable," Lu Jia's voice was still a little hoarse, "If we substitute it in, the right-handed extremum won't collide."

Chu Ge glanced at it.

"Thanks."

My fingers flew across the keyboard, transforming the formula into logical statements in the C language.

Time passed little by little.

The night outside the window grew deeper and deeper.

Two points.

Four o'clock.

Chen Zhuo finished reading the dozen or so pages of the preprint paper in his hand.

He closed the pen cap and rubbed his slightly sore eyes.

I turned my head and glanced at it.

Wang Dayong was already asleep, leaning against the bed frame, snoring loudly, with a small screwdriver in his hand.

Lu Jia lay face down on the table.

The draft paper in front of him was covered with formulas.

He closed his eyes, his breathing even and deep.

The knot in his heart that had tormented him all night was untied, and he finally fell asleep.

Chu Ge was still sitting in front of the computer.

He had a lollipop dangling from his mouth, his eyes bloodshot, staring intently at the progress bar on the screen.

Chen Zhuo stood up and poured himself a glass of water.

"How much is left?"

"Almost there." Chu Ge's voice was terribly hoarse. "Final full compilation."

The fans inside the computer case were spinning wildly.

The funnel icon on the screen spun for a full minute.

"bite."

The system emitted a crisp notification sound.

A small window popped up.

Chu Ge took the lollipop out of his mouth, his fingers trembling slightly, and pressed the Enter key.

In the black command window, green data streams cascaded down like a waterfall.

Smooth.

There was no lag whatsoever.

Ten thousand.

Fifty thousand.

One hundred thousand.

Finally, the cursor stopped on the last line.

Search complete, total time 2.3 seconds.

It was twice as fast as the employer requested.

Chu Ge leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath.

He didn't shout or yell.

He just rubbed his face wearily.

"It's working."

Chu Ge turned his head, looked at Chen Zhuo, and smiled.

Chen Zhuo nodded and took a sip of water.

"Just package the test package and send it over, then collect the money and go to sleep."

Chu Ge clicked the mouse a few times to compress the generated program file.

He opened the private messaging interface of the hacker forum, ready to send a message to the other party.

Just then, the other person's avatar flashed.

They sent me a compressed file that's over ten megabytes in size.

This was followed by a message:

Hey bro, if the code works, could you do me a favor? This is the initial data of 20,000 raw images for our website. Could you run your new program through it and filter out any garbled characters and incorrect tags? If it runs without problems, I'll transfer 1,500 yuan to your account immediately.

Chu Ge was taken aback.

He opened the compressed file and extracted it.

Open the text document inside.

Chu Ge's face darkened after just one glance.

The text was densely packed, spanning hundreds of pages.

It contains all irregular data.

Some are normal Chinese labels for scenery and people.

Some of them are garbled characters: %amp;:*#￥.

Some are misspelled English words, or even punctuation marks that are a mix of half-width and full-width characters.

This wasn't something a programmer wrote; it was raw garbage manually entered by clerks who didn't understand computers, using all sorts of weird input methods. "What's wrong?"

Chen Zhuo noticed that something was wrong with Chu Ge.

Chu Ge pointed to the jumbled characters on the screen.

"The other party asked us to run a test with this raw data."

Chu Ge rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on.

"This job is impossible to do. The data is too dirty. It's full of human input errors that don't follow any logical rules."

Chen Zhuo walked over and glanced at the screen.

"Can't we just write a regular expression filtering script?"

"no."

Chu Ge shook his head.

"Regular expressions can only capture things that follow a pattern. Look at this line, he typed apple as pinguo, and there's some Martian language next to it. As soon as this kind of thing enters the underlying logic, the program will immediately judge it as an abnormal variable and freeze."

Chu Ge gritted his teeth.

"These bastards, they don't want to spend the time cleaning up this junk data themselves, and they want me to do the whole thing, including cleaning the code, for 1,500 yuan." Lu Jia was woken up by Chu Ge's voice.

He sat up groggily.

I glanced at the things on the screen.

"There is no mathematical pattern to this."

Lu Jia glanced at it and came to a conclusion, her voice hoarse from just waking up.

"Algebraic equations cannot solve unordered errors."

The room fell silent.

Chu Ge leaned back in his chair, looking at the 20,000 data entries on the screen, feeling somewhat discouraged.

I stayed up all night, and my brain is about to explode.

It's just one step away from victory.

"How about... I write a slightly more complex script tomorrow, adding more conditional checks, and filter out as many as possible?"

Chu Ge himself wasn't confident.

This kind of dirty work—using code to prevent human stupidity—is the most laborious and thankless task.

Chen Zhuo stared at the garbled text scrolling across the screen.

He reached for the mouse and scrolled down a few pages.

"No need to write a script." Chen Zhuo released the mouse. "Machines can't distinguish these kinds of random errors, but the human eye can."

Chu Ge was stunned.

"These 20,000 entries, relying solely on human eyes? How long would that take?"

"Of course it's slow for one person to read 20,000 messages."

Chen Zhuo walked to his backpack, took out a brand new blank floppy disk, and inserted it into Chu Ge's computer's floppy disk drive.

Chen Zhuo dragged the text document containing the raw data into it.

Pull out the floppy disk and put it in your pocket.

He glanced at Chu Ge, then at Lu Jia, who was rubbing his eyes.

"Leave this job to me."

Chen Zhuo walked to the window and pulled back the curtains a little.

The sky outside was already beginning to lighten.

"You two don't have classes this morning, so turn off your computers and go back to sleep."

Chen Zhuo turned around.

"I'll bring back clean data tomorrow night, and you can just run the program and submit it."

Chu Ge opened his mouth, wanting to ask Chen Zhuo where to find someone to look at these 20,000 data entries.

But seeing Chen Zhuo's calm demeanor, he swallowed his words.

"OK."

Chu Ge really couldn't hold on any longer.

He turned off the computer.

He gathered up all the draft papers on the table and stuffed them into his pocket.

He patted Wang Dayong, who was still snoring.

Dayong woke up groggily and wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth.

"Finished running?"

"You're done running, go to sleep."

Chu Ge stood up and stretched.

He glanced at Chen Zhuo but didn't say anything more polite.

Thanks.

Chu Ge led Lu Jia out of the door of room 215.

10:00 AM.

The old library of USTC.

Sunlight filters through the ivy leaves, casting dappled shadows on the wooden floor.

There weren't many people borrowing it before.

Su Wei was sitting on a high stool.

Holding an old thread-bound book, he was carefully repairing the torn pages.

Chen Zhuo walked over and placed the floppy disk in his hand on the wooden surface.

It made a soft sound.

Su Wei raised her head.

His gaze fell on the floppy disk, then turned to Chen Zhuo.

"A library card?" Su Wei asked.

"No books will be lent out."

Chen Zhuo pulled over a chair next to him and sat down, looking at her through the book.

"I need your help to earn some extra money."

Su Wei put down the thread-bound book and glue in her hands, and picked up a dry towel to wipe her hands.

"explain."

"This floppy disk contains 20,000 pieces of messy text data."

Chen Zhuo pointed to the black plastic cube.

"It's full of manually entered tags, with many spelling errors, garbled characters, and meaningless symbols."

He looked into Su Wei's eyes.

"Machine algorithms can't eliminate this kind of illogical and messy data. We need to manually check it line by line, delete the erroneous lines, and keep the correctly formatted ones." Su Wei looked at the floppy disk without saying anything, mentally assessing the workload.

"Twenty thousand, if we're fast, it should be ready by tomorrow."

Chen Zhuo spoke in a calm tone.

Give it to me before 6 PM tomorrow, fifty yuan.

Su Wei reached out and took the floppy disk.

I flipped it over and looked at the back.

"What kind of work is this? Outsourcing outsourcing?"

Su Wei's lips twitched slightly.

Chen Zhuo smiled.

"I guess so. It's like a makeshift team encountering physical tasks that can't be solved with computing power."

Su Wei put the floppy disk into the pocket of her vest.

"I'll take this job, but you can't just plug any floppy disk into the library's computers. I'll have to go back to my dorm tonight and borrow my roommate's computer to watch it."

"Okay, I'll come pick it up tomorrow afternoon."

Chen Zhuo stood up, ready to leave.

"etc."

Su Wei called out to him.

Chen Zhuo turned around.

"If it were a text document, all 20,000 data entries would be concatenated."

Su Wei looked at him.

"I've read a bit about this in related books before. If I delete a line, how can I guarantee that the images corresponding to the line numbers won't be misplaced when you import them?" Chen Zhuo looked at Su Wei, a hint of amazement flashing in his eyes.

This girl is not only quick and efficient, but also extremely sharp-minded.

"I've already written a macro in that text file."

Chen Zhuo replied.

"You don't need to delete the text directly. When you encounter a line with garbled characters, just type a 0 at the beginning. When you encounter a normal line, type 1." He paused slightly.

"I'll go back and rematch the format; you just need to check if it's correct or not."

Su Wei nodded.

"Understood. Come find me here tomorrow at six o'clock."

She picked up the glue again and continued repairing the thread-bound book.

The next day, in the evening.

Chen Zhuo arrived at the old library on time.

Su Wei pushed the floppy disk to him.

There were faint dark circles under her eyes, indicating that she had stayed up late last night.

"All done. A total of 3,412 dirty records were deleted."

Su Wei's voice sounded tired, but still crisp.

Chen Zhuo took the floppy disk, pulled out a fifty-yuan bill from his pocket, and placed it on the table.

"Hard."

Su Wei put the money away and placed it in the drawer.

"Cash and goods settled."

That evening.

216 Dormitory.

Chu Ge inserted the floppy disk that Chen Zhuo had brought back into the computer.

Read the data text that Su Wei marked.

He wrote a very simple reading script that only retrieves data that starts with a 1.

A few seconds later.

More than 16,000 clean test data entries, free of any garbled characters, were extracted.

Chu Ge imported this data into the working underlying program.

Press Enter.

The data stream on the screen was scrolling wildly.

There were no errors reported.

There was no lag whatsoever.

Completed in one go.

Chu Ge let out a long sigh of relief.

He packaged the final program and test results and sent them to the employer on the forum.

After half an hour.

The other party replied to the message.

[Awesome, even faster than we expected! Send us the card number, we'll transfer the money right away.]

Chugo leaned back in his chair.

He turned his head, looked at Chen Zhuo standing next to him, and then glanced at Lu Jia who was reading a book.

He grinned.

"nailed it."

A weekend evening.

An open-air barbecue stall outside the south gate of USTC.

The night wind rustled the leaves beside me.

The stall was filled with the strong smell of charcoal smoke and cumin from roasted lamb.

Next to a folding round table by the roadside.

Five people were sitting there.

Chu Ge, Chen Zhuo, Wang Dayong, Lu Jia, and Su Wei, who was called out by Chen Zhuo.

Two large plates of grilled meat skewers and several plates of cold dishes were placed on the table.

A bottle of Jianlibao (a popular Chinese soft drink) sat in front of Su Wei. She wasn't wearing her library vest today; instead, she wore a regular black coat and sat quietly to the side, drinking her beverage. Lu Jia, on the other hand, found the smoky environment very uncomfortable.

He frowned, holding a skewer of grilled meat, staring at the speck of charcoal ash clinging to the skewer, and hesitated to take a bite.

Chu Ge opened two bottles of Jia Duo Bao, handed one to Dayong, and took one for himself.

"Come on, let's have one!"

Chu Ge bumped into Da Yong and tilted his head back to take a big gulp.

He put down his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

He pulled a thick envelope out of his pocket.

It contained 1,500 yuan in cash withdrawn from an ATM.

All of them are brand new 100-yuan notes.

In 2002, this was an enormous sum of money that would make college students envious.

Chugo placed the envelope on the table.

He put away his usual unruly demeanor.

In this small circle, technology trumps everything, and he knows his own limitations.

"I didn't think too much about the money when I accepted the order."

Chu Ge looked at Chen Zhuo, his tone serious.

"If it weren't for your framework and Lu Jia's formula, I would definitely have lost this deal."

He immediately opened the envelope and began counting the money.

The movements were extremely swift and decisive, without any hesitation or delay.

He took out six hundred-yuan bills and placed them in front of Chen Zhuo.

"Chen Zhuo, you set up the macro framework, you shaped the bones of this program, so you take the lion's share."

Chen Zhuo looked at the six hundred yuan in front of him.

There was no refusal, nor were there any insincere pleasantries.

He naturally reached out and picked it up, putting it in his pocket.

"it is good."

Chu Ge then pulled out four more hundred-dollar bills and pushed them in front of Lu Jia.

Lu Jia was stunned for a moment, looking at the money.

"Your mathematical logic solved my problem," Chugo said, looking at him. "You deserve it."

Lu Jia frowned.

"I do not want."

His voice was soft, with his usual stubbornness.

"I wrote that for you not for the money, I just felt it was wrong and needed to be corrected."

Chu Ge's hand, holding the money, froze in mid-air.

He knew this kid's temper; forcing him to give him money was harder than killing him.

Chen Zhuo picked up a bite of cold dish from the side and spoke slowly and deliberately.

"Take it."

Chen Zhuo looked at Lu Jia, his tone gentle.

"This is the value your knowledge brings to the world. Knowledge has a price, and you should get used to it."

Lu Jia glanced at Chen Zhuo.

He was silent for a while.

He reached out and took the four hundred yuan, then casually stuffed it into his pocket.

Chu Ge breathed a sigh of relief.

He then pulled out two hundred-yuan bills and handed them to Wang Dayong, who was engrossed in eating meat.

"Dayong, I'm sorry to have troubled you with cooling in the middle of the night and almost burned out your power strip. Here's a reward for your hard work."

Da Yong smiled憨厚ly.

Without any hesitation, he took the money, stuffed it into his pocket, and continued gnawing on the lamb leg in his hand.

Chu Ge had three hundred yuan left.

He took out a fifty-yuan note and handed it to Su Wei, who was sitting opposite him.

"Su Wei, Chen Zhuo paid fifty yuan for the mine clearance, so this fifty is yours."

Su Wei glanced at Chu Ge, then at Chen Zhuo.

Without saying a word, he took the money and put it away.

Chu Ge held the remaining two hundred and fifty yuan in his hand.

He glanced at the money in his hand and couldn't help but curse.

"Damn, what a moron!"

The people at the table were stunned for a moment, and then Da Yong couldn't help but burst into laughter.

Even Su Wei, who had been keeping a straight face, had a hint of a smile in her eyes.

Chu Ge shook his head helplessly and put the money away.

"Alright, everyone go their own way. This barbecue is on me."

He picked up the Jia Duo Bao herbal tea from the table.

"I'll probably take on this kind of job again if it comes up on the forum in the future."

Chu Ge looked at the people at the table, his eyes revealing a geeky fervor.

"I do the coding, Chen Zhuo builds the architecture, Lu Jia calculates the logic, Da Yong handles the logistics, and Su Wei does the validation. Our makeshift team can do whatever we want in this university." Chen Zhuo didn't take a beer; he picked up his water glass and clinked it with Chu Ge's.

"A good idea."

Chen Zhuo took a sip of water and put down the cup.

He turned his head and looked at Wang Dayong, who was eating with his mouth full of oil.

"Da Yong".

"Hmm?" Da Yong looked up.

"If you're free this weekend, take me to the Bai Nao Hui shopping mall in Huizhou."

Chen Zhuo pulled out a napkin and wiped his hands.

"Go and build a new computer."

Upon hearing this, Da Yong's eyes immediately lit up.

"Okay! What level of specs should I get? A Pentium 4? What graphics card? Or the configuration you mentioned before?"

"Both the motherboard and graphics card should be the best available on the market."

Chen Zhuo spoke calmly.

"The hard drive needs to be large, and the monitor needs to be flat-screen for a more comfortable viewing experience."

Chu Ge listened from the side, somewhat surprised.

"A machine with this kind of top-of-the-line configuration would cost several thousand yuan."

"Aren't you heartbroken?"

Chen Zhuo smiled.

He looked at the dim yellow streetlights on the road not far away.

"Storing code in the computer room is too much of a hassle, and downloading foreign literature from the education network is too slow."

Chen Zhuo withdrew his gaze.

"If you want to do a good job, you must first have the right tools. Just think of it as buying a tool."

He paused for a moment.

He uttered the most important sentence of the night.

"Furthermore, I need you to help me buy a private laser printer."

Upon hearing this, everyone at the table except for Dayong, who was already mentally prepared, was stunned.

Even Su Wei stopped drinking her beverage and looked at Chen Zhuo.

"Laser printer?"

Chu Ge thought he had misheard.

"Keep it in your dorm? What do you need that thing for? Those supplies aren't cheap."

"Printing preprints of papers from abroad."

Chen Zhuo spoke in a very calm tone, as if he were stating an extremely ordinary daily need.

"There are too many foreign language documents. Looking at them on the computer is bad for your eyes. Going to a print shop is not only expensive but also troublesome over the years." He looked at the people at the table.

"Chu Ge, if there are any more low-level optimization orders on the forum in the future, you can take them. If you encounter any unavoidable logic issues, come to me and Lu Jia." Chen Zhuo pointed to where Chu Ge had just split the money.

"The rules remain the same: distribution according to work, each earning their own money."

He picked up his chopsticks and took out a peanut.

"Use the money you earn to upgrade your motherboard and memory, Dayong to find second-hand parts, and Lu Jia to save up to buy books."

Chen Zhuo looked at the six hundred yuan in his pocket.

"As for me, those cutting-edge papers from abroad are thick and tedious."

He smiled gently.

"The money I earned was just enough to buy A4 paper and spare toner cartridges."

Chu Ge grinned and held up the Jia Duo Bao in his hand.

"Fine, whatever makes you happy, for the sake of A4 paper and toner cartridges."

Da Yong also raised his glass.

Lu Jia hesitated for a moment before picking up the water glass in front of her.

Su Wei held a pack of Jianlibao (a type of Chinese liquor).

Chen Zhuo, holding a water glass, bumped it with them.