Quadruple split.

Chapter 2660 Current Affairs
Real time: 21:58
City B, North Campus of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 3F, Lounge Room, Mu Changchun Laboratory
[You have disconnected. Please select whether to reconnect?]

"Do not reconnect."

[Should we execute the wake-up procedure?]

"implement."

[Received. It is now 9:58 PM on November 7, 2049. You will wake up in one minute.]

"Ok."

……

one minute later

"Although it's a little strange to log off before the servers shut down..."

He Lei slowly got up from the advanced gaming pod, whose hatch opened automatically. Although he felt no discomfort, he still subconsciously moved his not-so-stiff body and muttered with a wry smile, "But there's nothing I can do about it."

After that, he left the game pod, put on the white coat hanging on the rack next to him, and went into the adjacent washroom to wash his face.

This is the third-floor lounge of Mu Changchun's laboratory. However, unlike the public lounges and cubicles used by ordinary students, the lounge where Gahrez is currently located is several times better than the other rooms in the corridor, both in terms of area and functional facilities.

A private bathroom, dressing room, bedroom, living room, kitchen, and small balcony—these amenities are clearly not something an ordinary student can easily access. In fact, even a girl like Zhou Min, who is not ordinary and can be considered a 'noble student,' cannot enjoy such treatment in the laboratory.

Of course, Zhou Min's student dormitory is in a high-end residential area off-campus, and its facilities are actually much better than this place. But from an objective point of view, He Lei, who has such a standard of accommodation in the laboratory, is far superior to Zhou Min in terms of resources.

After all, villas off-campus can be bought with money, but the environment He Lei is currently enjoying is definitely academician-level treatment.

That's right, it's the treatment of an academician. To put it simply, this overly luxurious 'dormitory' was actually prepared by the school for Academician Mu Changchun, who is also the mentor of He Lei and Zhou Min, and has nothing to do with ordinary students.

So here's the question: why didn't Academician Mu Changchun stay in the rest room that the school specially prepared for him, but instead gave it to He Lei?

The reason is simple: the dormitory prepared for Academician Mu by the school is even more luxurious than the rest room that the school specially prepared for him.

"So why would I choose to live in a dormitory-style workspace instead of a dormitory with my own workspace?"

After saying that, Mu Changchun tossed the access card for the workroom and dormitory to He Lei, and that same day ordered a top-of-the-line gaming pod to be installed in his bedroom.

As for He Lei's original gaming pod, it was moved to the new dormitory arranged for him by Academician Mu. The place was less than a five-minute drive (by electric car) from the laboratory. Although the environment was not as good as Zhou Min's villa dormitory off-campus, it was still a nice luxury single room, which was theoretically far beyond what a family like He Lei could afford.

This is mainly because Academician Mu has a lot of influence. Ultimately, although he is relatively low-key outside of the game and is considered an unassuming figure among academicians, the resources that the old man can mobilize are definitely beyond most people's imagination.

In short, since passing Merlin's test in the workshop in Onic City, He Lei's resources in reality have exploded. The dormitory benefits and the luxury game pods are just two of the most insignificant aspects of this.

Closer to home——

At this moment, the reason why He Lei left the game before the server shut down was not because Merlin gave him a break because of his good performance. On the contrary, He Lei actually left the game with a mission in mind.

As for the task itself, in short, it was to revise the thesis.

Obviously, this paper could not be the paper of He Lei himself, who had just become Academician Mu's apprentice and was still a freshman at the time, but rather someone else's paper.

That's right, that person is another student of Academician Mu Changchun, Gahrez's senior, with a good family background, good looks, and a good personality, but not so good in academics—Zhou Min.

As we know, among the many students who paid money and used connections to get into the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhou Min was definitely a rare and good girl. Although she could only join Mu Changchun's laboratory, which had no high threshold, and slack off because of her limited abilities, she always aimed to improve herself as a real researcher. She not only devoted most of her energy to studying and her coursework, but also had very strict requirements for herself, which is why she was deeply loved by Academician Mu.

Unfortunately, a lack of ability is a lack of ability. Despite Zhou Min's hard work, effort, and dedication, her graduation thesis was still precarious in Mei Lin's eyes. Although the format was very neat and there were virtually no extremely ridiculous problems such as grammar, punctuation, fitting art, fuzzy mathematics, parts exceeding the total, capitalization lock, random page numbers, copy and paste, and data omissions/miscalculations, it still could not hide the fact that Zhou Min's academic level was low.

In Academician Mu's previous words, this thing can pass the test 100% of the time if it's thrown into an ordinary school, and 80% or 90% of the time if it's thrown into a better university. Even if it's placed in the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, given that its mentor Mu Changchun has a decent reputation, it should have a 70% chance of passing if nothing unexpected happens. Theoretically, it's quite reliable.

However, plans can't keep up with changes. Not long ago, He Lei and Mu Changchun helped Zhou Min polish her paper, raising its pass rate from 70% to nearly 90%. Then, a shocking incident was exposed.

In short, Mo Tan could write twenty different papers of that caliber overnight just by searching for information online, while Shuang Ye could have its AI NAVI generate more than one hundred different papers in five minutes, and the quality of all of them was better than that of this beautiful PhD student.

At least, it won't have those extremely ridiculous problems like 'grammar errors, punctuation errors, fitting art, fuzzy mathematics, parts greater than total, caps lock, random page numbers, copy and paste, and data omissions/miscalculations'.

Even more outrageous, that paper was actually listed as one of the 'Outstanding Graduate Papers' of that prestigious university that year!
Thus, this incident caused a huge uproar. Although in 2049, data deletion is just one of countless ways to advance to the next level, such an outrageous event still disheartened many who had chosen this path, leading to a massive "spot the difference" campaign, determined to eradicate this unethical practice of data deletion.

As the saying goes, "When the city gate catches fire, the fish in the moat suffer," although the idiot who deleted the data was the first target of the data deletion campaign, the data deletion school that chose to protect this idiot could not escape the reckoning either. Almost all the excellent data deletions (and even the ordinary graduation data deletions) were scrutinized by everyone, and more and more loopholes were pointed out.

After that, the incident spread again. As people lost their illusions about "data deletion", countless substandard "data deletion" services were condemned. The spark ignited by some idiot quickly became a raging fire, spreading rapidly throughout the entire "data deletion" community.

As a top university in China, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences was naturally unable to remain uninvolved in this controversy. Therefore, despite its strict academic standards, the university repeatedly raised its requirements for the quality of this year's graduates' theses in the current extreme environment. In less than two weeks, it was raised to the point that Zhou Min's abilities were absolutely insufficient to pass the exam.

Admittedly, Zhou Min could use some underhanded means to make the request more lenient towards her, but unfortunately, although she lacks the ability, she deeply dislikes the scumbag who instigated the whole incident, so there is absolutely no way she would do anything similar to that kind of trash.

This leaves very few options for Zhou Min's paper to pass the review smoothly.

The most cost-effective, simplest, and most convenient method is to have Academician Mu, as the supervisor, spend a little time easily revising Zhou Min's thesis to a level that barely passes the minimum requirement.

Unfortunately, if it were Academician Mu a year ago, he probably wouldn't have minded taking some time to help his "beloved student" Zhou Min revise her paper. After all, the energy consumption of the degree of difficulty could be replenished by drinking a cup of half-sweet coffee.

However, after the release of "The Realm of Innocence," Mr. Mu Changchun became completely engrossed in it and, having secured a stable sponsor, could not spare even a little time for it.

Even outside the [Boundary of Innocence], Academician Mu, who had already completed several large models, was still able to continue his targeted research. In fact, with the assistance of various high-end equipment, the development speed of some projects was even faster than in the game. So, not wanting to waste even a second of his research time on Zhou Min, and not wanting his obedient student to be unable to graduate, Academician Mu made a snap decision and decided to have He Lei do it for him.

To be fair, although He Lei was also considered "untalented" by Academician Mu, compared to Zhou Min, who only received the evaluation of being "more resourceful than a paramecium," He Lei was already able to begin revising the relevant paper after Mu Changchun spent about ten minutes finding a lot of useful reference materials.

"call--"

Five hours later, having completed over 70% of the revisions, Gajrez, sitting alone in a booth on the first floor of the lab sipping coffee, let out a soft sigh. After saving the file seven or eight times, a faint smile appeared on his face as he murmured, "Not bad, it doesn't seem too difficult to actually do..."

"He Lei!"

Just then, accompanied by a clear shout, a tall and slender figure appeared in front of He Lei as if it had just been refreshed.

"Huh? Senior sister?"

He Lei looked at Zhou Min, who was dressed casually, with a rather blank expression, and asked, "When did you arrive?"

"Just got here. I came back from the old guy's place. I was planning to hurry back to my dorm to work on my thesis, but when I passed by here I found that the lab lights were still on, so I rushed over. I didn't even have time to put my luggage back."

Zhou Min pointed to the large suitcase behind her and said with a somewhat flustered expression, "But when I came in, I saw you sitting here, and your expression... was a little scary."

"Scary?"

He Lei subconsciously raised his hand to touch his cheek, and hesitated before asking, "Me?"

"Yes, well... I can't quite put my finger on what's so scary about it, it's just..."

Zhou Min swallowed, somewhat embarrassed, and said, "It looks rather eerie, like a mannequin stuck here."

He Lei was stunned again, and asked in bewilderment, "A dummy?"

"Ahem, I guess it's just my imagination, my imagination."

Zhou Min shook her head vigorously and laughed, "No matter how you look at it, you're a cute little junior brother who's a bit silly, so lively and adorable."

"oh oh."

Upon hearing this, He Lei stopped dwelling on whether he looked human or not and asked curiously, "But senior, I remember your dormitory should be off-campus. If you just came back from your hometown, you shouldn't have passed by our lab."

"Uh……"

Zhou Min, realizing that her earlier rambling seemed a bit far-fetched, stiffened for a moment, then stuck out her tongue and said somewhat awkwardly, "Well, actually, it's because my supervisor talked to me about the thesis a few times before, and I thought he was planning to stay up all night to revise it for me, so I came to check... Hehe, after all, if my supervisor is willing to help me revise it, I won't have to put in the effort myself."

He Lei nodded slightly and smiled in agreement, "That's true."

"But I think I'm overthinking it."

Zhou Min shrugged and shook her head, saying, "There are no benevolent mentors here who want to help us out, only poor junior brothers who are also struggling to finish their papers so late at night. Hey, speaking of which, why does your paper look so similar to mine?"

He Lei smiled slightly and said gently, "Because this is your thesis, senior sister."

"Eh?!"

Zhou Min was taken aback, and after a long pause, she exclaimed in a trembling voice, "So, Junior Brother, you...you...you...you...you...you actually..."

"Let me adjust it for you a little, senior sister."

While quickly correcting a few inappropriate data points, He Lei said in a tone that sounded as reliable as possible, "Don't worry, although my skills aren't great, the main references and directions for modification were given by my supervisor. I'm just helping to adjust things along that line of thought."

"This...this won't do!"

"Uh, I know it wasn't appropriate for me to help my senior revise her thesis without permission, but my advisor..."

“It has nothing to do with my supervisor. You’ve helped me so much, I can’t just sit back and enjoy the benefits!”

"Eh?"

"are you hungry?"

"Huh? I'm actually... fine?"

"So you're a little hungry, right? Come on, let your senior sister treat you to something good to eat!"

"No, no, I actually..."

"Want to eat hot pot? How about Haidilao? I know a good restaurant nearby!"

"This……"

"What are you doing here? Hurry up and change your clothes, let's take a taxi!"

Chapter 2651: The End