I met my whole family through Baidu Tieba.

Zhou Man turned her head and looked at Xiao Bonian.

She felt a bit annoyed and upset by what Shen Kang said earlier, and even a little wronged, but now she felt warm inside.

As a powerful businesswoman, she has met countless people and heard all sorts of rhetoric. She can tell whether someone is speaking sincerely or just being polite.

Xiao Bonian was clearly speaking from the heart.

Because he didn't just boast about himself, but honestly shared some of the "features" of his stir-fried vegetables, and these features were all advantages in his eyes.

That makes sense.

After all, food is a very personal thing.

Just like some people love Sichuan cuisine to death, thinking that its numbing spiciness and fresh aroma is the ultimate taste in the world, and they feel uncomfortable if they don't eat it for a meal; but for another person, they feel that it is too stimulating and too heavy-flavored, and they sweat after eating a couple of bites, and they don't understand what's so delicious about it.

Take hamburgers for example. People who like them say they are convenient, satisfying, and enjoyable, with bread sandwiching a meat patty and cheese, and you get everything in one bite. People who don't like them say that it's just two slices of bread with a piece of meat in it, what's so great about it, and a bowl of hot soup noodles is more comforting.

The same goes for Indian food. People who like it find the spices rich and layered, with each bite a delightful surprise and very delicious. However, people who don't like it find the taste too strange and pungent, even making them dizzy from the smell. They feel that eating this kind of porridge is not much different from eating feces.

Therefore, the same dish can taste like two completely different things to different people.

Shen Kang felt that the vegetables were too salty, too old, and undercooked. That was Shen Kang's taste; he didn't know how to appreciate them.

Xiao Bonian said that it has a beginning, development, climax, and conclusion, and a sweet aftertaste. This is not an intentional embellishment, but rather his genuine feeling.

Zhou Man thought about it more and more and realized that this was indeed the case.

Xiao Bonian's tastes naturally align with hers. He enjoys eating the dishes she makes. Last time she cooked, Xiao Bonian ate a lot, and no one forced him that time.

Today, he picked up three stalks of this plate of greens and said, "Not bad." He ate them quietly and naturally, without exaggeration or reluctance.

This is probably because her "characteristics" just happened to fall into his preferred category.

Thinking about it this way, Zhou Man felt even more at ease.

She even felt a little proud, thinking that not everyone could eat her dish.

If you, Shen Kang, can't eat it, it just means your taste isn't at that level yet. Professor Xiao can taste the aftertaste, that's Professor Xiao's skill.

Zhou Man finally couldn't hold back and said to Shen Kang, "Did you hear that? It's not the food that's the problem, it's that you don't know how to eat."

After saying that, she felt that her words sounded too much like a little girl throwing a tantrum, so she picked up her juice and covered her face.

And at the dining table

Shen Kang looked at Xiao Bonian.

Xiao Bonian acted as if nothing had happened, but he just didn't dare to look at him.

Shen Kang then looked at He Qiuzhu next to him, thinking, "President Zhou, you said I can't eat, right? Then I'll find you someone who can."

"Don't just eat meat, eat some vegetables too, make a balanced meal." Shen Kang pushed the plate of vegetables toward He Qiuzhu.

He Qiuzhu didn't even raise her head.

"I don't eat green vegetables."

"..."

Shen Kang turned his head and looked at the boy's silly, head-down eating. The image of He Qiuzhu always staring at various vegetables when they ate together at school flashed through his mind.

I would often use various methods to add different kinds of meat to her plate.

I've even wondered a few times if you were a rabbit in your past life, otherwise why would you love eating vegetables so much?

And now you're telling me you don't eat vegetables?

OK OK.

You guys are shrewd, but I'm not stupid either.

Now that the patients have recovered, Shen Kang stopped talking and started to act aloof, eating more vegetables and speaking less.

Fortunately, he was always a cool and aloof male god in school, so he was used to it and it was still quite easy for him to play the role now, and it looked pretty convincing.

As for Zhou Man, she has indeed recovered and stopped acting like a "model mother." She has returned to her usual self, secretly blaming the author of that book for writing such nonsense. It was completely useless!

Blindly believing everything in books is worse than having no books at all...

The four of them ate and chatted for a bit.

During the conversation, Zhou Man also mentioned the snakeskin bag that Shen Kang had carried back and asked what it was.

Shen Kang explained that the gifts were various local specialties brought by his employees from their hometowns. They were all just trying to curry favor with him, their boss. After gathering them up, there was quite a lot, so he just grabbed a snakeskin bag, packed it all up, and carried it back. After all, there was too much stuff for him to eat by himself.

At this point, Shen Kang added, "It's all rustic stuff. President Zhou, you're of such high status, so please don't eat it. I'm afraid you won't be used to it."

Zhou Man looked up and asked, "How do you know I don't like it?"

Shen Kang said, "Isn't it obvious? You usually eat French food and drink Romanée-Conti. How are you used to eating this? I'm embarrassed to put it in front of you. I'll just eat it myself, an ordinary person like me."

Seeing his stingy look only made Zhou Man want to eat it even more. It was a kind of perverse pleasure to see a little kid happily eating a lollipop, then snatch it away and bite off half, watching the kid bewildered first and then burst into tears.

Having children is meaningless if it's not for fun—though not entirely accurate, that's roughly the idea.

"Don't give me that. Perfect, we don't need to buy groceries tomorrow. Let Aunt Zhang cook, and we can all try some."

"no……"

Shen Kang wanted to say something more.

Zhou Man waved her hand dismissively, "It's settled then." She then happily ate her meal, thinking to herself, "Serves you right for insulting me like that."

Even the aloof and handsome Shen Kang couldn't hold back anymore. He sighed, had no choice but to continue eating.

Seeing that the boy looked quite depressed, Zhou Man felt even more cheerful. After finishing her meal, she didn't wait until tomorrow and immediately urged Shen Kang to take her to the location where the snakeskin bag was "hidden"—Shen Kang's bedroom—to get a few packets of beef jerky.

Afterwards, he pulled He Qiuzhu to watch TV with her in the living room. Of course, the most important thing was to open the beef jerky and eat it in front of Shen Kang.

After taking only a couple of bites, Zhou Man asked, "Are your employees from western Sichuan?"

Shen Kang was having tea with Xiao Bonian in the open-plan study, which was connected to the living room, so he casually replied, "Mm."

Zhou Man didn't even turn her head, she just said, "I knew it, the taste is pretty right, pretty authentic."

If it doesn't taste right, something's definitely wrong.

Shen Kang grumbled inwardly, but didn't care about anything else. After finishing the tea in his cup, he couldn't wait to invite Xiao Bonian to a duel—the kind from "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils".

Please bookmark the only official website for this novel: ".". This is the only website the site owner uses; other websites may stop updating at any time.

For the past few months, he had been utterly frustrated by Xiao Bonian's script, always unable to win. The only time he won was when Xiao Bonian forgot to turn on the script.

Now that we're offline, we can finally keep an eye on Xiao Bonian and make sure he doesn't use any scripts, so we can have a fair and square battle between men.

Of course, just in case he might lose, Shen Kang directly asked to go to Xiao Bonian's room so the two of them could fight behind closed doors.

Xiao Bonian smiled and agreed.

……

This was the first time Shen Kang had entered Xiao Bonian's bedroom.

Upon entering, you are greeted by a faint aroma of tea, mixed with the scent of paper and a hint of wooden furniture.

The bed was neatly made with a dark gray quilt cover. Two pillows were placed side by side, and on the bedside table were only a spare pair of glasses and an open book on statistical natural language processing, with a pencil on top.

A long table stood by the window, with a desktop computer on it. All the cables were tucked under the table, none of them draped over the surface. Next to the monitor was a black mechanical keyboard, the gaps between the keys spotless.

Beyond that was a bookshelf, stretching from floor to ceiling, with the spines of the books facing outwards, arranged perfectly at different heights.

Shen Kang glanced at it briefly and saw that most of the papers were related to computer science, mathematics, and linguistics, with a few floors containing history, philosophy, and some old, yellowed literary publications.

The walls were almost bare, except for a whiteboard next to the bookshelf with a few sticky notes with formulas and two lines of English text. An arrow in the corner pointed to the sentence: "Get it running first, then talk about optimization."

The only slightly messy item on the table was a clear glass, half-filled with cold water. The glass was spotless, without a single fingerprint.

Shen Kang took two steps inside and found a pair of dark blue indoor slippers placed by the bed, straight with the toes pointing outwards, as if they were ready to be put on at any time.

On the other side of the corner, there was a black tennis bag, zipped up all the way, with the handle facing upwards.

The room was quiet, restrained, and rational, like a scholar's study that had been temporarily borrowed. There were no superfluous decorations, and nothing that revealed any emotional fluctuation.

"Please sit down."

Xiao Bonian pulled another chair in from outside and placed it next to the long table and the desktop computer.

After looking around, Shen Kang turned his attention back to the desktop computer.

"Professor Xiao, did you bring your home computer with you?"

He had been to Xiao Bonian's own "home" and had been inside Xiao Bonian's study. The computer there was exactly the same as the one in front of him... Oh, no, that's not right.

"It doesn't seem to be that one?" Shen Kang contradicted himself before he could finish his thought. "They changed it?"

"Um."

Xiao Bonian didn't sit still. After moving a chair over for Shen Kang, he poured two glasses of water and placed them on the long table. "I got another set."

Shen Kang nodded, feeling that this was very much in line with Xiao Bonian's personality—cautious. He guessed that Xiao Bonian was prepared to go back and deal with any problems that might occur over there. In that case, the absence of a computer would be a suspicious flaw, so he had provided an additional computer.

Then, Shen Kang said calmly, "Then I'll use your computer."

Even if Xiao Bonian has a script, it's on this computer, while my own computer doesn't. If I use Xiao Bonian's computer and let Xiao Bonian use my own, then I can prevent Xiao Bonian from cheating without even having to say anything—perfect.

Xiao Bonian had no objection and agreed.

The two sat down, turned on their computers, logged into their respective accounts, and then went to the training ground to start their PK battle.

Twenty minutes later

"I'm not playing anymore."

Shen Kang pushed the mouse away in frustration.

Losing seven games in a row, what's the point?

Professor Xiao doesn't seem to have any cheat codes, but I just keep losing.

He was puzzled. The PK in "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils" didn't require much skill. His equipment and stones were similar to Professor Xiao's, so why could he always lose to Xiao Bonian?

Xiao Bonian sat to the side, sipping a glass of water, watching him, wondering if he had taken it too seriously. Should he play another round, deliberately letting him win a couple more? ...

As Xiao Bonian was pondering this, Shen Kang, having put aside his frustration, looked at Xiao Bonian with bright eyes and asked, "Professor Xiao, why can't I beat you? Can you explain?"

Xiao Bonian was taken aback, then sighed inwardly: Not dwelling on failure, but immediately breaking free from the constraints of human genes after setbacks based on inherent human genes, seeking the reasons immediately, then correcting and improving, and finally defeating the opponent—that's Shen Kang for you.

He then spoke frankly, explaining why he had been winning all along, thus clearing up Shen Kang's doubts.

"You lost not because of your strategy or speed, but because of the server."

"Lost to the server?"

Shen Kang was puzzled, as he didn't quite understand.

"Professor Xiao, can we speak like human beings?"

Xiao Bonian smiled, turned his chair around to face Shen Kang, and explained in more detail: "Every time you press a skill, the client first needs to determine your status, target, and cooldown locally before sending the request to the server. The server then makes another determination and returns the result. There is a delay in this process. If you press too quickly, the command is piling up in the buffer while the client is still processing the previous skill animation. There is a window between your operation command and the actual time it takes effect."

"During this window of opportunity, your character will reveal some information in advance. For example, if your next skill is a dash, the client's path prediction will shift slightly. If you're using a crowd control skill, your character will have a very short animation of raising their hand. You might not see it yourself, or you might see it but not notice it."

"But I saw it."

"..."

Shen Kang seemed to understand. "So, Professor Xiao, you predict based on movements?"

Xiao Bonian nodded, then shook his head: "Strictly speaking, it's not prediction, but observation of your client performing 'predictive execution'."

"To be fast, it will guess what you're going to do in advance and load some resources before you actually press the skill button. I only need to watch those pre-loaded traces to know what you're going to press next."

Shen Kang was stunned: "This game has this kind of mechanism?"

"All complex clients are available."

Xiao Bonian also gave some other examples: "It's not just games; operating systems, browsers, and even the CPU itself all work this way. To be faster, they calculate in advance. This is called predictive execution, or PculaTV CRN in English."

Shen Kang was skeptical. "Wow, that sounds so mystical! The CPU knows what I'm going to do next? It sounds like fortune telling."

He even wanted to praise the fool.

Xiao Bonian smiled and said, "You find it mysterious because you've only seen the game. But in computer architecture, this has long been proven. Inside the CPU, there's something called a branch predictor. When it encounters instructions like conditional statements, loops, or jumps, it doesn't wait for the conditions to be calculated before deciding which path to take. Instead, it guesses one path to execute. If it guesses correctly, it saves time; if it guesses incorrectly, it discards the result and starts over. That's predictive execution."

Shen Kang nodded: "I understand. If you guess right, you win time; if you guess wrong, you work for nothing."

"Yes. Guessing is better than not guessing. It's like simultaneous interpreting. When interpreters hear the first few words, they're already predicting the sentence structure in their minds, and they might even start moving their mouths. Most of the time, the predictions are correct, and the translation can keep up with the pace. Occasionally, if the prediction is wrong, they can stop and correct it. But it's still much faster than waiting for the original words to finish before translating."

Xiao Bonian seemed to have gotten into the conversation, and after finishing this example, he added, "But you know what? Intel did consider another path back then."

"What road?"

"Abandon the execution of predictions."

Xiao Bonian said, "Intel and HP worked together on an architecture called Itanium. Their idea at the time was very radical: since prediction can be wrong, and there are costs associated with being wrong, why not just not let the hardware guess? Let the compiler handle instruction scheduling and parallel decision-making. The compiler pre-orders the instructions, and the CPU just needs to execute them accordingly. There is no need for prediction or complex out-of-order execution."

Shen Kang listened intently: "That sounds very reasonable."

Xiao Bonian nodded: "Theoretically, it's wonderful. But Ando ultimately failed, and failed miserably."

Why?

"Because compilers can't be that smart. Most of the information a program needs at runtime is something the compiler can't predict at all, such as what the user inputs, what the network returns, or which memory address will be accessed. These things are only known at runtime."

"While hardware prediction carries the risk of misjudging, it is usually fast and accurate. Itanium placed all its bets on the compiler, but in many real-world scenarios, instruction parallelism simply couldn't be achieved, resulting in poor performance and compatibility. Ultimately, it was outmatched by AM and Intel's own 86 architecture."

Shen Kang said thoughtfully, "So, although predicting and executing might lead to mistakes, it's still better than not predicting at all."

Xiao Bonian said, "That's right. Predictive execution is about exchanging the 'cost of possibly guessing wrong' for the 'reward of guessing right with a high probability'. Judging from the final winning results in the industry, this is the right path."

"Is that so..."

Shen Kang nodded slowly, seemingly lost in thought, then frowned slightly.

Predictive execution: if you guess correctly, you gain valuable time; if you guess incorrectly, you revert to a previous approach...

Why did he feel like he'd heard this kind of thing somewhere before?

And why is my heartbeat gradually getting faster?

He could hear his own heartbeat, not loud, but heavy, one beat after another, like someone knocking on the door deep inside his chest.

It's like standing alone on a desolate plain in the dead of night, when suddenly you hear a terrifying, extremely low, and unheard-of beastly cry coming from afar.