My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 176 The grilled kidneys were really good tonight (mistakenly posted, this is from Chapter 178)

USTC back door.

The early summer evening breeze had lost its last trace of chill, carrying a hint of warmth, mixed with the strong aroma of cumin and the smoky smell of charcoal from the street stalls, and roamed freely throughout the street.

In front of Lao Li's barbecue stall, four yellowed plastic chairs surround a square table with a missing corner.

The tabletop was covered with a layer of grease that hadn't been thoroughly wiped off in who knows how long, and it gleamed faintly under the low-wattage lamp overhead.

Chu Ge sat down imposingly in a seat near the aisle and turned to shout at the owner who was turning over the meat skewers in front of the charcoal stove.

"Boss, ten skewers of kidney, fifty skewers of lamb, and thirty skewers of pork belly, grilled a little charred!"

The shopkeeper paused abruptly while fanning himself with a palm leaf fan, glanced back at the four teenagers at the table who looked like students, and kindly offered a reminder.

"Hey kid, are you sure you can finish all this? Ten skewers of kidneys cost a lot."

"If we can't finish our food, we'll pack it up and feed it to stray cats."

Chu Ge waved his hand.

"Bring over two more cases of chilled drinks, the coldest ones, the kind with frost on the bottles."

Sitting opposite Chu Ge, Wang Dayong gasped as he listened to the way Chu Ge was reciting the menu. He then kicked Chu Ge under the table.

"Chu Ge, are you crazy? It's not a holiday, what's wrong with you?"

Wang Dayong lowered his voice.

"Your meal must have cost you over a hundred, almost two hundred. Are you trying to kill yourself? I only have a ten-yuan note and a few coins left."

Hearing this, Lu Jia, who was standing next to him, also looked up, pushed up his black-rimmed glasses, and echoed him earnestly.

"Based on our average Engel coefficient over the past three months, this meal was clearly beyond the budget limit for both of our dorm rooms."

Chen Zhuo sat in the innermost seat against the wall.

Instead of joining Wang Dayong and Lu Jia in denouncing Chu Ge, he took four pairs of disposable chopsticks from the plastic chopstick holder on the table, slowly rubbed them together to remove the splinters, and then distributed them to the other three people.

After doing all this, Chen Zhuo finally raised his eyelids, looked at Chu Ge opposite him, whose face was full of barely suppressed excitement, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

"Let him order."

Chen Zhuo's voice was gentle, with a certain certainty that came as a matter of course.

"Boss Chu probably made a big profit today, and he's been holding back this meal for a while. If we don't let him treat, he'll have trouble sleeping tonight."

Chu Ge slapped his thigh suddenly, pointed at Chen Zhuo, and laughed so hard that his eyes disappeared.

"Brother Zhuo really understands me!"

Chu Ge didn't rush to explain. Instead, he mysteriously reached into his jeans pocket, fumbled around for a while, and pulled out a crumpled bank ATM receipt.

He spread the receipt flat on the greasy table, pressed the edge with two fingers, and slowly pushed it to the middle of the table.

"Take a look at them all."

Chu Ge raised his chin, suppressing the urge to roar to the sky, and said calmly.

"Just printed from the South Gate branch of China Construction Bank."

Wang Dayong approached suspiciously.

The lights from the streetlights and the food stalls mingled on the receipt, where the ink was still somewhat faint.

Wang Dayong squinted, tapping the number column on the receipt with his finger.

"Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands... hundreds of thousands?"

Wang Dayong's voice cracked.

He suddenly raised his head, his eyes wide like copper bells, staring intently at Chu Ge, even holding his breath for two seconds.

Lu Jia moved much faster than Wang Dayong.

He grabbed the receipt, pushed up his glasses, and quickly scanned the account number, date, and balance.

After confirming that everything was correct, he looked up, his eyes showing a bewilderment for the first time that mathematical formulas could not explain.

"You... robbed a bank?"

Lu Jia asked very seriously.

"Rob your grandpa's bank."

Chu Ge snatched the receipt back, carefully folded it, stuffed it back into his pocket, and patted it twice.

Just then, the boss carried over a case of chilly drinks and casually placed a screwdriver on the table.

Chu Ge didn't use a screwdriver.

He grabbed a bottle of drink, jammed the cap on the edge of the table, and slammed his hand down.

With a soft bang, the bottle cap flew off, and white foam oozed out from the bottle opening.

He opened three bottles and pushed them in front of Wang Dayong and Lu Jia respectively, keeping one for himself. Then, he turned around and shouted at the boss.

"Boss, another can of Jianlibao! Iced!"

A short while later, a can of soda with water droplets was placed in front of Chen Zhuo.

"The initial testing in the capital has concluded."

Chu Ge raised the bottle, his eyes gleaming with a light rarely seen in his eyes—the pride of having made a sound in the real world with his own hands.

"Last night, Wang Xing's team incorporated the underlying architecture that I rewrote."

Chu Ge turned to look at Chen Zhuo after saying this.

"Brother Zhuo, the idea of ​​sparse matrix and vector multiplication that you gave me was like a godsend. Last night, we simulated ten times the extreme concurrent traffic in Beijing, and the server ran smoother than the hot water coming out of our dormitory."

Wang Dayong was stunned.

"So, this 100,000 is..."

'

"Final payment, plus dividends, plus buyout."

Chu Ge took a big gulp, the icy liquid rolling down his throat, making him shiver.

"They got anxious, afraid I would sell this framework to someone else, so this afternoon they transferred the money over with interest."

The table was silent for a few seconds.

In an era when the average living expense is only a few hundred yuan, 100,000 yuan is a huge sum of money that can change many things for a college student who has not yet graduated.

Wang Dayong swallowed hard and reached out to grab the drink in front of him.

Lu Jia also silently picked up her drink.

"Second brother, awesome."

Wang Dayong struggled for a long time, but only managed to utter this one sentence.

"Come on, let's have one!"

Chu Ge held up the bottle.

Three green glass bottles and one orange soda can gently bumped together in mid-air.

Chen Zhuo took a sip of Jianlibao, put down the can, and looked at Chu Ge.

Keep your money safe and don't spend it recklessly.

Chen Zhuo whispered a word of advice, like a worried old mother.

Chu Ge chuckled twice and casually tore off a napkin to wipe his mouth.

He moved closer to Chen Zhuo, lowering his voice slightly, with a hint of probing.

"Brother Zhuo, I have something to tell you."

Chen Zhuo picked up a peanut and threw it into his mouth without looking at him.

"you say."

"Wang Xing spoke with me on the phone for half an hour this afternoon."

Chu Ge looked at Chen Zhuo's profile.

"He's not stupid. The moment he saw that algorithm, he knew it was something someone of my level couldn't have come up with out of thin air. The underlying algebraic logic was too high-dimensional; it completely overwhelmed their existing engineers."

Chen Zhuo chewed on peanuts, not replying, his eyes fixed on the flickering sparks on the charcoal stove.

"He kept trying to get information out of me, trying to find out if I had a mentor guiding me."

Chu Ge swallowed hard.

"Wang Xing's original words were that if this expert was willing, he could fly to Huizhou at any time to meet him. Even if he didn't join their company, he could be a nominal technical consultant. He could ask for whatever salary he wanted, and the shares could also be discussed."

Chu Ge's eyes lit up as he spoke.

Although Wang Xing is still in the startup phase, Chu Ge can sense his ambition and resources in Beijing's social circles.

This is an extremely rare opportunity to step into the online poker table.

Wang Dayong and Lu Jia also stopped what they were doing and looked at Chen Zhuo in unison.

Chen Zhuo swallowed the peanut in his mouth and wiped his hands with a tissue.

He didn't show the shock a child would have upon hearing about a lot of money, nor did he deliberately feign a detached, worldly-wise air.

Chen Zhuo simply smiled gently, his eyes even carrying a faint hint of nonchalant indifference, as if watching a spectacle unfold.

"Did you tell him who I am?" Chen Zhuo asked.

"No, I'm tight-lipped. I haven't even revealed your last name without your permission."

Chu Ge quickly shook his head.

"That's fine then."

Chen Zhuo nodded, reached out and took the Jianlibao, then took another sip.

"Don't mention it again."

"6

Chu Ge was stunned.

"No, Brother Zhuo, you really won't see him?"

Chu Ge became anxious.

"That's Wang Xing! Who knows how big his business might become in the future? Even if you just give them a few pointers and get some initial shares, you could still..."

'

"It's too far."

Chen Zhuo interrupted Chu Ge, his tone nonchalant.

"What do you mean it's too far? It's only a two-hour flight from Beijing to Huizhou..."

'

"I mean, we can't connect, we're too far apart."

Chen Zhuo crossed his hands on his knees, leaned back slightly, and looked at the three puzzled people opposite him.

He began to speak slowly and deliberately.

"What is Wang Xing concerned about? Daily active users, concurrent traffic, how to seize market share, and how to close the loop of business logic."

Chen Zhuo smiled.

"But I care about these things."

Chen Zhuo pointed to the dim yellow incandescent light above his head.

"What I'm concerned about is whether the singularity of the continuous field on the blackboard in Professor Li's office can be eliminated, and whether the Jacobian determinant will cause space distortion after the homology group is mapped to the discrete topological space."

Chen Zhuo shrugged.

"Why would I go see him? He wouldn't understand what I'm saying, and I can't be bothered with how he makes money. It's a waste of our time, no need."

Chu Ge opened his mouth, wanting to refute, but found that he couldn't find a single word to refute.

A string of code he throws out can create a storm in the business world, but he himself doesn't even have the interest to glance at that world.

"Alright."

Chu Ge sighed, picked up the bottle, and took a swig.

"I really don't understand your level of understanding, but then again, it's like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut with a brain like yours to work on the internet."

As soon as he finished speaking, the boss walked over carrying a huge iron plate.

"The kidneys are here! Be careful, the lamb skewers are hot!"

The sizzling, oily grilled kidneys were served, and the rich aroma of cumin and chili powder instantly captivated everyone's sense of smell.

Wang Dayong was the first to move.

Without any hesitation, he grabbed two skewers of mutton, ate more than half of it in one bite, and chewed it with his cheeks bulging.

"tasty!"

Wang Dayong shouted indistinctly.

"Chu Ge, stop thinking about useless things and hurry up and eat. These kidneys are grilled to perfection."

The atmosphere instantly returned to that pure, bustling, everyday life.

Chu Ge also let go of his worries, grabbed a skewer of kidneys and took a big bite.

Chen Zhuo took a skewer of grilled pork belly and ate it slowly. The pork belly was grilled until crispy, and the fat had been dried out, leaving only a charred aroma.

"Hey, Lu Jia."

Chu Ge chewed on some meat and nudged Lu Jia, who hadn't said much, with his elbow.

"Don't just focus on eating! So, senior, how's your progress going?"

Upon hearing this, even Wang Dayong, who was busy devouring lamb skewers, stopped what he was doing and perked up his ears.

Lu Jia paused for a moment while chewing.

He pushed up his glasses, his expression slightly unnatural, but he still tried to remain calm.

"The progress is very stable and in line with logical expectations," Lu Jia said.

Stop talking nonsense.

Chu Ge put down the bamboo stick.

"What does 'stable' mean? How far have you progressed in your conversations? Have you gone out to dinner yet?"

"The invitation to dinner is still under evaluation."

Lu Jia said in a very serious tone.

"Our current communication mainly focuses on information exchange and the clash of ideas."

Chen Zhuo raised an eyebrow and put down the pork belly skewer in his hand.

Speak like a human.

Chen Zhuo casually added insult to injury.

Lu Jia pursed her lips, hesitated for a moment, and then took out a small notebook from her pocket.

"In order to review and analyze the semantic feedback from my senior, I hand-copied down our key conversations on QQ, along with the precise timestamps, as raw data records. Our current communication mainly focuses on information exchange and the clash of viewpoints."

Chu Ge and Wang Dayong were stunned on the spot.

"You actually copied your entire QQ chat history into your math workbook just to find someone to date???"

Chu Ge stared wide-eyed at Lu Jia as if he were looking at an alien.

Lu Jia hesitated for a moment, but still pushed the small notebook filled with dense writing over.

"You can see for yourselves. Personally, I think our exchange was very insightful."

Chu Ge snatched the notebook from him, and Wang Dayong also leaned in to look.

Chen Zhuo didn't move. He remained seated, drinking Jianlibao through a straw, waiting to hear Lu Jia's love story.

Chu Ge cleared his throat and began reading the notes in his notebook.

"At 9:30 last night, my senior sent me a message: 'The weather is so muggy today. It feels like it's going to rain tomorrow. I don't even feel like going to the library.'"

After Chu Ge finished reading this sentence, he looked up and glanced at Lu Jia.

"That opening line is perfectly normal, so what was your response?"

Chu Ge lowered his head and continued reading Lu Jia's reply data.

Lu Jia replied: "Based on the recent movement trajectory of the subtropical high pressure released by the China Meteorological Administration, and combined with the precipitation probability distribution in May of previous years, we can build a weather prediction model based on Markov chains. I just ran it on my dorm computer, and the probability of rain tomorrow is 87.5%. The attachment is the derivation process I have compiled. Since it is inconvenient to display formulas in the QQ chat box, I have packaged it and sent it to your QQ email."

After Chu Ge finished reading these words, the entire food stall seemed to fall silent for a second.

Wang Dayong almost spat out the mutton he was eating.

What are you thinking?

Chu Ge looked at Lu Jia in disbelief.

"Someone complains to you about the stuffy weather, and you send them a Markov chain??"

Lu Jia frowned and retorted confidently.

"What's wrong with that? She asked a question, and I answered it in the most rigorous way. That's a responsible way of communicating."

Chen Zhuo, sitting opposite him, couldn't help but chuckle softly.

He shook his head and looked at Lu Jia.

"Third brother, if you really can't find a topic, you can teach her calculus. Markov chains are too powerful for girls who are not math majors."

Chen Zhuo said with a hint of teasing.

Did your senior reply to you later?

Wang Dayong asked eagerly.

Chu Ge glanced down at the records in the notebook, his expression becoming quite interesting.

"Reply, two hours and four minutes later. By the way, you even wrote down the time?"

Chu Ge thought.

The senior student replied: Oh. Thank you. You know so much.

"Look."

Lu Jia's eyes lit up.

"She praised me for knowing a lot, which means she acknowledges my logical analysis skills."

Chu Ge covered his face in despair.

Wang Dayong sighed and patted Lu Jia on the shoulder.

"Lu Jia, in my hometown, this is called killing the conversation. People say 'oh,' which means 'I don't want to waste my breath on you anymore.'"

Chen Zhuo looked at Lu Jia's stubborn expression, still seemingly confused, and sighed softly.

"It's actually very simple."

Chen Zhuo placed the empty bamboo skewers on the edge of the table and aligned them.

"When she complains about the weather and doesn't want to go to the library, her real concern isn't whether it will rain tomorrow."

Lu Jia humbly sought advice.

"So what is the core demand?"

"Emotional resonance."

Chen Zhuo leaned back in his chair, watching the blue smoke rising from the charcoal stove.

"You just need to reply with: 'It's quite stuffy. I brought an umbrella. If it rains tomorrow, I'll wait for you at the entrance of the second teaching building after class, and we can go eat sweet and sour pork ribs in the cafeteria together.'"

Chen Zhuo paused after speaking.

"Or, to put it more simply, if she doesn't have an umbrella, you go and give it to her; if she does have an umbrella..."

'

Chen Zhuo smiled slightly.

Just say you didn't bring it.

Chu Ge listened with his eyes wide open.

He turned his head and looked at Chen Zhuo as if he were a monster.

"No, Brother Zhuo."

Chu Ge swallowed hard.

"You're only 12, where do you get all these tricks up your sleeve? Your emotional intelligence is a complete waste in our two dorms!"

Chen Zhuo glanced at Chu Ge indifferently.

"This isn't a routine; it's the optimal solution for behavioral logic."

Chen Zhuo picked up a skewer of freshly grilled meat.

"Furthermore, stop bringing up age. In terms of mental maturity, the three of you combined might need to take two of my elective courses."

Chu Ge was speechless, so he could only pick up the bottle and bump it against the table.

Wang Dayong, who hadn't said much, was now staring intently at the iron skewer for roasting mutton in his hand.

He examined the skewers from all angles, then looked at the charcoal grill that was sparking.

"When Lao Si mentioned the optimal solution, something suddenly occurred to me."

Wang Dayong pointed to the iron skewer in his hand.

"This thing has a very high thermal conductivity. Look at this piece of meat, the outside is already burnt and bitter, but the inside is just cooked through."

Chu Ge rolled his eyes.

"Dayong, it's just a meal, can you stop having these professional habits?"

"No, I'm serious."

Wang Dayong perked up.

"This is the same precision problem I encountered with the base in the underground processing workshop. It's due to thermal expansion and contraction, resulting in uneven heat conduction. If the barbecue skewers could use an aluminum rod as the inner core, with a thin steel tube on the outside, the aluminum would be responsible for rapid and even heat conduction, while the steel would be responsible for the strength of the contact surface. The meat would definitely be crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, with the heat evenly distributed to every cell!"

Wang Dayong became more and more excited as he spoke, and even used chopsticks to draw a cross-sectional diagram of the nested pipes on the table.

"If the boss takes your advice, he'll probably call the police."

Chen Zhuo looked at the structural diagram drawn with oil stains on the table and added insult to injury at the opportune moment.

"We're not going to charge any costs at all. If you keep doing this, the boss will have to close down next month."

Wang Dayong's grand plan was instantly extinguished by Chen Zhuo's cold water.

He scratched his head, realizing that Chen Zhuo's words made sense. He could only channel his grief and anger into his appetite, grabbing two more skewers of meat and starting to devour them.

Night fell.

The noise on the food stall street did not diminish; on the contrary, it became even more boisterous as wave after wave of students arrived after their evening self-study sessions.

The grilled meat on the table was gradually reduced to almost nothing.

The two cases of drinks were reduced to just a few empty bottles, which lay scattered on the ground.

Chu Ge drank the most, and by now he was slurring his words.

He leaned back in the plastic chair, tilted his head back, and looked at the night sky. In the summer nights of Huizhou, you could see a few stars if you were lucky.

"Cool...

""

Chugo let out a long burp.

He didn't know whether he was talking about how great the barbecue was, or how great the confidence that the 100,000 yuan gave him was.

Lu Jia was still fiddling with his small notebook, seemingly pondering the deeper logic behind Chen Zhuo's earlier lesson about not having an umbrella. He was muttering to himself, calculating some new probability.

Wang Dayong let out a loud burp, patted his round belly, and looked completely satisfied.

Chen Zhuo had already finished his Jianlibao.

He sat quietly in this greasy corner, listening to a few boys arguing loudly about equipment in the game not far away, watching the stall owner skillfully flipping meat skewers over the charcoal fire, and watching sparks fly in the night as the fan was waved.

The aroma of fireworks rises.

For the past two weeks, I've been constantly pulled and stretched by the resonance groups, fiber bundles, and continuous domain singularities in office 402. But at this moment, this barbecue and the idle chatter of my roommates have completely soothed my tense nerves.

He really liked this feeling.

In the academic world, there are only cold right and wrong and absolute truth, but the real world is made up of burnt lamb skewers, wrong text messages, and the ecstasy of 100,000 yuan.

This is what real, living humanity looks like.

"Boss, the bill!"

Chu Ge roared and stood up unsteadily.

The boss ran over with a calculator covered in grease and started clicking away.

"That's 162 in total, just give me 160."

Chu Ge pulled two crisp 100-yuan bills from his pocket and slammed them on the table with an air of arrogance.

"Keep the change! The rest can be paid for next time!"

This domineering move left Wang Dayong, who was standing next to him, speechless.

"Let's go back to the dorm."

Chu Ge waved his hand.

Wang Dayong quickly stepped forward to support Chu Ge's arm, preventing him from falling headfirst into the nearby green belt.

The four of them left the food stall street and, following the dim streetlights, entered the campus of the University of Science and Technology of China.

The summer night breeze rustled through the sycamore trees on campus.

Chu Ge was half-hanging on Wang Dayong, muttering something about a database and a vocabulary list. Lu Jia was beside him, occasionally pushing up his glasses, his eyes never leaving the notebook in his hands.

Chen Zhuo walked at the very back.

He walked slowly, his hands in his pockets, his shadow stretched long by the streetlights.

As Chen Zhuo walked past the Faculty of Science building, he subconsciously looked up and glanced in the direction of the Mathematics Building.

The office lights are off.

Judging by the timeline, that email sent to the Princeton Journal of Mathematics should already be in the editor-in-chief's inbox by now.

Chen Zhuo withdrew his gaze, looked at his three roommates walking ahead, and a slight smile appeared on his lips.

The grilled kidneys tonight were really good.

"Chu Ge, don't run into the tree!"

A desperate roar came from ahead.

"That tree... its movement is too unpredictable..."

""

Chu Ge gave a vague retort.