My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 180 Different Tracks

In June, Huizhou is so hot and humid that it feels like a giant, uncovered steamer.

The wind was blowing in from outside the balcony, but it wasn't cool at all; it only carried the smell of the sun-baked plastic track from the playground.

The doors to dorm rooms 215 and 216 were wide open, in order to let in some cross breeze.

In dormitory 216 across the hall, Chu Ge, shirtless with a towel draped around his neck, was frantically typing away at the computer. The keyboard clattered loudly as he pounded away, and the code on the screen scrolled down like a waterfall.

His forehead was covered in sweat, which streamed down his cheeks and was about to get into his eyes when he suddenly freed one hand and grabbed a towel to wipe it off haphazardly.

In dormitory 215, just across the corridor.

Chen Zhuo sat in his chair.

Holding a can of Jianlibao that wasn't quite cold anymore, he didn't act as if he were facing a formidable enemy as Chu Ge did. Instead, he relaxed and leaned back in his chair, looking out the window at the plane tree that had wilted a bit from the sun.

Wang Dayong, who was sitting on the opposite bed, was holding a lump of metal that he had picked up from some workshop and was slowly polishing it with a piece of sandpaper.

Apart from the sounds of keyboards being typed and sandpaper scraping against metal, no one in the dormitories on either side of the corridor was speaking.

This silence lasted for about ten minutes.

"Smack."

A loud thud of the Enter key came from across the hall.

Chu Ge let out a long sigh, as if he had completed some major project, and slumped back in his chair.

"Done."

Chu Ge muttered something.

He grabbed the thin "Specialization Intention Form for the Junior Class" on the table, put on his slippers, and strolled leisurely through the corridor into dormitory 215.

Lu Jia also followed from across the street.

Holding the hard copybook used for transcribing QQ chat logs and her own assignment form, Lu Jia pulled over an empty chair from Da Yong's desk and sat down, pen in hand, without moving for a long time.

Chu Ge pressed the form in his hand against the corner of Chen Zhuo's table, picked up a ballpoint pen from the table, and without even a second of hesitation, filled in a few words in the first intention column.

Computer Science and Technology.

After finishing writing, he threw the pen on the table and casually picked up the water cup he had brought with him, gulping down more than half a cup of cold boiled water.

Wang Dayong stopped sanding and looked up at him.

"Filled it out?"

"Filled out."

Chu Ge wiped his mouth.

"What's there to hesitate about? I knew what I was going to do from the first day I came to HKUST."

Wang Dayong smiled憨厚ly.

"That's true. You're a big boss with a net worth of 100,000 yuan now. What else would you do if you didn't work with computers?"

Chu Ge waved his hand.

"Dayong, you can say this in your dorm, but don't shout it out outside. What boss or what, it's just the final payment for the underlying infrastructure."

Although Chu Ge said that, he couldn't hide the excitement in his eyes.

He plopped down on the empty ladder next to him, turned around to face the people in the room, and crossed his legs.

"Let me tell you, Wang Xing called me last night. After the underlying layer of our database was running smoothly, their website's concurrency has tripled without crashing. He also wants to invest more in me and have me lead a team to be responsible for the maintenance and upgrades of the backend."

Chu Ge sighed as he finished speaking and pointed to the overheated computer case on his desk across the hall.

"But the few old computers I have right now don't have enough computing power. They're okay for running small datasets, but if I were to do a large-scale distributed architecture, these crappy cases would burn out in no time."

Chu Ge pointed to the form he had just filled out.

"So, I have to go to the computer science department."

Chu Ge grinned.

"The Computer Science department has the best server room in the whole university. It's all air-conditioned, temperature-controlled rooms, and there are several newly acquired mainframes. If I get into the Computer Science department, with my skills, it's a sure thing that I'll get a job as an administrator or project assistant in the server room. At that time..."

Chu Ge lowered his voice, as if he were talking about some business secret.

"At that time, I'll secretly do some of my own side jobs in the middle of the night and use some of the school's computing power to support my database. That's called making good use of idle resources."

Wang Dayong was stunned.

"Aren't you...you're taking advantage of the school?"

"Can something done by scholars be considered taking advantage?"

Chu Ge spoke with righteous indignation.

"This is called industry-academia-research collaboration."

Chen Zhuo sat by the window, quietly listening to Chu Ge's eloquent speech.

He took a sip of Jianlibao, and the warm, sweet taste spread in his mouth.

Chen Zhuo turned his head and looked at Chu Ge.

He made no moral judgment on Chu Ge's extremely worldly, even somewhat mercenary, logic.

On the contrary, he admired this frankness of knowing clearly what one wants and pursuing it without any pretense.

Chen Zhuo tapped the edge of the can lightly twice with his fingers.

He looked at Chu Ge, and a faint smile slowly curved his lips.

"fine."

Chen Zhuo's voice was calm and gentle, with a touch of casualness.

Hearing Chen Zhuo's affirmation, Chu Ge became even more energized.

"Right, Brother Zhuo? You also think my plan is flawless, right?"

Chen Zhuo nodded.

"The plan is good."

Chen Zhuo straightened up slightly, placed one hand on the armrest of the chair, and a hint of cunning flashed in his eyes.

"However, Boss Chu."

Chen Zhuo deliberately emphasized the word "boss".

Chu Ge's face stiffened, and he quickly waved his hand.

"No, no, no, Brother Zhuo, I get chills down my spine whenever you call me boss. Just tell me what you need."

Chen Zhuo chuckled softly.

"Nothing much, just wanted to remind you of something."

Chen Zhuo pointed to Chu Ge's computer screen across the hall.

"That incredibly fast database you're using now, the underlying sparse matrix algorithm for dimensionality reduction, if I remember correctly, I just jotted it down for you on a scrap of paper one night last month, right?"

Chu Ge was stunned.

He blinked, looked at Chen Zhuo, and swallowed hard.

Chen Zhuo leaned back in his chair, looked at Chu Ge with an innocent expression, but his words were anything but ambiguous.

"I don't care if you grow your business and take advantage of the school in the computer lab, but since you're using my matrix, shouldn't you leave me a backdoor too?"

Chen Zhuo shrugged, his tone carrying a hint of self-righteous cunning.

"I occasionally need to run some data, so can you share some of your computing power with me? Also, I won't charge you for the underlying architecture license fee. Charging a little rent isn't unreasonable, is it? Like... how about treating the dorm to some barbecue from Lao Li's place once in a while?"

The dormitory was silent for two seconds.

Then, Wang Dayong couldn't help but burst out laughing.

Chu Ge let out a long breath and reached up to wipe his face.

"Depend on."

Chu Ge glared at Chen Zhuo.

"Brother Zhuo, you scared me to death! I thought you were going to ask me to do something big."

Chu Ge patted his chest.

"No problem! Forget about leaving a backdoor, I'll just give you a super administrator account with the highest privileges. Barbecue is nothing, from now on, Chu Ge will cover all the late-night snacks in our dorm!"

Chen Zhuo smiled and raised the can in his hand, signifying the deal.

Chen Zhuo turned his head and looked at Wang Dayong.

Wang Dayong was still sitting on the stool.

The metal lump in his hand had been polished by sandpaper until it shone, revealing its original texture.

In front of him was also the expression of interest form.

The table is still blank.

"Dayong, what about you?" Chen Zhuo asked.

Wang Dayong stopped what he was doing.

He tossed the metal in his hand a couple of times, feeling its heavy weight.

He raised his head, looked at Chen Zhuo, and then at Chu Ge.

Wang Dayong's expression was somewhat simple and honest, but his eyes were very bright.

"I used to think that mechanics was just about drawing blueprints."

Wang Dayong's voice was soft, and he spoke very slowly, as if he were thinking as he spoke.

"If you draw a circle on a blueprint, a lathe can machine out a circle; if you draw a straight line, a milling machine can cut out a groove. I used to think that as long as the blueprint was accurate enough, there was nothing in the world that couldn't be made."

Wang Dayong lowered his head and looked at the piece of metal in his hand.

"But when I went to the underground workshop last time to work on the base for my senior brother Zhao Peng and the others, I realized that what I was thinking might be wrong."

Chu Ge also leaned over and listened.

"The dimensions drawn on the blueprints are static, but these lumps of iron and copper are dynamic."

Wang Dayong rubbed the edge of the metal with his thumb.

"They have their own temperaments."

"When the machine tool starts and the temperature rises, the steel pipe expands and the aluminum pipe expands. The drawings clearly indicate a tight tolerance, but once it's on the machine, everything changes."

Wang Dayong raised his head, his eyes sparkling with the excitement unique to young people, like discovering a new continent.

"Later, I put the aluminum tube inside the steel tube so that their thermal expansion and contraction would cancel each other out. When I installed it, it fit perfectly, without any gaps."

Wang Dayong rubbed his hands together.

"At that moment, I suddenly realized that I was more interested in the nature of these materials themselves than in drawing those rigid lines on paper."

Wang Dayong grinned.

"A piece of ordinary iron, with some carbon and manganese added, is heated in a furnace and quenched, and its hardness and toughness are completely changed."

Wang Dayong held the metal block in his hand and examined it against the sunlight streaming through the window.

"No matter how precise the machine or how brilliant the blueprints, if the materials underneath are uncooperative and cannot withstand high temperatures or pressure, the finished product will be a waste."

Wang Dayong put down the metal block and picked up the pen on the table.

"I feel particularly at ease when I touch these materials. I can almost feel when they are brittle and when they are tough."

Wang Dayong no longer hesitated.

He wrote each stroke of his form with great effort.

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, specializing in metallic materials.

After finishing writing, Wang Dayong put down his pen, scratched the back of his head, looked at Chen Zhuo and Chu Ge, and smiled a little embarrassedly.

"I'll choose this one."

Chen Zhuo looked at Wang Dayong.

He saw the piece of metal Wang Dayong was holding, the forceful strokes he made when writing, and the purity in his eyes.

Chen Zhuo didn't say anything flattering, nor did he make any hypocritical pleasantries like "the future of the country's heavy industry depends on you."

Chen Zhuo simply sat there and nodded gently.

"It suits you quite well," Chen Zhuo said.

"Metal doesn't lie. If you understand its temperament, it will work for you."

Chen Zhuo held up the soda can and gestured to Wang Dayong across the distance.

"Dayong, if you ever come up with any new high-temperature resistant alloy, remember to save one for me. I happen to need a durable paperweight."

Wang Dayong was stunned for a moment, then burst into a hearty laugh.

"Alright! Little Zhuo, as long as I can refine it, I'll give you the biggest prize!"

The atmosphere in the dormitory became very relaxed.

Everyone has found the path they want to take.

Chu Ge chose computing power and worldly matters, while Da Yong chose metal and steadfastness.

At this moment, Lu Jia, who had been silent until now, moved.

Lu Jia closed the hard copy with a soft click.

He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and turned around.

Lu Jia's expression was very serious, as if he were preparing to give an important academic report.

Chen Zhuo, Chu Ge, and Wang Dayong all turned their attention to Lu Jia.

The form in front of Lu Jia had already been filled out.

Chu Ge, with his sharp eyes, peeked out.

"Applied mathematics?"

Chu Ge read it aloud, then scratched his head in confusion.

"Third brother, haven't you always been interested in number theory and higher-order partial differential equations? How did you switch to applied mathematics?"

Lu Jia did not answer immediately.

He reached out and tapped the notebook where he copied the chat history twice.

Chen Zhuo's words about emotional resonance and the optimal solution of behavioral logic at the food stall a few days ago clearly dealt a devastating blow to Lu Jia's worldview.

But Lu Jia is Lu Jia after all.

The collapse of a genius is often accompanied by another form of frantic reconstruction.

"Partial differential equations are too simple."

Lu Jia spoke up.

His voice was calm, revealing an almost stubborn rationality.

Chu Ge almost choked on his saliva when he heard this.

"Partial differential equations...simple?"

Chu Ge glanced at Chen Zhuo, then at Lu Jia.

"Brother, if those senior students in the math department who failed their final exams heard you say that, they'd throw you off this building."

Lu Jia ignored Chu Ge's interruption.

He adjusted his glasses.

"In the realm of pure numbers, no matter how complex the equation is or how high the dimension is, it has a definite boundary. As long as the conditions are met, even if you spend ten years, you will definitely find a unique solution."

Lu Jia paused for a moment.

His gaze passed over Chu Ge and landed on the empty space outside the window.

"But there is one thing in this world that has no single solution."

Lu Jia lowered her head and looked at the notebook in her hand.

"Human emotions, human choices, human behavior."

Lu Jia spoke a little faster, as if suppressing some kind of fervor.

"I sent her a long string of Markov chain weather forecasting models, and she only replied with 'Oh, thank you, you know so much.'"

Lu Jia raised her head and looked at Chen Zhuo.

"This is completely illogical."

"If we follow the principle of equivalent exchange of information, and I output a high density of effective information, she should respond with an equal density of logical discussion."

But she didn't.

"Her feedback was fragmented and illogical."

Lu Jia took a deep breath.

"I used to think that human emotions were unpredictable variables, but that night when we were having barbecue, Chen Zhuo said something."

Lu Jia stared at Chen Zhuo.

"The optimal solution for behavioral logic".

Lu Jia repeated those words.

"This shows that even seemingly chaotic emotions and social behaviors still have a hidden logic at the bottom."

Lu Jia stood up.

He took a few steps in the dormitory.

"Human society is like a huge, disordered topological network, where each person is a node, and every conversation and every choice is a state transition."

"Since it's a network, and since there are state transitions, it must be able to be described using a mathematical model!"

Lu Jia turned around and pointed to the forms on the table.

"I added a note after 'applied mathematics'."

"I want to choose an intersection that leans towards game theory and behavioral models."

Lu Jia's eyes gleamed with an almost mad scientist-like obsession.

"I want to study the most complex variable in the world—human beings."

I believe that as long as enough parameters are introduced and the correct stochastic differential equations are established, even if it's a girl's thoughts or the most complex game theory in human society, I can calculate the absolute expected value.

Chu Ge's mouth was open, and he couldn't close it for a long time.

Wang Dayong looked completely bewildered, clearly not understanding the necessary connection between Markov chains and girls' thoughts.

Chen Zhuo sat by the window.

He looked at Lu Jia, who seemed to be facing a formidable enemy, preparing to use mathematics to fight against the emotions of all humanity.

Chen Zhuo couldn't help but laugh.

His shoulders were trembling slightly from laughing.

He did not laugh at Lu Jia.

He just felt that his friends were all incredibly capable.

Chu Ge finally came to his senses.

He glanced at Lu Jia, then at Chen Zhuo.

"Brother Zhuo, you should do something about him."

Chugo said with a hint of despair.

"When this guy goes on a blind date in the future, he will most likely send the girl a Nash equilibrium analysis report."

Chen Zhuo suppressed his smile.

He looked at Lu Jia.

"fine."

Chen Zhuo spoke in a very gentle tone.

"Using mathematics to analyze chaos is a path that no one has ever walked before."

Chen Zhuo stood up, walked to Lu Jia's side, and tapped on the hard copy.

"However, Lu Jia, before you build your model, I suggest that when you chat with that senior, you should just ask her if she eats the sweet and sour pork ribs in the cafeteria. This will save you a lot of computing resources."

Lu Jia carefully considered Chen Zhuo's suggestion.

Then, he nodded solemnly.

"That makes sense. Before the underlying algorithm is perfected, using empirical shortcuts is the most efficient approach."

Chu Ge covered his face in pain.

Wang Dayong also sighed.

Chen Zhuo smiled, turned around and walked back to his desk.

Now, of the four people gathered in 215, three have already made their decisions.

Chugo went to the computer lab.

Da Yong went to collect the materials.

Lu Jia went into the interdisciplinary field of applied mathematics.

The three of them simultaneously turned their gazes to Chen Zhuo's desk.

There was also a "Specialization Intention Form for the Junior Class" there.

The form is still blank; not even a name is written on it.

"Brother Zhuo."

Chu Ge looked at Chen Zhuo.

"And you? Where are you planning to go?"

When this question was raised, the air in the dormitory seemed to freeze for a moment.

Because everyone knows that Chen Zhuo's situation is different from theirs.

They are filling out forms to choose their majors.

Chen Zhuo is different.

"The paper by Professor Li Jianming from the School of Mathematics that you mentioned to us was recently submitted to the *Annals of Mathematics*, so are you planning to go to the mathematics department?"

Lu Jia's tone had a slight lilt at the end.

"Professor Li Jianming has been walking with a brisk pace these past few days. I heard he didn't even fail anyone when he taught large lectures to undergraduates."

Wang Dayong shook his head.

"The School of Mathematics is good, but the School of Physics is unlikely to let him go. Vice Dean Fang didn't sleep for days because of the wind tunnel data. Chen Zhuo helped them modify the underlying matrix, which directly saved the entire key project. Do you think Dean Fang would let Chen Zhuo go and work on pure mathematics?"

Chu Ge nodded in agreement.

"So, Brother Zhuo."

Chu Ge looked at Chen Zhuo.

"The School of Mathematics or the School of Physics, which one are you planning to go to?"

Chen Zhuo pulled out a chair and sat down again.

He glanced at the blank form on the table.

The cicadas outside were still chirping incessantly, and the sunlight slanted across the table, illuminating the white paper.

Chen Zhuo did not answer immediately.

He reached for the pen beside him and twirled it between his fingers twice.

"I haven't decided yet."

Chen Zhuo's tone was very indifferent.

"Haven't decided yet?" Chu Ge paused for a moment. "The form is due tomorrow."