Reborn not to be a beast of burden, I set the rules.

October 9, Wednesday.

The third day after the military training ended was also the first day of classes at Dongda University.

The teaching building was filled with the noise of new students in the early morning.

Ye Ming clutched his English textbook and followed his student ID number to find his seat at the back of the classroom.

The wooden desk showed signs of age. He had just sat down when he glanced at the empty seat beside him out of the corner of his eye.

"Hey! We're deskmates!"

A clear, crisp female voice entered my ears.

Ye Ming turned his head and saw a girl sitting down with her schoolbag in her hand.

She has a classic oval face, bright and intelligent eyes, and her eyes curve into crescent moons when she smiles. She exudes a lively and energetic spirit.

It's her, my old deskmate.

Again.

Ye Ming's heart skipped a beat, but he simply raised his eyes and said calmly, "Hmm."

"My name is Ruan Xing, I'm from Shanghai! And you?" She tilted her head and looked him up and down, showing no sign of unfamiliarity.

"Ye Ming, Shandong Province."

The brief conversation had just ended when the English teacher walked into the classroom with her textbooks and began calling roll.

Ruan Xing immediately shrank back and whispered in his ear, "Let's talk after class!"

He then opened his textbook, a nonchalant smile playing on his lips.

Ye Ming composed himself and focused on the lesson.

After the class, Ruan Xing behaved herself and didn't bother him anymore.

I would only occasionally poke his arm with my pen, point to a word in his textbook, and whisper, "How do you pronounce this?"

Ye Ming answered each question, and she nodded and continued listening to the lesson.

The moment the bell rang, Ruan Xing immediately took out her phone.

"Quick, add me on QQ! We're deskmates after all, it'll be easier to study together in class—if I oversleep, you'll have to wake me up."

Ye Ming gave her the number, watched her type it in quickly with her fingers, and then chased after her to get her phone number before waving away contentedly.

He watched her retreating figure and gently closed his textbook.

I need to find an opportunity to remind her about that matter from her past life.

The afternoon sun shone through the sycamore leaves onto the campus path.

Ye Ming returned to his dormitory, slung his bulging backpack over his shoulder, and headed straight for the computer association's computer lab.

This is his second time trying to get into the Planning Association.

If force doesn't work, then try gentle persuasion.

Anyway, I've worn away all my shame in my past life.

The computer room door was ajar, and sporadic keyboard clicks could be heard coming from inside.

Ye Ming pushed open the door and entered. The boy who had been on duty yesterday immediately looked up, his brows furrowing: "What, it's you again? I already told you we're not recruiting any new members!"

"Chen Rui, who is that?" The girl with the ponytail stood up from her computer; it was Li Yue, the vice president of the Computer Association.

Chen Rui, the male student on duty, curled his lip and said, "It's that liberal arts student from yesterday, coming to join in the fun again."

Li Yue glanced at him, her gaze sweeping over his heavy backpack, and asked calmly, "Classmate, what exactly do you want to do?"

Ye Ming took a deep breath, his tone so sincere it was almost obstinate.

"Senior, I know we're not recruiting new members. I don't want to join; I just want to stay here and read. I promise I won't bother anyone. I can do any chores, like cleaning or moving things."

"I'm from the School of Humanities, and I have zero programming experience, but I really want to learn programming. I can't get through the books in the library, so I want to get into the tech atmosphere and ask a few questions occasionally."

As soon as he finished speaking, the bespectacled boy next to him peeked out. It was Zhang Yuan, a key member of the Planning Association, who was looking at him with great interest.

Li Yue and Zhang Yuan exchanged a glance, and then nodded after a moment.

"Okay, you can sit in the corner. Don't touch the machine. Ask questions when you're free."

"Thank you, senior! Thank you, senior!"

Ye Ming nodded his thanks and walked to a corner to sit down.

It became.

That afternoon, there weren't many people in the computer room.

Besides Li Yue, Zhang Yuan, and the male student on duty, there were only two or three senior students debugging their own code.

Ye Ming quietly flipped through the book, finding the HTML tags and CSS float property difficult to understand, so he looked up and stared at Li Yue's computer screen.

In the Dreamweaver interface, the senior student is using float:left to adjust the module layout, and the lines of code are neatly arranged.

On the other side, Zhang Yuan was debugging a PHP page, and the query statements on the screen were clearly visible.

Ye Ming silently wrote it down in his notebook.

When he got stuck on the knowledge point of "front-end and back-end communication", he hesitated for a long time before finally taking his notebook and walking over to Zhang Yuan, speaking softly.

"Senior, I really don't understand the relationship between AJAX, PHP, and MySQL."

In the notebook, I neatly copied down "The front end sends a request to the back end via AJAX, and the back end returns JSON data", with a big question mark next to it.

Zhang Yuan glanced at the curled-up textbook and suddenly laughed: "You're really going to stick to this?"

"If you have a poor foundation, you can only rely on hard work."

Zhang Yuan didn't say anything more. He pulled up a chair, opened the editor, wrote two lines of code, and patiently explained.

"Look, this is the front-end JavaScript, which uses XMLHttpRequest to send requests. This is the back-end PHP, which connects to the MySQL database through the MySQLi extension, retrieves the data, converts it into JSON, and returns it. The process involves the HTTP protocol."

Two concise lines of code helped Ye Ming sort out the mess in his mind.

He suddenly understood.

"Come back tomorrow, and keep asking if you have any questions." Zhang Yuan patted him on the shoulder.

Ye Ming turned to Li Yue and asked softly, "Senior, can I ask you some questions about front-end development?"

Li Yue didn't turn her head, but the corners of her mouth turned up slightly: "First, understand the basics. If you don't understand HTML or CSS, feel free to ask."

Before leaving, Ye Ming silently emptied the wastepaper basket in the computer room, collected the empty water bottles and threw them into the trash can, then gently closed the door and left.

October 9th, Thursday.

This was Ye Ming's third visit to the Planning Association.

This time, in addition to his schoolbag, he was also carrying a plastic bag containing several kilograms of newly harvested Huijing oranges and a bag of spiced melon seeds.

You can't hit a smiling face, and it's always good to bring something along.

Pushing open the door, the server room was busier than yesterday.

Five or six senior students were gathered around a computer, discussing something, the sounds of keyboards and whispers blending together.

Ye Ming paused at the doorway. Li Yue looked up, saw him, and waved him in: "Come in, there's a seat in the corner."

He placed the bag on the table and said somewhat apologetically, "Seniors, thank you for your help yesterday. Please share this with everyone."

Li Yue chuckled: "You certainly know how to handle things."

Zhang Yuan grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds, cracked them open, and nodded, saying, "The taste is not bad."

Ye Ming didn't say anything more, turned sideways through the crowd, sat back in the corner and continued reading.

I finally mastered the HTTP protocol yesterday, but new problems have arisen on my laptop: calculating the width and height of CSS box models, and the differences between MySQLi and PDO.

He waited quietly, and when the two had some free time, he asked them for their advice one by one.

During the lunch break, people gradually dispersed, leaving only Li Yue, Zhang Yuan, and Ye Ming.

Li Yue peeled an orange and handed it to him: "I bought it myself, don't be shy."

The golden oranges were sweet and refreshing. Ye Ming took one, bent down, and took a bite.

"Oh, right," he suddenly remembered something, "I still haven't seen my advisor from the Computer Science Association?"

Li Yue waved her hand: "Professor Zhang is busy since the semester just started, he probably won't be in the computer lab until next week. But he's in the Computer Science department, so you can go to his office if you need anything urgent."

Ye Ming nodded, understanding the situation.

Friday, January 9th.

This is Ye Ming's fourth time stepping into the Planning Association.

He pushed open the door and was slightly taken aback by what he saw.

There were especially many people today. Seven or eight senior students were either sitting or standing. Some were debugging code, some were talking in hushed tones, and there were even arguments about projects coming from the corners.

He instinctively looked for his corner and found that several books and a laptop were piled up on the empty table.

Seeing that he was stunned, Li Yue looked up and said, "There are a lot of people today, and the corner is taken. Why don't you move a stool and sit here next to Zhang Yuan?"

Ye Ming responded, moved a folding stool from the wall, and sat down next to Zhang Yuan.

As soon as he sat down, Li Yue beckoned to him, "Ye Ming, come here."

He strode forward, and Li Yue stared at him, asking directly, "You've been working so hard to learn this, what exactly do you want to do?"

Ye Ming paused.

To be honest, there's not much to hide.

"I want to create a personal website to host the small games I wrote, and see if it can be successful."

Li Yue and Zhang Yuan exchanged a glance and smiled simultaneously.