Oh no! I've only been a freshman and I've already been targeted by a mean upperclassman.

That silly grin lasted until the next morning.

Li Chen was awakened by Wang Qiang's deafening snoring and Zhao Zixuan's dream-like ramblings about picking up girls.

He opened his eyes. The dormitory was still dimly lit, and the air was filled with an indescribable, complex smell.

He picked up his phone, the screen lit up, and a photo of Yan Xi smiling with her eyes crinkled came into view.

Li Chen's lips curled up uncontrollably once again.

"Sigh, it's hopeless."

He quietly climbed out of bed, washed up, changed into his sportswear, and appeared on the playground on time.

Morning run, breakfast, taking the Queen to class.

He goes through the process smoothly and effortlessly; it has become an instinct ingrained in his bones.

The morning classes proceeded smoothly.

However, by the afternoon, the atmosphere of impending storm began to permeate the air.

The first period in the afternoon was a required course for first-year computer science students: "Computer Organization and Architecture".

The instructor was Professor Liu Jianguo, the leader of the "Four Great Detectives" of the Computer Science Department, nicknamed "Liu the One-Cut".

Professor Liu is over fifty years old, with half-gray hair, wearing an old pair of black-rimmed glasses, and always wearing a faded gray jacket.

He never looks at the textbook when he lectures, and he never talks nonsense. He is known for his extremely tricky final exam questions and his consistently high failure rate, which is the highest in the entire department.

In his class, no one dared to be late, no one dared to sleep, and no one even dared to play on their phone.

Li Chen and his roommates arrived at the lecture hall ten minutes early and found seats in the middle towards the back.

"Damn, something's off about the atmosphere today," Wang Qiang said in a low voice, looking around as he sat down.

"When has the atmosphere in Liu Yidao's class ever been right?" Zhao Zixuan yawned.

"No," Wang Qiang pointed to the front row, "look over there."

Li Chen looked in the direction he was pointing.

In the prime seats at the very front of the lecture hall sat several boys whose demeanor was distinctly different from others.

Unlike other students, they didn't fill their desks with books and computers.

The table was spotless, except for a brand-new MacBook Pro.

The boy in the lead was dressed in expensive trendy clothes, with a Patek Philippe watch on his wrist. He was talking and laughing in hushed tones with the person next to him, looking arrogant.

"Li Hao?"

Zhao Zixuan recognized the man and raised an eyebrow. "Why is he taking this class too?"

"Who is Li Hao?" Li Chen asked.

"A top student in the computer science department, and also the president of the department's programming club."

Chen Mo pushed up his glasses and began his popular science explanation.

"This person has an extremely high IQ. He won a gold medal in the ACM Asia region during his freshman year of college. He comes from a wealthy family. His father is the CEO of a listed technology company in Linjiang."

Simply put,

Chen Mo summarized, "A high-end version of a pretentious academic."

"I heard this guy is arrogant and looks down on everyone," Zhao Zixuan added, "especially those of us who are 'uneducated and incompetent'."

"He usually works on projects in the lab and rarely comes to take these basic courses."

As they were talking, the boy named Li Hao seemed to sense something and turned around.

His gaze precisely swept over dozens of heads and landed on Li Chen.

There was neither curiosity nor hostility in his eyes.

There was only one kind of pure, undisguised, condescending scrutiny and contempt.

It's as if you're looking at a creature that's a completely different species from yourself.

Li Chen raised an eyebrow slightly and calmly met his gaze.

A faint, mocking smile appeared on Li Hao's lips before he turned away, never looking back.

"Damn, what kind of look is that?" Wang Qiang complained. "Who does he think he is?"

"Ignore him," Li Chen said calmly.

He had a feeling that today's class might not go too smoothly.

The school bell rang.

Liu Yidao, carrying a yellowed lesson plan, walked into the classroom on time.

He walked to the podium, put down his lesson plan, picked up the chalk, and turned around to write a title on the blackboard.

"Optimization of Dynamic CPU Scheduling Algorithm Based on Priority Preemption".

A soft gasp of cold air rose from the classroom.

"This...isn't this part of graduate course content?"

"Has Liu Yidao gone mad again?"

Liu Yidao ignored the discussions below. He adjusted his glasses and spoke in his unchanging, emotionless tone.

"Today's lesson will not cover the textbook content."

"Let's discuss a practical problem."

He turned around and drew a complex system model on the blackboard, labeling more than a dozen processes with different priorities, as well as a shared, resource-limited memory pool.

"The problem is simple," Liu Yidao said. "Design an algorithm that minimizes the 'starvation' time of low-priority tasks while ensuring that high-priority tasks are executed first, and provide a proof of the algorithm's time complexity in the worst case."

The entire classroom was completely silent.

Everyone was stunned by this question.

This doesn't look like an undergraduate classroom; it looks like a doctoral thesis proposal session.

Liu Yidao's gaze slowly swept over the pairs of dazed eyes below the stage, a hint of barely perceptible disappointment flashing in his eyes.

"Does nobody have any ideas?"

he asks.

The classroom remained deathly silent.

Just then, a voice rang out from the front row.

"Professor Liu, I think this question is very challenging."

It's Li Hao.

He stood up, a confident smile on his face.

"The standard textbook approach is to use a multi-level feedback queue, but this cannot fundamentally solve the 'starvation' problem."

"Personally, I think we can introduce an 'aging' mechanism to dynamically increase the priority of low-priority tasks that have been waiting for a long time."

He spoke fluently, rattling off a string of technical terms, which drew admiring glances from some of the students around him.

Liu Yidao nodded, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

"The idea is good, but how do we quantify the weight of 'aging' and how do we prove its stability in a multi-core concurrent environment?"

Li Hao paused for a moment when asked the question, and the smile on his face froze.

"This... requires further mathematical modeling and simulation testing."

"Sit down," Liu Yidao said in a calm tone.

Li Hao sat down somewhat reluctantly.

He knew that his moment in the spotlight had been cut short halfway through.

His gaze inadvertently drifted to Li Chen in the back row.

Seeing Li Chen's nonchalant and carefree demeanor, the nameless anger in his heart surged up again.

How can an internet celebrity who is famous for fighting and his face get more attention at school than himself?

Why would he be able to win the favor of a woman as privileged as Yan Xi?

A brilliant idea to humiliate the other person formed in his mind.

He stood up again.

"Professor Liu."

Liu Yidao looked at him, his brows furrowing slightly.

"Although I cannot give a perfect answer for the time being, I have a suggestion." Li Hao's face once again showed that "kind" smile.

"Didn't our school recently produce a 'God of Martial Arts' and a 'God of Football'?"

He deliberately raised his voice so that everyone in the classroom could hear him clearly.

"I heard that this student, Li Chen, is not only outstanding in sports, but also a once-in-a-century genius in academics."

"Since he is such a rare talent, I believe he must have his own unique insights into the question you raised."

"How about we invite Li Chen to come up on stage and give us a demonstration?"

As soon as he finished speaking, the entire classroom erupted in chaos.

All eyes immediately turned to Li Chen.

Shock, astonishment, schadenfreude, watching the show...

Wang Qiang and Zhao Zixuan's faces turned pale instantly.

"Holy crap! That bastard's too cunning!"

Chen Mo's ten fingers were already typing away on the laptop, leaving afterimages as code scrolled rapidly across the screen.

"It's over. The paper on the theoretically optimal solution to this problem was published three years ago in IEEE Transactions on Computers, and it has been cited less than fifty times. It belongs to an extremely cutting-edge and niche field. Old Li couldn't possibly have seen it..."

Liu Yidao's gaze also fell on Li Chen.

He disliked these little tricks in the classroom.

But he disliked even more those students who sought fame through unorthodox methods.

"Li Chen, right?" he said, his voice icy. "Since Li Hao speaks so highly of you, then come up here and write down your thoughts."

There was no turning back now.

Under the gaze of hundreds of eyes in the audience, and amidst Li Hao's smug and mocking smile.

Several options flashed through Li Chen's mind.

First, directly refuse, saying you don't know. Consequence: You'll solidify your reputation as "all brawn and no brains" and become the laughingstock of the entire department.

Second, try to write something random to fool them. Consequence: Liu Yidao and Li Hao expose you on the spot, and you suffer an even worse fate.

three,……

He glanced at the question on the blackboard.

He had indeed never seen this question in any textbook.

Li Chen slowly stood up.

He didn't look at anyone and walked straight toward the podium.