The gifted program’s dormitory building.
The hallway was filled with the strong, somewhat pungent smell of 84 Disinfectant.
The floor was damp. The dorm mother had just walked from one end of the corridor to the other with a spray bottle.
Fang Yuanming arrived at the door to room 215.
The door wasn’t shut tight, leaving a small gap.
Fang Yuanming reached out and pushed the door open.
The air in the dorm room was slightly better than in the hallway. A window was cracked open, and a cold draft poured in, dispersing much of the stuffy smell.
Wang Dayong was bent over, butt in the air, wiping dust off the floor with a damp, rinsed rag.
Chu Ge from room 216 across the hall had dragged a chair over and placed it nonchalantly in the aisle between two desks.
He held a gray, old calculator, his thumb flying across the keys. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he muttered to himself.
Chen Zhuo was sitting at his own desk, which was very neat and tidy.
He wasn’t looking at any thick, foreign-language textbooks, nor was he writing out any formulas.
In his hand was a small pair of scissors he normally used to cut up scrap paper.
They had forgotten to buy a mirror for the dorm, so Chen Zhuo had to tilt his head slightly, using the blurry reflection in the windowpane to carefully trim the slightly overgrown hair around his ears.
SNIP.
A small clump of black hair fell onto his shoulder. Chen Zhuo lowered his hand and brushed it off.
Seeing Fang Yuanming come in, Chen Zhuo stopped what he was doing and turned his head.
"Teacher Fang."
Chen Zhuo placed the scissors on the desk.
"Giving yourself a haircut?"
Fang Yuanming walked in, his gaze falling on Chen Zhuo’s somewhat uneven sideburns.
"Yeah."
Chen Zhuo reached up and touched the spot above his ear.
"The campus has been on lockdown for a few days, and the barbershops outside are closed. My hair’s getting long and it’s starting to poke my ears."
Fang Yuanming looked at him.
The image of this ten-year-old freshman in front of him, giving himself a haircut with paper scissors, overlapped with the image Zhou Zhenhua had painted over the phone in the office just a moment ago: a reclusive titan solving a century-old problem.
This sharp contrast left Fang Yuanming momentarily unsure of what expression to wear.
"Teacher Fang, the temperature logs for today were already turned in this morning."
Wang Dayong straightened up and tossed the rag into the plastic washbasin at his feet. A layer of gray foam floated to the surface of the water.
"The four of us took our temperatures. No fevers."
"Alright. Make sure you keep the window open for ventilation. Don’t let it get stuffy," Fang Yuanming nodded.
He walked over to Chen Zhuo’s desk, his eyes drifting downward.
Besides the scissors and a few strands of cut hair, the only thing on the desk was a piece of scratch paper covered in numbers and symbols.
"What are you calculating?"
Fang Yuanming asked casually.
Chen Zhuo followed Fang Yuanming’s gaze and glanced at the paper.
"The accounts."
Chen Zhuo answered frankly.
"The accounts?"
"Mhm."
Chen Zhuo pointed to Chu Ge, who was still holding the calculator with a look of deep-seated misery on his face.
"During the lockdown, the cafeteria has fewer options, supplies being brought in are limited, and meat dishes are even rarer. Chu Ge took on an outsourced project, and we’re all staying up late to rush it, so we get hungry easily."
Chen Zhuo picked up the sheet of scratch paper and handed it to Fang Yuanming.
Fang Yuanming took it and looked down.
"Pickled Cabbage and Beef Noodles, bought by the case, cost per pack: 1.2 yuan.
Shuanghui sausage, pack of ten, average price: 0.8 yuan per sausage.
Marinated eggs, sold individually in the cafeteria for 1.5 yuan, but can be bought in bulk from the campus store for 1 yuan each..."
Beneath this detailed price list was a row of formulas written using basic queuing theory and probability.
On the last line, a number was circled in red ink—it was the optimal purchasing plan they could achieve with the living expenses they had scraped together for the lockdown period.
Fang Yuanming held the mathematical model, speechless for a long moment.
"You’re writing equations and building a model... just to figure out the most cost-effective way to buy instant noodles?"
Fang Yuanming waved the paper in his hand, looking at Chen Zhuo.
"The economic base determines the superstructure, after all."
Chen Zhuo gave a gentle smile and pulled out his chair to sit down.
"We don’t know how long the lockdown will last, so we have to be careful with our living expenses. Dayong and the others eat a lot, and their work is physically demanding."
’I know, but if I just say it out loud, I won’t get arrested, will I?’
Beside them, Wang Dayong scratched his head, embarrassed, and chuckled twice.
Chu Ge tossed the calculator onto the desk and sighed.
"Teacher Fang, you have no idea."
Chu Ge leaned back in his chair and started to vent his frustrations.
"These days, you practically have to fight for sausages and pickled vegetables at the campus store. If you go late, you won’t even see an empty wrapper."
Chen Zhuo ignored Chu Ge’s chatter.
He opened a drawer and pulled out a white meal card from the very back.
"Teacher Fang, are you heading to the Physics Building later?"
Chen Zhuo stood up and held out the meal card.
"If you pass by the first floor of the cafeteria, could you help me add money to my card?"
Fang Yuanming didn’t take it, just looked at him.
"The self-service top-up machine seems to have been broken for the past two days. You can’t add money."
Chen Zhuo explained.
"You have to queue at the manual service window, and it’s too crowded over there."
Fang Yuanming took a deep breath and accepted the slightly worn meal card.
Outside, the entire physics community of Hua Country—from the Capital City to Jinling, from Shuimu University to the Huake Institute—
was pulling every string they had, searching the whole world for the C. Zhuo who could smash open the boundaries of a Singularity with a Discrete Matrix.
And yet this nationally protected, top-secret talent—imagined by the outside world to be as closely guarded as a giant panda—
was currently in a double dorm room that reeked of disinfectant, giving himself a haircut.
Furthermore, for the sake of the price difference on a few cases of instant noodles and sausages, he had seriously constructed a mathematical model.
And now, his greatest request was for his teacher to help him queue up at the manual service window in the cafeteria to add money to his meal card.
"The outside world is in an uproar over that paper by Delian."
Fang Yuanming stuffed the meal card into his jacket pocket.
He looked at Chen Zhuo, his tone complicated.
"The calls from the Capital City blew up Dean Alchemist’s desk phone all morning. They’re all looking for you."
Chen Zhuo gathered the loose strands of hair on the desk and swept them into the nearby trash can.
Hearing Fang Yuanming’s words, his movements didn’t pause, and his expression showed no change.
"What do they want with me?"
Chen Zhuo dusted off his hands.
"What else? They want to consult you in person about the derivation process for that Discrete Matrix and discuss the physical meaning of a universal collapsing state."
Fang Yuanming looked at him.
"If Alchemist were to hand you over right now, you could probably walk sideways through the domestic academic world, at least for a while."
After hearing this, Chen Zhuo looked at the bare tree branches outside the window and thought seriously for two seconds.
Then, he spoke in his usual unhurried tone.
"Teacher Fang, discussing universal collapse sounds great."
Chen Zhuo pointed toward the dormitory’s main entrance.
"But if they really came, the moment they got to the temperature check downstairs, the dorm mother would have to stop them all. At a critical time like this, no outside personnel are allowed on campus. It doesn’t matter who they are."
Chen Zhuo turned his head and smiled at Fang Yuanming.
"Besides, I only know those few derivation steps for my Discrete Matrix. If we really sat down to discuss it, I’m afraid I’d just be clueless and embarrass Keda."
Fang Yuanming was left speechless by that remark.
He looked at Chen Zhuo’s completely unfazed face, then couldn’t help but laugh.
"Alright, Dean Fang has run interference for you. The official story is that you’re doing confidential foundational research."
Fang Yuanming pointed at him.
"You just stay here in the dorm and peacefully calculate your instant noodle accounts. Should I add fifty or a hundred to the meal card?"
"A hundred," Chen Zhuo said. "I’ve got to add a chicken drumstick tonight."
Fang Yuanming waved his hand, turned and left the dorm, pulling the door shut behind him.
The smell of disinfectant in the hallway was still pungent.
But Fang Yuanming found the smell much more pleasant now.
He reached out and touched the meal card in his pocket.
C. Zhuo.
’Let him be. Let him stay quietly on this sealed-off campus, worrying about his chicken drumstick for dinner and his cheap sausages.’
「In the dorm room.」
As soon as the door closed, Chu Ge spun his chair around to face Chen Zhuo.
"Brother Zhuo," Chu Ge said, a little puzzled. "What was Teacher Fang saying just now? Something about a paper, universal collapse... looking for you?"
Wang Dayong also lifted his hands from the washbasin, flicked the water off, and looked over curiously.
Chen Zhuo picked up the small scissors from the desk again and, using the reflection in the window, carefully snipped the last stray strand of hair by his ear.
"It was nothing."
Chen Zhuo put the scissors away in the drawer.
"Just a misunderstanding, same name. Teacher Fang was just joking with me."
He pulled out his chair, sat down, and took the scratch paper.
"Where were we with the calculations?"
Chen Zhuo picked up his red pen, bringing the topic back on track.
"If we buy a whole case of Master Kong, the store owner will throw in two marinated eggs, right?"
"Right, right, right."
Chu Ge’s attention immediately snapped back, and he nodded vigorously.
"The owner said buy one case, get two free."
Chu Ge reached for the calculator, glanced at the number on the screen, then looked up at the closed door of room 216 across the hall.
"Oh, right."
Chu Ge clicked his tongue.
"That stubborn guy, Lu Jia, has been cooped up across the hall all morning verifying that queuing theory matrix you drew up yesterday. I went to check on him just now, and his eyes were all red from exhaustion."
Chu Ge took the ballpoint pen in his hand, casually reached over, and crossed out the number of sausages on Chen Zhuo’s scratch paper, writing a new number.
"This work is too mentally draining."
After changing the number, Chu Ge tapped the paper with the tip of his pen.
"Tonight, we have to add two extra sausages to his instant noodles. Give him the free marinated eggs, too. The three of us can dial our shares back a bit and eat more sparingly."
Chen Zhuo looked at the number Chu Ge had changed and nodded.
"Okay, we’ll buy according to your changes."
Chen Zhuo picked up his red pen and put a checkmark next to the revised number.
Outside the window, a few bold sparrows landed on the bare branches, chirped a couple of times, then fluttered their wings and flew away.

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