The room fell silent for a moment.
Chu Ge opened his mouth, glanced at the tree diagram in his hand, then looked at Lu Jia standing in the doorway.
Chen Zhuo, sitting in his chair, watched the roommate who had shown up of his own accord.
He let out a helpless sigh.
Chen Zhuo stood up, grabbed an empty chair from in front of Wang Dayong’s desk, and placed it next to his own.
He picked up the thermos on his desk and poured a cup of hot water.
Chen Zhuo set the cup on the corner of the desk.
"Since your brain won’t shut off, sit down and finish it."
Chen Zhuo looked at Lu Jia, his voice calm.
’I have plenty of experience with this, after all.’
"Finish the calculation, and your mind will be at peace."
Lu Jia stood in the doorway, still clutching the few sheets of scratch paper in his hand.
He looked at Chen Zhuo.
Then he looked at the silent Chu Ge beside him, and Wang Dayong, who was squatting on the floor, drenched in sweat.
He shuffled forward.
He sat down in the chair.
The steam from the cup wafted onto his face, slightly easing his tense nerves.
Lu Jia picked up his pen.
Without another word, without a single complaint.
He lowered his head, and the tip of his pen touched down on a blank spot on the scratch paper. A soft SCRATCHING filled Dorm 215.
Chu Ge watched this scene unfold and silently turned back around.
He spread the inverted tree diagram Chen Zhuo had drawn flat beside his keyboard.
His fingers settled back on the keycaps.
Wang Dayong, still squatting, reached out and adjusted the angle of the small hanging fan, ensuring the air blew more evenly across the aluminum heat sink on the motherboard.
"I modified the coils on this fan. It’s powerful," Wang Dayong said to Chu Ge in a low voice.
"Go ahead and run the data. If the temperature gets high enough to fry it, I’ll eat this motherboard."
Chu Ge didn’t look up, just grunted in acknowledgment.
The sound of keys clacking filled the room once more.
This time, the frantic, impatient pace was gone, replaced by a regular, steady rhythm.
Chen Zhuo sat back down in his own seat.
He opened the printed English academic paper and picked up his fountain pen.
The only sounds in the room were the WHIRRING of the fan, the CLACKING of the keyboard, and the SCRATCH of Lu Jia’s pen on paper.
Occasionally, Chu Ge would pause.
"Chen Zhuo." Chu Ge stared at the screen, his brow furrowed. "The reverse topology reaches the second layer and the data interface narrows. How do I handle the overflow?"
Chen Zhuo didn’t look up, his eyes still on the paper.
"Don’t handle the overflow. Just create a null pointer, dump the overflow data into the cache pool, and let the underlying loop pick it up on its own."
Chu Ge paused for two seconds, then his hands flew across the keyboard, typing out a few lines of code.
"It’s through."
Chu Ge said nothing more and continued typing.
A short while later, Lu Jia’s pen stopped moving.
He pushed a sheet of paper, densely covered in writing, toward Chu Ge.
"The half-life variable." Lu Jia’s voice was still a bit hoarse. "Substitute it in, and the dextrorotary maximum won’t clash."
Chu Ge glanced at it.
"Thanks."
His fingers danced across the keyboard, converting the string of formulas into logical statements in C.
Time ticked by.
Outside the window, the night grew deeper.
「Two o’clock.」
「Three o’clock.」
「Four o’clock.」
Chen Zhuo finished reading the ten-plus-page preprint paper in his hands.
He capped his pen and rubbed his tired eyes.
He turned his head to look around.
Wang Dayong had fallen asleep leaning against the bed frame, snoring thunderously, a small screwdriver still clutched in his hand.
Lu Jia was slumped over the desk.
The scratch paper in front of him was covered in formulas.
His eyes were closed, his breathing even and deep.
The problem that had tormented him all night was solved. He was finally asleep.
Chu Ge was still sitting at the computer.
A lollipop stick protruded from his mouth, his bloodshot eyes glued to the progress bar on the screen.
Chen Zhuo stood up and poured a glass of water.
"How much is left?"
"Almost there." Chu Ge’s voice was extremely hoarse. "Last full compile."
The fans inside the computer case were spinning frantically.
The hourglass icon on the screen spun for a full minute.
DING.
The system emitted a crisp notification sound.
A small window popped up.
Chu Ge took the lollipop out of his mouth. His fingers trembling slightly, he hit the Enter key.
In the black command window, a stream of green data cascaded down like a waterfall.
Smooth.
No lag whatsoever.
Ten thousand entries.
Fifty thousand entries.
One hundred thousand entries.
Finally, the cursor stopped on the last line.
Search complete. Total time: 2.3 seconds.
Twice as fast as the client’s requirement.
Chu Ge leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath.
He didn’t shout or cheer.
He just wearily rubbed his face.
"It ran."
Chu Ge turned his head, looked at Chen Zhuo, and cracked a smile.
Chen Zhuo nodded and took a sip of water.
"Package the test build and send it over. Get paid, then get some sleep."
Chu Ge clicked the mouse a few times, compressing the generated program file.
He opened the private message window on the hacker forum, ready to send it to the client.
Just then, the other party’s avatar started flashing.
A compressed file, a dozen or so megabytes in size, came through.
It was followed by a message:
[Bro, if the code ran successfully, do me a quick favor. This is 20,000 raw image data tags from the early days of our website. Run them through your new program and filter out the garbled code and incorrect tags. If it works, I’ll wire you fifteen hundred yuan right away.]
Chu Ge froze for a moment.
He clicked on the compressed file and extracted it.
He opened the text document inside.
After just one glance, Chu Ge’s face darkened.
Hundreds of pages of densely packed text.
It was full of irregular data.
Some were normal tags, like "landscape" or "people."
Others were just garbled code: %&*#¥.

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