A crisp collision echoed in the air, like an invisible pair of scissors cleanly snipping away the tense, explosive atmosphere in the office.
The retort that Fang Shi hadn’t yet managed to utter got stuck in his throat.
His hand, raised mid-air, paused for a moment before he lowered it somewhat unnaturally to his side.
Li Jianming also fell silent. His body, which had been leaning forward, slowly straightened. His chest still heaved, but the reckless, fanatical energy had been forcibly suppressed by more than half by that soft but distinct tap.
Zhou Qiping sat in his large leather chair, still holding the heavy lid of a teacup. He didn’t place it back on the cup, instead letting it hover over the rim.
His gaze didn’t fall on Fang Shi, nor on Li Jianming. Instead, it passed over them and landed on the young man in the white T-shirt standing behind them.
More accurately, it landed on Chen Zhuo’s left forearm.
A clear red mark circled his arm, particularly glaring against the young man’s fair skin.
Zhou Qiping’s gaze lingered on the red mark for two seconds before he slowly raised his eyes to look at the two titans of their fields standing before his desk.
"You’re a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty years old between the two of you."
Zhou Qiping began to speak.
His voice wasn’t loud, and his words came slowly. There was no obvious anger, but this calm statement carried a weight that made one’s heart tighten with pressure.
"Shouting and screaming in an office in the administration building over a sophomore."
Zhou Qiping placed the lid gently back on the desk.
"Even getting physical and grabbing him."
The office fell dead silent.
Zhou Qiping’s gaze shifted to Li Jianming, and he asked in a level tone,
"Old Li, look at the mark you left on Xiaochen’s arm. He’s only twelve years old; his bones haven’t even fully set. Don’t you have any idea how strong your grip is from a lifetime of writing on a blackboard?"
The moment these words were spoken, Li Jianming’s body stiffened slightly.
He subconsciously turned his head, following Zhou Qiping’s earlier gaze to Chen Zhuo’s left arm.
The bright red fingerprints were still there.
Li Jianming froze.
He was a pure academic, his mind filled with nothing but mathematical formulas and deductive logic. When lost in the fervor of an academic debate, he was completely unaware of his own physical actions.
In that moment of grabbing him, he had only felt as if he were seizing a lifeline to the truth, completely forgetting that this lifeline was a living, breathing child.
A palpable sense of embarrassment and guilt instantly flooded the old professor’s face. Already flushed from the argument, his face now turned an even more unnatural shade of red.
His lips moved as if he wanted to say something to Chen Zhuo, but the graph theory titan, normally so eloquent at the lectern, was now as clumsy as a schoolboy who had done something wrong, unable to squeeze out a single word.
Fang Shi, standing to the side, had been quietly sighing in relief, thinking that Zhou Qiping was mainly reprimanding Li Jianming.
But Zhou Qiping’s gaze immediately shifted to him.
"And you, Old Fang."
Zhou Qiping looked at Fang Shi.
"You’re usually so composed during meetings. Why are you joining in on this nonsense today? ’A vital national asset’? ’Void Symbols’? Are these the kinds of things you two department heads should be shouting in the hallway? Where is your dignity as educators?"
Fang Shi gave a dry cough and averted his gaze.
He turned and irritably scratched his thinning hair.
Being scolded like this by the vice-president of research in front of a student, he really couldn’t keep his composure.
"Vice-President, about this... Old Li came here to poach him first. I couldn’t just stand by and watch someone from our lab be dragged away by force."
Fang Shi tried to offer another quiet excuse.
"That’s enough."
Zhou Qiping waved his hand, cutting Fang Shi off.
He stood up from behind his desk, walked around the large, solid wood surface, and came to stand before the two men.
"I know what you’re thinking, and I know why you both were willing to throw your dignity away today."
With his hands behind his back, Zhou Qiping glanced at Fang Shi, then at Li Jianming, who was clutching his draft paper.
"One of you has a wind tunnel model stuck in a computational deadlock, the other has a graph theory conjecture that’s been stalled for five months. If it were me, I’d be anxious too. But that’s no excuse for you to break the rules."
Zhou Qiping set the tone.
"You know the rules of Keda’s program for gifted youth better than I do. The first two years are for general education—building a foundation, broadening horizons, and absolutely no specializing. This was the rule set down by the founding academicians when the program was established."
Zhou Qiping looked at Li Jianming, his tone growing much sterner.
"Chen Zhuo is only twelve years old, and he’s a sophomore. He has the right, and plenty of time, to explore any subject that interests him. Old Li, just because he has a talent for graph theory doesn’t mean he has to immediately take over your entire workload. That’s not cultivation, that’s stunting his growth!"
Clutching his draft paper, Li Jianming lowered his head and said nothing.
Zhou Qiping turned his head and looked at Fang Shi.
"The same goes for you. Don’t think that just because he spent a few days in your physics lab and helped you adjust a few parameters, he belongs to you. Stop trying to saddle a student with these grand responsibilities. You are not to use lab resources as a veiled form of kidnapping."
His intentions exposed, Fang Shi awkwardly rubbed his nose and didn’t dare to talk back.
He had treated them both with an even hand.
With Chen Zhuo’s status as a free agent now clear, the atmosphere in the office relaxed slightly.

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