Just a few days after final exams ended, summer vacation officially began. The once-bustling dormitory was suddenly more than half empty.
The clothes hanging out to dry in the hallways were gone, leaving only a few empty wires swaying in the air.
Chen Zhuo pushed open the door of the old library. With the school on vacation, only one staff member was on duty behind the circulation desk, dozing off.
The foreign materials room on the third floor.
The room was empty, save for a single person sitting by the window.
Chen Zhuo didn’t rush over to say hello. Instead, he walked straight toward the row of bookshelves at the very back.
That was where the foreign-language journals and advanced monographs on mathematics and physics were kept.
Chen Zhuo stood before the bookshelf, his gaze sweeping over the rows of thick books.
He raised his hand and pulled out a bound volume of the *Mathematical Annals*. The book was heavy. He flipped through a couple of pages, then held it in his hand.
Next, he took two steps back and, in the fluid dynamics section, pulled out two all-English fluid dynamics journals. Together, the two books weighed a good three or four pounds.
He hefted the books, figuring they would be enough to keep him occupied at home for the next month. Only then did he turn and walk toward the seat by the window.
Su Wei was sitting there.
Her desk was cluttered with items. Several printed A4 sheets were covered in dense candlestick charts and time-series analysis tables. Beside them lay a calculator with worn-out, faded keys, and a notebook filled with complex formulas.
Su Wei was hunched over the desk, pen in hand, rapidly scrawling calculations on a piece of paper.
At the sound of footsteps, Su Wei paused her work.
She raised her head.
She had heavy, dark circles under her eyes, but in stark contrast to her exhaustion was the look in them.
It was a look of tense excitement, tinged with a raw, unseasoned ambition.
She looked at the approaching Chen Zhuo, then glanced at the books he was holding.
Su Wei put down her pen and rubbed the corners of her sore eyes.
"Declared your major yet? Did you pick the School of Mathematics or the School of Physics?"
Chen Zhuo walked over and placed the books he was holding in an empty spot on Su Wei’s desk.
"Neither. The university approved a cross-disciplinary double major."
Hearing this, Su Wei’s fingers, which had been tapping on the desk, stilled.
She looked at Chen Zhuo.
She didn’t look shocked, nor did she ask how he’d managed to get special approval from the university.
Su Wei just shook her head slightly. Her tone was placid, yet held a note of certainty.
"Only someone like you would dare do that."
Su Wei looked away, her eyes falling back to the messy pile of financial data reports before her.
She pointed, tapping twice on a sheet covered in red and green candlestick charts.
"I chose financial engineering."
Su Wei looked up, squinting slightly against the glaring sunlight from the window.
"Professor Shen Lan’s live trading fund goes active next week. I have to stay here to monitor the market."
Chen Zhuo listened and nodded.
"That’s good."
Su Wei’s gaze fell back on the stack of foreign journals.
"You’re taking that many home for the break?"
Su Wei looked at Chen Zhuo, a hint of confusion in her voice.
Chen Zhuo stood up, hoisting the stack of books with one arm.
"Something to flip through when I get bored at home."
Chen Zhuo looked at Su Wei, his tone as mild and nonchalant as ever.
"The main reason is I have to go back and supervise my childhood friend’s homework."
Chen Zhuo paused.
"He’s going into ninth grade, and his math is terrible. If I don’t step in, he won’t even test into a high school."
Outside, the cicadas droned on, one wave after another.
Su Wei sat frozen in her chair, her mind going blank for a second.
She stared at Chen Zhuo as if he were an alien and blurted out.
"Someone’s hiring a brain like yours as a private tutor?"
Su Wei leaned forward slightly, her financial instincts kicking in.
"How much are they paying you an hour?"
Seeing Su Wei’s earnest expression as she mentally crunched the numbers, Chen Zhuo’s lips curled into a faint smile.
"I’m not getting paid."
Chen Zhuo’s reply was matter-of-fact.
"Two cartons of milk a day."
Chen Zhuo thought for a moment, then added.
"If he passes his exams, I even have to throw in a motor for his mini 4WD."
The room fell silent.
Su Wei just stared at Chen Zhuo.
Two cartons of milk.
A motor for a mini 4WD.
Staring at Chen Zhuo, Su Wei felt a profound and absurd sense of dissonance.
She was clawing her way up in the world of finance, and here was the greatest genius she’d ever met, tutoring a middle-schooler for two cartons of milk.
"I’m heading out."
When Su Wei didn’t respond, Chen Zhuo said a casual goodbye and turned to leave.
As he turned, his gaze happened to sweep across the open notebook on Su Wei’s desk.
On it was a set of extremely complex mathematical formulas.
Chen Zhuo didn’t understand finance.
He didn’t know what candlestick charts were, nor did he understand support and resistance levels.
But in his eyes, this wasn’t a financial model at all.
This was just a system of continuous partial differential equations.
Chen Zhuo stopped in his tracks.
His gaze lingered on the formulas for a few seconds.
In Chen Zhuo’s mind, the topological structure of the equations instantly unfolded. He didn’t perform any complex calculations. Relying on a near-instinctive mathematical intuition, he could already see the structure’s endpoint.
The structure didn’t form a closed loop.
It was missing a boundary.
Chen Zhuo didn’t ask Su Wei what the equations were for.
He simply reached out and picked up the pen Su Wei had just set down.
Su Wei froze, watching him.
Chen Zhuo bent over, supporting himself with one hand on the edge of the desk.
Pen in hand, he added something to the very end of the densely packed equations Su Wei had written.
Outside the parentheses, he added a single variable symbol.
A very simple damping coefficient.
When he was finished, Chen Zhuo set the pen down. It rolled half a turn on the desk before coming to a stop.
He straightened up and looked at Su Wei.
"This system of continuous equations doesn’t converge under extreme variables."
Chen Zhuo’s tone was calm.
"You need to add this coefficient."
Chen Zhuo pointed to the symbol he had just written.
"Otherwise, if the parameters get too large, your system will run to infinity and crash."
Having said his piece, Chen Zhuo didn’t bother explaining what "extreme variables" meant, nor did he check to see if Su Wei had understood.
Chen Zhuo resettled the books in his arms.
"See you next semester."
Chen Zhuo turned and strode out.
His figure disappeared through the doorway.
Su Wei sat alone in her seat.
She looked down at the symbol Chen Zhuo had casually jotted in her notebook.
Damping coefficient.
In physics, it’s a value used to stop amplitude from increasing infinitely.
After a moment of stunned silence, Su Wei’s mind began to race.
She automatically translated Chen Zhuo’s purely mathematical language into the language of finance.
’Parameters getting too large.’
In the financial market, that meant an outbreak of extreme sentiment, an unpredictable black swan event, a panic sell-off, or an irrational rally.
’Run to infinity and crash.’
In live trading, that meant the model failing, losing control of the positions.
It meant getting wiped out.
It meant the account being zeroed out.
A cold sweat suddenly broke out on Su Wei’s back.
She stared at the added coefficient.
If the live fund went active next week and they actually ran into extreme market conditions, her original continuous model wouldn’t be able to react in time. It would drag Professor Shen Lan’s capital straight into the abyss.
And Chen Zhuo... he didn’t even know what the model was for.
He had merely glanced at the skeleton of the equations and, on a whim, patched a fatal flaw.
Su Wei took a deep breath.
She tore the page from her notebook and carefully tucked it inside the thickest of the data reports beside her.
Chen Zhuo walked down the stairs to the main lobby. He placed the stack of books on the circulation desk and rapped on the counter with two fingers, waking the dozing staff member.
After registering the books and getting them stamped, Chen Zhuo gathered the heavy journals in his arms and pushed open the main doors of the library.

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