The Fuxing high-speed train glided smoothly along the tracks toward the Capital City.
Li Dong sat by the window, watching Jiangcheng recede into the distance...
Just over half a year ago, he was just an ordinary slacker, staring at an 87 on his math test and questioning his life choices.
Back then, his only goal was to fight with all his might just to scrape by the admission cutoff for a second-tier university.
And now?
He was the province’s top science scorer, the national champion of the Huaxuan Cup, had over three hundred thousand yuan sitting in his bank account, and was carrying an acceptance letter to Yan University Yuanpei College in his bag.
This kind of comeback made him let out a sigh.
"I’m so damn outstanding!"
He immediately pulled out his phone.
But the moment he did, Li Dong was completely dumbfounded.
In the group, an image had actually appeared!
[John von Neumann has sent an image]
[John von Neumann]: @SeniorYearGrind, Your Excellency! Following the structural framework you provided last time, I’ve already built this big guy!
’What the hell? This crappy group can send pictures now?’
Li Dong quickly tapped on the image.
It showed a massive machine, but it was very different from the first general-purpose computer, the "ENIAC," that Li Dong had seen in textbooks!
This machine lacked the ENIAC’s chaotic external plugboards. Instead, its precision relays and high-vacuum electron tubes were arranged in perfect order.
Moreover, through its translucent glass casing, he could see countless magnetic-core memory modules nested inside.
(Just imagine the picture; no need to pad the word count.)
Li Dong sucked in a breath of cyberpunk air...
Historically, although Von Neumann had laid the foundation for modern computing with the "von Neumann architecture," he hadn’t been involved in the initial development of the first general-purpose computer, ENIAC, at all.
Even the EDVAC, the first model to actually implement that architecture, was only created after years of wrangling with a team of engineers.
But now, the father of computing had just soloed a general-purpose computer with a complete stored-program architecture all by himself.
’I just wonder what this machine’s processing power is like,’ Li Dong muttered to himself.
The image immediately blew all the other lurking titans out of the water.
[Isaac Newton]: Ooh~~, so this is that machine you mentioned? The one that can replace manual labor and calculate at the speed of light and electricity?
[John von Neumann]: Yes, Sir Isaac! This is it. I used a binary logic system and also took Mr. Maxwell’s advice, converting the theory of electromagnetic stress into actual hardware.
[John von Neumann]: As long as you connect the magnetic induction drive coils to the valves, you can leave the rest to it!
[Isaac Newton]: Alright, I’ll go give it a try, then.
After saying that, he went back to lurking...
Li Dong: ???
’What do you mean, titan? When you say you’ll "go give it a try," does that mean what I think it means?’
’Are you going to whip one up, too?’
Li Dong really felt there was something off about this Newton.
’How does it feel like I’m not reaping nearly as many benefits as he is? He’s about to fleece the entire Third Industrial Revolution, for crying out loud!’
Not long after Newton went back to lurking, two people who had previously been arguing like cats and dogs also appeared.
[Albert Einstein]: Oh! John! You really built this machine?
[Albert Einstein]: That "String Theory" thing has been making my brain feel like it’s about to explode lately!
[Albert Einstein]: All those eleven-dimensional topological manifolds and the systems of nonlinear partial differential equations in the compactification process... if I were to calculate them, it would probably take me several more months just to get a handle on it!
Li Dong: !! ’You’re really calculating it by hand? Wasn’t the rumor that you were bad at math??’
’Looks like the rumor about him scoring a 1 in math was false after all.’
[Niels Bohr]: Hmph, still calculating it yourself? Don’t you have students? I just have Heisenberg and Pauli doing the calculations.
[Heisenberg]: ...
[Pauli]: ...
[Niels Bohr]: Von Neumann, how much faster is that big contraption of yours compared to the hand-cranked mechanical calculators we have at the Copenhagen Research Institute? Can it really help us verify the mathematical self-consistency of String Theory?
[John von Neumann]: Rest assured, gentlemen. How could that industrial garbage at the Copenhagen Research Institute possibly compare to this?
[John von Neumann]: As long as we convert those multidimensional topological equations into low-level binary algorithms and input them, it can complete a year’s worth of your pen-and-paper calculations in the time it takes you to drink a cup of coffee!
Li Dong breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed this computer wasn’t too ridiculously overpowered after all.
But he forgot one thing: these people’s calculating abilities were not those of ordinary humans...
Just as the titans in the group were continuing their discussion about the machine’s applications,
[John von Neumann has sent you an exclusive red packet]
’Here it comes!’
[You have claimed John von Neumann’s exclusive red packet]
[Obtained Passive Skill: Code Intuition (Basic Edition)]
[Description: A gift from the father of computer science. In his eyes, the world is made of 0s and 1s.]
[Effect: From now on, code will no longer be mere characters in your eyes.]
[You will be able to see through to the underlying logic of a program at a glance, sensing memory allocation, the movement of pointers, and complexity redundancies within algorithms.]
As Li Dong claimed the red packet, he felt a blind spot in his mind light up.
But that wasn’t all!
[System Announcement: Inspired by you, group member "John von Neumann" has successfully created a groundbreaking, first-generation electronic computer.]
[Due to your indirect intervention, the developmental trajectories of Universe No. 1666 and Universe No. 1927 have been altered.]
[Congratulations, you have obtained a special item: Origin Fragment of the Third Industrial Revolution (1/3)]
[Item Description: This is a crystallization of origin that embodies an entire era’s technological leap.]
[Current Effect (Single Piece): Even as a single fragment, it provides you with a powerful learning ability.]
[When you study any foundational knowledge related to computers, communications, or semiconductors, your absorption efficiency will be increased by 500%.]
[Complete Effect: If you collect all three fragments (3/3), you will gain the ability to completely replicate an entire branch of a groundbreaking tech tree!]
Li Dong was dumbfounded after reading the description.
He was just an ordinary provincial top science scorer who’d gotten into Yan University Yuanpei College. Wasn’t a phrase like "an entire branch of a groundbreaking tech tree" a bit too high-level for him?
But his self-doubt lasted for less than a second before that confident arrogance retook the high ground of his intellect.
’I’m the Group Leader of the Cyan Dragon Study Group! The direct superior of this bunch of scientific gods...’
He even had the spare mental capacity to complain to himself.
’But the UI layout for the group notifications this time is actually a lot better than before. Did this crappy group secretly evolve behind my back?’
Just then, the [Origin Fragment] finished loading in his brain.
A scene appeared in his mind.
A ridiculously crappy Lenovo laptop with the words "MEMORY_MANAGEMENT" displayed on the screen.
Ever since receiving the "Fragment of the Calculation of Non-trivial Zero Points of the Riemann Zeta Function,"
Li Dong had forced himself to chew through countless legendary computer science books while preparing for his college entrance exams.
Books like *Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective*, *Introduction to Algorithms*, *C++ Primer*, and he had even chewed his way through *CUDA by Example: An Introduction to General-Purpose GPU Programming*.
He knew that in the manuscript, Riemann had used a god-tier optimization similar to the saddle-point method (method of steepest descent), directly reducing the computational complexity for calculating non-trivial zeros from O(t)—which grew linearly with the imaginary part t—down to O(√t).
However, no matter how much theory he learned, he couldn’t perfectly translate Riemann’s algorithm into a programming language.
He had even gone and borrowed the computer lab of the Jiangcheng Sixth Middle School informatics competition team!
And the result?
Because the code he wrote was an absolute mess in terms of memory management and concurrent threading, he maxed out both the CPU and GPU loads at 100%!
It was even worse when he ran it on his own Lenovo laptop.
Even though the algorithm’s formula was correct, he just couldn’t use a programming mindset to perfectly orchestrate the hardware.
The high-precision floating-point temporary objects generated by each calculation piled up wildly in the memory pool, and the movement of the C++ pointers was a complete disaster.
At best, he could only get near the first 10^6 non-trivial zeros before the program would crash and reboot due to severe memory leaks and a paralyzed garbage collection mechanism, completely overwhelming the RAM!
Looking back at the code he’d written back then, it was like looking at a pile of shit!
"I have to optimize it! Right now!"
Just as Li Dong was about to take his laptop out of his suitcase...
"Um... excuse me, sorry to bother you."
Li Dong looked up.
A young man rolling a suitcase was standing in the aisle, holding a high-speed rail ticket. With a slightly awkward expression, he pointed at the seat Li Dong was sitting in.
"This window seat you’re in... I think it’s mine."

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