"But, Dongzi."
"I think Liangzi is being a bit too hasty."
Li Dong turned to look at him.
Chen Yue shook his head.
"He’s just afraid of being left too far behind by you."
"But, you know, a freshman preparing for the grad school entrance exams is mostly just faking the effort."
"If you gave him a linear algebra problem, he wouldn’t necessarily know how to solve it."
"He hasn’t even established a foundational understanding of his own major’s curriculum."
"Right now, he’s just sitting in front of a pile of books for the Political Theory, English, and Mathematics I sections of the exam, just grinding away."
"He’s not honing his skills."
"He’s honing the feeling of ’I’m working hard.’"
Li Dong was silent for a few seconds after hearing this.
’He actually agreed with Chen Yue’s assessment.’
’It reminded him of something else. What was this situation like?’
’To make a slightly inappropriate analogy...’
’When this whole AI thing blew up...’
’A lot of people were clamoring to ’learn AI’. ’
’Did they really want to learn it?’
’Not necessarily.’
’They were just afraid of being left behind by the times.’
’But did this ’fear of being left behind’ really require such urgency?’
’No, it didn’t.’
’Because on the day this technology truly becomes widespread...’
’...you won’t even need to go out of your way to learn it.’
’The major companies will be more afraid of you not knowing how to use AI than you are.’
’They’ll polish the user interface to the point where a three-year-old can use it.’
This was actually very similar to Liu Liang’s current situation. Preparing for the grad school exam was something that should happen naturally; being a freshman was indeed too early.
Li Dong nodded and said.
"You have a point."
"I’ll talk to Liangzi about it later."
Chen Yue nodded, then suddenly seemed to remember something.
"Oh, right, Dongzi."
"Did you know that Misha from your class got into Jinling University?"
Li Dong stopped in his tracks.
He looked over at Chen Yue.
"Misha?"
"Jinling University?"
Chen Yue nodded.
"Yeah."
"I heard it from Liangzi, too."
Li Dong was a little surprised by this.
He had been running around Jinling quite a bit lately, shuttling between his apartment, the Collaborative Innovation Center, the Jinling University School of Physics, and the Jinling University library.
He had probably walked around the Jinling University campus more times than many of its own students.
But he had no idea Misha was at Jinling University.
He’d never run into her on campus.
Li Dong and Chen Yue chatted idly as they walked.
When they reached the street outside the school gate, Chen Yue pointed to a small shop with red lanterns hanging across the street.
"That one."
"Look at the sign."
Li Dong followed his finger.
The sign read "Chu Xiangfu".
Below it, a line of small text read: [Authentic Sichuan and Chongqing Homestyle Cooking].
Li Dong let out a "Heh."
The two of them crossed the road.
Chu Xiangfu wasn’t very big inside.
There were seven or eight square tables.
Li Dong and Chen Yue found an empty table.
Li Dong opened the menu.
"Fish in chili oil, twice-cooked pork, mapo tofu, husband and wife lung slices, and mouth-watering chicken."
"Five dishes, plus a side of rice."
After the food arrived, Chen Yue picked up a piece of the fish in chili oil with his chopsticks.
The moment it entered his mouth, he frowned.
"Dongzi."
"This Sichuan restaurant definitely isn’t run by someone from Sichuan and Chongqing."
Li Dong also took a piece.
The moment it entered his mouth, he started coughing.
"Definitely not."
People from other provinces think people from Sichuan and Chongqing can handle spiciness.
But what they actually eat is *málà*—numbing and spicy.
The two of them finished the entire table of Sichuan food with furrowed brows.
Chen Yue pulled out his phone and glanced at the time.
"Dongzi."
"I have to get back to the hotel and pack. I’ve got an early high-speed train back to Rongcheng tomorrow."
"I’ve got a ton of stuff to deal with next semester."
Li Dong didn’t try to make him stay. After paying the bill, the two of them walked out.
Chen Yue rubbed his stomach and said.
"Dongzi."
"Let’s never come back to this place again."
Li Dong nodded in profound agreement.
After returning to his apartment, Li Dong walked straight to the water cooler, filled a cup with cold water, and downed it in one go.
Seeing Chen Yue today had actually moved him.
But for now, he had to set that emotion aside. There was a more important matter weighing on his mind.
He closed his eyes, and his consciousness sank into the Memory Palace.
He had to get to the bottom of that ominous premonition today.
Li Dong walked straight to the [Related Materials] bookshelf.
He was going to re-examine these documents, but this time it wouldn’t be a quick skim. He needed to digest them completely.
The first volume, the second...
As he read the seventh one, Li Dong’s consciousness paused.
In this volume, there was a section that specifically mentioned the "tree-ring Carbon-14 anomaly."
At the end of the section, the author cited a blockbuster paper published in *Nature* in 2012, written by Miyake Fumi.
Li Dong had skimmed this paper before. Now, he retrieved it from his memory.
The paper documented an astonishing discovery.
Between 1956 and 1960, a few Japanese researchers extracted samples from an ancient "Yakushima Cedar," a tree species that can live for thousands of years, and measured the Carbon-14 content in its tree rings year by year.
Why focus so intently on Carbon-14?
Because Carbon-14 is not a naturally occurring product in the atmosphere.
This isotope is only produced when cosmic rays penetrate the atmosphere and violently strike nitrogen atoms in the air.
Under normal circumstances, the frequency and total amount of cosmic rays visiting Earth are very stable.
Therefore, over long periods, the concentration of Carbon-14 in Earth’s atmosphere has also maintained a constant equilibrium.
However, the Yakushima Cedar sample revealed an extremely bizarre piece of data:
Between AD 774 and 775, the Carbon-14 content in the tree rings skyrocketed without any warning.
That soaring peak was a full order of magnitude higher than any normal fluctuation ever observed by the human astronomical community.

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