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Chapter 6
6
The programming practice seminar garnered much criticism, but in the days to follow, many students followed a course of action best described as “despite what your mouth says, your body shows your true intentions.”
Sleeping a bit more in the mornings, surfing the net a bit more in the evenings. For the students who weren’t yet concerned about entering society and earning an income, this was a difficult temptation to resist.
In any case, for the first half month after the seminar was formed, one after another, people sought out Li Xun to question him about it.
And Li Xun refused no one. All students who inquired and registered were accepted. There were no other requirements.
In the end, even Fang Shumiao joined them.
Fang Shumiao’s explanation was as follows. “It’s very competitive to get a spot in the Student Union. I have to squeeze out some time to meet and familiarize myself with the school leaders.”
Of course, she didn’t forget about her roommate. “Do you want to come too? I’ll talk to Li Xun for you.”
Zhu Yun declined, “Thanks, but I’m okay for now.”
Zhu Yun’s parents were teachers, so from a young age, she’d been taught that attending morning and evening study hall were the most basic and natural things that a student should do. It wasn’t a thing that caused her difficulties. Moreover, she still hadn’t quite figured out what this supposed “practice seminar” even was.
Rumor had it that it was special treatment for Li Xun because of his family’s strong backing. But Zhu Yun didn’t believe a word of it. Why was that? There was no reason.
After some time passed, things began to show gradual changes. Zhu Yun found that many of the students who had chosen to participate in the seminar slowly returned to the study hall.
Fang Shumiao brought back some news from the front lines.
“It was too ridiculous.” With a frown, she continued, “The project was too hard. We’re just learning the basics now. We’ve only seen a bit of code, but they want to do something so complicated. My head feels like it’ll explode.”
“Was it really hard?”
“Super hard!” Fang Shumiao replied without hesitation.
Zhu Yun was a bit curious about the project, but then she suddenly thought of something else. She asked, “What about Ren Di?”
As the class representative for their C programming course, and as far as Zhu Yun could see, Ren Di had no interest in programming. Even on assignments, Ren Di would copy her work.
After mentioning Ren Di, Fang Shumiao’s tone became unclear.
“Her? 
She’s not participating in the seminar.”
“Then why is she staying there?”
“Li Xun let her. He put her name down on the roster on the first day, but he didn’t care whether she showed up or not.”
“Is that so
”
Fang Shumiao shrugged. Then she secretly glanced over at Zhu Yun and whisperred, “Let me tell you. Every night, Ren Di will go meet with Li Xun.”
Zhu Yun raised her brows.
“Li Xun too. There were a few times that he was really busy, but once Ren Di showed up, he’d drop everything he was working on. Then he wouldn’t come back until the middle of the night, and no one knows where they went. Mysterious, isn’t it?”
Zhu Yun was about to speak when Fang Shumiao continued, “Eh, well it’s not that no one knows. Gao Jianhong knows, but he won’t talk.” She curled her lips. “Tch, mysterious
 What else would a guy and girl be up to? We’re all grown up, so what’s there to feel guilty about.”
“
.”
“And Ren Di, she’s such an idiot. Who doesn’t know that Li Xun changes girlfriends faster than a person changes clothes? What could she be planning?”
After she finished speaking, Fang Shumiao rolled her eyes and walked off. Zhu Yun hadn’t gotten a chance to say a word.
The difficulty of the seminar’s project cleared out 90% of its participants. Another interesting phenomenon that resulted was that after those students returned to the study hall, they rarely participated in the gossip about Li Xun.
After some more time passed, all the students got serious again. The midterm exams were here. It was the first real college exam for these students, and since it would account for 30% of their final grades, everyone was especially attentive.
Zhu Yun as well, especially since she was the representative for their programming course.
No one knew who she was trying to compete against. She would spend the whole day in the library, various systems and compilers on her computer screen, tirelessly answering a single question again and again with multiple methods.
Every time she wanted to relax a bit, that pixel character would suddenly pop into her head. It charged at her with a sword in its hands, and then her fighting spirit would reawaken.
On the day of the exam, Zhu Yun rolled up her sleeves and headed into the test room. Since this was a programming course, the exam naturally took place on a computer. After the exam started, Zhu Yun went straight to the final programming question.
The problem was to “write a program that draws a heart.”
Zhu Yun frowned. Teacher Lin’s question was too careless. The simplicity of the problem was a bit excessive
 Her feelings then were essentially: A chef prepares all the ingredients for an imperial feast, only to find that the customer simply wanted instant noodles.
Zhu Yun sighed and then completed the programming problem before returning to the reasoning questions. Her studying had been comprehensive, so she quickly completed the exam. As she was about to get up to submit her exam, she realized that beside her, Li Xun had yet to get up.
Eh

For some reason, Zhu Yun had released the hand that was about to click the submit button.
She flipped through the exam paper several times but genuinely didn’t see anything that needed changing. The program she wrote for the final question was also running smoothly. A standard heart pattern that couldn’t be more standard

What gave her a sense of complacency was when she glanced over at math rep Wu Mengxing. Although the actual code wasn’t visible, she could see that the length of the code in the compiler was four times longer than her own. What was she writing? How verbose.
Li Xun finally handed in his exam. Zhu Yun had already been sitting for more than ten minutes, doing nothing. When she saw Li Xun leave, she found herself sighing, and then she handed in her exam as well.
Several days later, the grades came out.
Completely contrary to Zhu Yun’s expectations, Li Xun only scored 11th in the class. She’d beat him out at 7th. When Zhu Yun saw the rankings, she was overjoyed, feeling like she was floating in the clouds. But when her test paper was returned, she was shocked.
The grader had marked too brazenly, docking several points for a rounded decimal.
As for the C programming grades, they’d both (all?) gotten full points.
Zhu Yun held her exam as she tried to take in the moment. It didn’t seem as exciting as she had thought it would be

When she went to Old Mr Lin’s class that day, Zhu Yun discovered that her seat was occupied by Wu Mengxing, who was in a discussion with Li Xun. Wu Mengxing’s backpack was at her own seat, so Zhu Yun figured that she’d return there soon. She walked over and waited in the other seat next to Wu Mengxing.
“Can
 Can you help me look over this?” she heard Wu Mengxing ask.
“Open it,” Master Li said lazily.
Wu Mengxing started her program, and Zhu Yun peeked over. It was from the exam, to draw a heart.
“This is how I went about it.” Wu Mengxing stumbled through her words, as if frightened by Li Xun. “I split the heart into three parts, and then
 And then I split it again into left space, the first part of the heart, the middle space, the second part of the heart, and then I used a loop
”
Zhu Yun immediately understood. This thought process was much like Wu Mengxing’s personality, honest and upright.
After a moment, Zhu Yun heard Top Score Li laugh. “You call yourself the math class rep?”
How rude and hurtful!
Indeed, Wu Mengxing was quite embarrassed by his ridicule. Trembling, he said, “C-c-can you let me see yours?”
Li Xun responded, “There’s no point in that. You should ask the class rep over there instead.”
???
Wu Mengxing turned around. When he turned, Zhu Yun and Li Xun’s eyes met briefly. Zhu Yun’s thigh cramped even as her expression remained even.
“What’s wrong?”
Wu Mengxing, “Zhu Yun, can you let me see your program?”
Zhu Yun nodded. “Sure.”
After all, she was a nice, kind student, like a spring breeze.
Zhu Yun opened her program and Wu Mengxing’s eyes lit up.
“It’s so clean!”
Two loops, six lines total.
Wu Mengxing said, “So you can write a function to make a heart. My method was really dumb.”
“No, it’s okay.”
Wu Mengxing’s face was very serious. He grabbed his notebook and started writing, muttering as he worked. He had the foundation, but sometimes you just can’t figure something out. But seeing the method now, he quickly understood.
Armed with this new insight, Wu Mengxing’s expression brightened. He thanked Zhu Yun several times, and she told him there was no need for such courtesy between friends. A joyous and harmonious relationship.
After Wu Mengxing left, Zhu Yun returned to her seat. The warmth in her face hadn’t yet dissipated when her eyes met Li Xun’s once more. Zhu Yun really wanted to ask him about what kind of experience he had that would cause him to ridicule someone in such a manner.
“If you have something to say, say it.” Li Xun was leaning back in his chair, his gray shirt bunched loosely at his waist.
“Mmh?” Zhu Yun asked blankly. “What?”
Li Xun sneered and turned away.
Hey, who are you looking down on? After being continiously provoked by him, Zhu Yun, for some reason, blurted out, “Let me see.”
Li Xun lazily narrowed his eyes. “Mmh?”
A tall order. Filled with some kind of energy, Zhu Yun charged forward, “Can you let me see your program?”
Li Xun’s response came unhurried, “Sure.”
He tapped on the keyboard and then the compiler appeared on the screen. Zhu Yun moved closer.












What in the world.
In terms of length, Li Xun’s code was longer than Wu Mengxing’s. But where Wu Mingxing’s idea was immediately understood and archaic, like using wood to make fire, Li Xun’s
 Zhu Yun focused all her brain power, but she could only comprehend up to the fifth line.
What was that part after that? What was the final outcome?
An even voice came from behind her, “If you don’t understand, don’t force yourself. It’ll just trouble you.”
As someone who’d yet to deal with the strong stimuli in the world that could cause a sudden onslaught of pain—commonly described as nerve pain—Zhu Yun’s head started to hurt a lot. While her head was spinning, the bell sudenly rang.
Tea in hand, Old Mr Lin stepped into the classroom, and Zhu Yun quietly returned to her seat.
After class ended, Li Xun left the room, and then Zhu Yun pulled out her pen and scribbled down the key points of the code she’d seen earlier before rushing back to her dorm room. She started flipping through her textbooks and going through information she’d collected. Four hours later, after dozens of tests, she was finally successful in replicating Li Xun’s code.
Time to run the program.
On the screen, a three dimensional red heart appeared, beating badump, badump against the dark background.
Later, on the rooftop, the night breeze felt very refreshing. Zhu Yun sighed as she looked over at the distant fountain and poked open her milk tea. She took a sip and then heard a familar voice behind her—
“Fuck.”
Zhu Yun turned around and greeted, “Ren Di, come sit.”