The practical training base’s establishment had attracted no shortage of criticism — but in the days that followed, everyone demonstrated with their own actions exactly what it meant to say one thing and do another.

Sleeping in a little longer in the morning, spending a little more time online at night: for students who had yet to encounter the real world and its financial pressures, these were temptations all but impossible to refuse.

And so, within just half a month of the training base’s founding, dozens of students trickled in to find Li Xun and ask about it.

Li Xun turned no one away.

Anyone who wanted to come was welcome. Anyone who signed up was accepted. No conditions whatsoever.

In the end, even Fang Shumiao went over to register.

Fang Shumiao’s explanation: “The student council is way too competitive. I need to carve out time to get my face known in front of the school administrators.”

She didn’t forget her good roommate, either: “Do you want to come? I’ll put in a word with Li Xun for you.”

Zhu Yun politely declined. “Thanks, but I’m fine for now.”

Both of Zhu Yun’s parents were teachers, and in the upbringing she’d received from childhood, attending morning and evening study sessions was simply what students did — nothing worth complaining about.

Besides, she still hadn’t quite figured out what this so-called “practical training base” actually did.

As for the rumor that the department was giving Li Xun special treatment on account of his family connections — Zhu Yun didn’t believe a word of it.

Why not?

No particular reason.

After some time, things gradually began to shift. Zhu Yun noticed that many of the students who had joined the base specifically to get out of study sessions were quietly trickling back.

Fang Shumiao returned with her first frontline report.

“Absolute nonsense,” she said, brow furrowed. “The project is way too hard. We’ve only just learned the basics — barely seen a handful of lines of code — and they expect us to build something that complicated? My head’s going to explode.”

“That difficult?”

“Difficult,” Fang Shumiao said flatly, with no room for debate.

Zhu Yun wanted to ask what the project actually was, but something else came to mind first. “What about Ren Di?”

In the C programming course where Zhu Yun served as class representative, Ren Di’s assignments were always straight copies of hers. She showed no sign of any interest in programming whatsoever.

The moment Ren Di’s name came up, Fang Shumiao’s voice turned noticeably evasive.

“Her? She… she’s not working on the project.”

“Then how is she still there?”

“Li Xun’s doing. He put her name down on the very first day, without asking whether she’d show up or not.”

“Is that so…”

Fang Shumiao shrugged, then snuck a glance at Zhu Yun and lowered her voice. “I’ll tell you something — Ren Di goes to find Li Xun almost every single night.”

Zhu Yun raised an eyebrow.

“And Li Xun, too. Several times he’s been in the middle of something busy, but the moment Ren Di shows up, he drops everything and disappears until the middle of the night. Nobody knows what they’re up to. Strange, right?”

Zhu Yun was about to say something, but Fang Shumiao pressed on:

“Well — I suppose it’s not quite nobody who knows. Gao Jianhong knows. He just won’t say.” She pursed her lips as she spoke. “Please. All that secrecy — what else could a man and a woman possibly be doing together? They’re both adults. Are they scared of ghosts or something?”

“…”

“And Ren Di, too — she’s just so stupid. Everyone knows Li Xun goes through girlfriends faster than he changes clothes. What does she think she’s getting out of it?”

With that, Fang Shumiao rolled her eyes and swept away with an air of serene self-satisfaction.

Zhu Yun never got a word in edgewise.

The project’s difficulty level had weeded out nine out of ten of the free-riders.

Another noteworthy phenomenon: after returning, those students rarely participated in conversations about Li Xun anymore.

More time passed, everyone settled down, and the midterm examinations arrived.

This was the first formal exam since the semester began — counting for thirty percent of the final grade — and everyone took it especially seriously.

Zhu Yun was no exception, particularly when it came to C programming, the course she served as class representative for.

It was as though she was quietly competing with someone, though she couldn’t have said who. She practically lived in the library every day, had installed every kind of runtime software and compiler on her computer, and worked through the same problem every which way she could, tirelessly.

Whenever she felt like easing up, a little pixel figure wielding a sword would surface unbidden in her mind, stomping forward and jabbing her with it — and just like that, she’d be fired back up with determination.

On the day of the exam, Zhu Yun arrived at the examination hall ready for battle. This kind of programming-focused course was taken on computers, and the moment the exam began, she scrolled straight to the last question — the programming problem.

The prompt read: Write a program to draw a heart.

Zhu Yun frowned. The old man Lin really did set problems on a whim. This one was almost embarrassingly simple…

The feeling she had in that moment: like a master chef who’d prepared a full imperial banquet’s worth of ingredients, only to find that the guest just wanted instant noodles.

She finished the programming question in one smooth, uninterrupted run, then turned to the theory section.

Her preparation had been thorough, and she finished the questions quickly. As she was about to submit, she suddenly noticed that Li Xun, seated a few terminals away, hadn’t stood up yet.

Well…

For reasons she couldn’t quite explain, the hand she’d already placed over the “Submit” button released.

She went through the exam paper again and again, more than a dozen times. There was genuinely nothing left she could change. The last programming question had run without a hitch — producing a heart shape so perfect it could have served as a textbook example, and moreover…

She felt a small flicker of satisfaction: just moments ago she’d accidentally glanced over at Wu Mengxing, the math class representative sitting beside her. She couldn’t see his actual code, but she’d caught the length of it in the compiler window — nearly four times as long as hers.

Whatever he’d written in there.

All that fuss for nothing.

Li Xun finally submitted.

By that point, Zhu Yun had been sitting there doing nothing for a good fifteen minutes. She watched Li Xun’s departing figure, let out a quiet, inexplicable sigh on her own behalf, and submitted as well.

A few days later, the results came in.

Completely contrary to Zhu Yun’s expectations, Li Xun ranked only eleventh in the class — she had beaten him by a full seven places.

The moment she saw the rankings, Zhu Yun felt as if she were floating on clouds — and then, when she looked at the detailed score breakdown, the feeling went flat.

The way this person unapologetically neglected everything outside his specialization: his Introduction to Marxist Theory alone had dragged him down by more than ten points.

Then, in the C programming column: they were both at full marks.

Zhu Yun held the score report for a moment and sat with the feeling.

It wasn’t quite as thrilling as she’d imagined…

That same day there was a class with Old Man Lin. When Zhu Yun arrived, she found Wu Mengxing occupying her usual seat, talking with Li Xun beside him.

Wu Mengxing’s bag was still where it had been before, so Zhu Yun figured he’d be leaving soon. She went over and settled into the seat to Wu Mengxing’s right to wait.

“Could you… could you take a look at this for me?” she heard Wu Mengxing say.

“Pull it up,” Li Xun replied, in that unhurried drawl of his.

Wu Mengxing ran a program. Zhu Yun slid her eyes over without making it obvious — it was the exam question: draw a heart.

“My approach was like this.” Wu Mengxing seemed a little afraid of Li Xun; his words came out in halting fragments. “I divided the heart into three sections, and then… then I split it into the left-side spaces, the first part of the heart, the middle spaces, the second part of the heart, and then used a for loop to keep cycling…”

Zhu Yun understood immediately. The approach was exactly like Wu Mengxing himself — two words: straightforward and blunt.

After a moment’s pause, she heard the top-ranking student let out a quiet, soft laugh.

“And you call yourself the math class representative?”

That was brutal.

Sure enough, Wu Mengxing wilted under the mockery, his voice going unsteady. “W-well — c-can I see yours, then?”

Li Xun: “No need to look at mine. Look at the class representative sitting next to you.”

Wu Mengxing turned around.

In doing so, he shifted just enough that Zhu Yun’s eyes collided directly with Li Xun’s.

Zhu Yun’s leg seized with a sudden cramp. Her face remained perfectly composed.

“What is it?”

Wu Mengxing: “Zhu Yun, could I take a look at your program?”

Zhu Yun nodded. “Of course.”

After all — she was a classmate as warm and gentle as a spring breeze.

Zhu Yun opened her program. Wu Mengxing’s eyes lit up.

“So clean!”

Two for-loops. Six lines total.

Wu Mengxing: “So you can write the heart as a function — my method was too clunky.”

“Not at all. It was fine.”

Wu Mengxing’s expression turned serious; he took out a notebook and started scribbling, muttering to himself the whole time. He had the foundation — he just sometimes couldn’t quite make the mental turn. But once the logic was laid out in front of him, he grasped it immediately.

The enlightened Wu Mengxing was visibly refreshed and brightened. He thanked Zhu Yun repeatedly; Zhu Yun graciously told him not to worry about it.

A warm and harmonious scene.

After seeing Wu Mengxing off, Zhu Yun returned to her own seat. The gentle expression hadn’t yet faded from her face when her eyes met Li Xun’s again.

She genuinely wanted to ask him: just what kind of life experiences had produced that three-hundred-and-sixty-degree, full-rotation, no-blind-spot expression of contempt he wore so naturally on his face?

“Say whatever you want to say.” Li Xun leaned back against his chair, his grey shirt bunched loosely around his waist and abdomen.

“Hmm?” Zhu Yun looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

Li Xun let out a short, dismissive laugh and looked away.

Who exactly do you think you’re looking down on?

Stung by the repeated provocations, and without quite knowing which wire had short-circuited in her brain, Zhu Yun heard herself say out loud: “Let me see it.”

Li Xun lazily slanted his eyes toward her. “Hmm?”

Committed now, Zhu Yun pressed on: “Your program — can I take a look at it?”

Li Xun, unhurried as ever: “Sure.”

He tapped the keyboard. The code filled the compiler window, and Zhu Yun leaned in.

…

……

……..

What on earth.

In terms of length, Li Xun’s code was even longer than Wu Mengxing’s — but Wu Mengxing’s approach, crude and ancient as striking fire from stone, could be seen through in an instant. Li Xun’s, on the other hand… Zhu Yun marshaled every last brain cell she had and could only make sense of it up to the fifth line.

What was the rest of it?

What was the final output supposed to produce?

“Don’t force it if you can’t make sense of it.”

The voice that drifted from behind her was even-tempered and pleasant.

“You’ll strain something.”

A sudden, acute pain with no external cause — commonly known as nerve pain — paid Zhu Yun’s brain its very first visit.

In the dizzying, spinning moment that followed, the bell rang for class.

Old Man Lin strolled in on the dot, tea in hand. Zhu Yun withdrew to her seat without a word.

After class.

Li Xun stepped out of the classroom door. The moment his foot cleared the threshold, Zhu Yun pulled out a pen and wrote down the key nodes she’d just seen in the code, one by one — then sprinted back to the dormitory.

She pored over books, combed through reference materials. In the end, after four solid hours of effort and more than a dozen rounds of testing, she finally succeeded in reconstructing Li Xun’s code from scratch.

Run—

In the center of the screen, against a dim and shadowed background, a three-dimensional, blood-red heart beat steadily: thump, thump, thump.

The rooftop.

The wind tonight was so cool and refreshing.

Zhu Yun stood there, musing to herself, gazing out toward the fountain pool in the distance as she pierced the seal on a cup of milk tea.

She’d barely gotten the first sip in when a familiar voice sounded behind her—

“Damn!”

Zhu Yun turned around and called out in greeting.

“Ren Di — come sit with me.”