My IQ Increases Year by Year

The door to the Applied Fluid Dynamics Lab of the School of Physics was ajar.

Zhang Yuan stared at the flickering monitor in front of him, blinking hard.

His eyes were bloodshot, and his hair, plastered to his forehead, looked like it hadn’t been washed in at least three days.

Lin Fang at the workstation next to him wasn’t much better off. She wore a pair of thick glasses and was mechanically stuffing dry soda crackers into her mouth, her gaze vacant.

"Brother Zhang."

Lin Fang swallowed the cracker, her voice weak.

"The simulation for the third set of wind-resistance pressure data is done. No errors."

Zhang Yuan wiped his face and sighed.

"If there are no errors, start running the fourth set. Dean Fang said that as long as the system doesn’t crash, we must produce all the phase-one data for the vehicle’s front-end wind tunnel test before the Spring Festival."

After speaking, Zhang Yuan turned his head and glanced at Chen Zhuo, who was sitting by the window.

Chen Zhuo was wearing a hooded sweatshirt today. He was neatly stacking a few papers from his desk, tucking them into his backpack, and then slowly zipping it closed.

"Xiaozhuo, packing up already?"

Zhang Yuan couldn’t help but ask.

Chen Zhuo turned his head and smiled at Zhang Yuan.

"Yeah, my train is tomorrow. I should head back early and get some rest today."

Zhang Yuan looked at Chen Zhuo’s serene face, then glanced back at the rows of green code on his own monitor. A pang of indescribable bitterness welled up inside him.

Two weeks ago, this lab hadn’t been like this.

Back then, the system would crash whenever the data load was even slightly large, brought down by the insufficient computing power needed for the continuous partial differential equations.

They could only run a simulation for a few dozen minutes before having to stop and troubleshoot. Progress was snail-paced. Though everyone was anxious, they at least had some breathing room. Dean Fang knew the hardware couldn’t keep up, so he didn’t rush them too much.

Until Chen Zhuo casually threw in a discrete algebraic matrix.

Once the program’s underlying logic was replaced, the system was like it was on steroids. It never crashed again, and the data processing speed increased dozens of times over.

When the Alchemist saw how fast things were moving, he made an executive decision: everyone was to work around the clock. They had to get results before the New Year.

The result was that the program was running just fine, but the people were about to break down.

"This algorithm you wrote is too solid."

Zhang Yuan picked up the cold coffee on his desk and took a sip.

"So solid that now Dean Fang looks at us like a landlord eyeing a new pack of mules."

Lin Fang let out a chuckle from her desk, but it was quickly followed by a weary yawn.

"I want to go home, too."

Lin Fang slumped onto her desk.

"My mom called yesterday to ask when I was buying my ticket. I said probably on New Year’s Eve, and she chewed me out."

Chen Zhuo pushed his chair back under the desk and slung his backpack over one shoulder.

"Thank you both for your hard work."

Chen Zhuo’s tone was gentle.

"I’ve already set the fault tolerance for these data sets. As long as the hardware doesn’t burn out, it basically won’t need any manual intervention. You guys just need to watch the progress bar."

Zhang Yuan gave him a pained look.

"Xiaozhuo, are you going to keep working on those topology formulas over the holiday? With a brain like yours, I bet it never really switches off, does it?"

In Zhang Yuan’s mind, a genius who could casually rewrite the system’s core architecture probably had nothing in his life but math and physics.

Chen Zhuo stood at the door. Hearing this, he shook his head seriously.

"No, I’m not. Even my brain needs a holiday."

He fiddled with his backpack strap, a glint appearing in his eyes.

"My mom called yesterday. She said she’s already braised some beef and is just waiting for me to come home and slice it. And my childhood friend already cased the local arcade last week. He said they got a new *The King of Fighters ’97* machine and is dying to drag me over to practice combos."

The lab fell silent.

Zhang Yuan and Lin Fang stared, mouths agape, unsure of how to respond.

Braised beef.

The arcade.

*The King of Fighters ’97*.

For these words—so full of mundane, everyday charm and middle-school immaturity—to come from Chen Zhuo, who had just been discussing high-dimensional matrix reduction, created a jarring sense of cognitive dissonance.

Zhang Yuan looked at Chen Zhuo’s still-childish face, and it suddenly hit him.

This powerhouse before him—the one who was schooling a bunch of twenty-something master’s and doctoral students, the one who had single-handedly dragged an entire national-level project ahead of schedule—was, holy shit, actually just a twelve-year-old kid who still went home for the holidays to set off firecrackers and get lucky money.

"Alright, fine."

Zhang Yuan waved his hand weakly.

"Just get out of here, before I get jealous enough to unplug the router."

"Brother Zhang, Sister Lin, Happy New Year in advance."

Chen Zhuo waved with a grin and walked out of the lab.

The moment the door closed, Zhang Yuan turned his head to look at Lin Fang.

"What were you doing when you were twelve?"

"Playing with mud."

Lin Fang replied without a change in expression, then turned her eyes back to the monitor.

"Back to work, mule."

After leaving the Physics Building, Chen Zhuo crunched through a thin layer of snow on the ground, heading toward the School of Mathematics’ office building.

He was collecting another stipend from the School of Mathematics, so he had to stop by and say goodbye to Professor Li Jianming before he left.

The School of Mathematics’ office building always felt a bit gloomy and cold in the winter. Chen Zhuo navigated the familiar path up to the third floor and arrived at Li Jianming’s office.

The door was open.

The air in the office was thick with the smell of chalk dust and cigarette smoke.

A huge, rolling blackboard took up half the room. It was covered in a scrawl of distorted integral symbols and homology group mapping formulas.

Professor Li Jianming had half a cigarette between his fingers, his brow furrowed into a knot, staring intently at the top right corner of the blackboard.

His PhD student, Wu Tao, stood before the blackboard, clutching a stub of chalk, his hair a total bird’s nest.