On the second day of the break, Lu Yao and Zhou Qiang arranged to go hiking. Huang Yibo joined in, so the dorm-room trio reunited once again.
Zhou Qiang asked curiously, "Lu Yao's freelancing, and my wife went to Russia, but how does a busy man like you actually have time to come hiking? Aren't you grinding away on your thesis every day? That's seriously weird."
"I had to get out and slow down a bit. I'm sleeping in the lab every day now. I'm almost falling apart. The moment I try to sleep, my brain starts thinking about my thesis and my data. I feel like if I don't change my mood soon, I'm going to get depression."
Huang Yibo said it with a smile.
Lu Yao remembered that back when they were undergrads at the Institute of Technology, Huang Yibo had a normal build and was a clean-cut young man. Now that he was doing graduate studies at Jiao Tong University, his body had visibly swollen and fattened up, making him look very tired.
Compared with last time, however, Huang Yibo was in high spirits today, as if he had made progress in his research.
He did not hide it either. "I'm definitely going straight into a PhD early. I'll keep muddling along under my advisor."
Lu Yao was a little surprised. "I thought you'd wanted to get out and work for money ages ago."
"That was then, this is now."
Zhou Qiang was shocked. "Did your advisor introduce his daughter to you?"
"His daughter's still in high school... It's nothing like that."
Huang Yibo gave a mysterious smile. "The main thing is that my advisor got me a spot and brought me into a group with him. That group is at the cutting edge of our country's