This Bookworm Isn't Omnipotent After All! (Seeking Reads and Collections)

Chapter 22: This Academic Prodigy Isn't All-Powerful After All! (Please Read and Bookmark!)

"Professor Xia?"

Wu Tianming turned around and saw that the person approaching was none other than their department head, Xia Qing. Standing beside Xia Qing were a man and a woman.

Wu Tianming and Wang Ye quickly straightened up, standing properly as they looked at Professor Xia.

Getting caught red-handed eavesdropping by the department head—how were they supposed to explain this?

"Professor Xia, don't misunderstand. We were just passing by and heard arguing inside, so we got curious," Wang Ye said, shamelessly forcing an explanation, unwilling to give up.

Xia Qing glanced at him expressionlessly, ignoring him. She looked toward the office door and asked, "Is Teacher Ke Zhan inside?"

Wu Tianming and Wang Ye both nodded. Wang Ye, even more eager, stepped forward and said, "Professor Xia, do you want me to knock for you?"

"Mm," Professor Xia replied.

With permission, Wang Ye hurried to knock. Soon, footsteps sounded from inside the office.

The door opened, and Ke Zhan's face appeared. He saw Wang Ye first and frowned, about to say something when his peripheral vision caught the people standing beside him.

"Director Wei, Vice President Han, Director Xia—what brings you here?"

Xia Qing looked at him and said slowly, "We'd like to talk to you about your paper. Is that convenient?"

"Uh, of course, please come in." The arrival of Xia Qing and the other two seemed to catch Ke Zhan completely off guard. He hurriedly invited them into the office before realizing Luo Yao was still standing there.

"Luo Yao, you can leave first." Ke Zhan didn't want Xia Qing and the others to know about his conversation with Luo Yao, so he quickly sent Luo Yao away.

Xia Qing watched Luo Yao leave without saying anything. Only after Luo Yao closed the office door did she turn her sharp gaze back to Ke Zhan.

Outside the office door.

"Brother Ye, the way you knocked for Teacher Xia just now looked like you were guiding the way for a Japanese officer!" Wu Tianming sighed in relief after Luo Yao came out and couldn't help but joke.

"It was all for Santuo! You don't know how anxious I was just now," Wang Ye said, wiping imaginary sweat from his forehead.

"Let's get out of here. None of us had breakfast, so let's go eat lunch," Wu Tianming suggested.

"Don't you want to keep listening?" Wang Ye whispered, his eyes still lingering reluctantly on the office door.

"Getting caught once was embarrassing enough. Two grown men eavesdropping—if you want to listen, go ahead!" With that, Wu Tianming led Luo Yao away. Wang Ye, seeing he was the only one left, figured that being embarrassed alone would be truly humiliating, so he quickened his pace to catch up.

On the way, Wu Tianming asked Luo Yao if Ke Zhan had said anything in the office. A rare flicker of emotion crossed Luo Yao's face.

"He's so stupid. He kept asking me why I emailed the editor of Semiconductor instead of sending it directly to him. Looks like not sending it to him was the right choice—he probably wouldn't have understood it anyway."

Wu Tianming and Wang Ye fell silent.

They thought Luo Yao and Ke Zhan were on completely different wavelengths—one only wanted the other to correct his mistake, while the other desperately tried to cover it up.

Ke Zhan probably never expected to run into someone as stubborn and straightforward as Luo Yao.

"Santuo, you don't get it. Ke Zhan's current title is just an ordinary lecturer. He's probably trying to get promoted to associate professor, which is tied to the number of published papers. With what you did, that paper of his probably won't count toward his evaluation."

"Associate professor? Someone with his skill level could never become an associate professor." Luo Yao's dead-serious tone made Wu Tianming and Wang Ye laugh helplessly.

This guy really didn't hold back!

They had never met anyone so blunt.

"Damn! I just realized—the way Ke Zhan looked at me earlier, he probably thinks Professor Xia and the others were called here by me, right?" Wang Ye suddenly froze in place.

Wu Tianming also recalled what had just happened. He said gloomily, "Well, now we can only pray that Ke Zhan fails his associate professor evaluation. Otherwise, we're all in for trouble."

"I don't know about trouble, but now that you mention it, I really am hungry. Let's go eat—I'm already dizzy from hunger. If this keeps up, I'll definitely get low blood sugar," Wang Ye said, his head drooping weakly.

Wu Tianming felt his stomach empty too. He said, "Let's go then. Cafeteria One or Cafeteria Two? I heard Cafeteria Two has spicy hot pot today..."

"I'm not going. You two go ahead," Luo Yao said when he saw they had started discussing lunch.

"Huh? You didn't eat breakfast either, and you're skipping lunch? That won't do. Skipping meals can cause cholecystitis. You should at least eat a little." Wu Tianming's family often dealt with medicine and pharmaceuticals, so he had grown up with health awareness and paid extra attention to it.

"Is that so?" Luo Yao asked doubtfully.

Growing up, aside from completing the reading tasks given by the system, he had never known that skipping meals could cause cholecystitis.

This academic prodigy wasn't all-powerful after all!

Both Wu Tianming and Wang Ye realized that.

"Santuo, I've noticed your self-care skills are a bit lacking. Come on, big brother will take you to eat." With that, Wang Ye waved his hand, signaling Luo Yao to follow him.

"But I need to go read," Luo Yao said. It wasn't a lie—he needed to prepare for the EDA project, and since he didn't have a computer, the best place was the library, where he could both look up materials and write code.

"Eat first, then read. As our ancestors said, 'Man is iron, food is steel—one meal missed leaves you weak.' Think about it—if your body can't hold up, how can you study?"

Luo Yao usually didn't pay attention to such knowledge, and his brain automatically filtered out things he considered useless. So now, hearing this, he instinctively found it strange: "Iron is a metallic element, while steel is an alloy. Iron can be smelted into steel, so if man is iron and food is steel, the causal relationship is wrong."

Wang Ye said he didn't want to talk anymore.

"Look how skinny you are. If you don't eat, you'll become a relative of the mummy in a few days. Come on, I'm about to pass out from hunger too," Wu Tianming said, unable to take it anymore, interrupting Luo Yao's continued science lesson.

Luo Yao hesitated for a moment but ultimately chose to follow them to eat.

It wasn't that they had convinced him—it was that their nagging reminded him of his mother.

They got their food in the cafeteria, sat down, and started eating. Wang Ye, ravenous, quickly finished a bowl of rice. Still hungry, he went for a second bowl.

By the time he finished the second bowl and downed a piece of savory pancake, Luo Yao had only just finished his meal.

"Brother Ye, can't you learn to eat like Santuo?" Wu Tianming said. Seeing that Wang Ye called Luo Yao "Santuo" without Luo Yao objecting, he started using the nickname too.

Wang Ye waved his hand, looking disgusted. "No way. If I ate that slowly, I'd starve to death."

After eating, Luo Yao wanted to go to the library to study. Wang Ye originally planned to go back to sleep, but Wu Tianming persuaded him to come to the library too, calling it a "digestive activity."