How can mathematics lie? It must be people who lie! (Bonus Chapter)

"Wait! Why are you going to ask? Who needs you to ask?" Wang Ye wasn't stupid. He knew Tang Dong had bad intentions and quickly called out to him.

Tang Dong ignored him.

The more Wu Tianming and Wang Ye tried to stop him, the more determined Tang Dong was to get to the bottom of it.

Maybe Wu Tianming and Wang Ye were both covering for Luo Yao!

If he could push Wu Tianming and Wang Ye out of the running in this interview, he was practically 100% guaranteed to get into the project.

After Tang Dong finished telling Xia Qing about Luo Yao, he expected the other person to thank him for the warning.

But he didn't expect Xia Qing to sternly tell him, "Don't inquire about Luo Yao's matters in the future."

Don't inquire?!

What kind of situation was this!

"But, Professor Xia, Luo Yao he..."

"Enough. Is there nothing else you need to do? If you don't want to participate in the interview this afternoon, I can find someone else." Professor Xia was swamped with work preparing for his upcoming meeting with the semiconductor alliance, and here Tang Dong was, coming to report on someone.

Tang Dong walked out of Professor Xia's office, unable to understand why Professor Xia wouldn't let him mention Luo Yao.

However, he quickly figured it out.

Luo Yao must have dropped out of school, which was why Professor Xia was unwilling to bring him up.

After reaching this conclusion, Tang Dong didn't forget to tell Wu Tianming and Wang Ye.

When Wu Tianming and Wang Ye heard this, they assumed Professor Xia had told him and rushed to Luo Yao's family restaurant. Only then did they discover the shop was locked up tight, even the sign had been removed, as if their previous meals there were just a dream.

"Brother Ye, it seems San Tu has really left," Wu Tianming said, feeling a bit lost. They hadn't known each other for long, but Luo Yao leaving without a word did make Wu Tianming a bit sad.

"That brat, what a scoundrel! If he's gone, did Luo Zhu leave too?!"

"No wonder I couldn't reach Luo Zhu recently. I thought she was busy with her studies and didn't have time to check messages." Wang Ye, usually a rough guy, showed a rare moment of dejection and squatted by the roadside.

"Forget it. Since San Tu is gone, let's focus on our own matters."

"I have an important interview this afternoon. I wonder if I'll pass?"

Wang Ye said angrily, "Pass! We have to pass! I want to show San Tu how outstanding we are!"

"Leaving without saying goodbye, he's got no conscience! And here I thought I was so good to him!"

Wu Tianming found it amusing watching Wang Ye vent, "Are you upset that Luo Zhu is gone too?"

"Sigh, I'm already heartbroken before we even started dating. It's crushing," Wang Ye sighed.

"Oh, come on. Stop trying to act like a devoted lover. Get yourself together and prepare for the interview this afternoon. If you're down in love, pick yourself up for the interview."

Wu Tianming couldn't be bothered with Wang Ye anymore and got up to leave. He hadn't gone far when he heard Wang Ye wailing, "Quick, come back and help me up, my legs have gone numb!"

Time quickly passed, and it was afternoon. Professor Xia took the three of them to Liushangpo.

Seeing Liushangpo for the first time, the three of them collectively gasped.

"Tech companies are really different from ordinary companies. These facilities completely blow my dad's company out of the water!"

"I never thought of myself as a country bumpkin, but here today, I've truly witnessed Huaji's extravagance."

"I must work here! I have to nail this internship today!"

Professor Xia led them to a closed-off terrace at Liushangpo. Several white chairs were placed on the terrace, and a tall person was sitting in one of them, reading a book. A middle-aged man sat beside them.

The cover of "Newton's Studies" blocked the person's face, and Wang Ye craned his neck but couldn't see clearly.

"The interviewers are over there. Follow me."

The three followed Professor Xia to the front of the person.

The person reading the book hadn't noticed anyone had arrived.

"Luo Yao, I've brought the interviewees," Peng Xun reminded Luo Yao from the side.

Wait?!

Who did that person just call?

The person reading the book slowly raised their head from behind the book, revealing a face that was all too familiar to Wang Ye and the other two.

"Luo... Luo Yao?" Wu Tianming's mind went blank. Everything he had prepared for the interview vanished instantly.

"Let me introduce everyone. Luo Yao is the head of the chip laboratory and will be interviewing you today," Peng Xun introduced Luo Yao.

Wang Ye looked at Luo Yao's familiar face, took a deep breath, and then spoke, "No, how did you become the head of the laboratory? And our interviewer? Is there some mistake?"

"What happened?"

"This world is updating too fast, am I not keeping up?"

Wu Tianming looked at Peng Xun beside them, thinking the interviewer should have been him.

Luo Yao remained silent.

He knew he couldn't explain things clearly right now, and the matter of Pangu EDA couldn't be revealed. So, he reminded them, "Are you still going to interview?"

"Yes, yes! How could we not? Please, tell us," Wang Ye said. His earlier nervousness had completely disappeared upon seeing Luo Yao.

Is there anything more satisfying than seeing your classmate during an interview?!

Absolutely nothing.

"I'll ask questions casually, and you guys answer."

"Okay, go ahead and ask!" Wang Ye winked at Luo Yao with a grin. He thought Luo Yao would go easy on him, but the guy was a block of wood, completely clueless about going easy.

Luo Yao picked up the questions he had prepared earlier and handed them to the three of them.

Wang Ye took a look and almost fainted.

[Prove that there are infinitely many prime numbers of the form 4k+3, where k is an integer.]

As everyone knows, in mathematics, the fewer words a problem has, the bigger the deal it is.

Neither Wang Ye nor Wu Tianming were math whizzes. As soon as they saw the question, they exchanged wide-eyed glances. Tang Dong, on the other hand, took out his pen and started writing furiously.

He had initially doubted Luo Yao being the interviewer, but thinking that Professor Xia and another person were present, Luo Yao wouldn't be able to play any tricks, so he cooperated with the problem-solving.

Seeing Wang Ye chewing on his pen, Luo Yao reminded him, "It's okay if you don't know the answer, you can write down your thought process. I'm mainly looking at the thought process."

Luo Yao believed that if a person's logic was sound, they could be trained. But if their logic was flawed, it wasn't a matter of training, but of starting from scratch.

Luo Yao gave the three of them half an hour. When the time was up, Luo Yao asked them to submit their papers.

Tang Dong had already finished and said to Luo Yao with a proud look, "I believe I've definitely satisfied you this time."

Luo Yao glanced at him with emotionless eyes and took his answer sheet.

Then, under Professor Xia's watchful gaze, Wang Ye and Wu Tianming nervously submitted their answer sheets.

They thought that after submitting their papers, they would just go back and wait for notification. To their surprise, Luo Yao started reading what they had written as soon as he received it.

Wu Tianming and Wang Ye immediately became nervous.

Announcing the interview results on the spot?!

Did it have to be this embarrassing!

Wu Tianming and Wang Ye felt that the typical corporate practice of asking candidates to wait for notification was more normal.

Announcing interview results face-to-face, weren't they afraid of complaints?!

Amidst their apprehension, Luo Yao finally looked up.

"Your logic is fine, but you made calculation errors. I can explain it to you in detail later."

Wu Tianming and Wang Ye were stunned. Did this mean they passed the interview?

After speaking, Luo Yao turned to Tang Dong and said, "You used the wrong theorem when solving the problem. You should have used Fermat's Little Theorem here, not Fermat's Last Theorem."

Tang Dong stood up excitedly, "Impossible! How could I have made a mistake!"

"First, let's assume there are only a finite number of primes of the form 4k+3. We can list these primes and denote them as p1, p2, p3, ..., pk."

"Then, let's consider the number N = 4p1p2p3pk - 1. N is clearly an integer of the form 4k+3, as it is 4k+3 minus 1. Now, we want to prove that N is not a multiple of any of the known primes of the form 4k+3, p1, p2, p3, ..., pk."

"A special case of Fermat's Little Theorem can be used: if p is a prime number and a is a positive integer, then a^(p-1) ≡ 1 (mod p). This theorem states that if a is not a multiple of p, then the remainder when a^(p-1) is divided by p must be 1."

"Then we have N ≡ (-1)^(p1-1)(-1)^(p2-1)(-1)^(p3-1)(-1)^(pk-1) (mod p1p2p3pk)..."

Luo Yao spoke as he wrote on the paper.

As he explained, Tang Dong's expression grew increasingly grim.

Luo Yao's logic was exceptionally smooth and clearly correct.

And the answer he had written earlier had some forced reasoning in the middle.

But Tang Dong believed it didn't matter, "At least my answer is correct, which proves I'm not wrong!"

Luo Yao was kindly explaining the problem to him, but he didn't expect the other person to be as stubborn as a dead duck, refusing to admit his mistake.

Luo Yao hated people who made mistakes and refused to admit them the most. Mathematics had already shown Tang Dong his error, so why wouldn't he admit it!

How could mathematics lie?

It must be people who lie!

He looked at Tang Dong, who was trying to get away with it, and his impatience grew.

"I could solve this problem using Fermat's Little Theorem when I was in elementary school, and you still used the wrong one?"

Hearing this, Tang Dong's face turned even uglier.

He could solve it in elementary school?

What a joke!

Professor Xia, Wu Tianming, and Wang Ye were also stunned. They hadn't expected Luo Yao to speak so bluntly.

"Even if you got the correct result, so what?" Luo Yao didn't stop talking and continued.

"If you robbed 5 million yuan from a bank, is it the same as earning 5 million yuan through hard work?"

"I'm sorry, I'm not a result-oriented person."

"What appears to be justice on the surface is actually a struggle for discursive power. This is merely you fighting for discursive dominance, believing you are right."

"For a mature product, if even the process isn't perfect, how can the result be good?"

"You can muddle through a single question, but that's absolutely impossible when creating a product!"

"Customers will never pay for your mistakes."

Luo Yao's voice wasn't loud, but every word resonated deeply with Peng Xun and Xia Qing.

Huaji's products, aimed at both individual and corporate clients, were meant to provide services for which customers paid good money, not a terrible experience.

No matter how flashy the product's exterior, if the system logic was flawed, people still wouldn't buy it.

Electronic consumer goods were already expensive, and the cost of trial and error became high. If a customer was fooled once, they'd develop resistance, making it tens of times harder to get them to buy again compared to acquiring a new customer!

Thinking this, Peng Xun nodded repeatedly.

In his opinion, Luo Yao was a bit too blunt, but he explained the reasoning clearly.

Someone like Tang Dong, Luo Yao wouldn't even consider, and if Peng Xun encountered such a person during an interview, he wouldn't hire them either.

They didn't even know what their work objective was; were they in the lab just to slack off?

At this moment, Tang Dong, angered, turned to glare at Xia Qing and said, "Professor Xia, I think Luo Yao is targeting me!"

Upon hearing this, Xia Qing immediately felt that this person was beyond saving.

Regardless of the reason, accusing the interviewer during an interview was a sign of low emotional intelligence.

Luo Yao also had low emotional intelligence, but his intelligence compensated for it.

Moreover, everything had been explained clearly by others.

The products developed in the chip lab would inevitably be customer-facing; otherwise, why would Huaji support a lab for no reason?

Were they that bored?

Since the products were customer-facing, the process indeed needed to be emphasized.

She hadn't expected Tang Dong to still think Luo Yao was targeting him after the explanation.

He was like a child.

Such a person couldn't be entrusted with important responsibilities.

Xia Qing shook her head and said, "I believe classmate Luo Yao is correct. I also believe that in this scenario, the process is more important than the result. Your role at Huaji is to create products, not floaty academic reports."

"If research achievements cannot be converted into practical applications, why should Huaji support this project?"

"Tang Dong, you'll come back with me. Study for a few more years before coming here again."

Xia Qing's words were tactful, but Tang Dong knew he had failed this interview.

Tang Dong was unwilling; he couldn't accept the fact that Luo Yao was more outstanding and had a broader vision than him.

Despite his anger, Tang Dong quickly calmed down. He knew he still had to stay at East University of Technology for a while, and now was not the time to offend Xia Qing.

Seeing Tang Dong fall silent, Xia Qing planned to take him back to school. When she inquired about the interview results for Wu Tianming and Wang Ye, Luo Yao said, "Both passed."

"Then we'll head back to school. Wu Tianming and Wang Ye will stay. From now on, you will follow Luo Yao's arrangements daily. I'll handle your leave requests with the school."

After Xia Qing left with Tang Dong, Peng Xun took Wu Tianming and Wang Ye to get their intern employee cards and then handed them over to Luo Yao.

"San Tu, I feel like I'm dreaming right now! I don't even know how I passed the interview." Wang Ye held his precious intern employee card, reluctant to put it down for even a moment.

Wu Tianming also spoke as if he hadn't fully processed it, "I really didn't expect the interviewer to be you! That guy Tang Dong even told me you dropped out!"

Upon hearing this, Wang Ye became angry and cursed, "That guy's mouth spews nothing but garbage! It's good he was eliminated!"

"Actually, I wasn't favoring anyone. Your answers were indeed better than Tang Dong's. While they weren't perfect answers, your thought process was sound."

Seeing that Luo Yao didn't want to elaborate on how he became the interviewer, Wang Ye dropped the subject.

He joked, "Then Boss San Tu, since we're all part of your lab now, what are we going to research next?"

"Chip EDA software."

"That's not a small challenge. I heard my dad say that many medical devices are afraid to use domestic chips, fearing problems."

"If we build EDA design software, will anyone use it?"

Luo Yao quietly looked at his phone, where a text message from Rao Xueling was displayed.

"They will. If they don't, they'll regret it," Luo Yao said, putting his phone back in his bag.

P.s. Thank you all for your support, which got me on the recommendation list. I'm adding an extra chapter today! I hope for more votes and follow-up support. The better the data, the more extra chapters the little author will add!