To Live Is to Learn!

Ye Kaifu sighed deeply at this thought. Forget it, forget it, he would just have to look for someone on the spaceship.

The ratio of men to women on the spaceship was strictly controlled at 1:1, and everyone had undergone genetic sequencing to ensure there were no dominant hereditary diseases. The girls' appearances certainly wouldn't be bad!

250,000 young and beautiful girls... 250,000! There had to be someone suitable for him!

Zhang Yuan took a bite of his stir-fried noodles, pulling Ye Kaifu back to the cold reality: "...It's just dating, nothing to be envious of. Reproduction isn't a mandatory course in life. Look at them, they're just drinking non-stop. What's the point of that?"

Ye Kaifu retorted indignantly: "Isn't the purpose of being alive to mate and reproduce?"

Zhang Yuan said with a hint of disdain: "Of course not!"

"People live to... learn!"

"Pfft?!" Ye Kaifu nearly spat out a mouthful of noodles.

Zhang Yuan said earnestly: "Let me tell you a story: there was a man named Wolf who planned to commit suicide at midnight because of a breakup."

"And then?"

"Because he was efficient, he finished writing his will by 10 o'clock. With time to kill until 12, he decided to read a math book..."

"He saw Fermat's Last Theorem and began trying to prove it."

"Then, the sun came up, and he hadn't proven it even after the whole night."

"???" Ye Kaifu was a bit confused.

Zhang Yuan continued: "After a night of mathematical research, Wolf's head finally cleared, and he decided not to kill himself. Later, he became a successful entrepreneur."

"...When he died of old age, people found his revised will: he left a 100,000-yuan inheritance as a reward for the first person to prove Fermat's Last Theorem."

"At the end of the 20th century, the mathematician Wiles finally won this prize."

"???" Ye Kaifu blinked.

"What I'm trying to say is that romance makes people stupid, while mathematics makes people happy. There's nothing worth talking about in romance; instead of wasting time getting a hotel room, you'd be better off studying... Knowledge will never let you down, nor will it ever abandon you."

"Therefore, people live to learn!"

Having said this, Zhang Yuan couldn't help but pull out his phone and start scrolling through the Super Brain app, fully enjoying the pleasure it brought.

Ye Kaifu's brain nearly crashed.

He wanted to argue back forcefully, but that ancient aura of a powerhouse forced him to nod.

Recalling his days as a "simp," it really felt like his intelligence had been lowered; he couldn't even tell right from wrong. A single word from his goddess could excite him for a whole week—he was such a loser.

He said speechlessly: "What you said makes sense..."

Zhang Yuan scrolled through math problems while inwardly praising his newly invented philosophy.

One good deed a day is better than building a seven-story pagoda.

Young man, the sea of bitterness is boundless, but turning back is the shore.

After enlightening Ye Kaifu, Zhang Yuan returned to his dorm, obsessed with researching his own algorithms, unable to extricate himself.

The stuff he had just talked about with Ye Kaifu—variance, dynamic programming, and the like—was merely basic knowledge in operations research. These things were still too amateurish; anything he could easily think of had already been thought of by experts long ago.

Furthermore, the mathematical model Ye Kaifu designed was flawed, and with such an unstable foundation, no amount of optimization could save it. It was almost impossible to write an extraordinary paper based on that.

His father's idea, however, was much more elegant: it utilized a non-linear geometric theory to solve non-linear and non-holonomic problems in robot kinematics. In particular, when two matching parts possessed symmetry, it could be easily represented and reasoned using geometric group theory.

The whole process... how should he put it? Since the core algorithm had already been handled by his father, he only needed to understand it. But expressing it was incredibly tedious; a human arm alone had 27 degrees of freedom, making the entire expression method unimaginably complex.

"Maybe he saw how troublesome it was and just couldn't be bothered to finish it?"

Zhang Yuan pondered to himself: "It's very likely. After all, he had to design every system for the spaceship; that stuff is even more tedious and difficult..."

"Or perhaps, it's a little gift specifically prepared for me."

"The gap between people is truly vast..."

And so, Zhang Yuan became immersed in research and exploration as the days passed by.

One day, two days, three days...

A week passed.

After being indoctrinated with the philosophy that "people live to learn," Ye Kaifu also began a life of grinding.

On one hand, he felt a sense of envy, jealousy, and competitiveness; Zhang Yuan's theoretical knowledge was clearly far superior to his own.

On the other hand, he really did have the intention of catching up to the other person through "hard work."

When Zhang Yuan went to the library, he went to the library; when Zhang Yuan slept, he slept. In any case, he refused to fall behind for even a moment.

It had to be said that the atmosphere of study, while intangible, was a real thing, and it spread very easily within a dormitory. If everyone in the same room was a top student, it was likely the result of cross-infection between them.

But after a week, Ye Kaifu felt like he was about to explode!

He really couldn't keep it up anymore.

He was going crazy. From morning till night, he spent at least 12 hours studying. Aside from eating, drinking, and using the bathroom, it was just study, study, study!

Even in his dreams, he could see those damned theorems; he was practically going insane.

"Why am I working this hard? I'm on vacation!" He had asked himself this more than once: "I'm going to run out of time to have fun soon, let me just take a day off."

"Brother, can you please take a break... ahhhhh!" he screamed in his heart.

He had once considered himself a model of diligence and studiousness, but compared to a true madman who treated solving math problems as "recreation," he was nothing more than a drop in the ocean.

The most critical part was that his roommate was actually enjoying it so much he couldn't extricate himself, even laughing out loud from time to time...

What kind of nonsense was this?

As he thought about it, Ye Kaifu began to pant heavily, trying to suppress the twitching muscles in his chest.

"Work hard, keep going, fighting!"

"Only those who can keep their composure are the true strong ones!" He cheered himself on, suppressing the heart that longed to go out and hang out with pretty girls.

But in the blink of an eye, a mutter from Zhang Yuan completely shattered Ye Kaifu's psychological defenses: "...Hmm, I might as well finish reading these documents while I'm at it; I can read them for free using the campus network anyway..."

"It's only 200 pages in total, not much at all."

200 pages!

What the hell.

A little person inside Ye Kaifu's head was frantically pulling at him, urging him to give in to temptation.

"It's no use, brother, I really can't keep going. By the time he finishes those two hundred pages, another day will have passed. I want to play games, I want to pick up girls, even a big meal would be fine... Every single cell in my body is craving entertainment."

"I need a break!"

Another little person roared in his mind: "No, absolutely not! If someone is smarter than you, stronger than you, and still works harder than you, then you have no choice but to keep up until the end!"

"Ye Kaifu, you absolutely cannot give in!"

"No, I want to give in!"

"...You absolutely cannot give in!"

"Ahhhhh, Zhang Yuan, please just give in already, I'm begging you, no, I'm pleading with you!"