"The copyright income from Goose Factory will arrive this month. Bawendi can get me a scholarship, and after the Nature paper is published, the School of Chemistry will also give me a paper bonus of fifty thousand.
"Adding in the money I saved before, I'll have more than enough to go to Boston."
After finishing his call with Bawendi, Chen Yuanguang took stock of the cash he had on hand and his future cash flow. He realized he could be considered modestly well-off.
His only regret was that the deal with Goose Factory had been for a one-time payment. When Goose Factory later adapted Kuala Lumpur Affairs into a movie, he would not get a share of the subsequent profits.
Bawendi meant to count Chen Yuanguang's final six months as an exchange at MIT and help him apply for an undergraduate scholarship of roughly 4,500 dollars a month.
MIT undergraduates generally received scholarships between 3,000 and 4,000 dollars. Since Chen Yuanguang would be going there to work first rather than formally enrolling in a PhD program, it would be difficult to assign him a dorm room.
Bawendi intended to give him an extra thousand dollars in scholarship money so he could rent a place in Boston.
Boston was not New York. With a 4,500-dollar scholarship, even if he had to rent his own place, he could still live very comfortably.
After reaching an agreement with Bawendi, Chen Yuanguang went to speak with his academic advisor the next day. Once the university realized it could not keep him, it gave him the green light. There would be plenty of opportunities to work together in the future; there was no need to sour the relationship now.
The university had no objections, as long as he returned to defend his graduation thesis and listed Jiang University's name if the thesis was published.
While Chen Yuanguang was thriving in modern society, his fame and legendary status shooting upward, the future timeline saw no progress at all.
The Malaysian police had already convicted the driver responsible for the accident. An eighty-two-year sentence was long enough that little would remain of his life by the time he got out.
Yet there were still no leads on the person who had hired the killer. There were too many suspects, and the prime suspect, Lin Ran, had not exposed any flaws. After being summoned by the police several times, nothing further came of it.
"What are you thinking? My dad is about to return to Yanjing to report on his duties. After that, he may stay there for a while. Is this just going to be forgotten?"
After Chen Yuanguang enrolled at the University of Malaya, Shi Huilan followed closely behind him. Her dorm room was even right next to his.
The university had been built after the Three Wars. Since all the rooms were singles with private bathrooms, there was no distinction between men's and women's dormitories.
After moving in beside Chen Yuanguang, Shi Huilan often came to see him. As more and more memories unlocked, Chen Yuanguang discovered that he and Shi Huilan had been childhood friends, classmates from elementary school through high school.
Considering Shi Huilan's mother's dominant position at home, along with the fact that Lin Ran had married into the family, it made sense that Shi Huilan knew her father might have had an affair and had even arranged for the murder of her childhood friend's parents.
It was also logical that she would choose to cooperate with Chen Yuanguang and want to put Lin Ran behind bars.
Logically, it was possible, but Chen Yuanguang could not fully trust her. This was Chen Yuanguang's perspective, not his own.
"It's not that I'm letting it go. I need to rely on myself.
"I told you the driver's sentence too. Even Mohamad Farro only got seventy-odd years. Lin Ran is only fifty now, and hiring someone to commit murder won't get him a sentence of seventy years.
"Once I raise my Citizen Level on my own, I'll naturally be able to send Lin Ran to the court of Truth Trial.
"I can even have Alpha find both parties involved in the Dark Star transaction."
No matter how advanced the computer technology was, no matter how well the dark web was hidden, it was utterly vulnerable before Alpha. Alpha simply did not bother with Dark Star because there was no need to.
That did not mean it could not.
And the higher one's Citizen Level, the broader the range of tasks Alpha could be asked to perform.
However, having Alpha obtain data from Dark Star and pinpoint specific individuals required at least Citizen Level Five.
Chen Yuanguang had seen similar news before. The son of some important figure had been killed by a hitman who had taken the job on another platform. That man had asked Alpha for help, and he had been Citizen Level Six.
Shi Huilan pouted. "Rely on yourself? That's too hard. As Alpha's control over Earth grows broader and broader, the ways to earn Citizen Contribution are becoming increasingly limited. Now, scientific research is practically the only path left.
"Or you could mine on Venus. Mine for about fifty years, and that should be enough to raise your level by one.
"You need Citizen Level Three to initiate a Truth Trial against my dad. You could mine on Venus until you died and still not have enough."
Venus mining relied entirely on robots and AI, but real people were still needed to work in Sky City orbiting Venus.
Because it was so far from Earth and human welfare was so good, very few people were willing to mine on Venus.
Chen Yuanguang said nothing after hearing her out. He merely took a sip of coffee and slowly savored the taste.
The coffee had been ground from beans grown on Mars and was extremely expensive. Chen Yuanguang imagined it carried the flavor of the stars, but unfortunately, he could taste nothing except bitterness.
"That's right. I intend to earn enough contribution through scientific research. That's why I came to the University of Malaya."
Shi Huilan pressed a hand to her forehead. "You're running away, not solving the problem. If scientific research were really such an easy path, there wouldn't have been a single new professor in all of Malaysia in five years."
Not all professors were equal. Those who became professors under Alpha's system automatically became Level Two Citizens, while those who had obtained professorships before Alpha's system only enjoyed the benefits of being professors and could not receive the corresponding Citizen Level.
Chen Yuanguang said, "Just because others can't do it doesn't mean I can't."
Chen Yuanguang felt that his intelligence was improving—or, more accurately, his ability to think through problems was improving. When facing the project Pangu had given him, his ideas either led him to papers that showed others had already tried and failed, or computer simulations revealed flaws.
Still, Chen Yuanguang felt that the depth, breadth, and sharpness of his thinking had all improved dramatically.
He just did not know whether it was because traveling through time had evolved his soul during the process, because Knowledge Download itself stimulated the brain, or because the souls of the Chen Yuanguang from the modern and future timelines had merged.
"Yuanguang, in old-fashioned terms, that attitude is just chuunibyou. Nobody else can do it, but you can.
"Sigh, good luck. This road is too difficult. Compared with Alpha, I don't know what advantage humans have."
Scientific research had gone through three stages: an era when humans handled all research, a cooperative era with humans as the main force and AI as support, an AI sub-era with AI as the main force and humans as support, and the present new era, where AI had entered almost every scientific field and human scholars had been squeezed into the humanities.
And the overwhelming majority of achievements in the humanities could not gain AI's recognition.
If Lin Jia were here, she would definitely say she believed in me. This busty, cute girl is far too good at pouring cold water on people. "I'll definitely do it."
In the modern timeline, Chen Yuanguang boarded a jet bound for North America one week before Christmas Holiday. Lin Jia also changed her original plan to return home.
One more chapter. Ya had been running around outside all day.
Before you continue