To be fair, Jia Xiu had hoped these research "volunteers" serving as computing power would work their hearts out, but now he felt they might be working a little too hard—so hard that he was starting to worry.
He was genuinely worried.
Especially when he saw someone popping pills while scribbling away furiously.
Honestly, it was getting a little scary.
Not treating one's body as a body, not treating one's health as health—at worst, modifying oneself or simply switching bodies—was an "excellent" tradition in the spellcaster profession.
But Jia Xiu still felt that a normal human body was better. If these people ended up with illnesses, it would be too late for regrets.
The people attending the winter camp looked much like those who lived in internet cafés year-round. Their complexions were wan, yet they carried a trace of excitement in their spirits. The thick dark circles beneath their eyes and the ceaseless rustle of writing created a subtly discordant sight.
Jia Xiu considered himself quite hardworking in his senior year of high school, but even he had never gone this far.
Back in high school, there had been no such thing as pharmaceutical assistance.
The places that did have such a thing were usually the peninsula to the east, or universities across the ocean.
Still, during the summer after his college entrance exams, he really had spent seventeen or eighteen hours gaming in a single day.
After he started working, he never had that kind of energy again. Not only had he gotten worse at games, he often could not even work up any interest.
When he finally had money to spend on entertainment, he had lost the drive to be entertained.
He would often stare at the monitor he deeply regretted buying—the one advertised as a high-refresh-rate competitive