Who Am I? Where Am I? What Am I Writing?

"...Mom, I won't be coming home this summer break."

"Um... here's the thing, Professor suggested I sign up for the National Mathematical Modeling Contest. The school will be organizing training over the summer... No, no, there isn't a registration fee. The department already paid it for me! The next time I come home might be during the New Year. Take care of yourselves. I'm always in good health, so don't worry!"

"...You really don't need to send me money. I still have some of last semester's scholarship left, and I take on part-time jobs when I'm not busy. If you have money, save it for Tong. It'll cost quite a bit once she goes to college."

"...Well, I'll leave it at that."

Taking a deep breath, Lu Zhou leaned against the dorm balcony railing and hung up.

Every Sunday night, he called home.

Time really flew.

Looking at the stars in the night sky outside, Lu Zhou was filled with emotion.

In the blink of an eye, his first year of college was about to end, while his younger sister, Lu Xiaotong, was about to enter her second year of high school—the crucial middle year of her high school life.

Unlike him, she studied the humanities.

Other than Mathematics, where he could offer her a little help, he was completely useless in every other regard.

Right beside the balcony was the bathroom. Huang Guangming, who was scrubbing himself inside, suddenly said in a sleazy tone, "Brother-in-law, calling home?"

Lu Zhou froze for a moment, then steadied himself and said, "You don't want to come out, do you? Just wait. I'll jam the door shut with a mop."

"Fuck, fuck, Brother Lu, spare me! I was wrong, don't do it! If you don't let me out, I'll sing in the bathroom!"

As he spoke, Huang Guangming had already raised his voice and begun singing at the top of his lungs in a howling, ghostly wail.

"Ahhh—Fifth Ring, you've got one more ring than Fourth Ring—"

Holy shit!

His voice sounded like a castrated rooster. It sent chills down Lu Zhou's spine, and he immediately shut the balcony door and fled back into the dorm.

Unfortunately, the bathroom's soundproofing was terrible. One wall was nowhere near enough to block it out.

The moment they heard Guangming singing, the other two people in the dorm burst out laughing. Liu Rui was especially exaggerated, collapsing onto the desk and covering his mouth in agony. "Fuck, why did you let Guangming sing? My teeth hurt like hell!"

In this critical moment, the dorm leader stepped up righteously. Shi Shang pulled out his chair and rose with solemn resolve. "Don't panic, Brother-in-law. I'll go take down this little thief."

"Get lost!"

Sure enough, nothing good ever came out of a dog's mouth.

Lu Zhou was so annoyed that he wanted to stuff this guy into the bathroom too and lock him in there with Guangming.

Why was there not a single normal person in the entire dorm besides him?

Sigh, this was painful!

For the next two weeks, Lu Zhou was either rushing manuscripts in the library, on his way to the library... or sitting in an exam room.

During the final exam period, there was probably no one else as neglectful of their proper duties as he was.

But he had every reason to be so neglectful.

Just as he had expected, he passed English without any pressure.

The same went for C Language. Aside from one rather creative question, there were basically no problems. The knowledge he had gained through system missions seemed engraved into his brain; there was simply no way he could forget it.

However, when it came to the Modern History exam, Lu Zhou was completely screwed.

The moment he spread out the test paper, he stared blankly at the questions.

Who am I?

Where am I?

What the hell am I writing?

When he asked the system, it gave no response at all. No amount of points worked. It seemed that social science questions were outside the system's answer service.

Fortunately, Lu Zhou still knew a little about modern history. As long as he got the general direction right, it did not matter whether he believed what he wrote or not—filling the entire paper was no problem at all.

As for how far his answers were from the standard ones, that would have to be judged by the graders.

In any case, he had done his best!

Three days after the Modern History exam, Lu Zhou finally uploaded his last paper.

Nearly three weeks of nonstop grinding had made him noticeably thinner. But after finishing this project and looking back on it, he still felt quite accomplished.

Three SCI papers a week, ten SCI papers in less than a month!

Who else could do that?

Huh?

After waiting anxiously for three days, the final paper was accepted ahead of schedule, just as expected.

When he received the acceptance email, Lu Zhou could not help wondering whether flooding someone else's journal like this was really okay. And all the papers were under the same author's name—wouldn't anyone notice?

Maybe the system had assigned his submissions to different reviewing editors.

But no matter what, whether there was a problem or not was something to worry about only after they were formally published a few months later!

Filled with excitement, Lu Zhou entered the pure white System Space and quickly walked to the translucent holographic screen.

[Congratulations, Host, for completing the mission.]

[Mission completion status: Host has published 1 Mathematics paper and 9 Information Science papers, with 39 days remaining. Rating: S+ (additional reward mission obtained)]

It was actually an S+ rating!

And the reward... was actually a reward mission!

Lu Zhou stared excitedly at the S+ on the holographic screen and the additional reward after it, so thrilled that he nearly lost himself.

Although he did not know what a reward mission was, he knew one thing clearly: in the Points Shop, reward missions were explicitly priced at 1,000 points!

[Mission reward: 100 Mathematics experience, 900 Information Science experience, 800 points, one lottery draw opportunity (90% junk, 9% samples, 1% blueprints).]

[Hint: Mathematics LV0 → LV1, Information Science LV0 → LV1]

This damn Mathematics level had finally advanced!

Lu Zhou was filled with excitement, not just because he had leveled up consecutively, but because breaking through Mathematics, this Smallpox, meant that he had finally left the beginner village. The level caps of other subjects would be unlocked to LV1.

Still...

He felt that the increase in system level did not seem to bring any substantial changes. He had originally thought that, like when he used points to exchange for papers, the system would directly enlighten his mind. But that did not seem to be the case.

At the very least, he did not feel as though his mind contained any new knowledge or memories he had never seen before.

"It seems the system's subject levels don't represent my ability to master knowledge. They merely unlock access to a certain database? And looking up information from that database also costs points? I wonder if lower-level materials come with a discount." Lu Zhou rubbed his chin, silently recalling the details of the Riemann Hypothesis as he ordered the system to give him a price.

However, as always, the system did not respond.

"It seems Mathematics at LV1 still isn't enough to solve the Riemann Hypothesis." After thinking for a moment, Lu Zhou asked, "Then what about the Beal Conjecture?"

As a generalization of Fermat's Last Theorem, which had already been proven, the Beal Conjecture was considered even more difficult than Fermat's Last Theorem. Its reward had reached one million US dollars. Last time, he had tried to use the system's power to solve it, but the system had likewise given no response.

[Required points: 5000. Required Mathematics level: LV2.]

Seeing that number, Lu Zhou gave an awkward smile and immediately gave up on the idea of exchanging for it.

That was fucking expensive!

But at least this time, it had given him a clear price. It seemed his guess had indeed been correct. Raising subject levels merely unlocked the Black Technology System's database, while accessing information in that database still required points...