How Come I Never Gain Weight No Matter How Much I Eat

Biting her thumb, her delicate brows tightly furrowed, Chen Yushan stared at the board in deep thought.

The defeat was already certain...

There was no room for recovery at all.

It took her quite a while to accept reality before she made a tentative suggestion.

"...One more round."

Lu Zhou sighed and looked up at the sky.

"Can I just admit defeat?"

"No!"

Chen Yushan was so angry she wanted to stomp her foot.

Whenever she asked Mathematics questions, he always "mocked" her by saying they were too easy—"Another free point," "Is it too late to prepare for graduate school?" She had originally hoped to regain some dignity through Chinese checkers, but Lu Zhou gave her none at all. He had beaten her ten times in a row, even after letting her move first.

Could it be that her IQ was actually low?

Chen Yushan, who had considered herself a top student for the past three years, could not help starting to question her life.

Seeing Chen Yushan stubbornly shove the board over and insist on another game, Lu Zhou could not help asking.

"Can I ask a question?"

Chen Yushan looked irritated. "Ask."

Lu Zhou asked solemnly, "How did you come under the illusion that you were good at Chinese checkers?"

Chen Yushan blushed at the question and said awkwardly, "When I was little... I played with my dad and mom and never lost."

"How little?"

Chen Yushan said quietly, "...I think elementary school."

Good heavens!

You still remembered something from elementary school?

And your parents had obviously been letting you win. Had you never played with anyone else?

For some reason, Lu Zhou suddenly felt a little sorry for this Guy.

Lunch was a seafood supreme pizza with cheese. Madam Yang had not lied to them; the pizza at this café really was delicious.

Though it was a little expensive, it was not his own money anyway. Lu Zhou even saved room and ordered an ice cream for dessert.

Watching Lu Zhou eat heartily, Chen Yushan, who was nibbling on a sandwich across from him, could not help teasing, "...You really can eat. Be careful you don't turn into a huge fatty."

"I wish I could gain some weight," Lu Zhou said nonchalantly as he ate the high-calorie ice cream drizzled with chocolate mousse. "But for some reason, I never gain weight no matter how much I eat."

The surroundings suddenly fell silent, and Chen Yushan stopped talking too.

Emmm...

That joke seemed to have drawn a little too much hate.

It felt like resentment was spreading through the air...

Lu Zhou could not help shivering.

By the time they returned to school, it was already two in the afternoon, the hottest time of day.

Afraid of getting tanned, Chen Yushan did not dare stay outside for long. She waved goodbye to Lu Zhou and quickly returned to the dormitory.

Seeing that it was still early, Lu Zhou first returned to the dormitory, brought his computer and the books he had borrowed from the library, then went to the teaching building and found an empty study room at random.

There were still nearly four hours before the drug resistance wore off. If he started taking the medicine at six, its effects would last until eleven at night, and it would not be a problem to push himself until midnight. The library would have closed long before then, so he naturally could not study there today.

Though his original plan had been to use the medicine once every other day, he happened to have something to do tomorrow. To avoid wasting precious time and complete the reward mission as soon as possible, he decided to pull an all-nighter today.

After turning on his computer, Lu Zhou first checked his email and found that Wang Xiaodong had already sent over the completed program.

After downloading the program and giving it a quick look, Lu Zhou extracted the code into a text file for backup, then began writing according to the format of a Mathematical Modeling paper.

He spent the entire afternoon finishing the paper, then packaged it together with the program and sent it to Teacher Liu's email.

"...I'll go to the cafeteria for dinner before coming back to work." Stretching lazily, Lu Zhou stood up and walked out of the classroom.

Because of summer break, the cafeteria was nearly deserted.

The upside was that there was no need to queue. The downside was that many of the cafeteria aunties had gone on vacation along with the students, leaving only a few open counters.

But that did not affect Lu Zhou much. Under normal circumstances, he settled dinner with a bowl of noodles.

While eating, he happened to run into Old Tang. Lu Zhou went over to greet him, then carried his bowl over and sat across from the professor.

When Tang saw Lu Zhou, he smiled and asked conversationally, "How is your preparation for Mathematical Modeling going?"

Lu Zhou smiled as well. "Not bad. I just submitted the assignment to Teacher Liu."

"What have you been researching recently?"

Lu Zhou knew Tang was not asking about Mathematical Modeling, so he thought for a moment and said, "I recently read a paper about the progress of the GIMPS Project research plan..."

Tang raised an eyebrow and asked with a smile, "The one from the Chinese Academy of Sciences?"

"Yes." Lu Zhou nodded. "I dug out that 1992 paper, Distribution Law of Mersenne Primes, and gave it a look. I found the conjecture in it very interesting, but the process was far too brief, almost nothing but a conclusion, so I tried researching it."

"That paper, yes, I know it." As though recalling something nostalgic, Tang sighed emotionally. "Mr. Zhou's paper really made our Hua Nation Mathematics community proud on the international stage."

The only regret was that the paper was too short, only two pages. Though it proposed an exact formula for the distribution of Mersenne primes, it did not provide a proof, so it could only be published as a conjecture.

After pausing for a moment, Tang looked at Lu Zhou and said with a smile, "Speaking of which, why did you stop researching your linear functionals and start researching Mersenne primes?"

"Uh... maybe I was driven by interest?"

Lu Zhou did not even believe that nonsense himself, so much so that he accidentally ended the sentence with a questioning tone.

Sure enough, Tang did not believe his nonsense. He shook his head and said earnestly, "Your talent in Mathematics is beyond question, but you're too impulsive. What results can you get by hammering here and pounding there? There's nothing wrong with being utilitarian—researchers are human too—but do you think Mersenne primes are so easy to calculate? That GIMPS Project you mentioned spent a full eight years and still could not determine whether the forty-fourth Mersenne prime was truly the forty-fourth. Do you think that reward is so easy to earn?"

Although the forty-fourth Mersenne prime had already been found in 2006, as of 2014, the academic community still reserved judgment on whether undiscovered Mersenne primes existed between the forty-third and forty-fourth Mersenne primes.

That number was simply too enormous, and the amount of computation involved was beyond imagination.

Moreover, judging from the GIMPS Project's reward standards, the only way to claim the next reward was to target the first Mersenne prime with one hundred million digits. Even so, the gains were completely disproportionate to the effort. After all, the reward for one hundred million digits was only 150,000 US Dollars, while the cost of calculating the thing would probably exceed that amount.

As a joke, with that much spare time, one might as well mine Bitcoin. Why bother with Mathematics research?

Convinced that Lu Zhou was the sort who had his eyes on money, Tang subjectively assumed that the boy had seen the reward and become completely obsessed with it.

Lu Zhou smiled awkwardly and did not find it easy to argue.

Explaining it would be far too troublesome.

He could misunderstand however he liked.

Seeing that Lu Zhou remained silent, Tang sighed and continued earnestly, "Your paper is excellent. It isn't just me who thinks so; several old professors from the Physics department who read it think so too. If you continue delving deeper in that direction, I dare say you'll produce another major result within two years. Even if we're being utilitarian, we should take the long view."

Lu Zhou asked softly, "Teacher, are you advising me not to continue researching in this field?"

Tang shook his head. "That's not what I mean. I simply don't think highly of this direction. First, it's too niche; second, it's difficult to produce results; third, I haven't researched it much myself, so I can't offer you much help. If you're merely studying it out of interest, I don't object. But if you throw yourself into it wholeheartedly, you'll only be delaying yourself. I've said what I needed to say. Think it over yourself!"