What a Huge Loss!

"What a huge loss!"

Lu Zhou logged onto the university's official website and looked at an announcement that had apparently been updated at some point. He sighed inwardly.

Who the hell would have thought that writing papers could make you rich?

It had only been the time it took the university leaders to hold a meeting...

The official website had announced the reward rules as follows.

IF was easy to understand—it referred to a journal's impact factor.

For example, Communications in Mathematics and Applications had an impact factor of 3.130. For the two mathematics papers he had published in that journal, the university would award him a total of 41,300 yuan. Moreover, according to Professor Tang, the money would be issued as a research reward and would be tax-exempt under Article 4, Item 1 of the Individual Income Tax Law!

As for the other nine papers, although they had been published in general journals and were also SCI-indexed with impact factors, sorry—they were not eligible for the reward!

Seeing this, Lu Zhou's heart ached.

Judging by the assessment of a certain publicly listed company's CEO, those nine papers were undoubtedly valuable. Yet because he had been tempted by the paltry 150-yuan submission fee, he had ended up screwing himself over.

It was too late for regrets now.

But thinking about it carefully, it was hard to say whether he had really lost out or gained.

If he had not published in general journals and instead had his work reviewed by more professional academic editors, his papers might not have stood out from the crowd and been accepted so quickly.

The reason he had received an S+ evaluation and unlocked the system's reward mission was, to a large extent, thanks to the speedy acceptance process of general journals.

No matter what, the money for the server was accounted for... probably?

"Zhouzi, what are you looking at?"

Seeing that Lu Zhou had unusually skipped his usual self-study session at the library and was instead sitting in the dormitory staring blankly at his computer screen, Liu Rui curiously leaned over.

After all this time, this guy had finally stopped calling him Brother Lu and gone back to normal.

It seemed any hype had an expiration date...

"Nothing." Lu Zhou sighed. "I'm just mourning the loss of my precious little money."

"What little money... SCI paper rewards? Holy shit, that's awesome..." Liu Rui's eyes widened as he shouted, "How much can you get?"

"Probably ten or twenty thousand."

Lu Zhou decided to be modest and cut the amount in half.

To his surprise, even after halving it, he still managed to scare the guy.

Liu Rui stayed silent for quite a while.

After a long time, he sighed and said in an infinitely melancholy tone, "Zhouzi, say no more. You're treating tonight."

Lu Zhou thought about it and felt that made sense.

After all, they had agreed back then: if one got rich, he would not forget the other. They did not have to get rich together, but at least a meal was in order.

He might have been a little money-minded, but he was not the stingy type.

So he took Liu Rui to the snack street near the university gates and found a place serving spicy hot pot...

Once their selected bowls of spicy hot pot were served, Liu Rui, who did not usually drink much, unusually ordered two bottles of beer.

They each opened one.

After the spicy hot pot arrived, Liu Rui suddenly asked, "How's it been staying at school over the summer?"

Chewing on a soy strip, Lu Zhou thought for a moment before replying, "Not bad, I guess? It's been pretty fulfilling."

"I really envy you." Liu Rui sighed. "I feel like I'm getting dumber and dumber. I can't take anything in."

Honestly, he somewhat regretted signing up for the Mathematical Modeling Competition.

He had fortunately passed the university's first round of selection, and the university had assigned him teammates and arranged training from a group of instructors. But once the real training began, he realized just how huge the gap was between himself and the truly talented people.

For example, the third-year senior in his group had already won second prize at the national level twice. He had entered this competition hoping to make one last push before graduation and aim for first prize nationally. Compared with that genius, Liu Rui was nothing more than a little lackey clinging to someone's thigh.

Yet even someone that impressive humbly claimed that his talents and learning were insufficient.

Later, Liu Rui heard that besides the teams organized by the university, there were also several "regular army" teams put together by the departments. Those were where the real geniuses gathered. It was just that those geniuses did not train with them, so they never saw them around.

Liu Rui now understood that Lu Zhou's team was probably one of those legendary "regular army" teams.

After learning that, he felt both wistful and conflicted.

The gap was simply too great. He had even begun to doubt whether there was any point in envying this roommate who had suddenly risen to prominence.

Lu Zhou clinked glasses with Liu Rui and casually said, "You've just been exhausting yourself too much."

"Can't be helped. People better than me work so hard. I have to work hard too." Liu Rui gulped down a mouthful of beer and let out a long breath, as though trying to expel the stifling air in his chest into the deepening night sky, where it would drift away with the lengthening darkness.

But Lu Zhou, who had had a little to drink, did not understand his melancholy.

And once people drank, they liked saying outrageous things.

"I remember... that saying goes differently, doesn't it?"

Liu Rui froze, thinking Lu Zhou had some profound insight, and immediately asked seriously, "Then how does it go?"

Lu Zhou let out a beer burp without giving it much thought. "If people better than you are already working hard... what's the point of you working hard?"

Liu Rui: "..."

In the end, they drank seven bottles in total, five of which were finished by Liu Rui alone.

Liu Rui was not the type who could hold his liquor to begin with, and he was the sort of quiet drunk who said nothing even when wasted. When he reached the last glass, he suddenly collapsed onto the table with a thud, startling Lu Zhou and scaring the spicy hot pot shop owner half to death. The owner thought he had sold them counterfeit liquor.

Later, they turned the guy over and found him muttering nonsense. Only then did Lu Zhou and the owner breathe a sigh of relief.

After paying the bill, Lu Zhou finally carried the staggering Liu Rui back to the dormitory. He truly did not have the strength to haul him up the ladder, so he pulled a mat from Liu Rui's locker and spread it on the floor as a makeshift bed.

Then he helped him lie down properly on the mat and casually covered him with a blanket.

Going this far for someone was really something else.

After turning on the air conditioner, Lu Zhou sat down in his chair, twisted open a bottle of mineral water, took a drink, and let out a long breath.

The trip had exhausted him.

Liu Rui, on the other hand, had started snoring the moment he lay down, sleeping like a log.

"Your head's going to hurt like hell tomorrow morning."

Lu Zhou shook his head, turned on his computer, logged onto a shopping website, and began searching for a suitable server.

According to Old Tang, the university finance department would transfer the money to his card by tomorrow at the latest. If he picked one today, he could place the order as soon as the money arrived tomorrow.

If possible, he wanted to buy one of better quality.

It was not entirely for the ticket-snatching app he had made for practice. More importantly, it was in preparation for the mission reward that would unlock "Artificial Intelligence LV0."

What would happen if he used points to upgrade Artificial Intelligence LV0 to LV1?

This would be the first branch technology he had unlocked since obtaining the system.

Lu Zhou was full of anticipation.

However, the moment he saw the price of the servers, his face darkened.

"Dell... 2U rack-mounted chassis, 56 cores and 112 threads, 256 GB memory, twelve 8 TB hard drives included... 270,000! Nope, I'm out."

"Lenovo IBM, dual-controller storage array, using Storwize real-time compression technology, 64 GB cache, eight 8 GB fiber-optic ports, twenty-four 3.5-inch disks! Quote... 40,000? This one looks pretty good... Fuck, I missed a zero! Can't afford it, can't afford it."

He turned the page, but they were all priced like that.

Fuck...

Why were they so expensive?

Lu Zhou sorted the listings by price and found that there were servers available for tens of thousands, but he had no idea whether they could handle operations. Besides, he could not spend all the money he had on a server.

Running a server cost money too!

Unable to make up his mind, Lu Zhou suddenly thought of the computer science genius in their group.

Right, why not ask him?

Seeing that it was still early, Lu Zhou immediately took out his phone and called him.