You Just Can't Listen to a Top Student's Honest Answer!

Replies flooded Tieba at a terrifying speed. Countless students, tormented half to death by life and their graduation theses, worshipped Qi Hao wildly in the thread.

They hoped that worshipping Qi Hao would increase their chances of getting an SCI paper published.

Screenshots of Qi Hao's post also began spreading like wildfire through group chats at universities everywhere.

Oblivious to it all, Qi Hao tucked his phone back into his pocket after posting and quickened his pace toward the dorm.

Inside the dorm room.

His three roommates, who had no classes, had long been waiting for news from Qi Hao.

Wang Jun was sprawled over his desk, playing on his computer. When he heard the door open, he immediately turned around. "Brother Hao! You're finally back! What did the principal want? Nothing happened, did it?"

The other two crowded around as well.

"What are you guys thinking? What could have happened to me? The principal just praised me and gave me a little reward while he was at it," Qi Hao replied.

"A reward?" the three said in unison.

"What reward?" Li Hui sat up straight, alert.

Qi Hao didn't keep them in suspense. "The university gave me a little reward for my paper. It just hit my account."

Wang Jun was the first to get excited. "You get a reward for publishing a paper? Holy shit, how much?"

"Not much, just six thousand yuan."

Qi Hao told them honestly, then realized he had underestimated how hard that number would hit the others.

Li Hui turned sour with envy.

Seriously, when they had first arrived at university, Qi Hao hadn't looked like a top student!

Why had he already gotten a reward from the university?

And a huge sum of six thousand yuan, at that!

"Seriously, Brother Hao, come clean. Did you undergo a genetic mutation?" Li Hui asked through gritted teeth as he leaned in. "We agreed to be salted fish together, but you secretly evolved into a top student behind our backs? You're making the three of us look like idiots!"

"Exactly!" Wang Jun immediately chimed in. Like a hungry tiger pouncing on its prey, he lunged straight at Qi Hao and wrapped his arms around him. "Brother Hao! No, godfather! You can't get away without treating us, can you? We've got to have a good meal today, one way or another, or the three of us will lie on your bed tonight and refuse to leave!"

Chen Yuan wasn't as dramatic as the other two, but he too looked at Qi Hao with envy written all over his face.

Qi Hao didn't know whether to laugh or cry as he looked at the three clowns.

When someone had reported him a while back, the three of them had stood by him the whole time. Treating them to a meal was only right, by any measure.

At the skewer shops around campus, a meal cost only around thirty yuan per person. A hundred or two would be enough to feed them all.

"All right, all right. Have you had lunch? If not, let's go now. All the meat you can eat."

"Oh!" The three erupted into a ruckus and immediately started changing to go out.

The skewer hotpot shop at the mouth of the alley outside the university gates was always bustling.

The four found a table in a corner and sat down, then picked out three large, overflowing basins of skewers: beef, gizzards and liver, tripe, duck intestines, lotus root slices, potatoes, tofu skin...

Li Hui also waved the owner over and had him open four bottles of beer.

"No Weiyi tonight," Li Hui said, pouring everyone a drink. "Come on, we have to properly celebrate Brother Hao making big money from publishing a paper!"

"Congratulations, Brother Hao!" The four clinked glasses.

Once the beer went down, the mood grew lively.

After they had eaten for a while, Li Hui held up his beer glass, looked at Qi Hao, and said seriously, "Brother Hao, there's something I want to discuss with you."

"Go ahead."

"I found out that, given where we are now, we could have a shot at the Mathematical Contest in Modeling."

"What's the Mathematical Contest in Modeling?" Wang Jun asked indistinctly, a beef skewer between his teeth.

Hearing that, Li Hui put down his beer glass and cleared his throat. "The Mathematical Contest in Modeling, officially the United States Mathematical Contest in Modeling for College Students, is an international competition hosted by the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications of America," he said excitedly. "It starts every February. Teams of three have four days to build a mathematical model for a real-world problem and submit a paper written entirely in English."

"Don't underestimate this competition. Having that experience on our résumés will make people look at us more favorably when we apply for graduate school or look for jobs."

"There are no restrictions on major or year, which means we can go for it as freshmen."

"Sounds pretty impressive," Wang Jun said with interest.

"You bet."

The more Li Hui talked, the more enthusiastic he became, his whole demeanor brightening. "Last week, I made a point of contacting a few upperclassmen from other universities who won M awards in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling last year. I talked to them in detail, and they said it's actually not as hard as it sounds. As long as you study the ideas and structure of the papers that won over the past two years, you can basically get the hang of it."

As he spoke, his gaze drifted toward Qi Hao, seemingly by chance.

"After asking around, I found out that not a single person on their M-award-winning team last year had ever published a proper academic paper."

"But our dorm is different now. We have Brother Hao."

"Think about it, Brother Hao. You've published an SCI paper. Writing academic English is as easy as drinking water for you. The paper is the most important factor in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling. With you there to oversee its quality, we could easily win an award!"

"And if we win an O award-the top prize-there's prize money too!"

"How much?" Wang Jun's interest was piqued.

"Ten thousand yuan!"

With that, Li Hui looked at Qi Hao expectantly.

Beside him, Chen Yuan quietly twisted the knife. "So after all that effort, your real goal was to get Brother Hao on board?"

"What do you mean, get him on board? This is a powerhouse alliance, complementary strengths, pooling resources!"

"I knew you guys didn't know about the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, so I made a point of looking into it," Li Hui said with complete confidence.

Qi Hao listened from the side without speaking.

Old Wang had actually already mentioned the Mathematical Contest in Modeling to him that day.

From what Old Wang had said, the contest was basically a bunch of Huaguo students flocking together to hand the organizers their money, while the organizers happily handed out certificates in batches.

For an ordinary undergraduate, an award from the Mathematical Contest in Modeling did look fairly good on a résumé and was somewhat useful. But for Qi Hao, it would be a waste of time, and he wouldn't get any practice out of it either.

Besides, with a system task to complete, there was no way Qi Hao could enter the Mathematical Contest in Modeling.

Now that he had heard Li Hui's entire plan, Qi Hao was still grateful that he had thought of him.

Qi Hao put down his chopsticks and answered seriously, "Huizi, you really have looked into the Mathematical Contest in Modeling thoroughly. I can tell you put a lot of effort into it. But I can't take part. You should be fine teaming up with Chen Yuan or someone else."

Li Hui froze.

He hadn't expected Qi Hao to refuse at all.

In his mind, he had already paved the road, gathered all the information, and finished planning everything. Qi Hao should have had no reason to refuse!

The gap between expectation and reality left Li Hui unable to understand.

"Brother Hao, do you not quite understand how valuable an award from the Mathematical Contest in Modeling is?"

Li Hui thought Qi Hao had refused because he didn't understand, so he hurriedly added, "This really isn't an ordinary competition. It's international, and the award definitely carries weight. If you think it's too much trouble, you don't have to worry about the modeling or programming at all. You'd only need to polish the final paper and handle the English writing. It would take two or three days at most..."

"That's not why."

Seeing that he had misunderstood, Qi Hao could only tell him the truth.

"The university arranged for me to enter another competition, and the schedules clash. I have to prepare for that competition every day now, so I really don't have the energy to handle both."

"Another competition?" Li Hui frowned. "What competition?"

"Do you want the truth?"

"Of course! Come on, tell me what it is!"

"The Microsoft Imagine Cup."

"What did you say?" Li Hui asked, unable to believe it.

"The Microsoft Imagine Cup," Qi Hao repeated. "Imagine Cup. It's run by Microsoft."

"I know the Imagine Cup is run by Microsoft!"

Li Hui's reaction was far stronger than Wang Jun's or Chen Yuan's.

He knew about it precisely because he had looked it up while searching for information on all kinds of competitions a while back. He did want to take part in a major competition like that in the United States, but the Imagine Cup had nothing whatsoever to do with ordinary freshmen like them.

Wang Jun looked curious. "What's the Imagine Cup?"

"The Microsoft Imagine Cup is an advanced technology innovation competition held by Microsoft Corporation for university students around the world. More than a hundred countries and regions participate every year, and the teams that make it onto the world finals stage are the top student teams from their respective countries."

"And Bill Gates might even attend in person."

Wang Jun and Chen Yuan exchanged a glance.

The level and remoteness represented by the words "Bill Gates" and "advanced global competition" were simply beyond anything they currently understood.

Li Hui grew more excited as he spoke, neglecting even his skewers.

"For a competition at that level, the prize money and resource support in the domestic region alone are already completely beyond what ordinary competitions can compare with."

"More importantly, the teams that qualify domestically are basically the ace teams from universities like Tsinghua University and Yanda University. Pick any one of their faculty advisers, and they're a major figure in academic circles."

"Brother Hao, the university arranged for you to compete in this on its own initiative?"

Qi Hao nodded, fished the last duck intestine out of the pot, and dipped it in his dish of oil. "The teachers said I should give it a try."

Li Hui felt stifled.

He had originally thought that tonight he could be the one in control of the information, showing Qi Hao his instincts and connections in competition circles. After all, he really couldn't compete with Qi Hao when it came to papers, but he had done a great deal of homework in advance when it came to competitions.

And what happened?

Here he was, talking himself hoarse trying to sell the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, while Qi Hao was going to compete in the Microsoft Imagine Cup!

If the Mathematical Contest in Modeling was a fitness-for-all event for university students, then the Microsoft Imagine Cup was a showdown at the pinnacle of the Olympics. The gap between the two was on a completely different plane!

The skewers in Li Hui's hand suddenly lost their appeal. Instead of taking his glass, he grabbed a beer bottle and drank straight from it.

The other two were in much the same state.

Qi Hao turned and saw the three of them like that. He froze for a moment, then felt helpless.

He hadn't wanted to tell the three of them about the Imagine Cup at all. Who told Li Hui to keep asking and insist on hearing the truth?

So sometimes, you just couldn't listen to a top student's honest answer!

To let his roommates enjoy their meal, he decided not to tell them about his upcoming meeting with Huaji's CEO.

A good Huaguo roommate-that was him!

By now, the drinking trio had begun swaying back and forth. Qi Hao immediately put down his chopsticks.

"Hey, don't just drink!"

"Holy shit! If all three of you get drunk, I can't carry you!"

Seeing that things were going badly, Qi Hao called on the system.

"System, is there anything that can sober them up?"

[In the great Soviet, alcohol is a warrior's second blood. The fighting people's dictionary knows only a shortage of alcohol, never sobriety!]

[A bottle of vodka in my left hand, a PPSh in my right, and tomorrow the White House is my home. Ura!]