Five Viscera Enhancement is Cheng Che's only growth-type talent.
This is different from [ One Tree Makes a Forest ].
One Tree Makes a Forest, adding a permanent healing aura to those around them, helping minor illnesses heal themselves and preventing major diseases, emphasizing prevention.
Five Viscera Enhancement directly strengthens the individual, working upwards from the internal organ level.
He had a full physical examination before, which was arranged by Qin Lie.
Qin Lie's reasoning was quite practical. "Athletes experience significant physical strain; we need to investigate."
I had colonoscopy, gastroscopy, echocardiography, and a full liver function test – everything that could be done was done.
When the results came out, the doctor stared at his report several times, and finally said, "Your internal organs are almost unbelievably healthy."
Cheng Che didn't say much at the time, but he knew in his heart that it was the Five Viscera Enhancement that was taking effect.
He was lying on the hotel bed at that moment, and the entry was evolving towards the fourth level.
A warm feeling spread from my chest, slowly reaching my abdomen, and then extending to my limbs.
The sensation wasn't hot, but rather warm, as if something was gradually strengthening it deep within the body.
He drifted off to sleep in a daze.
When he woke up again, he felt incredibly comfortable.
He sat up, stretched, and then habitually opened the attribute panel.
Then he froze.
[Stamina:90(+1)]
[Endurance: 90 (+1))
[Charm:90(+1)]
[Intelligence: 90 (+1)]
Cheng Che stared at the "+1"s for several seconds, then exclaimed, "Holy crap!"
He had always thought that his attributes were capped at 90, and that further breakthroughs would require trials.
However, after the Five Viscera Enhancement to the fourth level, the shackles were broken, and all attributes were increased by 1 point.
The attributes increase more slowly as you progress. This 1 point is nothing when you're around level 80, but at level 90, it's practically free.
He immediately thought of the Scholar's Set.
He took out his hat, gold-rimmed glasses, and pen from the system space and put them on one by one.
The Scholar's Fire is triggered, temporarily increasing Intelligence by 5 points.
91 plus 5 equals 96.
What does an intelligence score of 96 mean?
His performance at the previous report meeting was around 93%, at which point he was already able to clearly break down the proof of the Integer-Coefficient Polynomial Root Distribution Conjectures.
It's 96 now, which is 3 points higher than back then.
He closed his eyes, his mind racing.
Then an idea popped into my head.
Baker's Method. Effective constant.
He had already finished that paper, reducing the constants to a range that could be calculated precisely.
But the essence of that technique is "to transform a vague estimate into a precise boundary".
Besides number theory, where else can this approach be applied?
He opened his eyes and sat up straight.
Cryptography.
The security of Hyundai cryptography largely depends on the difficulty of certain mathematical problems, such as large integer factorization and discrete logarithms.
Security assessments of many cryptographic systems involve estimating how long it takes to compute a certain quantity.
These estimates are essentially lower bounds.
The more precise the lower bound, the more reliable the security assessment. His optimized Baker's Method is perfect for doing just that.
By tightening the previously coarse lower bound, the security parameters of the cryptographic system can be calculated more accurately.
Moreover, this direction is not just theoretical; it has practical application value and great commercial potential.
He opened his laptop, created a new document, and typed a line in the title bar.
" Baker's Method Constant Optimization and Its Application in Cryptography"
After typing it, he stared at the line of text for two seconds, then leaned back in his chair and laughed.
From number theory to cryptography may sound like a huge leap, but in his view, the two things share the same set of tools.
When he was proving that conjecture, he thoroughly studied algebraic number theory and complex analysis to bridge the three branches.
Now, take something out of this toolbox and use it in a different way; the logic still holds true.
Cheng Che's fingers touched the keyboard, ready to type, when his phone screen suddenly lit up.
Video call request.
Pei Jingshu.
He swiped to answer the call. The girl on the screen had a white silk mask on her face, revealing only her eyes and lips. Her hair was loosely tied back, and she was wearing a loose light gray sweatshirt.
The background is the sofa in her rented apartment in Seoul, with an uncapped bottle of toner on the coffee table.
" Cheche ~"
She spoke in Chinese with a Korean accent, soft and gentle, like someone who had just applied a face mask and wasn't fully awake yet.
Cheng Che looked at the face on the screen, which was mostly covered by a face mask, and the corners of his mouth curved slightly:
"Making a phone call while wearing a face mask?"
"I missed you." She pouted, stretching the edge of her face mask up slightly. "You're not even looking at me, where are you looking?"
He turned his head, his gaze returning to his phone screen. Looking at her on the screen, he smiled and said, "Writing a thesis."
"Oh..." Pei Jingshu blinked, the edge of the eye hole in the face mask wrinkling slightly. "Did I disturb you?"
When she said "is it?", the "is" had a slight trilled "r" sound, like a kitten scratching Cheng Che's eardrum with its paw.
"No." Cheng Che looked at her, his voice soft and slow, "Listening to your voice helps me think more clearly."
Pei Jingshu paused for a moment, then her eyes, visible beneath the face mask, curved into crescent moons, and the corners of her mouth couldn't help but curl up.
She didn't speak, but her whole face was glowing.
"Go ahead and write," she said softly, leaning her phone against the sofa armrest and shrinking further into the cushions. "I'll just watch you."
Cheng Che nodded and turned back to his laptop.
The keyboard clicked away.
He was wearing Scholar's Set.
A dark gray beret held down his hair, gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, and a dark silver fountain pen was tucked into his breast pocket.
As I scrolled down the formulas and derivations on the screen, line by line, with my intelligence at 96 points, my thoughts were as smooth as if they had been ironed out; I knew exactly where to go in each step.
Pei Jingshu remained silent in the video footage.
She was nestled on the sofa, her face mask on for almost twenty minutes, and it was time to take it off, but she didn't move.
She simply looked at Cheng Che the screen.
When he lowers his head to write, his brow furrows slightly, his lips are pursed into a line, and the blue light from his laptop shines through the lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses.
The rhythm of my fingers tapping on the keyboard was steady, neither too fast nor too slow, like the operation of some kind of precision instrument.
As Pei Jingshu watched, two small hearts slowly appeared in her eyes.
She didn't know from what moment she was struck.
Maybe it was the serve he made when we first saw him play ball; maybe it was the blush that appeared on his ears when his parents caught him kissing her at the door the day we met; maybe it was the earnest tenderness in his voice when he said, "Hearing your voice gives me more ideas."
Anyway... I really like it.
It's a physiological attraction, the hopeless kind.
She buried her face in the cushions, leaving only her eyes visible, and continued watching.
Cheng Che wrote for about forty minutes, pausing twice to check literature. His fingers slid across the touchpad, and his glasses reflected the light.
Pei Jingshu stared at him for over forty minutes.
It's almost 11 PM South Korea time.
She yawned; the edges of the face mask had dried, and it felt a little tight on her face.
" Cheche," she called him softly.
Cheng Che stopped typing and turned his head to look at the screen.
"I'm sleepy." She rubbed her eyes, a corner of her face mask curling up. "I'm going to sleep."
"Okay, goodnight."
Cheng Che finished speaking, he couldn't help but add another sentence:
I will think of you even in my dreams.
"Me too!"
She smiled, her eyes narrowing, revealing a happy expression, and reluctantly tapped the screen to hang up.
The video call ended, and the screen went dark.
Cheng Che stared at the black phone screen for a second, then chuckled.
I'm being incredibly sour and stinky myself right now.
He saved the document, closed his laptop, took off his Scholar's Set, and put it back in the system space.
Then he picked up his phone and sent a message to Professor Liu.
" Professor Liu, I have a new research direction I'd like to discuss with you."
Professor Liu replied quickly, "What direction?"
"The constant-value optimization of the Baker's Method is used for security parameter estimation in cryptography."
There was a moment of silence on the other end.
Then Professor Liu replied with a voice message, his voice carrying a sense of being shaken and impressed:
"Cryptography... that's quite a leap for you. But thinking about it carefully, the logic makes sense. When are you free? Give me a call, and we can discuss it in detail."
"The day after tomorrow, I guess. Tomorrow is the semi-final."
Okay. Good luck in the game.
Cheng Che turned off his phone screen and then looked at the schedule of international track and field events that Qin Lie had just sent him!