I'll Use the Mud to Grow Lotus Flowers

Interested in the technology?

Only then did Wu Chen belatedly piece together what had just happened.

The person called Beibei had sent three pictures in total.

Each time the model processed one of her pictures, the difficulty had increased a little, as if it had been planned.

In other words, she had already determined that he wasn't processing them manually, but using some kind of algorithm or technology, and had come to test him.

Was she using different levels of processing difficulty to test how capable he was?

Who could she be?

Wu Chen thought it over quickly, but for the moment, he had no idea.

Perhaps because he had taken so long to reply, the customer called Beibei sent a flurry of messages.

"First of all, I'm super sorry for bothering youuu, but boss, I'm not a scammer!!! I really do want to discuss the technology with you. I'm an expert in image research too!"

An expert?

Wu Chen's interest was piqued. "What do you do for work?"

"I'm a specially appointed associate researcher at Peking University!"

Though he couldn't see her expression, Wu Chen could picture her on the other end, wagging her tail proudly and nonstop like a puppy.

Wu Chen didn't quite believe her.

Associate researcher was a very senior professional rank in the promotion system at research institutions, which went from research intern to assistant researcher to associate researcher to researcher.

Generally speaking, to meet the evaluation criteria for associate researcher, one needed at least five years of research experience after earning a doctorate, along with at least two papers in top journals in one's field, or experience leading a research project at the provincial or ministerial level or above.

He wouldn't say all the associate researchers he'd met were mature and composed, but none of them talked like a little fool.

And she was supposedly a special appointee at Peking University, which would make her more accomplished than that old fart Wang Hongfa.

Wu Chen typed, "How old are you?"

She replied instantly. "I just turned 25!"

Damn it, he knew it was a waste of time.

A 25-year-old associate researcher?

Even a genius among geniuses like Jiang Nan was still only a lecturer!

How much had she drunk, and how little had she eaten, to get this smashed?

Wu Chen closed her chat window, too lazy to bother with her anymore.

He could accept being reborn, and he could accept having a system.

But he couldn't accept a 25-year-old specially appointed associate researcher at Peking University.

Granted, in a Qidian academic-genius novel, someone with that status would be a supporting character whose job was to shout "666" at the protagonist, not even worthy of a name.

But in real life, even the university president would take the initiative to shake hands with someone like that.

After accepting a few more image-processing orders and throwing them into the model, Wu Chen opened QQ.

He hadn't logged in for days, and a mountain of work messages had piled up.

He first opened the messages from Luo Xiaohong, a teacher in the academic affairs office.

She was responsible for coordinating Wu Chen's course schedule for the new semester.

"Teacher Wu, this is your teaching schedule for next semester. Please review it."

The message had been sent three days ago.

That was already quite late, considering there was only a little over half a month before classes began.

But for Wu Chen, who had spent over a decade as a front-line teacher in his previous life, preparing lessons was no big deal.

Still, when Wu Chen saw his schedule, his vision went dark.

Forty class periods a week?!

And he had fucking 8 a.m. classes all five days!

He distinctly remembered that in his first semester after joining the university, he had only been responsible for teaching C programming to two classes, for just six periods a week!

Wu Chen opened the schedule and examined it carefully.

First were C programming classes for three groups of first-year software engineering students, totaling 12 periods.

Then came computer networking fundamentals for one network engineering class, totaling eight periods.

There was also a Java web practical course for two second-year classes, totaling 10 periods.

Finally, there was artificial intelligence fundamentals for two third-year classes, totaling 10 periods.

From Monday to Friday, from eight in the morning to five in the evening, they had every last minute neatly mapped out for him.

Although there was an allowance for teaching, it was only 8.5 yuan per period, adding up to just 1,360 yuan extra a month.

Even hauling bricks at a construction site would pay more.

And it wouldn't be this exhausting!

Besides, when had the computer science department become so short-staffed?

Wu Chen had wanted to message Luo Xiaohong and demand an explanation.

But after typing a few words, he deleted them.

The dean had to approve every schedule, so Wang Hongfa definitely knew about it.

That old fart...

Wu Chen understood as soon as he thought about it.

Wang Hongfa was making trouble for him to get even for being embarrassed at the Jiangdong Pharmaceutical Factory.

As long as Wu Chen spent all his time teaching, he'd have none left for research or writing papers, and he'd be sure to come last in the end-of-semester evaluation.

Then Wang Hongfa could get a few students to complain about him and arrange a few teaching incidents.

After that, forget a promotion—he'd have a hard time even keeping his job at the university.

Even if he asked, the answer would be something like "the capable should shoulder more work" and "new teachers don't have such heavy research duties, so they should do more to ease the burden on the other teachers."

He took several deep breaths.

Wu Chen closed the chat application and chose to accept it.

Only by staying at the university could he obtain evidence of Wang Hongfa's crimes.

And most importantly, Wang Hongfa thought a full teaching load would affect him, but he would never imagine that Wu Chen had a system!

Completing teaching tasks could earn him skill points!

Under the system's rules, he could earn one skill point for every class period he taught to a high standard, which was far more cost-effective than monetizing technology.

If he monetized technology, he'd have to earn 1,000 yuan to get one.

So this was a case of Wang Hongfa throwing mud at him, and him using it to grow lotus flowers.

Once he had thought through where his interests lay, Wu Chen's mood settled down.

He found the textbooks and course materials for each class in the group chat and started looking through them.

But after just a few glances, he frowned deeply.

Just as he had expected, even in 2008, these textbooks were already badly outdated.

The C programming course was actually still using VC6.0. That was a widespread problem at universities across the country, so it was understandable.

But the Java web practical course was still using Java 1.4, which didn't even support lambda expression syntax.

Even if the industry hadn't fully transitioned to Java 8 yet, Java 1.6 was already mainstream. If the university's practical course was still teaching version 1.4, what use would it be once the students went out into the world?

Of course, in 2008, students majoring in computer science or software engineering had no trouble finding jobs, but Wu Chen still felt uncomfortable about it.

If he only wanted to coast through the days, acting like a repeater and reading off the PowerPoint slides, it actually wouldn't be that tiring.

Since he was responsible for the course, he would see that responsibility through to the end!

After finishing the orders he had on hand, Wu Chen closed Ali Wangwang and began preparing his lessons with complete concentration.

Lesson plans, teaching schedules, PowerPoint slides, source code for the practical exercises.

With the effects of the stamina potion, he would redo all those outdated lesson plans in one go!

And he wasn't doing it to satisfy a university inspection. He wanted to actually teach the students something.

It was a huge workload, but with the boost from level 1 intelligence, Wu Chen worked quickly.

Although level 1 stamina was only slightly better than an ordinary person's, level 1 intelligence was far more impressive.

Basic theory and code for the practical exercises flowed from his keyboard like water.

Wu Chen couldn't help thinking that if he'd had this intelligence when he took the college entrance exam, perhaps he really could have become a specially appointed researcher at Peking University by the age of 30.

After three days of intensive work, he had finally completed everything he needed for his classes.

Opening his attribute panel, he found that his attributes had also improved slightly.

[Intelligence: level 1 (0% → 1%)]

[Stamina: level 1 (0%)]

[Artificial intelligence: level 0 (70% → 71%)]

[Materials science: level 0 (0%)]

[Chemistry: level 0 (0%)]

[Physics: level 0 (0%)]

[Engineering: level 0 (0% → 2%)]

[Energy science: level 0 (0%)]

He wasn't surprised that his intelligence and artificial intelligence had improved.

But he hadn't expected engineering to go up by two points as well.

Was it because he had prepared course materials for network engineering?

Feeling satisfied, Wu Chen was just about to get some sleep when QQ suddenly coughed twice on his computer. He had received a new friend request.

He opened it and saw that the sender had found him through the university's faculty and staff group chat. Her nickname was "Jiangjiang."

Jiang Nan?