Chapter 318 - 175: Another’s Stone

Chapter 318: Chapter 175: Another’s Stone

Keda’s Cafeteria No. 2 was a cacophony of voices.

It was the peak of the dinner rush.

At a table near the north window, Chu Ge was holding his chopsticks, listlessly picking out strips of pork from a plate of stir-fried pork with hot peppers.

"Hey, Lu Jia, what about that supermarket receipt?"

Chu Ge pointed at Lu Jia, who was sitting across from him, with his chopsticks and raised an eyebrow.

"It’s been a week. Did you add her on WhatsApp yet? Don’t tell me you’ve been cuddling that instant noodle receipt to sleep every night after lights out."

Lu Jia, who was head-down, shoveling rice into his mouth, instantly flushed red at the comment.

He swallowed the rice in his mouth, adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose, and his voice was a little strained.

"I added her. She accepted the day before yesterday."

"You added her?"

Chu Ge perked up. He even stopped picking at his food and leaned forward.

"What’d you talk about? Did you use that game theory and Nash equilibrium spiel of yours? What was the first thing you sent? You didn’t actually send ’Hi, I’m the guy who was stuttering next to the holly tree the other day,’ did you?"

Lu Jia put down his chopsticks. His expression turned a little awkward, and he started unconsciously picking at the edge of the table.

"I didn’t send that much."

Lu Jia’s voice grew quieter and quieter.

"I just sent a smiley face."

Chu Ge stared, looking at Lu Jia as if he were an alien. After a long moment, he squeezed out a sentence through clenched teeth.

"A smiley face? You waited three days just to send her the default yellow smiley face emoji? And then? How’d she reply?"

"She didn’t."

Lu Jia was being honest.

"No shit!"

Chu Ge slapped his thigh.

"If I were her and I got a smiley face in the middle of the night from some guy who can’t even form a sentence, I’d have to be a saint not to delete you on the spot. Where’s that brain you use for calculus?"

Chen Zhuo, sitting beside Lu Jia, had been silent the entire time.

On his tray was a portion of stir-fried tomatoes and eggs and another of braised pork.

He ate very slowly, chewing each mouthful of rice for a long time before swallowing.

In truth, he hadn’t tasted whether the tomatoes were sour or sweet today at all.

Although his gaze rested on Chu Ge across the table, his eyes weren’t truly focused. In the few minutes Chu Ge and Lu Jia had been bickering, Chen Zhuo had already re-derived the convergence domain of the Gauss-Bonnet Theorem three times in his mind.

’Still a dead end.’

’That divergent integral term at the boundary of the continuous domain was like an impossibly tangled knot, stubbornly blocking the final link in his logical chain.’

’The smoothness of calculus was useless against a Discrete Matrix with infinite nodes. The error term was like a tattered rag flapping wildly in the wind, impossible to pin down.’

"Brother Zhuo, you talk some sense into him."

Chu Ge turned to Chen Zhuo, trying to recruit an ally.

"This guy’s hopeless, isn’t he? If it were me, I would’ve already..."

Chen Zhuo snapped out of it.

He slowly swallowed the food in his mouth, then picked up a napkin and wiped the corners of his mouth.

He looked at the indignant Chu Ge, a faint smile touching his eyes. His tone was placid, as if he were commenting on the weather.

"If it were you, you probably wouldn’t have even made it past step one."

Chen Zhuo folded the napkin and casually placed it beside his tray.

"After all, you just got kicked out of the computer lab last week for wearing flip-flops, and you went and flamed the admin on the student forum. Even if she does have an impression of you, it’s of a maniac in flip-flops who hammers on his keyboard loud enough to wake the dead."

Chu Ge’s words died in his throat.

He gaped at Chen Zhuo.

Chen Zhuo still wore that disarmingly gentle smile, his eyes clear and sincere. He even thoughtfully pushed Chu Ge’s tray closer to the center of the table.

"Eat up. If you keep picking through your stir-fried pork, you’ll only have the peppers left." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Beside them, Lu Jia couldn’t help but snort with laughter.

After a long, choked moment, Chu Ge pointed a finger at Chen Zhuo’s nose.

"Brother Zhuo... you usually look so nice and harmless, why do you go straight for the jugular the second you open your mouth? That’s called being unconventional, alright? Ever heard of a hacker’s ’laissez-faire’ attitude?"

Chen Zhuo just smiled without replying and picked up his chopsticks again.

Just then, a booming voice with impressive carrying power cut through the crowd in the aisle.

"Coming through! Excuse me, coming through! Watch out, or you’ll get soup on you!"

Wang Dayong, carrying two stacked metal trays, bulldozed his way through the long line for food.

He wasn’t even wearing a jacket, just a simple undershirt with a collar already soaked through with sweat.

A large, dark grease stain was smeared across his forearm.

Trailing behind Dayong were Zhao Peng and Zheng Nan from the School of Physics.

The two PhD students, who were usually mild-mannered and scholarly, were also covered in sweat, but their faces were alight with excitement as they followed Dayong through the throng.

"Hey, seats over here!"

Dayong spotted Chen Zhuo’s group, his eyes lighting up. He strode over and slammed the two trays, piled high with a mountain of food, onto the table.

One of the trays was piled high with pork ribs.

"Scooch over, make some room."

Dayong unceremoniously plopped down right next to Chu Ge.

Zhao Peng and Zheng Nan grabbed chairs, added them to the ends of the table, and sat down with their own trays.

Chu Ge sniffed the air, then immediately leaned back, giving Dayong a look of utter disgust.

"Dayong, have you been mining coal or blowing up bunkers? You reek enough to kill every fly in this cafeteria. And what is that black gunk on your sleeve?"

Dayong grabbed his chopsticks and carelessly wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, smearing a black streak of grime across it in the process.