Chapter 83: Thesis (1)
83 – Thesis (1)
Lin Xun: “You’ve been looking at it for twenty minutes.”
Lin Xun: “I think you should be done by now.”
“Hmm?” Dong Jun replied calmly, “Not yet.”
“Actually, you don’t have to finish it,” Lin Xun said. “I don’t think there’s much point in reading too much, since they’re all pretty similar.”
“Mhm,” Dong Jun responded, “Fortunately, there are many different kinds.”
Another five minutes passed.
This was the first time Lin Xun had seen Dong Jun’s car activate the Automated Driving System, weaving through city traffic at high speed—just so Dong Jun could focus on reading his Weibo posts?
“Dong Jun, Dong Jun?” Lin Xun called out.
He saw a faint smile curl at the corner of Dong Jun’s lips.
Lin Xun continued, “Once you’re done, I want to hide them… There are probably still quite a few people online who might see them. I think I’d just socially die.”
“Won’t happen,” Dong Jun said. “They’ll think you’re adorable.”
“And they’ll think I’m a jealous hater and a simp,” Lin Xun added. “Dong Shen, boss. Can you please spare me? If you keep looking, I’m going to kill myself.”
Dong Jun turned to look at him, his clear black-and-white eyes carrying a hint of a smile, though not exactly gentle. Lin Xun could almost sense a trace of mischief in them.
“You don’t call me that on Weibo.”
Lin Xun: “If I call you the way I do on Weibo, will you give my phone back?”
Dong Jun raised an eyebrow slightly: “Yes.”
“Male god,” Lin Xun gave up, resigned to his fate. “You’re my male god. I’ve liked you the most for years. Please stop looking.”
Dong Jun glanced at him indifferently, then turned back expressionlessly to continue scrolling through Weibo.
This male god, how could he go back on his word?
Lin Xun gritted his teeth and leaned closer. “You promised to give it back.”
Without looking up, Dong Jun replied, “Not that title.”
Then what title?
Lin Xun thought for a moment, and his entire being felt as if he had been placed on a grill, with flames being added to roast him.
The titles he used for Dong Jun were generally limited to “Dong Shen” and “male god.” As for anything else… there was only “husband.”
Lin Xun: “…”
He fidgeted uncomfortably.
He really wanted his phone back.
But he truly couldn’t bring himself to say it.
In the end, he could only hug Zhi Zhen to his chest and try to clear his mind, forgetting everything that had happened today.
But he couldn’t clear his mind.
After a minute of silence, he heard Dong Jun say, “You can look at mine too.”
Yours?
Lin Xun took Dong Jun’s phone. It was silver, with a slim body but surprisingly heavy. It had no case, and the cool metallic texture was unmistakable.
The lock screen opened automatically. The wallpaper was a picture of Zhi Zhen’s back, with a snow-white tail curled slightly.
But there wasn’t much to see on it.
Dong Jun’s phone had only a handful of apps, along with a few Galaxy products. There were no entertainment apps installed. If he checked the call logs, he was afraid he might stumble upon some business secrets he shouldn’t know about—he’d have to access Weibo through the browser.
Fortunately, it was automatically logged in.
But Dong Jun’s account had nothing particularly interesting aside from the enthusiastic praise from his “wife fans” and tech fans in the comments. There were only two Weibo posts, one of which was related to Lo—something he really didn’t want to see.
That post from years ago—”Lo asked me why I look at the stars. I think the Galaxy and code are the same kind of thing, and that’s also an answer.” It was inexplicably poetic, almost like a line from a love letter.
Lin Xun glanced at Dong Jun, who was intently scrolling through his Weibo, and a mischievous impulse surged within him. He typed his own ID into the search bar and clicked “follow.”
After that, he started browsing the trending topics.
Following Butterfly Madam’s clarifying Weibo post, another wave of people joined the fray.
Who was Butterfly Madam?
A triple-crown film queen, a noble goddess with a cold, enchanting aura, her most iconic role being a seductive concubine who brought kingdoms to ruin by toying with the flames of war. In recent years, she had gradually shifted toward behind-the-scenes work, becoming a seasoned veteran in the entertainment industry. Aside from winning awards left and right, she also had a massive male fanbase.
Now, a scandal involving an obscure singer-dancer and an unknown pretty face had actually prompted her to speak out personally, making the waters even murkier.
In the comments under the Weibo post, three factions were vying for the top spots.
One faction consisted of Butterfly Madam’s fans, controlling the narrative with generic pleas for everyone to stay calm.
Another faction was Qi Yun’s fans, also controlling the narrative with generic expressions of gratitude for Butterfly Madam’s clarification.
The third faction was the “wifey fans,” asking what kind of background this little newcomer had to make Butterfly Madam personally step in.
The situation was chaotic for a moment, and even Lin Xun was a bit confused by their tactics. He switched tabs, only to be bombarded with screenshots of his own Weibo.
The top Weibo post was also from a wifey fan, her tone filled with disbelief.
“After scrolling through his Weibo… is this… for real?”
Followed by another: “I’ll drink sulfuric acid.”
Lin Xun thought about it and concluded that “I’ll drink sulfuric acid” was probably an upgraded version of “I’ll eat lemons.”
No, life is the most important thing.
Right after that came instructions for making sulfuric acid.
“Burn sulfur in oxygen to get sulfur dioxide, pass it into hydrogen peroxide to get sulfuric acid, then distill and concentrate. Got it, sisters?”
The next post was from the “shop owner.”
Lin Xun clicked in.
The shop owner’s tone seeped through the text, carrying a hint of weariness.
“Crying, how is he chasing his crush more genuinely than I am??”
But the shop owner wasn’t ready to give up.
“I refuse to accept this. We’re all chasing the same crush, so how did he get ahead????? Is it because I was born the wrong gender??”
Lin Xun thought to himself that if you could write elegant algorithms, you might have a shot, but you probably still wouldn’t write them as well as I do. In the end, I’d still have it all.
Of course, some people had also figured out his identity.
“He’s not even in the entertainment industry? He’s a programmer??”
“Seems pretty skilled. Is this what they mean by ‘the early bird catches the worm’? I regret choosing the wrong major, otherwise that little newcomer would be me today.”
“I’m concerned about his hairline.”
“Does anyone in the industry know what his deal is? Seeing him struggling with code late at night every day, he must be a fraud, right?”
“Will my crush even help him debug his code? I’m jealous, I’m utterly jealous, I’m crying, my tears are forming the Pacific Ocean, circling the five continents, flowing with the ocean currents to Antarctica and turning into ice.”
The entire topic was filled with similar wails, the air thick with the scent of concentrated lemons. Occasionally, one or two programmer fans would pop up, saying, “Let’s not focus too much on our crush’s private life,” but they were quickly drowned out by the wifey fans’ cries of “It’s not that I don’t want my crush to date, I just can’t accept it, I’m jealous, I’m spiraling with jealousy.” It was like how inarticulate programmers always ended up losing debates against unreasonable product managers. In the end, they could only offer a few feeble words of comfort: “I think the little newcomer seems pretty good too.” “As a straight guy, I think he’s good-looking.”
Occasionally, there would be an inconspicuous comment or two like, “Why does he look a bit familiar?”
Lin Xun thought to himself that he had been lying low for too long. Back in the day, his name could also be suffixed with the word “god.”
It was normal. In this industry, newcomers replaced the old, and if you went without news for a while, you would sink to the bottom of the tide.
He aimlessly scrolled through his feed, and everywhere he looked, chaos reigned.
But seeing the devastation among his devoted fans, he actually felt two words.
Happiness.
Even though his Weibo was being publicly dissected, it couldn’t overshadow his happiness.
Clearly, human vanity was on full display at this moment.
But when he looked up at Dong Jun, he felt that while happiness was happiness, the dissection was still inevitable.
He had at least thousands of Weibo posts, and as for when it all started—it seemed… a very, very long time ago.
Just as he was scrolling through Weibo with a mix of happiness and pain, the surroundings gradually grew familiar. He realized Dong Jun hadn’t taken him somewhere else to eat but had driven straight back to his residence.
Dong Jun got out of the car, and he followed, with Zhi Zhen trailing behind.
While following, he came across a Weibo post from an acquaintance.
A senior named Ye Yuan.
She was a senior from the mathematics department, and he remembered her well because she was exceptionally talented academically, but her dreams were unconventional. She didn’t want to become a mathematician; instead, she aspired to be a science communicator.
During a summer activity that year, he and his senior went to the mathematics institute to help out. There was a type of visitor the institute’s security guard was all too familiar with—middle-aged men clutching a few sheets of scratch paper, claiming they contained groundbreaking work. They insisted they had proven Fermat’s Last Theorem using elementary mathematics formulas and would overturn the existing, useless, stagnant mathematical system, demanding to meet with academicians.
The guard was well-practiced in shooing them away. It was said that security guards at institutes for basic sciences were all too accustomed to such people. The guards at the physics institute could even laugh about a certain “master” who claimed meat was composed of “meat atoms,” dismissing it as absurd nonsense.
At such times, his senior would step forward and explain to these amateur scientists that proving Fermat’s Last Theorem must be based on rigorous modern mathematical logic—absolutely, absolutely, absolutely not something elementary mathematics could challenge. This involved…
—But science communication, much like Buddhism, only reaches those who are receptive. His senior’s explanations couldn’t sway them. In fact, they often grew furious, denouncing her as a slave to science with a rigid mindset. If Lin Xun hadn’t stood guard beside her with a menacing glare, they might have resorted to violence. Of course, in the end, the security guard with his electric baton would complete the eviction.
Lin Xun had advised his senior not to waste her breath, as it was impossible to reason with them.
His senior sighed and said, “But I want more people to understand science and the scientific method. It’s trustworthy because its system is rigorous, not built on sand, and it withstands the test of time. My dream is that one day, when elderly people are pitched health products, their first reaction will be to look up research papers and check if there’s data and theoretical support.”
Lin Xun said, “Then my dream is to change the world in a small way.”
His senior asked, “Like an Automated Driving System?”
Lin Xun replied, “Something like that.”
His senior said, “Keep it up. I’ll be waiting for good news.”
Later, the senior sister pursued a related career, striving to achieve her dreams. At the same time, she managed her social media accounts across various platforms with great success, becoming a popular science blogger with millions of followers, fighting on the front lines of online science communication and debunking misinformation, amassing countless fans.
Perhaps unable to bear the outrageous speculations about his identity, the senior sister—with her countless followers—reposted an algorithm inspiration Lin Xun had casually jotted down.
Ye Yuan – Zeroth Law: Long time no see, Lord Xun.
Lin Xun’s eyes grew warm.
Just then, he and Dong Jun walked into the room.
A hand took away his phone but didn’t move it far.
He saw Dong Jun give the post a like.
It seemed like a casual gesture, yet it fell like a drumbeat precisely at the right moment, stirring Lin Xun’s emotions.
Then, Dong Jun put the phone away and returned it to Lin Xun, the screen still on the first post—
“Starting today, I like Dong Jun.”
Lin Xun took it and looked up at Dong Jun.
He blinked and asked softly, “So you’re not angry anymore?”
Dong Jun hadn’t answered yet, but Lin Xun felt he had succeeded in saving himself.
—In the end, he chose to expose his main account to prevent his idol from being upset.
If Dong Jun truly was unhappy, he could show him the posts from these past few years. There might have been some calculation in this move, but over the years, his “idol” and “like” had been spoken with sincerity—regardless of what exactly that “like” was composed of.
He didn’t get an answer.
Because the next moment, he was pinned down on the sofa right where he stood.