Chapter 39: The Leadership Is Coming to Inspect?

After lunch, Zhou Yun was dropped back at the university.

He did not head to the lab, but went straight to his dormitory instead. After pulling all-nighters for a week straight, even with yesterday’s rest, he still felt a lingering exhaustion today.

"Back so early?" he ran into his three roommates who had just returned to the building.

"Yeah, had some business to take care of," Zhou Yun said, stifling a yawn. "I’ve been burning the midnight oil way too hard lately, so I came back to get some rest today. What about you guys?"

"Went to the lab to stake out some desks. If you don’t get there early, you can’t get any of the good spots."

"Our lab is already packed; there aren't any decent spots left. They're all right next to the door. You can see everything passing by the entrance from your workstation."

"Our lab is better. There are more seats, so I found one against the wall where you can’t see the door at all."

As soon as he returned to the dorm, Zhou Yun collapsed onto his bed. Strangely enough, despite feeling exhausted just moments ago, he felt quite alert once he lay down. Unable to sleep, he could only scroll through his phone.

"Oh, right. When are we supposed to pay for the dorm air conditioning? I saw that the students in my advisor’s group all paid for theirs."

Zhou Zhenghao tilted his head to look at Zhou Yang, who had spoken. "Where are we supposed to pay? Do we have to pay for AC now? Back in undergrad, we just paid for electricity."

Zhou Yang shook his head. "I don’t know. We didn't have any 'AC fees' back in undergrad either."

"Someone came by to mention it a couple of days ago, but you guys weren't here. It’s done through a mini-program; I saved the QR code." Zhou Yu took out his phone to check. "Found it. Let me see... what? It’s this expensive?"

"What’s the deal?" The other two walked over behind Zhou Yu, craning their necks to look at the phone screen.

A few minutes later, Zhou Zhenghao let out a perfectly articulated, "Holy crap!"

"Damn, that’s impressive. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a pricing scheme like this."

"Uh, so are we still going to pay?"

"I’m fine with whatever, but isn't the AC still working for now?" Zhou Yang shrugged.

"I’ll leave it up to you guys."

"Zhou Yun, what do you think?" The three of them looked up at Zhou Yun on his bed.

"Let’s hold off for now, right? We’d be paying for a few months of usage and losing out on the rest. If we wait until next summer to pay, wouldn’t we save a whole year’s worth of fees?"

Zhou Yun didn't mention that the situation would be resolved later; explaining it would be too much of a hassle. It was easier to just make up an excuse and brush it off.

"That makes sense! Let’s not pay for now."

No one gave the matter much more thought, and they all returned to their own tasks. Even though Zhou Zhenghao and the others hadn't been assigned their permanent workstations yet, they had plenty of work to do.

"Man, our advisor wants us to find research papers, but I’m a total novice. How am I supposed to find them? I found one before, and he said the quality was poor and told me to report again this week," Zhou Zhenghao said, scratching his head as he stared at his screen.

Zhou Yu leaned back in his chair, scrolling through his phone. "I have a link here that has some methods for finding papers. Want me to send it to you?"

"Sure, drop it in the dorm group chat. I have to report this week, and if I bring him another garbage paper, I’m going to get chewed out again."

"Sent. I feel like this guide is pretty comprehensive. Just remember to use a VPN."

"Nice! Where did you get this?"

"Not sure. A senior gave it to me a couple of days ago when I asked for the server account credentials. He said a friend gave it to him."

Lying on his bed, Zhou Yun’s mouth twitched. He connected to his VPN, clicked the link, and sure enough, it was the guide he had posted on GitHub.

Listening to his roommates praising it enthusiastically, he felt a strange sense of embarrassment, though he was also secretly pleased.

Meanwhile, in the President’s office, President Li Mingyuan had just finished a video conference. He rubbed his temples, feeling slightly weary, and took a sip of tea that had already gone cold.

Just as he was about to pick up an application report to review, the phone on his desk rang. He set down his cup and answered quickly. "Hello?"

"President Li, sorry to disturb you. I just received a notice from the Municipal Committee Office. They said Vice Mayor Wang is planning a temporary, unannounced inspection of our university this Friday, the day after tomorrow, in the afternoon," the office director said over the phone.

President Li’s brow furrowed slightly. An inspection from the city? Usually, they aren't this last-minute.

"The day after tomorrow? Did they say what it’s about?"

"The notice says they are inspecting the start-of-semester conditions of the city's universities. We probably aren't the only school that received this notice."

"I see."

"Do we need to prepare anything?"

President Li shook his head. "No. There’s not enough time to prepare anything anyway. Just keep everything as is."

"Understood. Should we at least put up a banner?"

"That’s fine."

After hanging up, President Li rubbed his temples again. He didn't take the matter too much to heart; inspections by city leaders were common occurrences. The only odd thing was how last-minute this one was.

On second thought, it made sense—the leadership probably wanted to see the school’s true state. There was no need for him to go out of his way to do anything. The school had been developing well over the past two years, and he considered himself a competent president; he had a clear conscience and nothing to fear from an inspection.

The next day, after a full day of rest, Zhou Yun finally arrived at the lab at noon.

The NeurIPS business was essentially over, and now it was just a matter of waiting for the official announcement. Things regarding Huijin had also come to a temporary close.

The next stage of the project wouldn't start for a few months, as purchasing a large number of servers and the associated infrastructure would take quite a bit of time.

Suddenly having nothing to do, Zhou Yun felt a bit out of sorts.

If he really wanted to find something to do, it wasn't as if there was nothing. With his current level of skill, he could pick any familiar field, work on it for a month, and easily produce a paper for a top-tier conference.

But that wasn't what he wanted.

The first NeurIPS paper was because he needed to catch his professor’s attention, so he chose a field he was familiar with. The goal was simple: to get published.

But for the current Zhou Yun, publishing just for the sake of publishing seemed meaningless.

He wanted to do something that would truly advance technology. For instance, the financial prediction model he had just finished—while he couldn't publish a paper on it, the satisfaction it brought was far greater than any top-tier conference paper could provide.

Zhou Yun rested his chin on his hand, aimlessly browsing various websites, wondering if he could find a direction that was both interesting and practically useful.

After half a day of searching, he still had no ideas.

Suddenly, a message popped up on his computer. It was from Deng Yonghua, asking him to come to his office, though he didn't specify why.

Zhou Yun happened to feel like he was hitting a bottleneck anyway, so he thought talking to his professor might yield some insights. He closed his browser and headed toward Deng Yonghua’s office.