Whether it was the Chinese or math papers, Chen Zhu did very smoothly, obviously having studied very hard.

Especially in math exams, Lin Chaoxi found that when she finished the test paper, Chen Zhu would also stop writing at about the same time.

Lin Chaoxi was very curious and wanted to take a look at Chen Zhu's paper, but the boy had already stood up to hand it in.

In the classroom, everyone taking the exam looked up in surprise, and then a burst of whispers broke out.

"Do your own papers." The examiner said seriously, and then took the paper handed in by Chen Zhu: "Don't you want to check it again?"

"No thanks." Brother Sleep God handed in the paper and left coolly, leaving everyone stunned.

Lin Chaoxi thought, this line seems a little familiar, and the after-school tutoring school that Lao Lin introduced seems quite impressive...

It was still early to finish school, and today was also the first day of the new semester for the cram school at the Lao Lin Red Star Welfare Home. She and Pei Zhi and Lu Zhihao had agreed to go clean up after school, so according to custom, she checked the test paper and got up to hand it in.

But when they walked out of the teaching building, Chen Zhu was still sitting on the flowerbed.

Seeing them, Chen Zhu stood up, took two steps, and then stopped.

The spring breeze blew by, and Chen Zhu stared at Pei Zhi without saying a word.

Lin Chaoxi looked here and there curiously. What was going on?

"What's the matter?" Pei Zhi asked.

"I...have...something to ask you." Chen Zhu said embarrassedly.

"What's the problem?"

Upon hearing this, Chen Zhu began to rummage through her bag, then walked up to Pei Zhi with the notebook in hand with a serious attitude.

"Is this your deskmate?" Huajuan asked in a low voice.

"Um."

"Why don't I ask you if I have any questions?"

"Maybe... my grades are not good enough..." Lin Chaoxi was very frank.

In short, she has gotten used to it, and Chen Zhu trusts Pei Zhi very much.

Chen Zhu and Pei Zhi did not move seats either, they just sat down beside the flower bed.

Pei Zhi has always been a very serious person. When he saw the question raised by Chen Zhu, he thought about it seriously for a while and did not answer immediately.

It was rare to see Pei Zhi like this, so Lin Chaoxi was a little curious. She leaned over and found that Chen Zhu's notebook was filled with densely packed program codes: "if" and "print" and so on. The question he asked Pei Zhi was a math problem, but it should be the kind that needs to be calculated by writing code, so it is essentially a programming problem.

"There are four numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4. How many different three-digit numbers can be formed without repeating numbers? What are they?" Lu Zhihao asked directly, "What's wrong with this question?"

“I tried the questions in the book, but I couldn’t get them right,” said Chen Zhu.

"It's so simple, you don't know how to do it?!" Comrade Lao Lu was very shocked.

"Are you learning programming?" Huajuan looked at the many codes and guessed something. He asked Chen Zhu, "Do you want to write a program to calculate?"

"I can just write it down, why do I need to use a program to calculate it?" Lu Zhihao asked.

"Uh..." Lin Chaoxi wanted to explain.

"The history of human evolution is the history of tool use," Pei Zhi replied.

"By Lao Lin." Hua Juan added, poking Lin Chaoxi's shoulder and telling Chen Zhu, "It's her father. He always says that when he's fighting for the hot pot meatballs."

Lu Zhihao was silent for a while, and finally said: "But don't call Master 'Lao Lin'..."

Chen Zhu was originally a man of few words, and after hearing you and I talking back and forth, he was even more speechless.

At this time, Pei Zhi finished reading the notebook from beginning to end and came back to his senses from thinking: "I have never learned programming, so I don't know how to do it." He said so.

They were all silent.

Pei Zhi held the notebook and found their expressions a little funny: "What's wrong?"

"Do you think there are times when you say 'no'?" Lu Zhihao said.

"Unbelievable." said Huajuan.

"I don't believe it!" Lin Chaoxi was very servile.

Chen Zhu looked at her with a bit of contempt.

Pei Zhi stood up, handed the book back to Chen Zhu, and said, "This is a very systematic thing. I have a general understanding of it, but I am not completely sure about it, so I still don't know how to do it."

Chen Zhu took the notebook and said nothing. Pei Zhi was a very speechless person sometimes.

Lin Chaoxi thought for a moment and asked Chen Zhu, "Why did you want to learn programming?"

“That’s my goal.”

"Oh, that's amazing!" Lin Chaoxi praised sincerely.

"Goodbye then. I'm going home first." Chen Zhu waved his hand indifferently and left.

Lin Zhaoxi looked at his back and suddenly shouted, "Wait!"

Chen Zhu stopped and looked back at her.

"Brother Sleep God... if you are learning programming by yourself, do you have a computer?" She asked tentatively, "Can the computer be connected to the Internet, like the place where the milk cat Internet cafe was before?"

"Oh, my dad got me a computer so I can surf the Internet at home," said Chen Zhu.

"Oh..." Lin Chaoxi was a little disappointed. It turned out that this was not an Internet cafe.

"Are you looking for a computer or an Internet cafe?" Chen Zhu frowned and asked.

"I want to find... a computer that can access the Internet..."

"How much do you want?" Chen Zhu asked.

Lin Zhaoxi was shocked: "How many?"

"There are some." Chen Zhu said, "Come with me."

——

It was not yet time to get off work and there were few cars on the road. The four of them plus Chen Zhu got off the bus and walked together towards the unfamiliar neighborhood ahead.

"Would it be a bad idea for us to go there suddenly like this?" Lu Zhihao looked around and asked hesitantly.

Chen Zhu's last sentence "some" made them all a little nervous, as if they were going to someplace very impressive.

"It would be bad to suddenly tell Master that I'm not going to clean, right?" Huajuan said.

"It doesn't matter, Master." Lin Zhaoxi said casually, "Brother Sleeping God has no objection!"

Chen Zhu walked in front with his schoolbag on his back.

Lin Chaoxi looked at his back and felt that fate was something hard to describe.

Ever since the Naimao Internet Cafe burned down, the owner was unable to rebuild it immediately and the cafe was closed. She had experienced all of this before, and now history was repeating itself without any surprise.

But for her now, the closure of the Internet cafe also means that they have no new place to go online. The computer room of the middle school is not like the library of Sanwei University where students can go online freely. Asking Lao Lin to buy a computer seems too purposeful.

But she has to access the computer.

Whether it is the study of mathematics in the current university or trying to prevent Lao Lin’s car accident as in the movie “Minority Report”, the great tool of computer is absolutely indispensable.

The appearance of Chen Zhu did not solve this part of the problem, but it was like an invisible hand constantly guiding her towards a future that was not very clear but seemed to have hope.

Chen Zhu stopped in front of a metal door.

They were silent for a while.

"Is it here?"

"It's here." Chen Zhu said firmly.

The tinplate door in front of him was closed, with an orange copper lock on it. Chen Zhu took out his key and opened the door. The copper lock opened, as if to say: Destiny——

The door suddenly opened, dust flew up, and seeing the scene in front of him, Lin Chaoxi sneezed loudly. After a while, he thought of how to finish the previous sentence.

Destiny - sometimes it's like a pile of garbage that you can't see clearly, but you must pick out treasures from it.

They stood in front of the garage of the old tube-shaped building, surrounded by chickens on the lawn. An old lady was trembling as she dried her quilt on the iron frame downstairs.

"That's all." Chen Zhu pointed at the things in the garage and said a little embarrassedly.

"Is this...is this...a computer?" Lu Zhihao asked in shock, looking at the old plastic shell, the circuit board whose structure could not be identified, and some complete computer cases in front of him.

Chen Zhu said: "These are old computers and some parts discarded by the traffic police. My uncle is a computer repairman. My dad talked to him and they bought the scraps together. My uncle was too busy to take everything away, so these are still piled up in the garage."

"What about your computer?"

"My uncle built one for me using these materials, and it's still usable," said Chen Zhu.

Chen Zhu's words completely shattered their fantasy.

"What's wrong?" Chen Zhu asked.

"No...nothing?"

“The computer is really good.”

"Um……"

"Let me take you up there to have a look." Chen Zhu said.

Going up the corridor on the left side of the garage to the third floor, after opening the door, Lin Chaoxi realized that this was where Lao Chen lived.

The place is very small, with two bedrooms and a living room, and it looks like a house assigned by the traffic police team.

The assembled computer that Chen Zhu mentioned is placed in a corner of the living room, next to a bookshelf. Both the computer desk and the bookshelf are probably the two newest things in the entire old house.

Lin Chaoxi followed Pei Zhi and stood in front of the bookshelf. Most of the books on it were reference books for high school studies. The books were very new and seemed to be bought by Lao Chen for Chen Zhu. On the last shelf of the bookshelf were many computer-related books, some about programming and some about hardware basics. Some of them seemed to be temporarily unsuitable for Chen Zhu, which was probably the reason why Chen Zhu encountered problems in his studies. Beginners were easily overwhelmed and disorganized when faced with a large amount of materials.

Chen Zhu turned on the computer and said, "This is it. It's still usable."

Lin Chaoxi turned around and saw that the computer was indeed a bit old. It had a large monitor instead of an LCD screen, but it was installed with XP, which meant that the hardware should be OK. She went over and clicked on it, and found that the running speed seemed to be OK.

"That's very good. Then... can we use the materials in the garage?" Lin Chaoxi asked tentatively.

"Of course, of course. It's scrap in the first place, but you have to wait until my uncle is free to help you match it. He's quite busy."

Hearing this, Lin Chaoxi followed Pei Zhi's lead, and then she found that everyone else's eyes were focused on the same place as hers.

"I won't..." Pei Zhi said.

"I know, because I haven't learned it." Lin Zhaoxi smiled awkwardly, pointed at the computer, and took a few books from the bookshelf and placed them in front of Pei Zhi, "Now I have a computer, I can learn, I have books, I can learn."

"Then I'll give it a try."

Pei Zhi is Pei Zhi, without any pretense or excuses, he sat down in front of the computer and started flipping through books and looking up information.

The flower rolls were already spread out on the sofa in Lao Chen's house.

"How long will it take you to study? Let me take a break first?" he asked Pei Zhi.

"I don't know yet." Pei Zhi replied.

Lin Zhaoxi walked over and kicked Comrade Huajuan's foot: "Let's go, let's go downstairs."

"What?"

"Let's clean up the garage first!" Lin Chaoxi said as he pulled him.

Huajuan hugged the sofa directly: "I knew what you were going to do. How can I not go when it's so dirty?"

"No~" she and Lu Zhihao said in unison.