Chapter 11#
Serious Baby#
Mo Xuzhi returned to the hospital in the evening.
After wiping his body and changing clothes, he put on a simple mask and strolled to the hospital’s small garden to get some fresh air.
The sky was getting dark, and there weren’t many people in the small garden. Mo Xuzhi found a bench in a random corner and sat down. Looking up, he saw that the clouds on the horizon looked quite unique, so he held up his phone and took a photo.
He logged into Weibo, switched accounts, edited the caption, and sent it.
[Wuzhi: Bastard [Image]]
In the photo, red and purple clouds painted the sky. One cloud at the edge had drifted apart, gradually taking the shape of a flower, magnificent and fantastical.
Mo Xuzhi called it a bastard.
[I… Madam… this bastard is really beautiful, Madam’s artistic cells have increased again]
[Chewing on the “the flower is so beautiful” that almost slipped out and swallowing it back down (this clearly looks more like a flower, hey!)]
[Madam is great, Madam is amazing, so when is Madam going to update today?]
[Does anyone still remember when Madam once forced himself to see a heart-shaped cloud as two halves, turned one half upside down, and said it looked like a check-mark function? At least the bastard is still intact. Tired.JPG]
[+1, at least it’s intact]
Mo Xuzhi chuckled and exited Weibo.
A voice drifted over with the wind.
“Make sure you understand the lattice structure… right, then substitute the data.”
Sounded a bit familiar.
Mo Xuzhi turned his head and saw a youth sitting on a bench one over from his.
If he remembered correctly, this person was named Ji Baiwen.
He might have been here all along, or he might have just arrived. If he hadn’t spoken, Mo Xuzhi wouldn’t have noticed him at all.
Ji Baiwen was sitting in a wheelchair with a laptop on his lap, glowing with blue light.
As if sensing something, he turned his head and looked at Mo Xuzhi.
The youth was leaning against the bench, his figure thin. With the overhead light shining down, his whole being exuded a sense of weary laziness.
Ji Baiwen softly said “wait a moment” to the person on the other end of the phone, then covered the phone.
“Sorry to disturb you.”
“I have some things to handle. The network in the ward is a bit unstable, so I came here. I didn’t expect you to be resting here.”
“It’s fine, carry on. I’m not resting.”
Mo Xuzhi smiled. His refined features flashed by for a moment before he turned away from the light again, sinking back into the shadows.
“I’m waiting for the moon.”
The weather was nice today, so the moon should be quite bright.
He was just wandering around anyway. As long as Ji Baiwen didn’t mind him hearing the call, then there was no problem.
Ji Baiwen was stunned for a moment.
The voice came from the phone again. He finally withdrew his gaze and refocused on the computer screen.
“…Mm, it’s fine… is it ready? Then substitute the data.”
Mo Xuzhi closed his eyes. In his ears were the occasional chirping of insects and the sound of Ji Baiwen typing on the keyboard, along with the low voices of people further away. It sounded quite comfortable.
“The data won’t substitute in?”
Ji Baiwen frowned as he listened to the voice on the other end, his hands temporarily stopping on the keyboard. “Read the data to me.”
“S1… 0.6876… S9, 0.7395.”
As the person on the other end read them out, Ji Baiwen repeated each one, typed the data into the computer, and then compared them one by one.
The data was correct.
“Brother Ji, save me!!! I’ve substituted the data several times, but the deduction doesn’t hold. It’s killing me. It was fine before!”
Ji Baiwen ignored the yelling on the phone, his fingers flying across the keyboard.
His brow gradually furrowed.
Both the structure and the data were indeed fine.
“The data is wrong.”
Ji Baiwen turned his head and saw the person who had been leaning against the bench slowly sit up straight, his back as straight as a pole.
The data is wrong?
No.
Ji Baiwen suddenly realized, Mo Xuzhi could understand what they were talking about?
“The data for S9 has been corrected. It’s now 0.7397. You can’t derive the result using the previous data.”
The youth, now sitting up straight, had lost his previous laziness. His tone was gentle and his voice cold, somewhat different from before.
He smiled: “0.7397, try substituting that in.”
Ji Baiwen’s fingers brushed over the keyboard. He lowered his eyes and said to the person on the phone: “Change S9 to 0.7397 and try again.”
The person on the other end didn’t doubt him and did as told.
The only sound left from the phone was the pitter-patter of typing.
Ji Baiwen turned to look at Mo Xuzhi.
Mo Xuzhi smiled at him and stretched, looking like he was about to leave.
“Brother Ji, I love you!! I finally derived it!” The person on the other end asked again, “Brother Ji, how did you know the data had changed?”
“Someone told me.”
“Now that it’s derived, I’m hanging up.”
Although Mo Xuzhi walked like an old man on a stroll, his long legs meant he had already gone quite far in just a moment, leaving only a shadow that grew longer and longer.
Ji Baiwen hung up the phone, put it aside, opened the browser, and searched for Mo Xuzhi.
The Baidu Encyclopedia entry was as good as empty, with only his name and birthday listed. It mentioned a few variety shows he’d filmed, plus a few ambiguous scandals—that was the entirety of the content.
He had originally filmed several TV series, but for various reasons, none of them were ever broadcast. Since then, he had never filmed any movies or TV series, only occasionally participating in variety shows.
No background information, no academic history.
Opening Weibo and searching for Mo Xuzhi again, Ji Baiwen saw a related super topic.
Without much hesitation, he clicked in.
The first things he saw were insults directed at Mo Xuzhi.
[Has Mo Xuzhi quit the circle today? No? Then I’ll come back tomorrow to ask (trash should stay underground)]
[Haha, found it. Mo Xuzhi used to attend some Excavator University, but he could never learn well and was asked to go home]
[Indeed something he would do]
[No-prize guessing: which unlucky soul will Mo-someone cling to and suck blood from tomorrow?]
[Guessing Bai Jing. Previously Mo Xuzhi forced him to go eat ice cream, and a CP trending topic came out that same day. It’s been so long, they should be ‘back in business’]
[Guessing Luo Wenyun. Mo-someone goes wherever the heat is high]
Ji Baiwen frowned, scrolled down a bit more, and eventually exited the super topic.
“…”
Ji Baiwen felt a tightness in his chest. He reopened the super topic and seriously typed out a bunch of words, wanting to reply to the second comment.
[System prompt: You are not yet logged in/registered. You cannot comment]
Ji Baiwen: “…”
Ji Baiwen registered an account on the spot. He even got stuck for a moment when choosing a nickname, as the system kept notifying him that the nickname was already taken.
This time, the system didn’t stop him.
[Hezi Mubaiwen replied to Gulu Gulu Bubbling: You shouldn’t talk nonsense about things for which there is no evidence. He is not that kind of person]
“Gulu Gulu Bubbling” was the person who claimed to have found out Mo Xuzhi went to Excavator University.
Gulu Gulu Bubbling seemed to live on Weibo, replying to Ji Baiwen almost instantly.
[If he didn’t attend Excavator University, then what university did he attend? Tsing-Bei University?]