He was outscored after scoring 520 points, but his status as a prodigy can't be hidden.

The students were already used to it.

The only top scorer in the country with a perfect score of 750, a direct disciple of Academician Zhang Chengzhi, and a regular user of a national-level laboratory—you expect him to learn first-year electromagnetism?

This is like making Usain Bolt participate in a crawling competition in kindergarten.

No one dared to wake him.

Except for one person.

"Lin Yu."

Xia Zijing sat next to him and poked the back of his head with her pen.

"Um?"

"Your phone rang. Seventeen times."

Lin Yu groggily pulled out his phone. On the screen, Shen Yue's messages were flooding the screen like a barrage of comments.

He casually clicked on the last one.

Then, his eyes narrowed.

It was a paper that had just been published on the arXiv preprint server. The title was long, but the core message was concise.

In his paper, Kevin Sterling of MIT announced that he has successfully fabricated 5-nanometer-scale bismuth telluride topological insulator films and achieved a groundbreaking experimental result of 18% energy recovery efficiency.

This is not the point.

The key part is the last paragraph of the paper.

Kevin wrote a passage in his acknowledgments that can be translated into plain language as follows:

"I am grateful for the inspiration provided by an anonymous researcher from the East. Although his theory is full of romantic fantasies, it was precisely these fantasies that led me in the right direction. Of course, science needs experimental results, not poetry."

This statement caused an uproar in the global academic community.

It's obvious to everyone who the anonymous researcher from the East is referring to.

This is not a thank you, this is a provocation.

And it's the most disgusting kind of provocation—stealing your things first, then telling everyone in front of them that you're no good.

I'm still seeing news about Shen Yue.

This paper has been reprinted in both Nature and Science.

Western media are giving extensive coverage, with headlines such as "MIT prodigy overcomes energy recovery challenge, leaving Chinese team behind."

[Domestic public opinion has also begun to stir, with many people asking whether there has been any progress on the Loongson project.]

[Mr. Lin, I think you need to respond.]

After reading the messages, Lin Yu put his phone face down on the table and lay back down.

Xia Zijing watched his actions and asked, "Not going to respond?"

"What should we respond to?"

Lin Yu's voice was muffled in his arms, "He only achieved 18%, while our theoretical value is 32.7%. And he used materials that we had already discarded."

"But he has experimental data, we don't."

"so?"

"So he won in the scientific community. He also won in the public sphere."

Xia Zijing's tone remained unchanged; she was simply stating the facts.

Lin Yu remained silent for a few seconds.

He knew Xia Zijin was right.

Science is all talk; if you can't produce experimental data, it's just bullshit.

Kevin stole his inspiration, produced the experimental results first, and then mocked him—this was even more disgusting than when Su Qingwan and Li Hao teamed up to mess with his answer sheet back then.

But what happened to those two in the end?

"He thought 18% was the ceiling."

Lin Yu closed his eyes again, his voice languid, "Then let him be smug for a while."

"Once our materials are ready, I'll personally step on his ceiling."

Xia Zijing glanced at him but didn't say anything more.

She simply wrote one line in her notebook:

[Materials preparation cycle: estimated 3 months. Kevin's window of opportunity: 90 days.]

The bell rang, signaling the end of get out of class.

Lin Yu was walking out with his schoolbag when he was surrounded by a group of people in the corridor.

Not classmates.

He is a reporter.

"Are you Lin Yu? What are your thoughts on Kevin Sterling's paper from MIT?"

"Lin Yu, there are rumors that your technological approach to the Loongson project has reached a dead end. How do you respond?"

"Student Lin—"

Lin Yu put one hand in his pocket and walked sideways through the reporters without stopping.

He left behind only one sentence the moment he stepped out of the crowd.

"What was his name again?"

The reporters were stunned.

"Kevin Sterling! The AI ​​prodigy from MIT!"

Lin Yu didn't even turn his head.

"Oh. I don't know him."

The reporters looked at each other in bewilderment.

Meanwhile, Kevin Sterling's latest tweet has just been retweeted 100,000 times.

The tweet consisted of only one sentence, accompanied by a selfie of him smiling while holding a thin-film sample in his MIT lab:

(Dear Mr. 750, I'm waiting for you. Show me what you've got, or you'll be shut up forever.)

The comments section was filled with mockery and jeers.

Lin Yu's social media accounts remain blank as always.

He never goes online.

Kevin's tweet went viral around the world within 24 hours.

The nickname "Mr. 750" instantly became a popular internet meme.

Those who support Kevin used it to mock Lin Yu—"So what if you got a perfect score on the college entrance exam? Getting a perfect score on the college entrance exam and research ability are two different things."

Those who support Lin Yu are also using it to cheer him on—Mr. 750, take him down!

But Mr. 750 himself was squatting at the entrance of the base canteen, fighting with Wang Lei for the last tea egg.

"Let me have it! I weigh 180 pounds! My basal metabolic rate is higher than yours!"

Wang Lei held onto the plate tightly.

"What does your high metabolism have to do with me?"

Lin Yu expressionlessly picked up the tea egg and took it away.

"..."

Wang Lei was on the verge of tears. It was true that his salary had increased fiftyfold since he started working for this boss, but it was also true that the quality of the food had decreased ninetyfold.

During the meal, Wang Lei handed me his phone.

"Boss, don't you see what's going on online? That American guy is practically digging up your ancestral graves."

Lin Yu glanced at it.

Kevin Sterling's name is everywhere on Twitter, Weibo, and Zhihu.

MIT even held a live broadcast where Kevin spoke fluently in front of the camera, touting his 18% energy recovery efficiency as a major breakthrough in the history of human technology.

"Isn't this just a test-taker who knows how to market himself?"

Lin Yu handed the phone back to Wang Lei, saying, "His 18% is the upper limit. The crystal structure of bismuth telluride determines that it cannot exceed 22%. He knows this himself."

"Then why is he still so high-profile?"

"Because he bet we couldn't make better materials."

Lin Yu peeled a clove of garlic. "He thought that by poaching the German team, he had cut off our path. That's why he dared to be so arrogant."

"Then we..."

"We don't need to do anything."

Lin Yu stuffed the garlic into the noodles and stirred them. "Professor Li's materials growth furnace is all set up. The first batch of samples should be ready next week."

"The data will speak for itself in due time."

Wang Lei nodded, but couldn't help saying, "But the insults directed at you online are so harsh that many people in China are starting to waver. They're saying things like the Loongson chip project is just a vanity project, and the 750-point scorer is just a test-taking machine—"

"Wang Lei".

Lin Yu interrupted him.

"exist."

Do you think I care?

Wang Lei opened his mouth, but swallowed the words that were about to come out.

Right.