Chapter 12: An Unexpected Encounter

That afternoon, after completing his registration, Gu Cheng went to the “Bureau of Industry and Commerce” to submit his company registration application.

Proposed registered capital: 100 million Yibi.

Without the help of a law firm or an agent, registering a company meant at least a dozen trips to various offices and banks; stamping documents, verifying capital, paying taxes and miscellaneous fees, registering trademarks... It simply couldn't be done in less than half a month.

So, starting the next day, Gu Cheng waited for the procedures while making time to attend programming classes, determined not to waste a moment.

Outside of class, he also made efforts to befriend a few skilled classmates, asking where they worked, hoping to find someone from the WEMADE company.

The training school he’d chosen had a very user-friendly curriculum. Multiple classes were running in parallel, and you could attend any instructor’s lesson by simply swiping your card—the hours would be counted, and you could leave once you’d completed the required study time.

For those brimming with energy and quick to learn, enrolling in several programming languages and alternating their attendance was entirely possible.

This arrangement was perfect for someone like Gu Cheng, a “castle in the sky” type expert, saving him a great deal of time.

In just a few days, the school began to buzz about a remarkable Chinese youth.

Every day, he arrived at 8 a.m., attended only half of each class, skipped the exercises assigned in the latter half, and hurried off to the next session.

Gu Cheng had signed up for three foundational languages—C, C++, and VB—as well as an introductory scripting course. He juggled the four courses, yet his progress was seemingly no slower than those studying just one.

What would take a normal person half a year to finish, at his pace, would take barely a month.

The Doyi people were no less diligent; they took pride in their “desk-warming” culture—a term in English specifically describing the Doyi approach to learning, where the effort is measured by how warm you keep your desk.

They believed in sitting there and working themselves to the bone, even if they learned nothing, just to appear hardworking.

This only made Gu Cheng’s approach stand out more starkly.

The Chinese ideal of admiring “geniuses who can ace the test without effort” seemed not to exist in Doyi. Their value system honored hard work, not intelligence—a mindset Gu Cheng simply couldn’t fathom.

In his view: if you’re truly gifted, why not own it outright? Why pretend to be humble? That’s just being dishonest.

“C++ struct basic applications… mastery at 85%. Remaining points to grasp: syntax of nested structs, combining struct stacks with pointers, syntax for different priority settings…”

Gu Cheng’s mind operated with a “gamified learning” regimen inherited from the future.

Every day, every class, every minute could be used to its fullest.

As soon as he mastered a topic—once there was nothing left to challenge him—he abandoned it and moved on to the next.

His brain, forged by his previous life with an “auxiliary learning bio-CPU,” and still retaining a bit of “introspective” ability, allowed Gu Cheng to manage his time with astonishing efficiency.

Moreover, his programming concepts were already more advanced than anyone present, teachers included. The only gap he had to fill was the syntax of the languages themselves, so his learning speed was naturally extraordinary.

By the end of the first week, the C language instructor was the first to lose his patience: Gu Cheng’s existence was a challenge to classroom order!

That day, just as Gu Cheng, sitting in the back row, had solved two challenging problems and was about to leave, the C language teacher called out sternly:

“You there! Come up and demonstrate on this computer: how should this struct nesting be written?”

The C language teacher was an old-fashioned man, obsessed with seniority.

Most of the clueless students didn’t realize how tricky the question was, thinking it was just a regular exercise.

However, a few top students immediately noticed the problem was beyond the current syllabus: it wasn’t just struct nesting—it also involved a complex, hidden point about struct pointer references.

For someone who had already finished the C language course, there’d be no pressure; but for a newcomer, especially one who’d only studied for a week, it was overkill.

Gu Cheng didn’t refuse. He walked straight up, glanced briefly at the code and the logical structure of the problem, then tapped out his answer with swift, concise keystrokes. The teacher’s computer was connected to a projector, so everyone could see his work.

“Wrong! The standard answer should be like this!” The teacher, feeling vindicated, began to lecture as soon as Gu Cheng finished.

He pressed a few keys, opened a code comparison tool, and projected the results for all to see.

Gu Cheng’s code had several sections marked in bright red.

The code comparison tool, like B-compare, automatically highlights differences between two text files.

You could set one as the “standard version” and the other as the “compared version”; any difference would be marked in red, though that didn’t necessarily mean the compared text was incorrect.

Still, to the uninitiated, all that red meant Gu Cheng’s code was wrong.

The teacher lectured with all the gravity of his age: “Young man, don’t be arrogant! Don’t get complacent over a little achievement. I don’t know how you Chinese are taught about humility, but you ought to learn perseverance from our Doyi classmates!”

Gu Cheng scratched his head impatiently. “What’s the point in all this talk? Just compile and run it—we’ll see who’s right.”

The teacher was stunned. “You… you still won’t admit your mistake? Fine, I’ll convince you!”

He clicked compile and run…

And that was the end of it.

According to the test results, Gu Cheng’s code, though different from the standard answer, produced the same outcome.

Then the teacher and the class’s most advanced students noticed: in the standard answer, a certain block of code was redundantly called three times instead of being encapsulated in a definition. Gu Cheng, meanwhile, had defined it properly, reducing the overall code by two lines.

The code was clean, concise, and elegant.

“If it works, it works. Making simple things complex is easy; making complex things simple—that’s the hard part.”

Fortunately, Gu Cheng was still somewhat respectful and didn’t press his advantage. With that, he left for his VB class.

“Damn it! Shows off and leaves!” The C language teacher was left choking with indignation, unsure how to react.

The classroom, filled with students bound by the rigid etiquette of Doyi, secretly cheered him on inside.

“What a genuine guy... When did Chinese people become like this?”

“So cool!”

A true remnant of the Jin spirit, indeed.

...

A morning of intense study quickly brought lunchtime.

Gu Cheng’s brainpower was taxed from his rigorous efforts, making his hunger arrive all the faster.

As he ate the Doyi-style omelet rice, he couldn’t help but complain inwardly: “Food prices here are ridiculously high!”

He had to reserve enough for the 100 million capital verification, and with tuition just paid, life was rather austere.

“Oppa, is this seat taken? Can I sit here?”

Looking up, Gu Cheng saw a girl with a ponytail, holding a tray and standing in front of him.

She looked about twenty, wearing a wide-shouldered, half-off-shoulder top and tight jeans that showed off her long legs—a fresh and charming seven out of ten.

She seemed familiar; probably one of his classmates from programming, so he confirmed, “Miss, I’m only sixteen—you’re calling me oppa?”

“Oh please, oppa isn’t about age. If you don’t like it, I’ll stop.” She looked a little disappointed and sat down without waiting for a reply. “You’re Gu Cheng, right? I’m Cherry. I work at a game company—I’m also in the C language class.”

“I know. A couple of times I stayed until class ended and saw you surrounded by guys discussing questions.”

He’d never had the chance to talk to her before—she was the only pretty girl in class, and always mobbed by guys during breaks. Gu Cheng had no time to join the crowd.

Thinking of this, he couldn’t help but tease, “It’s great being a girl coder. When a guy gets stuck on a bug, he could pull his hair out and no one helps. A girl gets frustrated and sighs, and half the class rushes to her rescue.”

She burst out laughing. “You’re so funny!”

Gu Cheng’s offhand remark made Cherry recall the scene perfectly, and she couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Realizing her loss of composure, she quickly covered her mouth with a napkin.

“Enough joking. Let me introduce myself. I’m a game planner. I didn’t know programming before, so the programmers on my project team always tricked me. It was so frustrating. I had no choice but to learn a bit myself so I could supervise them in the future.”

What Cherry described was common in the industry.

If a planner or product manager knows a bit of programming, they can stand their ground at work. When a programmer claims “this can’t be done technically,” they’re able to argue the point. A manager who knows nothing about coding is helpless in such situations and can only delete the requirement, not knowing whether it’s truly impossible or just laziness.

But Gu Cheng wasn’t interested in Cherry’s industry gossip. Sticking to his purpose, he asked her directly what he most wanted to know.

“Which company do you work for?”

“Our company’s called WE-made Entertainment. Heard of it? We’ve made several games.”

“Pfft—”

“What’s wrong?” Cherry thought he was choking and immediately got up to pat his back.

“Cough, cough… Damn, what’s with this seaweed soup? Why is the seaweed so long and uncut?” Gu Cheng pulled a long strip of seaweed from his throat, making a joke.

Cherry didn’t suspect a thing.

He’d finally found someone from the industry!

Seeing Gu Cheng couldn’t speak, Cherry blushed and boldly asked, “You’re training to find a job, right? Interested in trying out at our company? We’re small and don’t care much about degrees. With your skills, you’d definitely make it.”

Poaching is poaching. Why blush? Haven’t seen such a handsome programmer before?

“Thanks, but I’m not looking for a job. But, ‘Legend’—that’s your company’s game, right?”

Cherry’s eyes immediately sparkled with pride and delight. “You know Legend? I’m in the Legend planning team!”

Gu Cheng was suddenly tempted to treat her to a feast.