Chapter 132

In the deep of night, inside the Department of Computer Science laboratory at Qinghua University, the humming drone of fluorescent light tubes echoed through the silent room, sounding exceptionally abrupt in the empty space. Chén Zhāoyáng sat alone in front of his computer, his eyes locked onto the scrolling lines of code on the screen as if those lines were the entirety of his life. His fingers unconsciously rubbed the rim of his coffee mug. The coffee inside had long since gone cold, but he seemed completely unaware of it. His entire focus was concentrated on the screen before him; those rows of code were like the melody of his life, and he was so deeply immersed in them that he could not pull himself away. A full twenty-eight days had passed since the approval of the Huaxia 01 overseas patent application. For Chén Zhāoyáng, those twenty-eight days had been like dancing on a tightrope, every step fraught with danger and uncertainty. Not only did he have to coordinate the Qinghua team in optimizing the system, but he also had to deal with the rigorous audits of the special task force dispatched by the Ministry of Science and Technology.