Sir, the times have changed.

Dozens of pairs of eyes were fixed on the two people on the podium. One was the freshman from Guanghua who had been the center of swirling rumors, and the other was the almighty top-tier god of the School of Information Science and Technology.

Dai Damai pushed up the glasses on the bridge of his nose, not angered by Chen Zhi's provocation in the slightest. On the contrary, he found it somewhat amusing.

As a top talent in the IT field, no one knew the true weight of current AI better than he did.

Sure, current AI could play Go, recognize cats and dogs, and even write a few lines of nonsensical modern poetry.

But that was just the result of brute force, piled up using massive amounts of data and computing power.

But writing code?

Give me a break. The so-called AI-assisted programming nowadays could at most help you autocomplete brackets or scrape a couple of ready-made wheels from GitHub.

The moment it involved complex logical architecture and creative interaction, the artificial retard would instantly show its true colors.

"Interesting."

Dai Damai crossed his arms. "Junior, being arrogant is a privilege of the youth, but being overly arrogant is just ignorance."

"Since you want to bet, I'll play along."

He pointed to his ThinkPad. "If that thing in your flash drive can really write better code than me, like you claim, never mind following your lead from now on, I'll write code for you for free for the rest of my life."

"But if you lose..."

Dai Damai paused, "You'll stand by Weiming Lake and shout 'I am a huge idiot' three times. How about that?"

Chen Zhi shrugged.

"Deal."

He turned around, his gaze sweeping over the crowd of onlookers who were more than happy to watch the drama unfold.

"Does anyone have a laptop with decent performance? Preferably one with a dedicated graphics card, starting from an RTX 3080."

To do a good job, an artisan needs the best tools.

Although Moss was an AI, it was only an initial version after all and still had to rely on local computing power. If he ran it on a thin and light laptop with integrated graphics, the computer would probably start smoking first.

"I do!"

A boy in the back row raised his hand.

He pulled a heavy laptop out of his bag and jogged up to the podium.

"Junior, use mine! It's a newly bought ROG Strix Scar 5 Plus with a 3080 graphics card."

Chen Zhi took the laptop, its RGB marquee lights still flashing, and gave the boy a thumbs-up. "Thanks, bro. I'll buy you a Coke later."

He placed the laptop on the podium, plugged in the power supply, and shoved the silver flash drive into the USB port.

The screen flickered.

A simple dialog box popped up.

Awaiting input.

"Let's not mess around with anything pointless."

Chen Zhi pointed at the screen. "Senior, let's set a time limit. Ten minutes. We start at the same time, and you set the topic. In the end, we'll see whose final product has a better effect and higher code quality."

Dai Damai didn't hold back and pondered for a moment.

"Then let's write a simple interactive animation effect."

"Ten minutes. Let's see who can make the most realistic effect and the smoothest interaction within the limited time."

"No problem."

Chen Zhi placed his hands on the keyboard. "Let's begin."

As the boy who lent the computer shouted "Start", the sound of clacking keyboards echoed through the laboratory.

That was Dai Damai typing code.

It had to be said, there was a reason this guy could command a million-yuan annual salary.

He barely needed to think; complex mathematical formulas and rendering pipelines came to him effortlessly.

Importing libraries, defining classes, building rendering loops, writing shaders...

The students in the audience watched, dumbfounded, and some even pulled out their phones to start recording.

"Too strong. Is this the typing speed of God Dai?"

"Coding a prototype graphics engine by hand in ten minutes, is this even something a human can do?"

Compared to Dai Damai's frantic activity,

Chen Zhi's side seemed...

A bit too quiet.

He leaned back lazily in his chair, rested one hand on the keyboard, and slowly typed a few words.

Then, he stopped.

That's right, he stopped.

Chen Zhi even had the leisure to unscrew a bottle of mineral water he had casually grabbed earlier and tilt his head back to take a sip.

The students in the audience looked at each other in dismay.

"Is... is he giving up already?"

"I told you he was just showing off, right? I bet he doesn't even know how to configure an OpenGL environment."

Someone couldn't help but peek at Chen Zhi's screen.

In that dialog box, there was only a single, simple line of instructions:

[Generate a WebGPU-based 3D particle starry sky system with fluid dynamics characteristics, and call the camera to achieve real-time particle disturbance interaction based on gesture recognition.]

Seeing this line of text, the boy who peeked almost laughed out loud.

Do you think writing code is like ordering takeout? You want fluid dynamics and gesture recognition? Why don't you ask it to generate an Iron Man suit for you?

However.

In the very next second.

The cursor stopped flashing.

Immediately after, a stream of green code suddenly appeared on the screen.

It wasn't appearing line by line, but refreshing screen by screen!

It was so fast that the naked eye couldn't capture the specific characters at all; one could only see a blur of green afterimages scrolling madly.

The boy who had just been mocking Chen Zhi instantly had his smile freeze on his face.

The laptop's cooling fans suddenly turned violent, whirring as if the machine were about to take off.

In less than three minutes.

The screen on Chen Zhi's side went still.

The last line of code fell into place, and the cursor resumed its flashing.

Chen Zhi looked at Dai Damai, who was still coding furiously next to him.

"Senior, want to take a break?"

Dai Damai ignored him.

Every second was precious right now.

He was building the final lighting model, which was a crucial step.

Finally, the ten-minute countdown ended.

Dai Damai hit the Enter key and let out a long sigh of relief.

"Done."

He confidently turned his laptop screen toward the audience below.

"Although time was a bit tight and I could only use Three.js for a simple wrapper, the core algorithms were all written by hand."

On the screen, a 3D Rubik's Cube appeared, suspended in mid-air.

As Dai Damai dragged his mouse, the cube smoothly rotated, scrambled, and solved itself. Every block had a realistic metallic texture, and there were even simple light and shadow reflections.

"Holy crap! Awesome!"

"He wrote this level of rendering in ten minutes?"

"And it can interactively solve itself, the logic is fully functional, without any lag!"

Thunderous applause erupted from the audience.

This was indeed the absolute limit of what a human programmer could achieve in such a short time. Whether it was the standard of the code or the final visual effect, it was impeccable.

A satisfied smile appeared on Dai Damai's face.

"Junior, your turn."

Chen Zhi smiled.

He turned the ROG laptop around to face everyone.

The screen was pitch black.

"What's wrong? Black screen?"

"Did the code crash?"

Just as everyone was filled with confusion.

Chen Zhi pressed the Enter key.

In the center of the previously pitch-black screen, countless brilliant points of light suddenly appeared.

Tens of thousands of them, densely packed like the sands of the Milky Way, stardust particles!

Every single particle was glowing. Possessing different colors, they flowed, spiraled, and converged across the screen, forming a flowing river of stars.

The visual impact of this moment made everyone present hold their breath.

And it wasn't over yet.

"Looking pretty is useless on its own; it's all about the interaction."

Chen Zhi said as he turned on the webcam above his laptop screen.

A small monitor feed appeared in the top right corner of the screen.

Chen Zhi raised his hand and gave a gentle wave at the camera.

The next second.

The originally peaceful, flowing starry river on the screen was stirred by an invisible force.

Countless particles surged and gathered wildly in the direction of Chen Zhi's gesture.

As Chen Zhi opened his fingers and clenched them into a fist.

The tens of millions of particles scattered and condensed accordingly.

Finally, as Chen Zhi's gesture froze in place.

All the stardust particles instantly recombined, constructing a massive, slowly rotating model of a hand made entirely of points of light in the center of the screen!

Even the bending of the finger joints was clearly visible!

The entire laboratory fell into dead silence.

The smile on Dai Damai's face completely froze.

He lunged at Chen Zhi's computer, his trembling fingers clicking open the source file.

"This is impossible... This is absolutely impossible..."

He muttered to himself, frantically scrolling through the code.

Three thousand four hundred lines.

All written in low-level shader language based on WebGPU.

The logic was rigorous, the comments clear.

The most terrifying part was the fluid dynamics algorithm. A mathematical model that complex would take him at least a whole day just to derive.

And this thing called Moss...

Had only taken three minutes.

"Is this the tool you were talking about?"

Dai Damai looked up, staring at Chen Zhi with hollow eyes.

He looked like a peerless master who had practiced swordsmanship his entire life, ready for a duel to the death at the peak of Mount Hua, only for his opponent to pull out a Gatling gun.

My lord, times have changed.

Chen Zhi pulled out the USB flash drive and looked at the young faces in the audience.

They were the top students of Peking University, the future elites of society, the chosen ones.

But at this moment, they were all silent, wearing expressions of fear.

A fear of feeling insignificant in the face of an unknown power.

"Students."

Chen Zhi's voice snapped them out of their daze.

"Put away your pride."

"The tide of the times is already rolling in. Even if you hide in your ivory towers, you will be drenched to the bone."

"This is the Fourth Industrial Revolution."

"The skills you pride yourselves on, the algorithms you stayed up late and lost your hair learning, in front of it, they are like the shuttles in the hands of textile workers."

"When the Spinning Jenny started turning, no one cared how exquisite the craftsmanship of those skilled workers was."

Chen Zhi walked up to Dai Damai, looking at the senior who was already somewhat crestfallen.

He reached out and patted Dai Damai's stiff shoulder.

"Senior, you have to accept your defeat."

"You can tear up that million-dollar annual salary offer."

The corners of Chen Zhi's mouth turned up, revealing the fangs of a capitalist as he smiled exceptionally brightly.

"Starting today."

"Welcome to my sweatshop."

"Let's talk about how to use this thing to turn the outside world upside down."