During the first year of college, most students still have a lot of ambition.
As time goes by, the proportion of those with ambition gradually decreases.
This is actually the same as going to work. When you first join a company, you are full of grand aspirations, but then you start to slack off and get paid to sit on the toilet.
Even the best universities are no exception.
At this moment, in the legendary Room 510, Xue Tao was rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
"This competition seems pretty simple. It doesn't require much of a foundation, as long as you're willing to grind. I feel like we could give it a try."
Xue Tao extended a team-up invitation to Chu Mingzhe.
Chu Mingzhe, however, scoffed at the idea. "Forget it. I think I should participate in a more prestigious competition."
"Heh, you can't get fat from one bite. If you only focus on the prestigious ones, you might end up just participating for the sake of it and get absolutely nothing out of it."
"That's absolutely impossible. I've been seriously buckling down lately, and I feel like my high school studying power has returned!"
The guy from Shanghai's face radiated a slightly adolescent arrogance.
At this time, Chu Mingzhe's complexion didn't look too good.
One of the reasons was that he had been tormented too severely by his crazy landmine girlfriend recently.
To be honest, sometimes you really have to believe in fate. There was definitely a reason why this girl ended up with Chu Mingzhe. Would a normal person fall for him?
It was fine before they started dating, but as soon as she got into the role of a girlfriend, she started acting crazy every day. Chu Mingzhe had effectively become her emotional trash can.
This left Chu Mingzhe a bit bewildered. What happened to the promised sweet romance? Where exactly was the sweetness, he wondered?
In any case, he couldn't taste a hint of sweetness.
On the other hand, watching Su Bai and Chen Yusheng go to class together every day was incredibly sweet.
Sigh, Brother Bai was on a completely different level, full of charm. He couldn't compare to Su Bai. But the question was, were normal couples really as troublesome as Leilei?
So recently, Chu Mingzhe asked around among the guys with dating experience in his social circle, and came to the conclusion that—
Nowadays, very few girls are easy to deal with.
This immediately made him feel a lot better.
So Chu Mingzhe had no choice but to continue enduring the pain and pleasure, dating his crazy girlfriend while finding some real work to do, so she wouldn't constantly harass him.
Studying was a great excuse.
Oh no, it wasn't just an excuse!
Based on the level he showed in the midterm exams, if he didn't buckle down, he risked failing his classes this semester.
Chu Mingzhe was originally hoping to get recommended for graduate school. Or rather, his parents had high expectations for his studies. Parents in Shanghai usually cared extremely much about their children's grades. Not just high school grades, but even college performance was a classic subject of comparison.
And Chu Mingzhe's generous allowance naturally came from his parents coughing up the cash. If he failed a class this semester...
Next semester, he probably wouldn't even have a dating budget!
Therefore, for this very fundamental reason, Chu Mingzhe had recently started to buckle down.
Taking classes seriously... at least looking like he was taking them seriously!
Spending time in the library after class... sometimes the study room. The main thing was to avoid his rival, Xue Tao. If Xue Tao went to the library, he would go to the study room, and vice versa.
That's how rivals were.
After all, they both liked to post on social media about studying hard. It wouldn't be cool if they clashed in the same setting.
As for the competitions he needed to participate in outside of his regular coursework, Chu Mingzhe had already found his teammates.
—Teammates he got through his parents' acquaintances.
Although they were all from Jiangcheng University, their majors and grades were all different.
It looked very diverse and proper.
It had the vibe of a protagonist group in a youth novel, awesome!
Therefore, it was absolutely impossible for Chu Mingzhe to team up with Xue Tao. The team already had him holding them back... ah no, you couldn't say holding them back. It should be called a green rookie phase. If they added Xue Tao, there would be slightly too few people actually doing the work.
Some competitions restricted the number of participants. What if the maximum was three people? Wouldn't that mean some teammate would have to drag him and Xue Tao along?
Carrying two people was too much effort.
It was better to have two people carry one.
At this moment, in the newly created small group chat, Chu Mingzhe saw that his teammates had already started discussing the competition.
This competition was hosted by the Computer Science Department, and the sponsor was White Night Ventures. Hmmm... never heard of them. It was probably some shell company started by a senior over in the startup park. It didn't matter.
One of the teammates was a junior female student from the Mechanical Engineering Department who wanted to transfer to the Computer Science Department for her master's.
Perhaps out of an eagerness to gather information, this senior girl often chatted with Chu Mingzhe and was quite enthusiastic. This gave Chu Mingzhe the rare joy of feeling valued by a girl.
After all, there weren't many girls in the Computer Science Department. As for other channels to meet girls, Chu Mingzhe had joined a few clubs. The problem was that as a college freshman, he was a new face. Furthermore, Chu Mingzhe wasn't exactly a social butterfly; he carried a bit of an idol complex and hadn't really mingled well yet.
Naturally, no girls paid attention to him.
At this moment, after posting the promotional link for the competition in the group, the senior girl tagged Chu Mingzhe and mysteriously started gossiping.
[I heard this competition is funded by a student from your department. That's so awesome!]
[When will I ever reach that level...]
Huh?
A student actually funding a competition...
This was really quite unusual.
Because Chu Mingzhe had been buckling down recently, he had sought out a lot of advice from upperclassmen.
College students nowadays were not like before. In the past, as long as you went to class step by step, found an internship after graduation, you would naturally find a job.
Now, you had to grind out all sorts of credentials just to fight for an internship opportunity.
You could only say that the times had indeed evolved...
For small competitions like this, they usually looked for off-campus sponsors. Even the cheapest events cost tens of thousands of yuan to run... For slightly more normal ones, the funding was in the six figures. What kind of college student spends six figures to host a competition?
A pure rich kid.
Speaking of rich kids, the first image that flashed through Chu Mingzhe's mind was actually Su Bai. Although a college freshman becoming an event sponsor was truly absurd, it really seemed like something Su Bai would do.
The watch he wore and the car he drove both had fantastical price tags.
He often spent thousands or even tens of thousands on a regular meal.
Spending over a hundred thousand to host a competition didn't seem strange. After all, Su Bai had a pretty good relationship with several teachers in the department. Previously, Chu Mingzhe thought it was because of Xia Lin, but looking at it now, it was definitely not just because of Xia Lin...
Simply being on good terms with a certain counselor wouldn't earn you that much special treatment.
It still came down to actual power and capability.
Chu Mingzhe clicked on the link and took a look. White Night Technology... Hiss... Could it really be Brother Bai's company?
Holy smokes, he's already playing around with companies. By the time they graduate, will Brother Bai be considering going public?
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
saw a female celebrity tied up and stuffed in the trunk! Little did he know, countless cameras were aimed at him at this moment - this was a new type of reality show. The first randomly selected passerby was caught in less than an hour. But when Xu Moru was selected, things started to take an unexpected turn. "Damn, this isn't how the script goes. This Xu Moru is too bold, he's not following the rules at all." "Crap, is this guy taking it seriously?" "The female celebrity has been scared to tears!"
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
