Ten o'clock in the evening.
The dormitory.
Jiang Ye and Cen Yemeng were both lying on their stomachs on the bed, their backs bare, reciting from their textbooks. Jiang Ye's back was broad and his muscles taut, with small, millet-like acne dotting his skin. Cen Yemeng's back was the opposite: pure white, smooth, with graceful curves. One had fluffy, short hair, the other smooth, lustrous long hair. The two were like different creatures.
Suddenly, a phone on the bedside table vibrated.
Jiang Ye reached for it and immediately sat up excitedly, "Great! It's done!"
Cen Yemeng looked up with bright eyes, "About the thesis?"
"That's right!" Jiang Ye handed her the phone.
"Mr. Jiang Ye, after discussing with us teachers, if you can indeed write a thesis that perfects your theory, with your wife Cen Yemeng listed as the second author, and the thesis is approved, we can completely consider granting you both a special interview pass, of course, limited to the three subjects we discussed earlier."
"That's wonderful!" Cen Yemeng beamed, "Husband, hurry up and write it!"
Jiang Ye immediately rolled off the bed and went to the small study desk, patting it three times with his hand.
The screen in the center of the desk tilted up, automatically adjusting to an angle parallel to Jiang Ye's line of sight, and then lit up.
Jiang Ye placed his hands on it, his fingers flying, as nimble as a pianist.
Large blocks of text appeared on the screen like a spray, quickly forming a dense expanse of black.
Soon, two hours passed.
At precisely midnight, Jiang Ye completed the entire thesis.
A total of 3980 characters.
"Is it a bit short?" Cen Yemeng sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over to look.
"Short? My previous thesis was also short, but just a few thousand characters like this have led tens of thousands of undergraduates to research it, write countless research papers, and expand into content of hundreds of millions of characters," Jiang Ye said. "So this one should definitely work!"
"Authorship, authorship," Cen Yemeng said.
Jiang Ye returned to the beginning of the thesis and added Jiang Ye, Cen Yemeng as authors.
He sent it directly to the teacher's email.
"Received," the teacher replied. "I will start reviewing it now and will inform you of the approval result during class tomorrow."
"Oh, no rush, it's so late, please get some rest," Jiang Ye typed back.
"I don't need to sleep; I've already had a sleepless brain surgery," the teacher replied again.
"Then thank you for your hard work, teacher," Jiang Ye said.
The couple were both very happy, high-fived in celebration, and went to bed, turning off the lights.
...
The next day.
The first class of the morning.
As soon as the teacher entered the room, their gaze went directly to the Jiang Ye couple in the back row.
"Mr. Jiang Ye, I regret to inform you that if the thesis was written in that manner, it would not pass the review," the teacher said. "Your wife would also not be able to pass without an exam."
The entire class turned their heads, looking at the Jiang Ye couple with surprise.
Many eyes shifted, as if contemplating something.
The students in this room, each with thousands of schemes, reacted quickly, starting to look at each other and exchange knowing smiles.
Jiang Ye stood up, "Teacher... where did it go wrong? I felt it was written well."
"It's not a matter of where it went wrong, but where there were no problems," the teacher said. "If you want this thesis to pass, please put in more effort and write something truly novel, groundbreaking, rigorous, and multi-faceted. In short, it must fully demonstrate the value of this thesis, ideally causing a stir in the relevant academic circles. At the very least, it should make us teachers feel that this thesis deserves to be printed on gold paper and placed in an academic museum."
Jiang Ye sat down dejectedly.
Cen Yemeng beside him also looked disappointed.
As expected, passing the interview wasn't that simple.
Class continued.
The day's classes quickly ended.
In the evening, as usual, they went to the track for physical training.
Jiang Ye's physical fitness was the best among the male students. He took the lead from the start, far surpassing all his classmates.
Previously, during physical training, the classmates would watch their watches, not running a single step faster than necessary, finishing exactly on time.
But this time, everyone started to desperately chase after him.
"Jiang Ye! Wait up!" a classmate gasped for breath.
"The students in front! Slow down a bit!" another classmate shouted.
Jiang Ye didn't look back.
He was wearing headphones and listening to music.
Yesterday morning, Zhi Jun Music had released an album called "Running," with songs specifically written to capture Jiang Ye's energetic spirit while running. Jiang Ye had the volume turned up high and was enjoying it immensely.
Soon, Jiang Ye was half a lap ahead of his classmates.
The other classmates were exhausted, their faces flushed red, giving up the chase and slowing down.
The male students in the class seemed to be going from one extreme to another. Some students suddenly stopped running, standing still to catch their breath, their eyes fixed on the sprinting Jiang Ye.
Soon, Jiang Ye lapped them and caught up to the last student walking slowly.
As he was about to overtake, the other person reached out, patted him, and shouted something.
Jiang Ye paused and took off his headphones.
"Brother Jiang, I am Wei Jianye, the General of Ba Chang Star. I don't have real power; I do some auxiliary work. The real power is with my wife," Wei Jianye accelerated, keeping pace with Jiang Ye. "My wife is also in our class, Zhu Qingyi, the one with the pigtails by the window. Do you remember her?"
Jiang Ye had no recollection but still nodded, "I am the General of Jiang Ye Star, and my wife is my deskmate."
"I know, the class beauty. You're lucky," Wei Jianye said, running with some difficulty but trying to keep up. "My wife and I wanted to ask you, are you still writing that thesis?"
Jiang Ye immediately understood what the other person meant.
They wanted to piggyback on a thesis authorship to exchange for a chance to skip three exams.
After all, if they couldn't pass the exams, they could only resort to crooked ways.
"I'll definitely keep writing, but I don't know if it will pass. I'm having a headache about it right now," Jiang Ye said. "My surname is Jiang, and I've run out of ideas."
"Hey! How could that be!" Wei Jianye was almost falling behind. "Our Ba Chang Star isn't too far from your Jiang Ye Star, only over ten thousand light-years. We developed earlier, and our latest new industry is the Leap Gate. I wonder if there's an opportunity for cooperation with your planet?"
Jiang Ye chatted with Wei Jianye for a while.
The students in front, having waited for a long time and grown impatient, simply started running backward.
"Classmate Jiang!" a portly Black man said. "Let me introduce myself, I am Willard, the Planet Governor of Willard Planet, and also the one with real power. Can you include me in your thesis? The price is negotiable."
Jiang Ye neither agreed nor refused, "I'm willing, but my thesis isn't easy to pass, and it's still uncertain if it will pass."
The physical training teacher for the male group was waiting at the other end of the track.
He frowned, looking across the field.
Almost all the male students in the class had stopped, gathered in a large group, chattering, and doing who knows what.
The physical training teacher took out his microphone, "Males! Keep running! What are you doing?"
A group of them reluctantly ran forward a few steps, then seemed to be drawn by a magnet and returned.
The urgent calls of the male students echoed across the field:
"Brother Jiang!"
"Brother Ye! You're my real brother!"
"Please help us out!"
"We can negotiate the terms; our planet is rich. Don't talk to those poor planets!"
The scene was chaotic.