The victory against Liu Yang created a subtle but perceptible shift in the team's dynamics. It was no longer just a project; it was a fortress, and they were its unlikely guardians. This newfound solidarity was about to face its greatest challenge yet.
An email arrived in their shared inbox, bearing the official seal of the University's Computer Science Department and the Student Innovation Center. The subject line made Xiaoyang's breath catch: "Invitation to Showcase: University Inter-Departmental Tech Innovation Fair."
It was a big deal. A huge deal. It was a platform, exactly the kind Liu Yang had taunted them about, but this one was legitimate, prestigious, and terrifying.
The news was met with a spectrum of reactions that perfectly encapsulated their team.
Su Yuning's response was instantaneous and analytical. "The probability of attracting potential research funding increases by 34.7%. The probability of exposing critical bugs under public demo conditions increases by 81.2%. A high-risk, high-reward scenario. We must accept."
Chen Yuexi's eyes widened, then gleamed with a frightening intensity. "The School Festival Arc! This is it! The moment our plucky heroes step onto the national—no, the inter-departmental—stage! We'll need a narrative! A theme! Coordinated outfits!"
Tang Youyou immediately pulled out her phone, her fingers flying across the screen. "The fair is in two weeks… that places it under the astrological influence of a waning trine between Mars and Jupiter… competitive, but with potential for great expansion. Our booth must face east-southeast to capture the ascending energy. I'll need to calculate the optimal color scheme for that specific celestial configuration."
Lin Xiaoyang felt the familiar, cold tendrils of anxiety wrapping around his circuitry. A public showcase. Crowds. Questions. Judgement. The energy expenditure would be astronomical. It was the absolute antithesis of his Principle.
"We… we don't have to," he ventured weakly. "We can cite… incomplete core features."
Four pairs of eyes turned to him. Su Yuning's were disapproving. Chen Yuexi's were horrified. Tang Youyou's were pleading. Even Li Hao, who had been listening in while pretending to play a game on his phone, shook his head in mock despair.
"Brother Yang," Li Hao said, "this is the 'Tournament Arc'! You can't skip the tournament! It's against the rules of shonen… and, like, life!"
The decision was unanimous. They were doing it.
The following two weeks were a blur of frantic, high-intensity development that pushed Xiaoyang's system far beyond its designed specifications. It was no longer just coding; it was a multi-front war.
The front line was with Chen Yuexi. The "theme" for their booth had become an epic saga.
"Are we 'The Architects of the Heart'?" she would ask, striking a pose, "or 'The Alchemists of Affection'? The first suggests stability and structure, the second, mystery and transformation!"
"Can't we just be 'The EfficientHeart Team'?" Xiaoyang would plead, his brain struggling to allocate processing power to such frivolous nomenclature.
"That has all the dramatic impact of a system update log!" she'd retort. "We need a story! A hook!"
The second front was with Tang Youyou. Her celestial calculations led to constant, last-minute changes. "The Mars-Jupiter trine has shifted 0.4 degrees! The accent color must change from vermilion to crimson to properly align our project's 'competitive fire' with the 'expansive luck' frequency!"
This would inevitably trigger a cascade of complaints from Chen Yuexi about color clash, and a terse message from Su Yuning about the inefficiency of altering finalized assets based on "unverifiable celestial mechanics."
And through it all, Su Yuning was conducting what she called "Stress Tests." She would bombard the app with simulated thousands of concurrent users, trying to break it. She'd craft increasingly obscure and edge-case user profiles to throw at the matching algorithm, hunting for failures.
"Scenario 437," she'd announce, her voice flat. "User A lists their hobby as 'extreme ironing.' User B lists their passion as 'competitive snail racing.' The commonality algorithm is returning a 89% match. This is a logical inconsistency."
"It's called serendipity!" Chen Yuexi would argue. "It's romantic!"
"It is a bug," Yuning would counter. "The algorithm is mistaking shared eccentricity for deeper compatibility."
Xiaoyang was the harried system administrator, running between all these fronts, applying patches, negotiating treaties, and trying to prevent a total kernel panic. He was surviving on instant noodles and the dregs of his willpower. His Energy-Saving Principle wasn't just broken; it had been thrown into a woodchipper.
One evening, late in the lab, he was on the verge of collapse. He'd just fixed a crash bug introduced by Yuning's stress test, updated the UI assets for the third time to accommodate Youyou's latest cosmic recalibration, and rewritten their project description for the tenth time to meet Yuexi's narrative standards. He put his head down on the cool desk, closing his eyes against the glare of the monitor.
His phone buzzed. A message from Shen Qinghe.
Qinghe: [11:17 PM] The Innovation Fair. It's a big opportunity. You're pushing your limits.
He was too tired to wonder how she knew. Maybe his mother had told her mother. Maybe she had just… calculated it. He typed a one-fingered reply.
Xiaoyang: System at 2% battery. Multiple processes unstable. High probability of public failure.
The three dots appeared immediately, pulsed for a moment, and then her response came.
Qinghe: Remember the Physics Olympiad in senior year? You stayed up for 72 hours deriving a proof for a problem everyone said was unsolvable. You didn't sleep. You barely ate. You said it was the most inefficient week of your life.
Xiaoyang frowned at the memory. He had forgotten about that.
Qinghe: When you won, you said it was worth every second of the drain. You looked at that gold medal and said, 'For this, I would do it again.'
Qinghe:Some outputs are worth any input. This is one of those times. Your team is your proof. Now go derive it.
He read the message twice. She wasn't offering a solution. She wasn't even offering comfort. She was offering context. She was reminding him of a part of himself he had buried under his Principle—the part that could burn white-hot with focus for something he truly cared about.
He lifted his head. Su Yuning was still running simulations, her face illuminated by the scrolling data. Chen Yuexi was sketching new booth layout ideas on a tablet, her brow furrowed in concentration. Tang Youyou was quietly arranging a small cluster of crystals next to the main server, muttering incantations for "stable data flow."
They were all still here. Still fighting. Still believing in their chaotic, beautiful, and deeply inefficient creation.
He took a deep breath, the fog of exhaustion lifting just enough. He opened his code editor.
"Yuning," he said, his voice raspy but clear. "Send me Scenario 437 again. Let's see if we can teach the algorithm the difference between 'shared eccentricity' and 'core value alignment'."
Yuning looked up, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. Then she gave a sharp nod. "Acknowledged. Transmitting data packet now."
Chen Yuexi glanced over, a small, tired smile on her face. "The 'Midnight Perseverance' scene. A classic."
Tang Youyou beamed, holding up a clear quartz point. "I'm channeling focus energy for you, Xiaoyang Gege!"
It was still a mess. It was still exhausting. But in that moment, Lin Xiaoyang understood. This wasn't a system failure. This was the system running. At full capacity. For a purpose.
He was no longer just saving energy. He was spending it, willingly, on something that mattered. And as his fingers began to fly across the keyboard, he realized that this, perhaps, was the most efficient use of his energy all along.