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Lin Xun explained the situation to Wang Anquan and Zhao Jiagou.\n
Zhao Jiagou was baffled. âThereâs a Turbo C interface above my head? Isnât Turbo C a fossil by now? It was discontinued years ago!â\n
Wang Anquan was even more lost. âClearly, thatâs not the issue here! More importantly, why are you hallucinating this, of all things?â He looked up, above his head. âThereâs nothingâs there.â\n
Lin Xun stared at the screen above his head. âNope, thatâs definitely Turbo C. High-definition and everything.â\n
He paused. âLuo, where should I check in?â\n
âIâve already made an appointment with the psychiatry department,â Luoshen replied.\n
Wang Anshen chuckled. âSeems like Algoâs taking a vacation to the psych ward.â\n
Zhao Jiagouâs voice was proper and detached, like the narrator of some nature documentary. âHere stands Lord Xun, a person who canât even get sick without standing out from the masses.â\n
The Jetta continued cruising steadily towards the nearest hospital.\n
<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nInside the consultation room, a middle-aged doctor in a white coat sat upright in his seat. His voice was warm and amiable. âWhat seems to be the matter today?â\n
âIâve started to hallucinate,â Lin Xun replied.\n
Before he even finished, the doctorâs eyebrows had already risen. Carefully, the doctor gave him a once-over. âHow old are you? Twenty?â\n
âTwenty-two.â \n
âThatâs pretty youngâand you look the part, too.â The doctor took notes as he spoke, typing on the keyboard at his desk. âWhat do you do for work? Are you a student?â\n
âNot anymore. Iâm a programmer.â\n
âProgrammersâŠâŠâ The doctorâs voice took on a cautious tone. âHm, programmers do tend to have problems. Do your hallucinations take on a specific form?â\n
Lin Xun looked at the blue square hovering above the doctorâs head. âAbove peopleâs heads, I see a⊠I guess it looks like a projection of some kind, of a⊠programming input screen.â\n
The doctorâs hands paused on the keyboard, his expression solemn. âIs it blurry?â\n
âItâs quite clear.â\n
âDo you hear voices?â\n
âNo.â\n
âHave you seen anything else?â\n
âNot yet.â\n
âDo you have a history of mental illness?â\n
âNo.â\n
âHow long has this been going on for?â\n
âIt started this morning.â\n
âYour mind seems quite sharp,â the doctor said, looking over at Wang Anquan, whoâd accompanied Lin Xun in. âDoes he normally act strangely?â\n
âNot really,â Wang Anquan replied, âbesides spending the whole day on the computer, anyway.â\n
âWhatâs his mental state usually like?â\n
âPretty stable.â\n
âWhat about his personality? Do you feel like he has a tendency to think in black and white, or go to extremes?â\n
Wait, what kind of person do you think I am?\n
âKind of.â \n
Lin Xun was speechless.\n
âOh?â The doctor seemed fascinated.\n
Wang Anquan scratched his head. âHeâs kinda⊠you know that type, always competitive, kind of a sore loser? Like, if he canât figure out how to code something right, heâll keep grinding it out until he figures it out. And if someone else figures it out first, then heâll hold a grudge.â\n
âWell,â the doctor said, amused. âThatâs understandable, I suppose.â\n
The doctor turned back to Lin Xun. âAround the time you started to hallucinate, was there anything else going on?â\n
âToday, I saw my⊠idol. I guess I was a bit overexcited.â\n
The doctor clucked his tongue, handing him a form. âHere, fill out this assessment first, and weâll see.â\n
Wearily, Lin Xun filled in the two-hundred-question assessment.\n
The doctor took a look at the results, scanning it over. âSeems like youâve got quite the positive mindset! But itâs true that youâre a bit too zealous, maybe. After all, being too sour about other peopleâs successes will turn you into a lemon!â\n
Lin Xun had no words. \n
I wasnât even that salty about the Lions thing, right?\n
âI donât think you have a mental illness,â the doctor said. âWhatever the problem is, I donât think itâs psychological. Iâd recommend you go see a neurologist and have an MRI done.â\n
Lin Xun was tossed over to the neurology department.\n
After his consultation, he was passed over again to the optometry department, like a diseased football.\n
The final conclusion: no matter what the problem might have been, it was probably best that he went home and got a good nightâs sleep first, before coming back in.\n
<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nBy the time Lin Xunâs exhausting ordeal was over, the sun had already set, the sky pitch-black.\n
The minute they got home, Wang Anquan and Zhao Jiagou collapsed onto the sofa in a fit of laughter. âAlgoâs finally lost it. Heâs coded his way into a qi deviation, huh?â\n
Lin Xun didnât have the energy to protest. Grabbing ice from the fridge, he poured himself a cup of cold water, taking a few gulps.\n
Wang Anquan strode forward, snatching the cup from his hands. âYour brainâs already fried, and youâre drinking water? Have you lost your mind? Donât answer that.â\n
He tossed Lin Xun a warm thermos filled with goji tea. \n
Under the watchful eyes of his two jailors, Lin Xun obediently finished off the thermosâ contents. âYou guys know I donât like warm drinks. Or sweet things.â\n
âGet out of my face,â Wang Anquan groaned. âYou lost our thirty million. You donât have the right to speak in this house anymore.â\n
Lin Xun was summarily chased into bed.\n
To tell the truth, he wasnât worried. The doctors had agreed that there didnât seem to be anything wrong with his bodyâif anything, it was probably just in his mind, a symptom of overwork. Things would be better, hopefully, after he got some rest.\n
Luoshenâs overall framework was already done; after filling a few sheets of scrap paper with ideas for future optimization, Lin Xun figured it was time to sleep. After getting into bed, he thought back to his meeting with Milky Wayâs CEO, his heart still fluttering at the thought. He grabbed his phone, opening Weibo. Flipping to his Special Focus page, he tapped on Dong Junâs icon.\n
The CEOâs ID was short and sweet: âMilky Way â Dong Jun.â His profile picture was a string of mysterious numbers, resembling some kind of code. The numbers were light grey on a white background, minimalist and sterile.\n
It seemed that Dong Jun barely touched social media. There was only a single post on his page, written ten years ago, before Milky Way Enterprises had even been foundedâwhen Dong Jun was only eighteen.\n
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-background is-style-solid-color"><blockquote class="has-text-color has-foreground-color">Lo asked me why I look up at the stars.\nI think that both the Milky Way and code are made of the same thingâand that this, too, is a certain kind of answer.
</blockquote></figure>\nUnderneath the post were hundreds of thousands of comments. Lin Xun could scroll for ages without ever reaching the bottom.\n
Some of the comments were from casual passersby, come to pay their respects: âBowing down to the legend himself! Glax is the worldâs best programming language.â\n
Others were filled with incomprehensible screaming: âAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA DONG JUN!!!â\n
Some were rather concerning: âhehehehehe teenage dong junâŠâ\n
The rest were tinged with jealousy: âwho tf is lo?? donât do this to me.â\n
The jealousy was understandable, Lin Xun thought. After all, Dong Jun had only ever posted a single, cryptic postâand in that single post, filled with hidden meaning, heâd mentioned a specific person. Theories abounded: some people guessed that Lo was a friend of Dong Junâs, while others even bet that Lo was his first love.\n
Either way, Lin Xun wasnât interested in his idolâs personal life. Before, heâd always visited Dong Junâs Weibo after checking out his latest code, leaving behind praises for his idolâs new work.\n
But what could he praise this time? Heâd exhausted his list.\n
Suddenly, an idea flashed through his mind. \n
Lin Xun posted a new comment: âSo handsome!!â\n
His praise was quickly lost in the flood of comments beneath Dong Junâs post, but Lin Xun was satisfied.\n
He turned off his phone, finally closing his eyes.\n
After a beat, his eyes flew openâhis breathing ran ragged, as if heâd suffered a scare. A moment later, Lin Xun slowly let his eyes close a second time.\n
As if sinking into another world, when he closed his eyes, a giant blue screen floated before him in the darknessâit was a C compiler screen.\n
He felt himself sitting on a swivel chair; slowly, he raised a cautious hand to touch the blue surface in front of him.\n
The minute his finger grazed the screen, a robotic voice suddenly echoed from all around him.\n
On all levels but physical, Lin Xunâs brain had become one giant question mark.\n
Suddenly, something began to glow next to his right hand. He looked down, only to find that a hovering golden scroll had materialized from thin air. The writing on the scroll was identical to what the voice had just read aloud, detailing his âquest objective,â ârewards,â and âprogress.â\n
Absorb qi? Sect territory? Those kinds of things seemed to make sense together, butâwhat did they have anything to do with programming?\n
Cautiously, he inspected the scroll once more before looking around at his surroundings.\n
It was an endless expanse of darkness, but floating around him were tiny silver specks, like stars in the night sky. The particles seemed to be moving, rising up from the ground and giving off a faint glow, lightly illuminating the space. He looked closer, realizing that they werenât stars at allârather, they were tiny numbers: some were 1âs, and others were 0âs. \n
In front of him was the huge, blue screen; to his right was the scroll detailing his âquests.â On his left, there was nothing at allâbut when he turned around, he found himself face to face with a giant tree.\n
He stood up and walked closer. On second glance, it wasnât a real tree at all, just the flat image of one. The treeâs silver roots gave off a bright glow; as the treeâs trunk extended upward, the glow slowly faded into darknessâonly the faintest outlines of the treeâs upper trunk could be seen. A large âCâ was written at the juncture between root and trunk.\n
Usually, the letter alone would have been meaninglessâbut combined with the compiler screen, its significance was as clear as day.\n
As far as programming languages were concerned, C was quite a special one.\n
Programming languages were split into high-level and low-level languages. Low-level languages worked at the level of the computerâs architecture, like machine code or assembly language: made up of confusing numerical mnemonicsâor even streams of pure binaryâthey were the language of machines themselves, and could be run directly.\n
High-level programming languages mimicked human language, and were what most people used to write code. When the code was run, it would be translated into a low-level programming language by the compiler: only then could it be run on a system.\n
But C was a bit different.\n
C was a high-level programming language with its own syntax, but at the same time, it could directly interact with certain parts of system architecture without modification, providing low-level access to memory and certain machine instructions. Because of this, some people dubbed it a âmid-level programming language.â\n
The roots represent machine language, or the computer itself. The trunk and its branches might be the user, then, and C is the bridge between the two, Lin Xun thought to himself. \n
Thereâs a C compiler, and a tree with the letter C on it. I guess if the tree lit up more, weâd see C#, C++, or Python as we went further up the trunk. Who knows, maybe weâd even reach Glax.\n
But more importantlyâwhat was the point of all this?\n
He couldnât help but glance over again at the scroll. It looked strangely out of place, Lin Xun thought, as he turned his gaze back to the huge screen in front of him.\n
Well, if there was a compiler, he may as well code. \n
To a programmer like him, it was as easy as breathing. Besides, he was already familiar with C.\n
The question was, how was he supposed to input text? Lin Xun raised his arms, his hands hovering in midair.\n
A ray of silver light surged forward, and suddenlyâa milky white keyboard materialized under his hands!\n
With a keyboard under his fingertips, Lin Xun could breathe easy. Like scratch paper to a mathematician, a keyboard brought a programmer a certain kind of comfort. A sense of security, even.\n
He fell back into the familiar rhythm of writing code.ăă\n
The program he was working on was universally acknowledged as the first lesson of any programming language. Whenever he was working in an unfamiliar environment, this program would naturally spring to mind as a test run, a tradition deeply ingrained in the programmer psyche.\n
First things first. He typed out the standard header, to make sure that the compiler would read his inputs properly.\n
#include ïŒstdio.hïŒ\n
Next, he created a function.\n
int mainïŒïŒ\n
Underneath, he typed a curly braceâthe body of the function would go inside of it.\n
{\n
The goal of the program was to print out a single sentence. \n
printf(âHello World\nâ);\n
He ensured that the function would return an integer, so that it would know to end properly. Finally, he closed the function body with another curly brace.\n
return 0;\n
}\n
His program was complete.\n
After hitting run, the screen changed, swapping over to a pure black operating environment. Two words popped up on the screenâthe first words ever spoken by a computer.\n
Hello World.\n
Something flashed by his right hand. \n
Lin Xun looked down, only to find that his âquest progressâ had increased to 100%. \n
The robotic voice suddenly spoke again. âTutorial complete; user has begun cultivation. Sect territory expansion in progress. Spirit +10.â\n
That⊠that was it?\n
Lin Xun was still deep in thought, when the robotic voice interrupted him once more.\n
âMain questline unlocked.â\n
âQuest objective: Unblock meridians and establish qi foundation.â\n