22: Library "Dating" and the Clash of Technology

On Saturday morning, shortly after the Polytechnic University library opened, Excellence was already sitting in the corner of the third-floor electronic reading room. Morning light filtered through the stained-glass windows, casting colorful shadows on the polished marble floor. The air was filled with the unique, deep scent of old book pages, mixed with the smell of wood wax and dust—an imprint left by countless knowledge-seekers over the past century.

Excellence's fingers tapped the desktop unconsciously, each tap strictly following the rhythm of Morse code: [S.O.S.]. The system's monitoring interface refreshed continuously on his retina:

[Environmental detection: Temperature 23.4°C, humidity 45%, ambient noise 42 decibels. 7 wireless signal sources detected, 2 of which match the characteristics of monitoring equipment. 3 hidden cameras discovered, located at...]

He had chosen a seat with his back to the wall, allowing him to see the movement in the entire reading room. This was a "defensive seating posture" suggested by the system to avoid surveillance from behind. Excellence took a deep breath and took the carefully forged circuit diagrams out of his backpack. He had deliberately rubbed the drawings to create creases, and stained the edges with coffee—all "authenticity adjustments" suggested by the system.

Who would have thought, Excellence mused bitterly, that I would be playing this kind of spy game in a century-old library. System, oh system, you gave me knowledge beyond this era, but you've made me live like a fugitive.

He looked around, noticing a few unusual details: a student in the distance was reading, but the frequency of their page-turning was highly unnatural; the person dressed as a repairman by the window had equipment in their toolbox that was far too precise; even the cleaning lady pushing the cart had wheels made of sound-dampening material.

Full-scale surveillance. Excellence felt a sense of suffocation. Just how many resources had they deployed?

At nine o'clock sharp, Su Mu appeared at the entrance of the reading room. She was wearing a simple white sweater and jeans today, her ponytail tied meticulously. But in Excellence's system vision, she was emitting warning signals:

[Target analysis: Sweater fibers contain conductive material, tablet has electromagnetic shielding. Signs of enhanced biological signals detected, suspected professional training.]

"Class Monitor..." Excellence stood up quickly, feeling his voice go dry. He noticed that Su Mu was wearing rimless glasses today, the lenses possessing an abnormal reflective characteristic.

Su Mu nodded slightly, sat down opposite him, and without any pleasantries, cut straight to the point: "Where are your circuit diagrams? Let me see."

Excellence bit the bullet and handed over the drawings. His fingers were trembling slightly, not just because of nervousness, but because the system was flashing warnings wildly on his retina:

[Warning: Target detected carrying advanced signal acquisition equipment. Suggest immediately activating the misleading coating on the drawings.]

Su Mu took the drawings and pulled a seemingly ordinary fountain pen from her pencil case, but in his system vision, the tip of the pen was emitting a faint infrared scanning beam.

Her brow furrowed deeper and deeper. Excellence's heart rose in tandem; he could clearly hear his own heartbeat accelerating, and he could even feel the veins in his temples throbbing.

A few minutes later, Su Mu looked up, staring at Excellence with a complex expression: "This is the... circuit you designed?"

"Ah... yes... that's right... is it... a big problem?" Excellence broke into a sweat and wiped his forehead subconsciously.

"A big problem?" Su Mu repeated, her tone somewhat strange. "Excellence, are you sure you want to make a... simple display driver circuit?"

She pointed to several clearly unreasonable places on the diagram, her pen tapping lightly on the paper, each point falling precisely on the "fatal errors" marked by the system.

"Here, the impedance matching is completely wrong, the signal can't get through at all. Here, you used reverse bias, which will cause the Node to burn out. And this filter module, the parameters are completely off, the cutoff frequency is drifting to who knows where..."

Every time she pointed out a flaw, Excellence's heart sank a little further. It was over; he had been seen through! This wasn't just a matter of skill level, it was a fundamental directional error!

Just then, the system suddenly prompted: [Attention: Target is using micro-expression analysis algorithms. Suggest adjusting facial muscles to display a confused expression.]

Excellence immediately complied, furrowing his brows to display the perfect look of confusion.

"...But," Su Mu changed the subject, her eyes filled with confusion and intense curiosity, "these obviously wrong designs, when pieced together, especially this feedback loop and this... strange compensation structure, although ridiculous overall, theoretically seem to hint at some... extremely special and non-traditional signal processing mode? I've never seen this approach."

She raised her eyes and stared intently at Excellence: "This is not something an undergraduate could be exposed to. Excellence, where on earth did you get these design ideas?"

Excellence felt his scalp tingle under her gaze, his brain racing. The system provided a script in time, but he needed to express it in his own way.

"I... I just... looked at some open-source projects online... and... just thought of it myself..." Excellence said, dodging her gaze and speaking incoherently, while deliberately drawing a clearly wrong circuit symbol on the desktop—this was the "playing weak strategy" suggested by the system.

"Which open-source project? Which forum?" Su Mu pressed, leaning forward slightly. Excellence could smell the faint scent of mint on her, but in his system vision, the reflection on her glasses was intensifying.

"Just... some... foreign geek websites... I forgot the names..." Excellence felt like he was suffocating. The system's warnings flashed continuously: [Target heart rate stable, breathing steady, suspicion level 72%]

Su Mu looked at his obviously lying demeanor and did not press further, but the suspicion and curiosity in her eyes were almost overflowing. She lowered her head, looked at the drawings again, and picked up her pen.

"Here, here, and here, these must be changed." She began to mark and modify the drawings rapidly, the tip of her pen scratching against the paper with a rustling sound. Excellence noted that her calculation speed was astonishing; she arrived at the results for many complex parameters almost without thinking.

"The approach for this module... although strange, could perhaps be kept, but the parameters need to be completely recalculated." She said, while asking seemingly casually, "You added this non-linear element to the feedback loop, are you trying to achieve signal phase self-adjustment?"

This question pointed directly to one of the system's core algorithms! Excellence was instantly drenched in cold sweat.

"I... I don't know either, I just felt... I should add something..." He replied stutteringly, while the system urgently provided several technical terms for him to choose from, "Maybe just... wanted to... enhance the... signal's self-adaptability?"

Su Mu's pen tip paused, and she looked up and gave him a deep look: "Self-adaptability? That's an interesting term to use."

She continued to modify the drawings, but her questions became sharper: "This compensation structure of yours reminds me of some professional papers on high-frequency neural signal processing. Have you been reading materials on that recently?"

Excellence felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff: "No, no... I haven't... I just thought of it..."

What he had thought would be "technical advice" had turned into Su Mu's one-sided "technical interrogation" and Excellence's difficult "defensive struggle." But it was undeniable that after Su Mu's modifications, the originally absurd circuit diagram had become much more reasonable; although the core architecture still came from the system, its reliability and feasibility had been greatly improved.

"That's about it for now." Su Mu put down her pen and pushed the modified drawings to Excellence, "I can only help you up to this point. But Excellence, you must tell me, what do you really want to do with this circuit? This is definitely not some simple electronics project."

Her gaze was sharp, as if it could pierce through Excellence's soul. Just then, the system suddenly issued a top-level alert:

[Quantum-level scan signal detected! Source: Target's glasses! Activate countermeasures immediately!]

Excellence felt a slight wave of dizziness; that was the system mobilizing his bio-electric field for shielding. He opened his mouth, but couldn't say a word.

Su Mu narrowed her eyes slightly, and the glimmer on her lenses suddenly intensified. Excellence felt the system's countermeasure force strengthening, and interference patterns began to appear on his retina.

At this critical juncture, Excellence suddenly realized a terrifying fact: running away would only make him more suspicious. If he fled in a panic right now, it would be tantamount to admitting to Su Mu that he was indeed hiding a major secret.

Cannot run. He told himself, must stay steady.

He forced himself to take a deep breath, trying to keep his expression calm. The system was rapidly refreshing response plans on his retina: [Suggestion: Adopt a strategy of partially confessing information to gain trust.]

"I..." Excellence finally spoke, his voice somewhat raspy, "I am indeed trying some... non-traditional methods." He chose every word carefully, "These designs might look ridiculous, but I am exploring a brand new signal processing pathway."

The glimmer on Su Mu's glasses dimmed slightly, but her gaze remained sharp: "What kind of pathway? Your design clearly violates basic electronics principles."

Excellence felt sweat sliding down his spine. He knew he was walking on the edge of a cliff, and every sentence could trigger even greater suspicion.

Just then, a soft female voice with a slight foreign accent broke the deadlock.

"Excuse me, does the Polytechnic University library... allow non-students to enter?"

Excellence and Su Mu turned to look at the same time, only to see Evelyn Li standing beside their table. Her appearance was like a quiet oil painting suddenly cutting into a tense laboratory scene, appearing exceptionally abrupt yet eye-catching.

Excellence froze in place, his brain racing. Was Evelyn's appearance a coincidence? Or was there another motive? He felt as if he had fallen into a meticulously designed chess game, and now a new, unpredictable variable had been added to the board.

Su Mu's gaze shifted back and forth between Excellence and Evelyn, the inquisitive look in her eyes deepening. The air in the corner of the library seemed to freeze, and a delicate balance formed between the three, each hiding unknown secrets, with every word potentially changing the direction of this undercurrent.