883: Chapter 878 The Initiative Has Changed

The old man held a cattail fan, covering his face with a copy of "Playboy" magazine, appearing to be asleep.

A hairless black cat was draped over his stomach, lazily glancing at Shen Yan.

"Go fix the television next door. The queue to repair the air conditioner goes until next month."

A gruff voice came from beneath the magazine.

The old man didn't even move.

Shen Yan didn't speak; he simply set Shen An down.

He surveyed the shop, which resembled a junkyard.

Finally, his gaze settled on a running CRT television in the corner.

The screen was full of static, making it look broken.

But Shen Yan came from a software background.

He could see that the flickering frequency of the static dots was patterned.

It was an encrypted waveform graph.

"Mr. Mo."

Shen Yan spoke, his tone steady, neither subservient nor overbearing.

"I am not here to repair appliances."

The old man took the magazine off his face, revealing a scruffy, unshaven face.

His eyes were murky and bloodshot, looking exactly like a drunk who hadn't sobered up.

Mo Weiming squinted at Shen Yan.

"A suit and leather shoes, hair slicked back."

He scoffed.

"If you're not selling insurance, you're peddling pyramid schemes. Get lost."

Shen Yan didn't move.

He pulled out a check from his pocket and gently placed it on the nearby oil-stained table.

"I wish to invite you out of seclusion to teach my son."

Mo Weiming didn't even glance at the check.

He grabbed a screwdriver from the table and tossed it casually.

Thwack. The screwdriver pierced the check precisely, pinning the seven-figure piece of paper to the tabletop.

"Does being rich mean everything?"

Mo Weiming sat up. The air of decadence vanished, replaced by an aura named 'Get Out'.

"The people I despise most in my life are merchants like you, stinking of money."

"You think a little money can buy knowledge? Buy IQ?"

"Take your brat and scram quickly. Don't dirty my place."

Shen Yan still didn't move.

He had encountered countless door slams like this during his early entrepreneurial days.

He knew that for someone like Mo Weiming, money was a stepping stone, not a pass.

The real pass was strength.

"It seems the intelligence was wrong. The so-called 'Ghost' is just a grumpy old man who only knows how to fix junk."

Shen Yan said lightly.

It was provocation.

Very cliché, but effective on arrogant people.

As expected, Mo Weiming's expression changed.

It was like a drowsy old lion whose tail had been stepped on.

"What did you call me?"

He stared intently at Shen Yan.

"Ghost."

Shen Yan repeated the word.

"The Ghost who proposed the concept of a multi-dimensional neural network twenty years ago, was ridiculed as a madman by the academic community, and left in a rage after burning down his laboratory."

The air in the shop seemed to freeze.

The black cat seemed to sense the killing intent, meowed once, and darted up to the roof beam.

Mo Weiming narrowed his eyes and grabbed a Wrench in his hand.

"Since you know who I am, you should also know that I have a bad temper."

"I'll count to three..."

"That waveform graph is wrong."

A childish voice suddenly interjected.

Breaking the tense atmosphere.

Both Mo Weiming and Shen Yan looked down simultaneously.

They saw Shen An had walked over to the snow-covered television screen at some point.

The little fellow stood on his tiptoes and swiped his finger across the screen.

"Here, and here."

Shen An pointed to the upper left and lower right corners of the screen.

"Although you used a Fourier Transform to hide the noise, there's a cyclical overflow here."

"If it's not fixed, in three minutes, this television's CRT will explode."

After speaking, Shen An turned his head and looked seriously at Mo Weiming.

"Grandpa, are you trying to set off fireworks?"

The Wrench in Mo Weiming's hand dropped.

It hit the top of his foot.

But he seemed to feel no pain at all.

He widened his eyes, looking like he had seen a ghost at the little figure who didn't even reach his knees.

The television was running the chaotic algorithm he had just written last night.

To make it run on this broken CRT, he had compressed the code to its absolute limit.

But just as Shen An said, in pursuit of the ultimate compression rate, he had risked leaving a logical loophole.

This loophole was extremely hidden; even a top supercomputer would take several days to discover it.

This little ghost wearing overalls and still having a runny nose noticed it at a glance?

"You... you can understand it?"

Mo Weiming's voice trembled slightly.

"Is it hard?"

Shen An tilted his head and pulled a milk candy out of his pocket, unwrapping it.

"I often play around calculating this kind of nonlinear regression equation when I'm bored at home."

"However, your approach, Grandpa, is very interesting. Using analog signals to carry digital logic, while the efficiency is a bit low, it's quite fun."

Fun?

Mo Weiming felt his worldview take a ten-thousand-point critical hit.

The thing he had poured his heart and soul into was just a toy in this child's eyes?

Shen Yan walked over at the right moment and picked up Shen An.

"Anan, be polite."

"Although this Grandpa has a bad temper, his algorithm is indeed the most advanced in the world right now."

Flattery smooths over everything.

Mo Weiming's expression softened slightly, but the shock in his eyes hadn't faded.

Ignoring the pain in his foot, he limped over to Shen An.

He wiped his oil-stained hands on his clothes, seemingly wanting to pat Shen An's head but afraid of dirtying the child.

"Child, how old are you?"

"Three and a half."

Shen An replied indistinctly with the candy in his mouth.

"Three and a half..."

Mo Weiming muttered to himself, his gaze gradually becoming fanatical.

It was the look of a wolf starved for three days seeing a plump sheep.

It was the look of a craftsman whose life had been buried seeing a peerless unpolished jade.

"The overflow just now, can you fix it?"

Mo Weiming asked tentatively.

Shen An nodded.

"Just add a redundancy check, it's simple."

"But this TV's memory is too small; adding a check will cause lag."

"If we use Chebyshev polynomials for fitting, we should be able to save 2KB of memory, which would be enough."

Bang.

Mo Weiming slapped his thigh.

"Genius! An absolute genius!"

He spun around in place like a madman.

Chebyshev polynomials!

How could he not have thought of that!

The bottleneck that had troubled him for half a month was solved by a single sentence from this child.

Mo Weiming suddenly turned to look at Shen Yan.

All the arrogance and disdain from before were gone.

Replaced by an eagerness bordering on pleading.

"This child... give him to me!"

"I want to take him as my final disciple!"

"Anyone who dares compete with me, I'll smash their skull with a Wrench!"

Shen Yan straightened his cuffs and slowly pulled out the check pinned to the table.

"Mr. Mo, didn't you just say you hate merchants the most?"

"Besides, I have a quirk too."

Shen Yan played with the check, his tone indifferent.

"I don't like people yelling at my son."

The initiative had changed hands.