Unexpected discovery

If Xia Ye hadn't stopped her, Song Xiaoxiao would have called Lin Yuan that very night to question him.

Lin Yuan, naturally unaware of all this, was looking at the bracelet Xia Ye had given him in his dorm room.

The meaning of the red string was self-evident.

When a woman gives a man a red string woven into an amulet, what she seeks is not merely peace and safety, but also a connection for their destined relationship.

One end of the red string was tied to Lin Yuan's wrist, its pulse beating in sync with his heart. The other end was tied to Xia Ye's heart.

Lin Yuan looked at it for a long time, his lips curving into a crescent moon.

After repeatedly fiddling with the red string bracelet, Lin Yuan finally turned his attention to the shoddy Bagua amulet strung on the red string.

'It seems this swindler's business is quite crude. Around a Buddhist temple, they should at least be selling Buddha amulets or something.'

'A third-rate swindler met a foolish girl?'

Lin Yuan shook his head slightly, only able to smile wryly at his wife's intelligence.

It seemed he couldn't let her manage the household finances in the future; she was simply too terrifying.

As he gazed at it, Lin Yuan suddenly noticed that the small Bagua wooden plaque was quite exquisite. It was an octagonal shape, two centimeters square, worn on the wrist like a small watch.

Its texture was dark and lustrous, and it felt somewhat cool to the touch. Lin Yuan even thought it might be carved from rosewood, because when he scraped off a tiny bit, he found that the color was inherent to the wood plaque itself, not painted on.

'This swindler actually invested a bit of capital.' The more Lin Yuan looked, the more exquisite the Bagua wooden plaque seemed, giving off a deliberately aged, rustic feel.

Lin Yuan touched the Yin and Yang symbol in the center of the Bagua, then looked at the eight trigrams: Qian, Dui, Li, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Gen, Kun.

Each trigram consisted of three horizontal lines, with two types of lines in total.

As an IT professional, Lin Yuan quickly realized, "Isn't this just binary, 3 bits?"

A bit is a component of a byte. A byte consists of 8 bits, and a bit is the true smallest unit in the world of computers, just like quarks in the real world (if quarks are indeed the smallest particles).

Each bit has two states, 0 and 1, which is why people say: in the world of computers, there are only 0s and 1s.

But now Lin Yuan found: it seems the 8 trigrams are also composed of 3 bits of 0s and 1s.

Is this a coincidence, or a coincidence?

Lin Yuan's thirst for knowledge immediately exploded, and he quickly searched for various materials online.

But after a thorough search, even after consulting ChatGPT, Lin Yuan still found nothing.

It turned out that someone had already noticed the binary representation of the Bagua a long time ago.

Leibniz, a mathematician from the German states, had already noted this situation in his time, but after so many years, the world's research on Bagua remained at the concept of "ancient divination."

Lin Yuan naturally wasn't bothered to delve into those trigrams with names that sounded difficult to understand.

But he couldn't help but let his mind wander, 'Could the Bagua be our Dragon Country ancestors' binary premonition? A premonition that silicon-based life would emerge from carbon-based life?'

Lin Yuan didn't spend much time on such boundless, sci-fi-like fantasies. It was late, and he was getting a little sleepy.

Before going to sleep, Lin Yuan suddenly had a whimsical thought—should he use the computing power system to search for Bagua-related content?

He thought better of it. Large-scale data retrieval was like using a big move; not only would it exhaust his accumulated computing power, but the system would likely not understand his casual curiosity about the Bagua, and it would probably crash.

After considering, Lin Yuan decided to search various academic databases.

He did find some philosophy papers mentioning the Bagua in studies of the book of changes, but how the hell could he understand them?

It was already a stretch to ask an engineering student to read philosophy papers, let alone philosophical papers on the book of changes.

Lin Yuan eventually closed those few papers and threw them all into the recycle bin.

After lying down on the bed, he suddenly had another whimsical thought—had anyone in IT written papers about the Bagua?

After all, in the IT industry, there are truly people who would invite eminent monks to bless servers (don't laugh, on The Other Shore, they also invite bishops to sprinkle holy water).

Although neutrinos have nothing to do with ghosts, what if those invisible things are indeed made of certain special particles? Then such religious operations might actually be useful.

So, Lin Yuan, with a try-it-and-see attitude, looked to see if there were any such extraordinary people in the IT world.

Thus, he searched from Google Scholar to domestic Zhiwang, looking for papers on the Bagua under the IT category.

Lin Yuan actually found someone mentioning in an overseas paper database: using exorcism rituals to bestow divine attributes upon server clusters.

And in various domestic academic databases, he indeed found a few, among which one particularly interesting one was written by a professor from Xia Bei University—"Theoretical Research on the Application of Bagua Feng Shui in AI Large Models," by Professor Zhou Shuiyi.

Lin Yuan looked at the author's name—Professor Zhou Shuiyi. This looked like the name of a charlatan at first glance.

If it weren't for search engines, he wouldn't even know how to read those two characters.

Lin Yuan read the preface of this paper—"Feng Shui is a way our ancestors perceived and understood this world. Bagua is a representation of the five elements of heaven and earth. Feng Shui and Bagua are our ancestors' 'understanding of things' and 'summary of thoughts' regarding this complex objective world. And what is AI? Is it not precisely the extraction of abstract concepts from complex phenomena? These two things reveal an unspoken understanding, a serendipitous alignment. Modern scientific civilization, breaking through the intricate fabric of space and time, has at this moment achieved a closed loop with ancient culture."

If he hadn't known for certain that this was a paper, Lin Yuan would have surely thought he was reading the prologue to a science fiction novel.

This was simply not what a paper's preface should be. Not to mention the mystical content, just the format and narrative logic were completely off.

'How did this charlatan become a professor?'

Soon, Lin Yuan's curiosity about Professor Zhou Shuiyi surpassed his curiosity about the Bagua itself.

Once a person in science and engineering has their curiosity piqued, it's like a supercar with its brakes removed; it simply can't be stopped.

Lin Yuan searched extensively online, but could find almost no information about Professor Zhou Shuiyi.

He only found a few posts complaining about Professor Zhou Shuiyi on Xia Bei University's forum.

[To all junior and senior students, please be aware: when choosing a supervisor, you must avoid our school's strange beast, Zhou Shuihuo.]

[How did this strange beast Zhou Shuihuo, in his forties, become a full professor?]

[Zhou Shuihuo, he's the best at philosophy in the computer science department, and the best at coding in the philosophy department.]

[How about we report and expose Zhou Shuihuo?]

[Support the upstairs, if you don't plan on getting your diploma.]

[What did Brother Shuihuo do to you? He just can't write code.]

[You're right, a full professor in the computer science department can't write code.]

[Our school actually has a hidden theology department, you know.]

.

.

Lin Yuan checked Xia Bei University; it was a respectable first-tier, non-985/211 university with a solid foundation.

Besides 985 and 211 universities in Dragon Country, there were indeed some good universities that, while not 985/211, were still excellent. Xia Bei University seemed to belong to this category.

Lin Yuan then proceeded to read Professor Zhou Shuiyi's magnum opus.

The AI part of the content used traditional Chinese medicine big data as an entry point, and the various formulas and data used were fairly standard.

Professor Zhou Shuiyi wanted to prove that Feng Shui could be introduced as a parameter in AI training.

But Lin Yuan felt he was completely forcing it.

Anyway, Lin Yuan didn't understand. What on earth did the traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions mentioned in his paper have to do with Feng Shui?

Thus, he understood the confusion of those students on the forum—how did this charlatan get promoted to full professor?