153: Chapter 153 Long-Term Return Agreement

August 19th, 8:00 AM.

Freshmen from three classes of Qiuzhen College crowded into the lecture hall, waiting for the military training mobilization meeting to begin.

On the desks lay the newly distributed Military Training Notice, its cover printed with a green camouflage pattern, holding inserted training schedules, leave procedures, housekeeping standards, march instructions, and military training disciplines.

The seats for Class 221 of Qiuzhen College were concentrated in the last two rows.

Most people here had heard of each other's names before.

The competition circle wasn't large, especially the math competition circle, which was even smaller.

Who won the winter camp gold medal, who entered the training team, who gave a brilliant solution to a certain combinatorics problem in a certain year—they might not truly know each other, but they had all heard of them to some extent.

Therefore, the sense of unfamiliarity upon entering school was not complete.

They were more like a group of old rumors finally placed in the same classroom.

Zhao Chengyu sat in the last row near the aisle, flipping through the Military Training Notice, his fingers lingering on the column for night marches with a heavy expression.

"Twenty kilometers."

Someone nearby leaned over to look: "Really twenty kilometers?"

"It's written very clearly above."

"Is this military training or a migration?"

"It's still not too late for you to drop out now."

"Forget it, the dropout procedure might be even more troublesome than twenty kilometers."

Several people laughed with suppressed voices.

After laughing, the topic naturally turned to another matter.

Zhao Chengyu raised his head and glanced at the empty seat beside him: "Speaking of which, Jiang Lin shouldn't be coming, right?"

As soon as these words were spoken, several people in the back row nodded naturally.

"Definitely not coming."

"I heard a few days ago that the college arranged a special adjustment plan for him, and his training session can be temporarily postponed."

"Normal. With his level, is it worth it for him to come stand in military posture?"

"If it were me, I wouldn't come either. The Math Center has air conditioning, sitting there dismantling PFR, isn't that much better than baking in the sun on the playground?"

"Not to mention military training, he hasn't even shown his face at the opening ceremony or class meeting. I've basically recognized everyone in our class except him; I've only heard his name but never seen the person."

When the conversation reached this point, someone in the front row turned around and glanced back, lowering their voice: "Keep your voices down, the senior is coming up."

On the podium, the leading senior Zhang Yuchen walked over to the projection screen holding the roll call sheet.

Counselor Li Yue sat on the side, holding a training schedule confirmation form in her hand.

"Everyone is almost here." Zhang Yuchen opened the roll call sheet, "Let's take attendance first, then start the mobilization meeting afterwards."

The lecture hall quieted down.

Name after name was read out.

"Present."

"Present."

"Present."

Voices rose one after another.

When reading the last few rows of Class 221 of Qiuzhen College, Zhang Yuchen's gaze stopped on a name.

Jiang Lin.

He paused for a moment.

Counselor Li Yue had already told him yesterday that Jiang Lin's situation was special, and the college had provided a training adjustment plan.

If he didn't come, the mobilization meeting wouldn't need to wait, and the materials could just be emailed to him later.

Zhang Yuchen cleared his throat and was about to skip this line when a very soft voice suddenly came from the back door of the western lecture hall.

"Report."

The voice was not loud.

Amidst the sound of air conditioning and the rustling of turning pages, it was almost inconspicuous.

But the last two rows of Class 221 of Qiuzhen College instantly quieted down by half.

Everyone instinctively turned back.

Standing by the back door was a boy in a white T-shirt, carrying a black backpack, with a thin layer of sweat on his temples.

Probably because he had rushed over from elsewhere, he stood by the doorframe, his breathing not yet completely leveled, but his expression was very quiet.

Jiang Lin nodded slightly: "Sorry, I'm late."

He was delayed by a few minutes this morning due to something.

Zhang Yuchen was stunned for two seconds before quickly waving his hand: "It's fine, come in, there are still empty seats in the back row."

Jiang Lin nodded and walked back along the side aisle of the lecture hall.

Passing by rows of seats, some people looked up at him, some pretended to lower their heads to flip through materials, and some had already recognized him, but were too embarrassed to show it too obviously.

Finally, Jiang Lin sat down in the corner of the last row of Class 221, put his backpack at his feet, and picked up a copy of the Military Training Notice on the table.

Zhang Yuchen steadied his mind and looked back at the roll call sheet.

"Jiang Lin."

A light response came from the back row.

"Present."

The voice wasn't loud, but after this "Present" fell, several people in the back row of Class 221 of Qiuzhen College quietly sat up a bit straighter.

He really came.

That classmate who even missed the opening ceremony and lived almost entirely in the class roster and external news was actually sitting in their back row.

The content of the mobilization meeting was very detailed.

Military training discipline, leave system, daily routine, housekeeping inspection, queue training, military boxing, combat injury rescue, orienteering, night marching, graduation parade.

Counselor Li Yue explained very clearly: leave within half a day is approved by the company and instructor, more than two days requires battalion headquarters approval, and accumulated missed training reaching a certain number of days requires make-up training.

Someone under the stage wailed softly.

"Stricter than high school military training."

"I'm already starting to miss high school military training."

Jiang Lin sat in the last row, quietly flipping through the notice in his hand.

The clauses above were all very ordinary.

But Jiang Lin read it very carefully.

Not because these clauses were so complex.

But because they constituted a complete set of Real World procedures: assembly, roll call, training, leave, resupply, return to team, assessment, and recording.

People were put into queues.

Queues were put into battalions and companies.

Battalions and companies were put into training cycles.

Everyone had a position, every absence had a record, and every falling-behind node had a handling method.

This wasn't a profound system.

Yet it was the most basic order of the Real World.

After the meeting, each class went to Building C according to the arrangement to check military training equipment, exchange sizes, and reissue missed items.

Most people had already received their military training uniforms last night, only going to change shoe sizes and supplement water bottles and satchels.

Because Jiang Lin didn't attend the class meeting and the unified uniform collection the day before, he followed the team through a complete reissuance process.

The sunlight outside had already risen.

The team walked along the tree shade by the roadside towards the Zijing Living Area, cicadas chirping louder and louder, and heat waves floating up from the road surface.

Zhao Chengyu deliberately slowed his pace, and when Jiang Lin walked closer, he spoke somewhat sheepishly.

"Are you really coming for military training?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you went directly with the adjustment plan."

"Follow along for a few days first."

"A few days?"

"See how it goes."

Zhao Chengyu scratched his head: "That's true, you must have a lot of things to do. But it's already outrageous that you can come; we were just betting you wouldn't show up."

Jiang Lin glanced at him.

Zhao Chengyu quickly added: "No malice, just feel that someone like you, um, should be very busy."

"I am a bit busy."

"Then why are you still coming?"

Jiang Lin smiled.

The shadows of the phoenix trees on the roadside fell on the ground, mottled and swaying.

Beside him were chattering classmates.

Someone complained that the military training uniforms were ugly, someone discussed whether to buy shoe inserts first in the evening, someone asked which window in the Zijing Canteen served food the fastest, and someone said they heard old-style popsicles could be bought next to Zijing Playground.

Human voices mixed with cicadas chirping, bustling into his ears.

Jiang Lin hadn't been immersed in such noisy human voices for a long time.

The Wasteland was too quiet.

So quiet that when the wind blew across the outer wall of the Outpost, he could tell which baffle's screws were starting to loosen.

So quiet that at night, the sound of the water circulation pump emptying would pierce into his consciousness like a fine needle.

So quiet that when he squatted on the red soil Wasteland to overhaul equipment, he could hear the soft sound of sand grains rolling over the metal shell.

Having been quiet for too long, he would forget what temperature it was when people crowded together.

"To experience it," Jiang Lin said.

Zhao Chengyu was stunned for a moment: "Experience military training?"

"Experience human life."

This sentence was too strange; Zhao Chengyu didn't catch on for a moment.

After a while, he said: "The first lesson of this life is grinding your feet, actually there's nothing great to experience."

Jiang Lin looked at him in puzzlement.

Zhao Chengyu said very seriously: "Really, rubber shoes are a nightmare; you have to put thick insoles in them. I'll go to the supermarket later, do you want some? I'll bring you two pairs."

Jiang Lin nodded: "Okay, thanks."

There was a long line at the clothing collection place in Building C.

Freshmen from various departments crowded together, camouflage uniforms piled up like small mountains, and staff shouted sizes at the top of their lungs. Jiang Lin slowly moved forward with the team, and when it was his turn, he reported his number and took a heavy stack of things.

Training uniform.

Training cap.

Woven outer belt.

Liberation rubber shoes.

Epaulets.

Water bottle and satchel.

He lowered his head and flipped through that pair of rubber shoes.

The soles were very hard, and the uppers were hard too.

Zhao Chengyu glanced sideways: "It's right for them to be a bit large, otherwise you won't be able to fit them after putting in the insoles."

"You're very familiar with this?"

"Suffered losses in high school military training," Zhao Chengyu said, "Two blisters rubbed on my heels, walking felt like being tripped by a discontinuity point of a function."

Someone nearby heard this and couldn't help saying: "Can you guys stop relating everything to mathematics?"

"Can't."

The team laughed again.

Jiang Lin hugged his military training uniform and walked outside.

Students from other departments recognized him, lowering their voices to say that must be Jiang Lin, and some secretly looked over here.

He acted as if he didn't hear.

He just followed the team forward.

Neither speeding up nor stopping.

On the afternoon of the 19th, a short training session was held at Zijing Playground.

It wasn't officially training yet.

The university-wide opening training ceremony at the East University Playground wouldn't be held until the 22nd; the 19th to the 21st were just a transition: mobilization, receiving uniforms, meeting instructors, housekeeping teaching, basic queue pre-training, and square formation joint practice for the opening ceremony.

But for Class 221 of Qiuzhen College, the afternoon of the 19th was enough to make them realize that military training was not something that could be automatically completed just by understanding it with your brain.

The instructor was a dark-skinned young non-commissioned officer with a straight waist.

The first basic pre-training class: standing in military posture for twenty minutes.

There was a patch of shade in the northwest corner of Zijing Playground, but the sun at 2:30 PM was still vicious, the plastic runway was baked soft, and stepping on it with shoe soles had a slightly sticky heat.

Jiang Lin stood at the very end of the team.

He had already changed into the newly collected camouflage uniform, his cap worn properly, his belt tied neatly, and his trouser legs rolled up to the appropriate position.

After standing into the team, he, like everyone around him, became a point in this independent platoon.

"Heels together."

"Toes apart."

"Pull in your stomach, puff out your chest."

"Eyes look straight ahead."

The instructor's voice fell.

The team quieted down.

Twenty minutes was not long.

But for newly enrolled freshmen, it was long enough.

Sweat slid down his temples into his collar, both itchy and painful.

Someone quietly moved their fingers, someone gently shifted their center of gravity, and someone tried hard to stand their body straight, resulting in their shoulders becoming stiffer and stiffer.

Jiang Lin stood very stably.

Not because his physical strength was astonishing.

But because he had long been used to remaining stationary in harsh environments.

Squatting to watch over equipment against the wind and sand in the Wasteland, overhauling lines under high temperatures, lying on the ground in low temperatures to listen to the residual vibrations of the expedition platform—there were far too many moments more agonizing than this.

But this was different.

Back then, there was only the sound of the wind and the buzzing of equipment around him.

The whole world seemed to be hollowed out, leaving only him alone.

And now, around him were subtle, rising-and-falling sounds of breathing.

Sweat beads stained the back of the front row boy's neck, the rustling sound of clothes rubbing came from the left, the command voices of instructors from other platoons in the distance were loud and powerful, the smell of grass baked hot by the sun floated in the wind, along with the faint salty-bitter taste of sweat.

Bustling.

Trivial.

Steaming with life.

It was the smell of living people.

It wasn't that he hadn't thought about what ordinary college life was like.

Living in a four-person room, complaining about military training with roommates, crowding into the canteen together, staying up late to rush homework together, like all eighteen-year-old boys, noisy and boisterous, without any heavy worries.

But the full data in the encrypted hard drive, the compiler's architectural draft, the entire unresolved product line of the Low Entropy Workshop...

These things could not be casually exposed, nor could they be casually entrusted to ordinary life.

So he participated in what he could, and asked for leave according to the process if there was a conflict.

Standing in the crowd, stained with sweat, listening to an earful of noise, eating a few meals in the crowded canteen, storing these sounds away.

This was already enough.

"At ease!"

With an instructor's command, a neat sound of clothing friction rang out in the team.

Jiang Lin followed the action, his posture standard and conventional, mixed in the team, completely inconspicuous.

Here, he was not the person standing in front of the white board.

Nor was he the founder of the Low Entropy Workshop.

He was just a freshman in Class 221 of Qiuzhen College who had just received his military training uniform.

Three days passed quickly.

On the 20th, housekeeping teaching, packing backpacks.

On the 21st, rehearsal for the square formation joint practice of the opening training ceremony.

In a short span of three days, the people of Qiuzhen Class 221 rapidly completed the transition from having only heard each other's names to knowing whose left and right were confused, whose shoe size was bought wrong, and whose quilt was folded like a topological singularity.

Jiang Lin was not present for every step.

On the night of the nineteenth, he finished the first paragraph of the notes for PFR / Marton Issue 006 in the Mathematics Center office.

On the afternoon of the twentieth, he went to the World Robot Conference exhibition hall to confirm the log archiving, media narrative, and anomaly segment review after the continuous demonstration of G-01 C.

On the evening of the twenty-first, after finishing the first draft of the gray-scale test protocol for Hengtai's closed tunnel, he replied to Liang Zhixia with six boundary comments.

But whenever he could make it, he would change into his military training uniform and stand in formation.

Thus, when official training began on the twenty-second, the members of Qiuzhen Class 221 no longer kept turning back to look at him like they did on the nineteenth.

They still knew he was special.

But they also began to take it for granted that he would appear in the formation.

August twenty-second, early morning.

The official opening ceremony of military training at the East Playground.

Several thousand freshmen stood on the same playground, the square formations spreading from in front of the rostrum all the way to the end of the running track.

Raising the national flag.

Playing and singing the national anthem.

Bestowing the flag.

Speeches by leaders of the military training brigade.

Speeches by student representatives.

The procedure was not complicated, one could even say it was fixed, but when several thousand people stood on the East Playground at the same time, any fixed procedure naturally gained weight.

Jiang Lin stood in the independent platoon of Qiuzhen College, his eyes looking straight ahead.

The voice from the stage came through the loudspeaker.

"Starting today, all students will enter a three-week period of military skills training and entrance education."

"During the three weeks of training, you will complete subjects such as marching drills, military boxing, combat-wound self-rescue and mutual rescue, orienteering, night marches, and the graduation parade."

"Military training is not to make every student a soldier, but to let everyone learn discipline, cooperation, and responsibility in their first class of university."

Discipline.

Cooperation.

Responsibility.

If these words were written on a PPT, they would seem very empty.

But placed on a playground where thousands of people stood simultaneously, they suddenly took on a tangible shape.

Toes aligned, shoulder lines flattened.

Commands were issued from a single point, transmitted layer by layer to the very end.

If someone walked wrong, they started over.

If someone fell behind, they were recorded, resupplied, and brought back.

It was neither a proof nor an engineering project.

Yet it vaguely felt somewhat familiar.

After the opening ceremony ended, each battalion exited in order.

The science company of the Fourth Battalion, where Qiuzhen College was located, returned to Zijing Playground for daily split training.

Along the way, the freshman formations stretched from the East Playground toward the Zijing direction.

Not long after leaving the main venue, people in the formation began to whisper.

"Is daily training at Zijing Playground?"

"Yes, it is close to the dormitories."

"Is it close to the cafeteria?"

"To the south is Zijing Cafeteria."

"That works."

"You are already thinking about the cafeteria?"

"I am also thinking about iced soda."

"There are old-fashioned popsicles at the small shop next to Zijing Playground."

"How do you know?"

"Reconnoitered on the nineteenth."

"You have great military qualities."

The instructor glanced back.

The formation instantly quieted down.

A few seconds later, someone couldn't help laughing again.

Zijing Playground was much smaller than the East Playground.

The plastic running track surrounded a natural grass soccer field, and the surroundings were planted with sycamore trees, their shade spreading in from the edge of the track.

The northwest corner bordered the Zijing Basketball Court, and further south was the Zijing Cafeteria.

Upperclassmen were already entering and exiting the cafeteria entrance. Seeing rows of freshmen being led into the playground, quite a few people stopped to take a couple of extra looks.

Barrels of water were moved into the shade of the trees.

Several folding boxes were placed nearby, containing Huoxiang Zhengqi liquid, band-aids, sunscreen, tissues, and spare candies.

Counselor Li Yue and Zhang Yuchen stood under the tree, each holding a name list and a training record sheet.

The first official training item was still military posture.

"Heels together, toes apart at about sixty degrees."

"Knees locked back."

"Pull in the abdomen, puff out the chest, shoulders back."

"Chin slightly tucked."

"Eyes looking straight ahead."

None of these actions were complicated when taken apart individually.

What was complicated was stacking all the actions together and making the body maintain them under the sun.

Ten minutes later, sweat began to stream down the back of the neck.

Twenty minutes later, someone in the formation began to gently adjust their breathing.

Thirty minutes later, a boy in the front row wobbled.

The instructor immediately walked over.

"Did you eat breakfast?"

The boy said in a low voice, "I did."

"What did you eat?"

"A steamed bun."

"Step out of formation, drink water under the tree, and eat candy."

The boy's face flushed red: "I can still stand."

"If you collapse, I'll have to carry you." The instructor frowned, "Step out of formation."

The boy finally jogged to the shade of the tree.

Zhang Yuchen immediately handed him water, and Counselor Li Yue took out a piece of candy from the box, asking him in a low voice if he felt dizzy, nauseous, or experienced blackouts in front of his eyes.

This small episode did not last long.

The formation continued standing.

But Jiang Lin's attention was gently hooked at this moment.

A formation was truly stable not because everyone was strong.

But because weak nodes could be promptly discovered, led away from the main formation, resupplied, observed, and returned to the formation after recovery.

It was not a single-point strength issue.

It was a checkpoint issue.

The Outpost's expedition platform had a similar logic.

During long-distance expeditions of G-Explorer-B, the real danger was never a momentary abnormality in a certain sensor, but rather that after the abnormality entered the system, it was not classified, not isolated, did not enter the rollback path, and ultimately polluted the entire task link.

This was even more true for G-01 C.

Foot slip itself was not terrifying.

What was terrifying was that the system misjudged the slip as normal contact and continued to shift the center of gravity until local failure turned into global instability.

Jiang Lin stood in the formation, his eyes still looking straight ahead.

But a certain originally loose structure in his mind suddenly clicked down a notch.

The draft of the Real World runtime he had previously proposed to Chen Yan initially aimed to solve core operator scheduling, backend cost models, and device abstraction.

Now it seemed clearly insufficient.

It was too static, too backend-oriented, and too focused on the operator layer.

If in the future MPS-Agent α was to be disassembled from a personal tool at the Wasteland Outpost into engineering modules achievable in the Real World, it could not only consider how tasks were split into backend executable units.

It must also consider who falls behind in long-term tasks.

Who rolls back, who enters the supply point, and who can return to the formation after pausing.

Which segment of state could be synchronized with low bandwidth, and which segment of state must be locally sealed.

This thing could not be named yet.

Formal naming meant the boundaries were already clear.

And Jiang Lin was very clear that it was currently just a real runtime draft stripped from Wasteland experience.

The whistle ending the military posture came.

"Rest for fifteen minutes."

The formation relaxed all at once.

Hats were taken off, water bottles were unscrewed, and several boys bent over holding their knees almost simultaneously, like puppets with their strings cut.

Zhao Chengyu walked toward the tree shade while saying in a low voice, "I finally understand why we needed to buy insoles before military training."

"Didn't you buy them on the nineteenth?"

"Yes, but I bought them too thin."

"Mathematical judgment error."

"This is an engineering problem."

Jiang Lin sat on the steps beside the playground and unscrewed his water bottle.

Zhang Yuchen walked over, tossed a small packet of candy to the boy who had almost wobbled earlier, and casually handed Jiang Lin a bottle of mineral water.

"Are you adjusting well?"

"Pretty good."

Zhang Yuchen glanced at him and smiled.

"Everyone thought you wouldn't come at first."

Jiang Lin took a sip of water: "I am a freshman too."

Zhang Yuchen was taken aback for a moment.

This sentence was very ordinary.

But coming from Jiang Lin's mouth, it became somewhat unusual.

The second half of the morning practiced stationary turns and marching steps.

Qiuzhen Class 221 had no problems whatsoever in theoretical understanding.

The execution result was still a complete mess.

"Right—face!"

After the whole formation finished turning, the instructor looked at the three people who clearly turned in the wrong direction and remained silent for a moment.

"Are you guys proving that space has multiple dimensions?"

Someone in the formation finally couldn't help laughing out loud.

The instructor wanted to laugh too, but still kept a straight face: "What are you laughing at? Start over."

After the third time, the formation finally looked somewhat decent.

Marching steps were another disaster.

As the command of one-two-one pressed down, the footsteps of the thirty-odd people initially sounded like scattered beads, varying in speed.

Some had large strides, some had stiff arm swings, and some disrupted their own rhythm in order to align with the front row.

Jiang Lin walked in the middle-to-rear section.

He could feel the rhythm differences of the people around him.

If treated as a machine group problem, the central command could only provide a rough rhythm, while true stability relied on local synchronization, error correction, and fallback recovery.

This was not the standard answer for training a formation.

But it was a very good runtime problem.

Low bandwidth, multi-node, weak center, long-term, synchronization error accumulation, dropout recovery.

Jiang Lin silently noted down these words in his mind.

There were many fragmented inspirations, but very few could actually make it into system design.

He would have to wait until night, until a complete mental block cleared up, to judge whether it was worth modifying the architecture.

At eleven-thirty in the morning, training ended.

Each platoon formed up and went to the Zijing Cafeteria.

The military training food window served meals very quickly with generous portions. Spare ribs, chicken drumsticks, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, beef with potatoes, vegetables, and soup were ladled into dining plates one by one.

Qiuzhen Class 221 was arranged in a fixed area with several long tables pushed together.

When they first sat down, everyone was too tired to speak.

After a while, the sweet and sour spare ribs played their due role, and the people at the table revived one after another.

"I declare that the military training window has temporarily saved me."

"The scrambled eggs with tomatoes are fine too."

"Have you guys noticed that eating after training tastes especially good?"

"This is the human body's feedback to a calorie deficit."

"Can you not talk so much like a thesis while eating?"

Someone else curiously asked Jiang Lin why he took the initiative to come to military training.

Actually, everyone wanted to ask this question.

Only no one knew how to ask it without being offensive.

Jiang Lin did not answer immediately.

The cafeteria was very noisy.

The clattering of dinner plates, the calling of numbers at the windows, and the air conditioning mixed with the heat of the food.

Someone from the Physics department at the next table was discussing whether they would practice goose-stepping in the afternoon, and at another table, someone had already begun planning to buy insoles and old-fashioned popsicles at night.

These sounds were all very close.

Close enough to make people feel that the world was full.

After a few seconds, Jiang Lin said: "There might not be so many opportunities in the future to do inefficient things with so many peers."

Zhao Chengyu was stunned.

A boy nearby laughed: "Your evaluation is too harsh, but very accurate. Military training is indeed not very efficient, but it is very memorable."

"The sweet and sour spare ribs are too."

The atmosphere relaxed again.

Jiang Lin did not continue to explain.

What he really wanted to say was not efficiency.

It was that if a person spent too long only interacting with tasks, failure samples, proof nodes, and engineering logs, they would slowly forget the touch of ordinary life.

Forgetting someone pushing a tissue over while eating.

Forgetting that when the formation walked in the wrong direction, everyone would hold back their laughter together.

Forgetting a group of people seriously discussing for ten minutes whether or not to go buy insoles at night.

These things had no strategic significance.

But they kept reality from being left with only strategy.

Two-thirty in the afternoon.

The sun over Zijing Playground had become very scorching.

The instructor did not immediately make everyone stand on the track to bake in the sun, but instead first led the formation to the shade of the trees to talk about the training arrangements for the next few days.

"Formations are the core of the first two weeks."

"Military boxing will be taught later."

"Combat-wound self-rescue and mutual rescue is an indoor class with a practical assessment."

"Orienteering is timed by platoon."

"There is also one more item, let me mention it in advance."

Saying this, he paused for a moment, looking at the group of freshmen in front of him who had just been wilted by the sun.

"In the early morning of August twenty-eighth, a night march of twenty kilometers."

As these words fell, the whole platoon came alive.

The instructor did not give them time to continue wailing and went straight on.

"Pack backpacks, bring water canteens and satchels, and the whole platoon moves together. There will be three supply points along the way distributing water and bread. No one is allowed to leave the formation without permission, falling behind must be reported, and there are pick-up and supply arrangements. After returning, form up for roll call."

A flurry of soft gasps sounded around.

Zhao Chengyu asked Jiang Lin in a low voice: "What do you think?"

Jiang Lin thought for a moment: "Insoles are indeed important."

Zhao Chengyu nodded solemnly: "Understood, I'll buy thick ones tonight."

Jiang Lin did not smile.

His attention was hooked by another matter.

A twenty-kilometer night march was not a simple forced march.

It was a very complete long-range task organization model.

Departing at dawn, packing knapsacks, low illumination, fixed team size, obvious differences in individual physical strength, setting up supply points along the way, a reporting mechanism for falling behind, rolling call after returning, and finally counting completion status by platoon.

The central command cannot take care of every single individual.

A single person falling behind must not drag down the whole platoon.

Supply points are essentially checkpoints.

The containment mechanism is essentially failure isolation.

The rejoin mechanism is essentially state recovery.

This was clearer than the thought he had while standing at attention in the morning.

That yet-to-be-officially-named real runtime sketch couldn't just care about how operators were dispatched.

It also had to manage how tasks wouldn't be interrupted.

Jiang Lin stood in the shade of the trees, listening to the instructor continue to explain the precautions for the march.

But a line of temporary directory names popped into his head first.

[ Long-Horizon Runtime Checkpointing ]

Long-horizon runtime checkpointing.

If the future MPS-Agent α is to run under unstable hardware, unstable energy, and unstable communication environments, it cannot assume that all execution units are always online.

It must allow a certain execution unit to fall behind.

Allow a certain backend to temporarily lose connection.

Allow a certain task to enter a degraded state.

Allow local failures to be contained rather than polluting the main process.

This was the same type of problem as that foot slip during the G-01C public demonstration.

It's not a question of whether it failed.

Rather, it's about how failure is seen, isolated, recorded, and rejoined when possible.

Afternoon training continued.

Marching at a regular pace, running, and halting-position turns.

Jiang Lin did not get distracted to think too much more.

At five-thirty in the evening, training ended.

The small store by Zijing Playground was surrounded tightly by camouflage uniforms.

Iced soda, old-fashioned popsicles, mineral water, shoe insoles, and tissues were selling fast.

Someone bought an iced watermelon, had the store clerk cut it into pieces, carried it back in a plastic bag, and shared it under the shade of the trees.

Jiang Lin also got a piece.

The watermelon was very icy, and the juice flowed down his fingers.

Zhao Chengyu took a bite and said vaguely: "This is the top-tier joy of military training."

Someone next to him said: "Mathematics cannot provide this kind of joy."

"Are you sure?"

"At least not right now."

Everyone laughed.

Jiang Lin sat at the very edge, finished eating that piece of watermelon, folded the plastic bag, and threw it into the trash can.

His phone had vibrated several times in his pocket.

Only then did he take it out to look.

The first one came from Liang Zhixia.

[ The first draft of the Hengtai enclosed tunnel gray-scale test protocol has been sent to your email. Professor Xu Mingchuan accepts the six boundaries of 'not entering production tunnels, not hanging dangerous equipment, not carrying people, not opening core logs, not handing over the underlying control chain, and not handing over the parameter generator', but hopes to add an item for a list of on-site observers. ]

The second one came from Professor Han Yanshan.

[ The minutes of the domestic group's afternoon meeting for Issue 006 have been sent. Regarding the double-spending problem under non-uniform density shells, Ding Jian believes it needs to be split separately into Appendix C-2, and it is not recommended to compress it inside the 47th main theorem. ]

The third one came from Terence Tao.

[ The double-spending isolation is subtle. Do not compress this section too much. ]

The fourth one came from Chen Yan.

[ President Jiang, for the real runtime sketch you mentioned last time, I built a version of the directory tree based on 'operator scheduling + backend cost model + device abstraction'. The core is still biased towards the backend tool chain. You can take a look tonight if you have time. ]

Four messages lay side by side on the screen.

Exhibition.

Hengtai.

PFR.

Real runtime sketch.

Every single one was heavy.

Every single one was enough to drag him away from the shade of Zijing Playground.

Jiang Lin looked for a few seconds without immediately opening any attachments.

He replied to Liang Zhixia first.

[ The list of observers must be locked in advance, signing confidentiality and safety responsibility confirmations, and no temporary additions are allowed. ]

He replied to Professor Han Yanshan—

[ Agreed to split Appendix C-2, will handle it tonight. ]

He replied to Terence Tao—

[ Agreed. I will expand the isolation proof. ]

He replied to Chen Yan—

[ Keep the directory tree for now; I will add a layer of checkpoint logic tonight, don't just think in terms of operator scheduling. ]

Chen Yan quickly replied with a question mark.

Gathered at 7:00 PM, military song teaching and song-battling warm-up.

Someone in the team wailed: "We still have to sing?"

"Do you know 'Unity is Strength'?"

"I only know the first line."

"Then you're done for."

"Is it too late for me to drop out of school now?"

Laughter scattered under the shade of the trees.

Jiang Lin put his phone back into his pocket.

He hadn't forgotten those problems.

They were all right there.

But now was not the time to deal with them.

Fragmented time cannot split Issue 006.

Nor can it touch the root directory of a runtime sketch that hasn't been named yet.

Even less can it review the rights and responsibilities boundaries of the Hengtai gray-scale protocol.

At 9:20 PM, training and evening activities ended.

Jiang Lin returned to Building 17 of Zijing.

Passing through the undergraduate dormitory area, Buildings 1 to 13 were still brightly lit.

Some people carried washbasins to the water room, some carried shoe insoles and iced drinks upstairs, and some stood downstairs calling home to talk about how long they stood today, how tanned they got, and what they ate at the cafeteria.

Building 17 remained quiet.

The sensor light turned on and then went out behind him.

Jiang Lin swiped his card to enter Room 402 and closed the door.

The room fell back into an independent silence.

After taking a shower, his heels were a bit red—not serious, just marks left by the friction of rubber shoes.

The military training cap was placed at the corner of the desk.

The water cup was placed next to it.

Inside the phone, the class chat group was flooding with photos of today's training.

Someone secretly took a picture of Qiuzhen College's platoon sharing watermelon under the shade of Zijing Playground, someone posted a video of the instructor with a dark face making them re-sing during the evening song-battling, and someone cut out the 20-kilometer night march on August 28th separately, accompanied by a sorrowful expression.

Jiang Lin glanced at it twice and placed his phone face down on the desktop.

Then he opened the computer and first looked at the real runtime sketch sent by Chen Yan.

This was a working file temporarily placed in the internal tool directory of the Low Entropy Workshop.

[ Reality_Runtime_Sketch_v0.1 ]

The original directory built by Chen Yan was very simple.

[ Operator-Schedule ]

[ Backend-CostModel ]

[ Device-Abstraction ]

[ Task-Dispatch ]

[ Log-Interface ]

The structure wasn't wrong, but it wasn't enough.

It was like a tool that could send tasks to different hardware.

It didn't look like a runtime that could let tasks survive in a bad environment yet.

Jiang Lin created a new layer of directory.

[ Runtime-Checkpoint ]

Below, he continued to write—

[ Task-State-Snapshot ]

[ Straggler-Detection ]

[ Fallback-Route ]

[ Low-Bandwidth-Sync ]

[ Rejoin-Protocol ]

[ Failure-Visibility-Log ]

[ No-Silent-Success ]

There can be no silent success.

A task successfully completed does not mean there are no failure boundaries in the process.

Even if the G-01C public demonstration passed, the 7-millisecond delay of the right hind foot sensor must be recorded.

Even if the military training formation marched in sync, it is necessary to know who almost staggered halfway, who was taken out of the team to drink water, and who later rejoined.

Even if the PFR / Marton main link is closed, the double payment in the non-uniform density shell cannot be silently mixed into the global accounts.

They are actually the same discipline.

Auditable.

Replayable.

Rejoinable.

Jiang Lin opened the README and deleted the first line.

The original first line was—

[ Objective: Establish a cross-backend task scheduling and hardware cost model. ]

He rewrote—

[ Objective: Establish a runtime sketch for long-horizon tasks that is interruptible, migratable, and rejoinable. ]

Then he wrote the second line.

[ Currently unnamed, unshaped, and internal only. ]

The third line.

[ This sketch does not serve show-off performance porting; it prioritizes failure visibility, state checkpointing, and weak backend recovery. ]

Save.

Commit to local Git.

Commit message—

[ add runtime checkpoint layer ]

After finishing these, Jiang Lin opened PFR / Marton Issue 006.

In the minutes of the domestic group sent by Professor Han Yanshan, Ding Jian's suggestion was marked red separately.

[ It is recommended to split the double-spending isolation under non-uniform density shells from the main proof of node 47, and make it independent as Appendix C-2. The main theorem only cites the isolation lemma and no longer bears the display of all accounts. ]

Terence Tao's email was even shorter.

[ Do not compress this section too much. ]

Do not compress this section.

Jiang Lin looked at that sentence, pondered for a moment, and then wrote the title in a new LaTeX file.

[ Appendix C-2: Isolation of Double Spending under Non-uniform Density Shells ]

On the next line, he wrote a Chinese note at the very top of his local draft.

[ The non-uniform density shell is not a local lemma problem, but a global account rejoin problem. ]

After writing it, he reviewed it himself.

Rejoin.

This word doesn't quite sound like a paper terminology.

But the meaning is very accurate.

If a local shell detaches from the global accounts halfway, it should not be quietly counted as paid.

It must enter the checkpoint, mark its state, confirm whether entropy drop has been consumed, and then decide whether it can merge back into the main proof chain.

Otherwise, it would be like someone who fell behind and circled back to the team, being counted twice on the roll call sheet.

Jiang Lin began writing the first paragraph.

Outside the window, in the Zijing undergraduate dormitory area, someone was still shouting in the corridor not to be late for morning exercises tomorrow.

Someone dragged their slippers to wash up.

Someone was probably modifying today's military training photos in bed.

Building 17 remained consistently quiet.

Only the sound of the keyboard fell softly into the room.

In the lower right corner of the screen, the schedule popped up tomorrow's reminder.

[ 06:00 Wake up ]

[ 08:00 Zijing Playground training ]

[ 14:30 Formation and military boxing preparation ]

[ 20:30 Issue 006 C-2 expansion ]

[ August 28, 00:00 20-kilometer night march ]

Jiang Lin glanced at it and turned off the reminder.

Today's military training did not stop his main line, but gave him a new Real World model.

Formation, falling behind, supply points, containment, rejoining.

These words will not appear in the brochures of the World Robot Conference, nor in the abstract of PFR / Marton v1.0.

But they have already entered that unnamed runtime sketch and the proof structure of Issue 006.

The night outside the window deepened.

There are less than nine days left until the eleventh Wasteland teleportation.