Chapter 103 - 99: The Advantage Is Mine

Chapter 103: Chapter 99: The Advantage Is Mine

"Shoo! I’m not going to out myself!" Ye Zixing realized she had misspoken and felt extremely embarrassed.

"What’s the big deal? It’s not like any of us hasn’t been a simp before." Li Yuting didn’t care at all. "When I look back at the messages I sent people back then, I really can’t fathom what mental state I was in to say such desperate, cringeworthy things. It was like I was possessed."

"If we’re talking about this, I’m wide awake now."

"Let’s see the chat history?"

Everyone turned to look at Li Yuting.

"I’ll show you, it’s all in the past anyway." Li Yuting spoke generously, but her expression was bashful. With reddened cheeks, she brought up her WeChat chat history.

Tsk, September last year.

Who would have thought that our Brother Ting, who usually acted so tough and carefree, was secretly hoping for a sweet romance behind the scenes?

But the content was going full clown mode.

The first sentence: "Alright, I won’t bother you anymore."

A few minutes later—

"Are you really going to ignore me?"

The third sentence, "Please just talk to me," failed to send, turning into a red exclamation mark.

She had been blocked.

Zhong Qing couldn’t hold it back and burst into laughter. PFFT! After laughing, she felt it was a bit inappropriate and struggled hard to hold it in.

Weren’t you supposed to be our strategist? And this is what you have to show for it? How do you have the nerve to give me advice?

"Alright, alright, laugh all you want. It’s in the past anyway." Li Yuting gave up trying to save face and fully embraced it. Whatever.

So, in the dorm, it seemed like only Yang Qiuyun hadn’t acted like a clown? But judging from what she had just said, that wasn’t necessarily true. Maybe she had made her move and gotten rejected too.

If that were the case, their dorm would truly become a clown convention.

Zhong Qing fell deep into thought. She wondered, "Should I make a trip home during the National Day holiday?"

She originally hadn’t planned to, as she needed to prepare for her exams. However, with Chen Jingle’s help recently, her English and political science scores had improved, and even her professional course mock exam scores had gone up significantly. As long as she maintained this rhythm, she could improve a bit more in the next three months, and her acceptance would be practically guaranteed.

That was why she was considering a trip home.

It might sound a bit greedy, but the truth was, she wanted both a man and her grad school acceptance.

At least for now, Chen Jingle seemed excellent in all aspects. Not only would he not hinder her studies, but he could also tutor her. Except for his age, which was a bit of a dealbreaker. But in the matchmaking market, probably few people would care about that.

Zhong Qing felt she still had a very good chance.

"Like everyone said, I can consider being a bit more proactive," she thought.

That way, the advantage would basically be mine!

...

Chen Jingle washed all the pots and pans, fed the cat, and then lay down on the rocking chair to play on his phone for a while.

He had done a lot more today than usual and felt a bit tired. He didn’t really want to move. Just lazily sprawling out like this felt nice.

As he rocked, a strange thought suddenly popped into his head: "Why do humans have to eat, drink, and use the bathroom?"

If people were like plants and only needed photosynthesis to survive, that would be pretty good too. Unfortunately, it was just a fantasy.

When he got tired of lying down, he reached out for a snow pear and slowly munched on it. After finishing, he tossed the core away.

"OK, time to take a shower!" he declared.

He had just pumped himself up yesterday, so he couldn’t let his enthusiasm die today. He had to persist and work hard!

He planned to continue reading tonight, striving to finish *Logic of Politics* early and then move on to the next book.

Although advancing in the pure liberal arts didn’t rely as heavily on talent as STEM fields—where one had to do countless experiments and record endless data—that didn’t mean it was easy. On the contrary, it required more effort and hard work, with a ton of literature to chew through.

Maybe STEM students felt that reading literature was a relatively easy task. They probably just hadn’t experienced the feeling of reading words until they wanted to throw up.

Chen Jingle had previously been full of enthusiasm, thinking that with the system’s help, he could easily pass the postgraduate exams and return to campus life. Looking at it now, even if he did get accepted, graduating wouldn’t be that easy for him.

He had wanted to coast through. But no matter how much he slacked off, he still had to read books, review literature, and write papers.

Speaking of writing papers, he had recently been pondering a serious question: "If I write a paper without a school, a supervisor, or an employer, can I still get it published?"

This was a very serious issue.

As far as he knew, many journals now had educational and professional title requirements for authors. Not to mention the top-tier core journals in the North and South; even many regular journals no longer accepted undergraduates as first authors. Because in the eyes of many, it was difficult to produce high-level research in the humanities. Even if there was any, it would be at the level of a doctoral student’s dissertation.

For example, something like *Middle County Cadre*.

Undergraduates? What the hell were they?

For someone like him, an ordinary university graduate from god-knows-how-many years ago, it went without saying. Trying to submit to a decent domestic journal was as hard as ascending to heaven. As for those journals that published anything for a fee, he didn’t even want them.

Of course, he could try submitting to international core journals, which didn’t have educational thresholds. But then he would face another problem: they had extremely high standards for the quality of the articles. Let alone undergraduates, even many master’s and doctoral students couldn’t necessarily pass. Furthermore, the research methodologies in social sciences differed between domestic and international academia, making it very difficult to successfully publish in those international core journals.

This was why everyone said that a university’s platform was crucial.

Because at its core, a platform meant resources.

The better the school, the more high-quality resources it could provide. Students from elite universities started learning academic writing and accumulating experience under their supervisors’ guidance during their undergraduate years, aiming for core journals right from the start. From beginning to end, their supervisors helped review and recommend their work. Even if they couldn’t get into a core journal, a prestigious regular journal would still accept it.

If worst came to worst, the professor could just carry them, adding their name as a second or third author on a paper, which was still considered a great achievement for a student.

Universities were like different factions fighting for territory.

Take a top-tier Project 985 university in the eastern coastal area, for example. The administrative staff were basically all alumni, and most of the teaching staff were as well. Their children would attend the same university after the college entrance exam, and their future spouses would also be staff members there. It was already a massive interest group.

It was just like cultivating immortality. How could a self-taught amateur compare to the Direct Disciple of a top-tier Sect? Without an overpowered cheat, how could you possibly stand a chance against them?

Even a top-tier Sect in the eyes of ordinary people would have to bow and scrape before the two great Holy Lands. A dignified Sect Steward wouldn’t even dare to utter a peep if beaten up by a Holy Land’s Direct Disciple.

The strict hierarchy in scientific research was evident!

"It’s so hard!" Chen Jingle had the will but lacked the power. At this stage, he didn’t have any good options.

"Since that’s the case, I’ll just keep accumulating knowledge," he concluded.

Maybe one day he would have an epiphany, produce some results, and have a chance to publish in a core journal. Who knew what the future held? Right?

Who knows, maybe a young, beautiful, and genius female professor would take a liking to him, accept him as a student, and directly hand him two core journal publications.

Heh heh.

After reading for an hour, he got up to stretch his limbs to avoid getting hemorrhoids from sitting too long.

Then he saw the WeChat message from Liang City.

"Unbelievable. Did you see the news? People are starting to hoard salt again."

"Huh? Hoard what salt?" Chen Jingle was a bit confused.

"They’re saying the nuclear-contaminated water has spread to our side, and they’re afraid the salt will be contaminated, so there won’t be any salt to eat in the future."

"Don’t we have plenty of salt lakes? Sea salt only makes up a small portion." Chen Jingle couldn’t understand it.

Liang City replied, "But the public is blind. Some influencers are setting the narrative, and the rumors are spreading like wildfire. Now everyone out there is telling people to hurry up and buy salt."

Chen Jingle was left speechless.

He wondered if the people who hoarded salt last time had even finished eating it. He had no interest in hoarding salt, though he had hoarded food before, which successfully helped him dodge a bullet.

For people who surfed the internet all day, besides having enough sensitivity to online information, they also needed sufficient discernment to avoid blindly following the crowd.

Besides the salt-hoarding incident, there was just a bunch of other messy news. Recently, the international situation had been a bit chaotic, so the two inevitably spent some time pointing fingers and analyzing global affairs—a common ailment among middle-aged men.

The two chatted for quite a while before Chen Jingle read his book a bit more and went to sleep.