Chapter 52 Trending Again

[F*ck me, no wonder this guy is a genius. He couldn't buy a train ticket and so, he wrote his own ticket buying app! So impressive!]

[I was wondering why this genius rejected CEO Wong's offer. It's because he's starting his own business! Wow, I envy those with a good brain! (cry, smile)]

[I re-posted, I'm convinced.]

[Genius, are you looking for an online girlfriend? My name is Luo Liyin!]

[Master genius, I'm a grade 7 middle school student. The pretty girl in my class said that she'll go out with me if I get into the Top 10 in the coming exams. If I win the prize, can you teach me mathematics?]

[Editing SCI? Please. Praying to god I get picked! Re-post!]

[I'm a PhD student and I'm impressed… Re-posted!]

[My thesis isn't in SCI, can I get a discount?]

It was the next day in the afternoon.

Lu Zhou was eating dinner when he pulled out his phone and checked Weibo. He was shocked.

Why are there so many re-posts?

However, most of the re-post captions were just people jumping on the bandwagon.

Lu Zhou was suspicious. When he opened the trending page, he was surprised.

Number four on trending!

How did it get up there?

Even though a lot of people re-posted, it's still a bit far fetched to be on trend, right?

Lu Zhou opened up the trending page and found out that a marketing account reported his app but not his blog post.

The earliest new source that reported it was called [New Things On Campus] and that blog was re-posted by a marketing account with millions of followers. Finally, it even caught the attention of [Huaguo Youth Daily] and they re-posted it.

Although they did not re-post his blog, the name [Campus Train] was still in the report.

[A first-year undergraduate student from the University of Jin Ling who could not buy a train ticket wrote his own free app for students to use. Look at how impressive this guy is…]

[Remember that undergraduate student that wrote ten SCI theses in a month? This time he is back at it again. (dog)]

These were the types of headlines in the reports.

After that, a chain reaction happened and it went out of control…

"…"

Lu Zhou saw this situation and was hysterical.

He did not expect to go on trending twice within two months.

Lu Zhou used his phone to log into the developer platform and entered his administrator account and password. He looked at the download data.

What?! The number of registered users reached 150,000!

With the number of user downloads experiencing explosive growth in the Android app store, it had even made its way into the Top Daily Downloads.

It seemed that his app had been accepted by a lot of college students.

As for how many users would stay active, it would depend on what happened next.

At this moment, he received a call from Chen Yushan.

"Lu Zhou Lu Zhou! Did you write that app?" asked the female voice on the other end of the phone. She was so excited that she sounded like she was happier than Lu Zhou.

Lu Zhou, "Yeah, I wrote it, why?"

"…"

After she received the confirmation, she became silent.

After a while, she sighed and her voice became heavier as she said, "Nothing. I feel like you're flying so high, I… Don't know what to say."

Lu Zhou was confused, "Flying so high? Not really. It'll still be three years till I graduate."

"You're right," said Chen Yushan. She laughed and changed the topic, "Oh yeah, my cousin came back from Shanghai. My auntie wanted to ask if you still have time to do tutoring next semester?"

"Yeah, of course," said Lu Zhou without any hesitation.

Upgrading the Alibaba cloud server, upgrading disk space, purchasing network communication traffic bandwidth, designing a beautiful UI interface… Everything required money!

Right now his app was free. It was hard to tell how much he would have to spend before he could monetize it.

It was not like he could exchange general points for money and so, he had to rely on working for some extra cash.

A happy voice traveled through the phone, "That's great, Meng Qi said that you are a good mathematics tutor. She would understand the question after one explanation from you."

"It's mainly because she's talented," said Lu Zhou with a smile.

Chen Yushan, "Oh yeah, also when she enters Grade 11, she'll only have Sundays off. You only have to tutor her one day. Is that fine with you?"

Lu Zhou, "No problem, I'm free regardless."

…

Zhang Zhongjie opened the door and walked into Dean Lu office. He said with a smile, "Dean Lu, you have quite a talent there in your mathematics department."

Dean Lu did not say anything at first. He put his pen down, adjusted his glasses, and sighed before saying, "Say it, what did that Lu Zhou kid go and do now?"

Dean Zhang smiled and said, "Oh, I didn't even tell you. How did you know it was Lu Zhou?"

"He's the only troublemaker of his caliber in the department."

"It seems that you're not happy?" said Dean Zhang as he sat on the sofa. With a smile, he said, "If that's the case, how about you transfer Lu Zhou to my computer science department. I quite like him."

"Oh," said Dean Lu. He leaned against his office chair and stared before saying rudely, "Don't even think about it!"

What a joke.

University of Jin Ling's mathematics department was not strong even though the university was ranked amongst the countries' Top 10 universities. It was not nearly as strong as their physics department.

They finally had such a genius in their department and Lu Fangping would never let him go. Not even if he had to deceive Lu Zhou!

"Why are you getting so riled up? I'm just kidding. It's up to him if he wants to transfer," said Dean Zhang. He smiled and continued, "Ok, serious talk. Have you seen Weibo recently?"

"Weibo?" asked Dean Lu. He frowned, "What's on Weibo?"

Although Lu Fangping knew about Weibo, he had not downloaded it on his phone. First of all, he was disinterested in the trending female celebrities. Secondly, the text on the phone was too small and thus, it was unsuitable for old people to read. Thirdly, he was busy with his job and side projects. He did not have so much free time to stare at his phone.

Furthermore, he did not keep up with the trends as much as Dean Zhang who was from the computer science department.

"The Lu Zhou from your department made an app called Campus Train. A few teachers from our department looked at it and found that it is pretty good. The school is encouraging entrepreneurship, right? I wanted to help him and so, I came over here," said Dean Zhang while smiling.

Dean Lu heard the good news and smiled as well. He then squinted his eyes as if he remembered something.

In order to encourage technological innovation at various universities and to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship, the Ministry of Education issued a [University Student Entrepreneurship Plan] which was issued directly to various institutions and education bureaus.

Dean Lu had heard of this plan. It was mainly for fourth-year undergraduate students that did not plan on getting a master's degree. Simply put, the state would provide financial support (loans) while the school would provide the resources to help students achieve their dreams of entrepreneurship!

Of course, not all projects could apply for this interest-free loan. For example, if one decided to open a bubble tea shop, or to sell clothes on Taobao, or if one simply wanted to use the money to buy stocks, the school definitely would not have approved.

Projects that could apply for this loan must first meet the criteria of not only being a technological innovation but it must also be realistic. For example, it was unrealistic if one wanted to build a rocket and needed to come up with a new type of rocket fuel.

The second criterion was that it must be able to create jobs.

After all, projects that were hatched by university alumni would be more inclined to hire students from their own university.

The University of Jin Ling wanted to appeal to the government. All of the departments allocated a certain amount of money towards the startups by the students. After all, employment was the top priority. If the school could really incubate a large project, it might even count as a scientific achievement!

Generally speaking, this policy only applied to fourth-year students. After all, their goal was still to study. They could not delay their academics for entrepreneurship. The school should not convince students to take the wrong path!

However, these criteria obviously were inapplicable when it came to Lu Zhou. Being able to write mathematical theses at his level meant it would be a piece of cake for him to get his bachelor's degree. Most professors did not look at him as an undergraduate student, at least not a first-year undergraduate.

But…

However talented this Lu Zhou kid may be, he's still part of our mathematics department. Why is the computer science department here?

Dean Lu knew instantly that this guy came here to undermine him!

Dean Zhang saw that Dean Lu did not speak. He smiled and used a kind tone as he said, "You shouldn't think that this will affect his studies. It's important to manifest his studies by doing projects. My suggestion will definitely be beneficial to Student Lu. Furthermore, a few teachers in my department did some research and felt that this project is interesting, so…"

"Don't even think about it! I'll go and find our head of department right now!" said Dean Lu. He stood up and smiled as he said, "Don't even try to undermine me! We were just worrying about how to use this money!"

There isn't any place to spend it on!

It was not like mathematics was useless, but what could one create with mathematics?

The few applications that were submitted all pretended like they were making big data statistical analysis software but they were actually about starting online shops! Who would give them money!

Finally, a person like Lu Zhou came along. Dean Lu would never give him up and so, he refused Dean Zhang.

You are here, again and again. You say you're helping our incubator project, but when the chicken finally laid eggs, your computer science department wants to steal the eggs!

Just because I have thick glasses and run around the office all day while being an honest man doesn't mean that I can't see through your schemes!

How naive!

How simple!

"I'm telling you, Old Lu. This is wrong, right? The project in your mathematics department isn't even related to mathematics but is related to computer science. What will people say about this?" said Dean Zhang as he laughed.

"If I say it's related then it's related. How come data science isn't related to mathematics? I'm approving it!" said Dean Lu as he stared at Dean Zhang. He suddenly realized that he had not even received an application yet, so he continued his momentum and said, "I'll give Lu Zhou a call today and ask for his application. I'll personally give it to the head of the department for him to approve!"

Dean Zhang was anxious, "You can't do this. You should ask the student's opinion! This is for his own good!"

Oh, you're trying to talk logic with me now?

Dean Lu turned his eyes and said swiftly, "Ok, I'll talk to him later. Wait for my response."

"No!" said Dean Zhang as he disagreed. He crossed his legs and said, "You're not honest. I'm sitting right here. Call him now! If not, you're buying me dinner."

Dean Lu called Dean Zhang shameless but the man did not even give him a reaction. Dean Lu knew that he had to solve this today and so, he picked up his phone and called Lu Zhou.