Wang Chengmin, guiding Zhao Yi, first headed to the dean’s office. Upon entering, they saw Li Lisheng in front of the computer. He was busily typing away with one hand, his movements were similar to someone playing piano, which was a bit odd and amusing.

Li Lisheng immediately stood up, "Principal Wang!"

"Director Li."

Zhao Yi greeted politely. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

Wang Chengmin went straight to a cupboard, "Director Li, I’m here to get the video camera, specifically the one for video recording."

Zhengyang Thirteenth Middle School owned a professional video camera which was used to record during events and meetings, and other necessary occasions.

Li Lisheng quickly helped with the search.

Zhao Yi glanced at the computer screen. The computer was logged into a forum page, and the open thread was about him, titled "Zhao Yi is my student, I know him. The data he disclosed is not false."

The former sentence was the key point.

Two comments that could be seen were unrelated to ’whether the data was false or not’, both doubted if the thread owner was ’dreaming’.

Li Lisheng was typing, "I am the English teacher at Zhengyang Thirteenth Middle School, and also the head of ..."

The sentence was not finished yet.

Zhao Yi looked at Li Lisheng, he couldn’t help but smile.

Li Lisheng, without noticing Zhao Yi looking at the computer, kept a calm expression, as if he had done nothing.

The video camera was brought out.

Wang Chengmin simply enlisted a helper, "Come, Director Li, let’s go to the Principal’s office and record a video for Zhao Yi!"

"Okay!"

Li Lisheng, agreeing, closed the webpage before leaving, his expression showing a hint of reluctance.

To Zhao Yi, it seemed like, "How hard it was to type that sentence!"

The three of them went to the Principal’s office.

Wang Chengmin professionally found a light blue cloth and hung it on the wall as a background.

Li Lisheng was responsible for the shooting.

Zhao Yi reminded him, "At the start, just focus on me. Once I actually begin demonstrating, zoom in on the magic cube."

The shooting started.

Zhao Yi first said to the camera, "I’m Zhao Yi. I saw that many people online do not believe the data I released, so I’m shooting this video for a demonstration."

"Please, watch carefully!"

The camera zooms in on the magic cube.

"This is the initial state of the magic cube from Jia Hongning’s match in the ’Brain Power Burst’ program."

The magic cube was spinning in his hand.

All six faces were clearly exhibited.

Zhao Yi was slowly twisting the magic cube, following along with his fingers, he was counting, "Step one, step two, step three, four, five..."

"Seventeen!"

With that, he lifted the magic cube with his palm. All six sides had been restored.

"Next is the second round!"

Zhao Yi was saying while slowly scrambling the magic cube, counting while doing so. He stopped at ’nineteen’, lifted up the magic cube again which had all six sides clearly displayed in front of the lens, "This is Jia Hongning’s magic cube from the second round. You guys can compare with the video, if I can get this with nineteen moves, I can certainly restore it with the same amount of moves."

"Because of time constraints, I will stop counting."

As he was saying, his fingers kept on moving, he restored the magic cube in about ten seconds.

Then came the third round.

Zhao Yi was concurrently scrambling and counting, he only moved fourteen times before he stopped. Then, he showcased the magic cube, "This is the magic cube used by Jia Hongning in the third round."

The shooting paused.

Zhao Yi opened the episode of "Brain Power Burst" on his computer and found the segment of the competition. He forgot about Zhou Junkai’s magic cube, watched it carefully again, and continued recording the restoration of the magic cube.

Next, he demonstrated the three initial states of the magic cube from Zhou Junkai’s competition.

Finished.

Zhao Yi didn’t say anything else, everything had been clearly shown.

After the video was successfully filmed, a new issue arose.

It’s a hassle for individual users to upload high-quality videos as you need to have certain qualifications and the review time is uncertain. He contacted the TV reporter Liu Huimin and briefly explained the situation. He added Liu Huimin’s Penguin Number and sent the packed video across.

The internet was a bit slow.

No worries!

Wang Chengmin simply instructed Zhao Yi to go back first, "Zhao Yi, let the video continue uploading, you go back and attend your classes. Once the video is successfully uploaded, I will log out your Penguin Number!"

Zhao Yi agreed and left, realizing there might be a risk on the way.

He didn’t care about the Penguin Number, there weren’t many friends in it, and nothing important, but what if Wang Chengmin had other intentions?

For instance, adding Liu Huimin’s Penguin Number?

It’s really hard to trust Principal Wang Chengmin!

...

Zhao Yi returned to his classroom, surrounded and interrogated by his classmates. However, he was more focused on studying.

Besides English and Chinese classes, and brushing up his ’Rest Coin’, he spent the remaining time either listening to lectures or seriously reading and doing exercises.

He felt a sense of urgency.

A lot of time was recently spent on other things and his studies might be neglected. But his grades had to improve, his college entrance exam target was not only Shuimu, but also ’Non-Computer Science Major’ in Shuimu.

If he only wanted to be admitted to Shuimu, it wouldn’t be difficult to get in through independent recruitment as long as he chose a Computer Science major.

However, he really didn’t want to study Computer Science!

In order to increase his choice of majors, he needs to get into Shuimu University with a high score.

So, keep studying!

In his free time, Zhao Yi was so engrossed in his biology book that it seemed like he would literally tear a page out and eat it at the drop of a hat.

...

Liu Huimin was known for her high efficiency in work.

After watching the video sent by Zhao Yi, she promptly posted it to the Nanjiang News Network. The headline read: "Refuting Doubts with Action - Zhao Yi Demonstrates Rubik’s Cube Restoration!"

Although the Nanjiang News Network wasn’t particularly popular in terms of traffic, it had the backing of a TV station and was noticed by several professional media outlets. The first ones to see the video were online media.

They quickly reported and shared the video, which swiftly gained more views.

Then came an embarrassing development.

Less than an hour later, the server of Nanjiang News Network was overloaded to the point of crashing. Incoming users couldn’t even open the link.

Thankfully, there were various articles and reports shared by other media outlets, and some smaller websites recorded and posted pirated versions of the video.

There wasn’t much concern about copyright infringement on the internet at the time.

Some official video websites labeled individual videos as ’shared’ content, rendering any legal action essentially meaningless.

Soon, numerous discussions broke out online.

On the search engine’s trending topics, ’Zhao Yi Demonstrates Rubik’s Cube Restoration’ took up a slot almost immediately.

’Zhao Yi’ was seen in the trending topics.

This was progress!

Previously, while ’Jia Hongning’ was a popular search term online, all references to Zhao Yi labelled him as ’the genius hacker’, as if he didn’t deserve to be known by his own name. Perhaps ’Zhao Yi’ just didn’t have the same appeal as ’genius hacker’.

Finally, Zhao Yi’s name made the leaderboard.

Other related trending topics included ’The Inside Story of the Rubik’s Cube Contest in Brain Power Burst’ and ’Jia Hongning’s Dishonorable Victory’, ranking 9th and 49th respectively.

Heated debates were brewing online, with voices of wonder and speculation everywhere--

"I can’t believe the data are real! I didn’t believe it at first, considering even a doctor said it was impossible to calculate!"

"This must have been calculated!"

"So ’Brain Power Burst’ competition had a hidden agenda? It must’ve! While watching the show, I felt like Jia Hongning won too easily!"

"Poor Zhou Junkai! Honest people always get screwed over!"

"I didn’t know you could cheat in a Rubik’s Cube contest. I always thought it was a test of wit and agility!"

"So we were all fooled by the show?"

"It’s all entertainment! All for ratings. Jia Hongning just had more attention-grabbing looks, so he won....."

"Did you guys notice? When he was restoring the Rubik’s Cube in the video, it took him less than ten seconds! The genius hacker is also a whizz at the Rubik’s Cube!"

"Yes, he’s incredibly quick. He’s no worse than Jia Hongning. I bet if they competed in Rubik’s cube restoration, Jia Hongning would lose!"

"Not necessarily!"

"I support the genius hacker, Zhao Yi. ’Brain Power Burst’ is supposed to be a mental challenge, right? The Rubik’s cube seems more like a test of speed rather than mental agility. The real challenge should be in determining who can restore the Rubik’s Cube in the least number of steps!"

"The genius hacker will definitely win! He’ll crush it with his superior IQ!"

"..."

When Zhao Yi returned home and logged onto his computer after school, he read the comments online for a while, a smirk revealing itself on his lips.

Posting a video in response had been the right move.

The online slander had visibly decreased this time; it was almost nonexistent.

Of course.

Science was the most important.

Compared to trash talking a stranger like Jia Hongning, designing programming algorithms was much more crucial.

Zhao Yi opened his coding software and resumed his work.

Although he had identified the key to designing the algorithm, the actual design process was still complex. His programming work remained focused on using the analyzed data to determine whether the first step would bring the Rubik’s Cube closer to restoration or make it more scrambled.

Zhao Yi had already given up on the former.

Even if he could directly determine whether a step was beneficial for restoration, and could use the "Connection Law" to analyze the assessment process; the resultant program design would be overly complex. Furthermore, even if the entire program was perfectly written, the amount of computational operations required for running it would be far too large.

This could be likened to the process of studying.

If an exam score was treated as the goal, whether completing a single exercise would improve one’s score would be difficult to say. But one thing was for sure: doing one more exercise certainly wouldn’t hurt.

It was incredibly challenging to determine, based on a single modification, whether the Rubik’s Cube was closer to being restored or not. However, determining whether a change was ’detrimental’ was comparably easier.

Now all of Zhao Yi’s efforts were focused on determining whether the first step made the Rubik’s Cube more scrambled.

It wasn’t long.

Two hours passed in a blink.

Zhao Yi stretched leisurely, looking at the long coding script on the screen.

He looked closely.

Very closely!

The more he looked, the more excited he became!

Some of the algorithms and judgment analysis processes he had created in the interim were nothing short of beauty in algorithm design. As he admired his own work, he felt a huge sense of accomplishment.

"I must record this!"

Zhao Yi pulled out a pen and paper, taking down the problems he encountered, the solutions and progress he had made.

The page of notes filled up rapidly.

"This is a completely new filtering method, I think I should name it ’Effective and Irrelevant Carry Filtering’. If I put all of this together, maybe I could publish a paper?"

Zhao Yi’s eyes lit up.

Now he knew the use of the Research Coin. He couldn’t just keep spending without earning more Research Coins.

Designing a ’Rubik’s Cube Calculator’ could earn him some Research Coins, but having a paper published in a prestigious journal and increasing his academic reputation and influence could certainly earn him more Research Coins, possibly even accumulating lots of Study Coins as bonus?

So...

He had to take record-keeping seriously!