Super God-Level Top Student

Upon hearing Su Mucheng's question, Qiao Ze shook his head and said, "Still no news. Li mentioned that it's normal for foreign journal editorial offices to be inefficient."

"Humph! Those bad guys!" Su Mucheng snorted in frustration.

Those foreign journal editors were too impolite.

Su Mucheng didn't find it exaggerated for Qiao Ze to finish a paper in eight hours and have it directly submitted by Li Jian Gao to an international core math journal.

She also didn't think it was normal for a paper to need revisions.

Not to mention that even Li Jian Gao found the reviewers' comments hilariously off-base.

In any case, Su Mucheng always believed that only saints could help reason over kin, and she was just a little woman.

So, of course, her Qiao Ze was right.

"Hm?" Qiao Ze looked at Su Mucheng again, seemingly unsure about where this sudden irritation was coming from.

"Aren't you angry, Qiao Ze?" Su Mucheng asked seriously in a low voice.

Qiao Ze shook his head and said earnestly, "If you choose to get angry with fools, or even argue with them, they will use their rich experience of having a low IQ to make you even angrier, thus trapping you in an unsolvable vicious circle. So I haven't gotten angry over such foolish things since middle school."

"But they're holding up your paper!" Su Mucheng said urgently.

Really, without exaggeration, she wanted Qiao Ze to shine with his own light more than anyone else in the world.

Qiao Ze shook his head and replied calmly, "I'm not obsessed with it, it's just a paper."

"But you wrote it in an afternoon," Su Mucheng replied petulantly, then tentatively asked, "So what are you planning to do? Didn't Li say before that once your paper gets published, you could apply for research funding support from the school? Now that it hasn't been published, can the school still provide support?"

Qiao Ze explained briefly, "Uncle Xu said he wanted to support us, but right now the institute has no money. Li's idea is that we formally start the project in the summer vacation. He'll try to get some more money, and by that time, the three hundred thousand from my mom's subsidy will also have arrived. That money should be enough to at least start building the framework."

Upon hearing this, Su Mucheng's eyes lit up. She whirled her gaze around and said, "Qiao Ze, can I also invest? I think your project will definitely be successful in the future, and I happen to have some money that I don't know what to do with. Why don't you use it on this project so you don't have to scrape money together from all over?"

Qiao Ze shook his head slightly and said, "To see preliminary results from this project, we need at least over one million. I'm even estimating using the lowest quotes from online."

"Hey, what a coincidence, Qiao Ze, I just happen to have over two million," Su Mucheng said immediately.

Qiao Ze gave Su Mucheng a look, somewhat puzzled, "How do you have so much money?"

"It's the New Year's money I've saved up from childhood! My grandfathers, grandmothers, maternal grandfather, maternal grandmother, seven aunts, eight aunts, and when I got full scores or came first in school, I got rewards. I didn't know how to spend it, so I just saved it up, and before I knew it, I had that much," Su Mucheng seriously counted on her fingers.

"Oh," Qiao Ze nodded, once again confronted with something beyond his knowledge.

After his father left, his grandparents sank into depression, and it wasn't long before they also passed away.

He definitely had relatives, but they rarely interacted.

His maternal grandparents didn't like him much either, so there wasn't much New Year's money to speak of—a hundred or two hundred, just token amounts he never handled.

However, Qiao Ze had never cared about these things. Whatever he needed, he would tell Lu Xiu Xiu, and she would generally try to buy it for him. Stay updated with m-v l|e'm,p y r

Nevertheless, he still explained to Su Mucheng earnestly, "Li and my project's biggest budget line is renting servers and computing power. This means if the project ultimately fails, all the initial investment costs are uncontrollable and non-recoverable, and it would be very difficult to stop the losses."

Su Mucheng blinked and said, "No problem! It's just New Year's money after all. If it's lost, it's lost. Isn't it normal to lose money in scientific research?"

After speaking, Su Mucheng finally remembered the matter Su Lixing entrusted to her and stuck out her tongue, saying, "I only have one requirement, which is to know the flow of this scientific research funding. I'll do the accounts so that when my parents ask me where all my New Year's money went, I can explain it to them."

Qiao Ze thought for a moment, then nodded and said, "If we succeed with this project, I think the results should be quite valuable. How to deal with it afterwards will be up to you to decide. All I need is to prove that my research approach was correct."

Su Mucheng shook her head and said, "Who said that? If it succeeds, the results should belong to both of us. We can discuss it. After all, it's your project. Oh, and maybe Li too."

Qiao Ze nodded and then picked up the phone, "Then I'll talk to Li about this."

Su Mucheng nodded excitedly, "Good idea!"

...

When Li Jian Gao received the call from Qiao Ze, he was completely taken aback.

Even when Qiao Ze and Su Mucheng both showed up in front of him, he hadn't entirely snapped out of it.

He was already caught in an inescapable cycle of self-doubt.

What kind of mentor was he?

The research topic, chosen by the student!

The paper, written by the student!

The paper revisions, personally made by the student!

The project's research funding, secured through the student's connections!

What had he done in all this?

It seemed all he did, with his associate professor status, was submit a paper, which then faced obstacles and hadn't gotten published!