茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

Chapter Ninety-Five: Baldy’s Wingman

Although Xiang Kun, who was always paying half attention to Zi Cheng’s situation, heard him Rat him out immediately, he pretended not to know and was busy looking down at his phone with his back to Zi Cheng and the two ladies until Zi Cheng called him directly…

Xiang Kun reluctantly got up, greeted the two ladies, pulled over a chair, sat down next to Zi Cheng, and gave him a stare, as if to say: Didn’t you say you’d handle this yourself? Why are you “selling” me out so quickly?

Zi Cheng also glared back at him, as if to say: I really can’t stand it anymore, brother!

Indeed, after he finished what Xiang Kun taught him to say, the two ladies didn’t follow his rhythm in conversation. They raised all sorts of questions to challenge him. He had no choice but to call Xiang Kun over for help after a few rounds.

The short-haired girl with healthy complexion looked interestingly at Xiang Kun who had just taken his seat. She asked, “Your friend said you can tell fortunes, is that true?”

Xiang Kun had considered explaining that he heard a bit of their conversation when he passed by them on the way from the bathroom, and based on that, he made some guesses. But then, he decided it would only provoke more questions and wouldn’t accomplish much. So he nodded vaguely, “Sort of.”

The one wearing glasses asked, ‘Your friend said he’s the 118th generation disciple of Maoshan. That’s not real, is it? And you… compared to a Taoist priest, you look more like a monk!”

Zi Cheng interjected quietly, “Um…l think I said 113th generation disciple …”

The girl with glasses glared at him, “So, is it real or not?”

“Fake, all fake…” Zi Cheng directly confessed.

Xiang Kun had to explain, “Speaking about the lineage of Taoism was just a metaphor. Actually, we use scientific methods for divination, like computer programming, quantum mechanics, etc.”

“Quantum mechanics?” the short-haired lady chuckled, then turned to her friend with glasses.

The latter adjusted her glasses with her index finger, gazing at Xiang Kun with an amused look, “Quantum mechanics? Utilizing wave functions? Or ‘uncertainty principle’?”

Uh, was that hitting Xiang Kun’s soft spot now? He didn’t believe that he could fool others with quantum mechanics by merely reading a few introductory books for a while. So he simply ignored her somewhat teasing question, “We have used the latest Al neural network as the basis of our fortune-telling research. We employ a TensorFlow-based backend to build a Convolutional neural network model. Through large-scale data comparison and learning, we can calculate a person’s fortune.”

Xiang Kun instantly judged from the girls’ expressions, and their heartbeat and breathing patterns, that they didn’t understand this. Humph, are you stunned? You are good at Physics, but are you also good at programming?

While Xiang Kun was talking, he gave Zi Cheng a look, as if to say: It’s your turn, brother. I’m playing the wingman here!

Zi Cheng rose to the challenge instantly, “Yes, we started to work on the digitalization of fortune-telling research when we were undergraduates ten years ago. Look, this is the fortune-telling app we developed then. It had over 200,000 downloads and was considerably popular.”

While talking, he searched for an app named “Ma Men Universe Fate Analyzer” on his phone. However, this app is a PC software that doesn’t support mobile systems, at least it looked impressive.

Indeed, Xiang Kun and Zi Cheng developed this app during college, part of their numerous “useless programs”.

This fortune-telling software did not use any deep learning or neural networks at all. It simply packaged all the contents available online such as horoscopes, eight characters of birth times, and personality tests, then provided these to users through an ugly interface.

The download counts on the internet were manipulated by them…

The biggest reason for developing this software was that it included a “Couple’s name compatibility index”. If the male’s name was “Liu Chuang” or “Xiang Kun”, the result would be a perfect score of 100, with lots of praise for being a match made in heaven.

They then anonymously distributed the software link in their school forum, claiming that the software was “incredibly accurate!”

But there was a problem with this software. When testing the couple’s compatibility index, if the male’s name was “Liu Chuang” or “Xiang Kun”, no matter what the female’s name was, even if it was “Godzilla” or “Pig Steel Hyena”, the resulting score was still a perfect 100 and a match made in heaven…

Later on, when people discovered this trick, the names of the two creators were tweaked in all sorts of ways. They hastily made patches to the software, but it was too late. This was their most famous incident in the school forum.

However, nowadays, Liu Chuang unashamedly and proudly showcases this shoddy software. Xiang Kun also nods in agreement, saying, “Everything in the real world can be digitized. As long as the data is sufficient, everything can be

calculated.”

The girl with short hair laughed, “Oh? So, you’ve just calculated our information using this software? Didn’t you say that this software doesn’t have a mobile version? How did you use it just now?”

“Of course I didn’t use this software. It’s just our practice exercise from ten years ago.” Xiang Kun didn’t answer her question directly but pulled out a square-folded paper from his pocket and handed it over, “Check this out.”

The short-haired girl took the paper with an intrigued expression. As she unfolded it, she found that it was a blank paper with many folds, seemingly folded into various shapes. Unable to comprehend the meaning, she handed it to the girl with glasses and asked Xiang Kun, “What’s special about this paper?” This paper was indeed special!

This was “A4 Paper 1” that had been in contact with Xiang Kun. After he gave the coin to Liu Shiling and flicked the ballpoint pen bead onto the earring boy, the only items left with him that had established a connection were two pieces of A4 paper. Although he hadn’t planned to use it for anything, he always carried “A4 Paper 1” with him. Unexpectedly, it came in handy now.

“You can borrow a pen from the bar, write down a random number on the paper, fold it into a small piece, and hold it in your hand when you come back. I’ll tell you what’s written on the paper. If I guess it right, both of you should buy us a drink each, how about it?” Xiang Kun suggested.

“What if you don’t guess it right?”

“We buy drinks for you?”

“If you can’t guess it, either of you two will go to the entrance, face the road on the opposite side and shout ‘I’m a liar’ three times, how about it?” The short-haired girl suggested, raising her chin slightly.

“No problem.” Xiang Kun replied promptly.

After the two girls whispered to each other, the girl with glasses took out a neutral pen from her bag next to her, carrying the A4 paper to the other side of the aisle. She placed the A4 paper on the wall, out of their sight line, and wrote a number on it.

When she returned, the girl with glasses held the folded paper in her hand and said, “Guess!”

Xiang Kun glanced at her and said, “Before guessing the number, let’s warm up first. Turn your hands behind your back, pass the paper between your hands, and I can guess which hand you have the paper in.”

So the girl with glasses turned the hand holding the paper block behind her back. Xiang Kun naturally guessed correctly. She tried twice more unconvincedly but was still incorrect. The short-haired girl next to her looked vigilantly in her direction to see if there was any “accomplice” of Xiang Kun giving him cues, but found nothing.

After testing five times, the girl with glasses resignedly placed the folded paper on the table in front of her, staring at Xiang Kun and said, “Guess the number.

What do you think I wrote?”

“Six, in Chinese.” Xiang Kun stated confidently.

It wasn’t that the paper was in contact with him, and he knew what was written on it. He took out this paper just to help him locate the position of the sound.

The sounds of different strokes of writing numbers are different. He naturally couldn’t differentiate complex words based on the sound of strokes, but there is no big problem in distinguishing numbers. The only issue was how to locate the sound in a relatively noisy environment.

The wise girl with glasses didn’t write Arabic numerals but wrote the number six in Chinese.

As soon as he heard the sound of the four strokes, he immediately determined that she was not writing Arabic numerals. Among the Chinese numerals, only five and six have four strokes, but there’s a significant difference in the fold of five, and this sound is easy to distinguish, so it could only be six.

Seeing Xiang Kun simply stating the number the girl wrote on her still folded A4 paper without even touching or looking at it, the girl with glasses was amazed. She exchanged a surprised glance with her companion, and her first reaction was to look up at the ceiling where she had just written, trying to confirm if there were any surveillance…

As long as they were convinced, it was fine. Xiang Kun gave a slight smile to the two girls and spoke, “Everything can be computed, that’s the magic of calculation. Every crease on that paper has its own wisdom, and to explain the principle, it’s highly complex. My friend is a high-achiever from Stanford, and he has done a lot of related research over the years…”

Speaking of this, Xiang Kun gave Zi Cheng a meaningful glance: now it’s your turn, I’m almost running out of fuel here!