Chapter 57: Posting

Professor Dai understood the whole story; it was, after all, another result of over-politicization. Hosting an international event in a city should have been an ordinary affair, but in order to exaggerate their achievements, the officials involved tried every possible way to amplify its impact, such as loosening the requirements for extra points in the high school entrance exams. The response was swift: almost all students in seventh and eighth grades signed up, even schools like No. 2 Middle School, which had never offered math olympiad courses, forced every student to participate, hoping to get lucky. What was supposed to be a proper competition turned into a mess without anyone realizing it!

Professor Dai was an educator himself. Hearing about this left him furious. "What do you plan to do?"

Xiao Cheng replied earnestly, "Professor Dai, isn't this whole thing absurd?"

"Yes!"

"Are you angry?"

"Of course!"

"I'm angry too, so I want to voice my criticism online!"

The old professor nodded. "Right! You should speak out! Where will you post it? I'll support you!"

The professor had his own notebook, which he took out. The two sat together—Xiao Cheng at the desktop computer, Professor Dai at the writing desk with his laptop.

"Please review the related information first. I’ll let you know once my post is up."

Truth be told, Xiao Cheng had little experience with computers. His typing was still at the two-finger level, and the so-called computer classes at school were perfunctory, teaching nothing substantial. But this time was different. He glanced at the keyboard, memorized the position of each key, placed his index fingers on the raised F and J keys, and arranged the rest in sequence. Most people need long practice to type without looking, converting brain memory into muscle memory, but Xiao Cheng didn’t. As he typed, he broke down the words into pinyin and found each letter on the keyboard; this process, combined with key pressing, was almost as fast as touch-typing.

He knew how to use search engines. He opened "Mang Search," typed in "International Mathematical Olympiad," and went through past scores, rules, question setters, committee members, and other related information. These details might not be immediately useful, but Xiao Cheng remembered them anyway; you never know what factor might cause a surprise, and his two contracts would only take effect upon winning, so he couldn't afford mistakes.

After reviewing the basics, it was time to post. Xiao Cheng’s fingers flew across the keyboard, and soon a piece titled "Is This a Math Olympiad or a Lottery? Exams Are Just About Luck?" was done. He logged into the world’s largest Chinese social network, "Mang Friends," and published it on his personal blog. At least his classmates could see it now.

In a sea of faces, you and I are friends—Mang Friends.

He then edited the article, changed the title to "Revealed: Tricks Commonly Played in the Math Olympiad!" and posted it to several of the most popular Mang forums. As expected, the forums were bustling; within moments, there were four or five replies, though most were just casual comments. He told Professor Dai the address, "The post’s up, go for it, old man!"

The professor was truly dedicated, leaving a thousand-word comment reflecting on the phenomenon from various angles, making Xiao Cheng feel a bit embarrassed.

The post was being continuously reposted. Xiao Cheng switched windows and accounts, his brain working at high speed, which showed in his efficiency—within just ten minutes, the article was reposted over a hundred times under different titles. Especially in Mang forum’s local section, Xiao Cheng used different accounts to bump the post, making it a hot topic.

But the good times didn’t last. The post was deleted!

"Sorry, the post you are viewing has been removed. In five seconds, you will automatically return to the homepage, or you can choose to close the window..."

What on earth does this mean?

Although the article had been reposted many times, the biggest traffic came from Mang forum’s local section. Why was it suddenly deleted?

He sent a private message to the moderator, and the reply came quickly: it wasn’t deleted by the management team, but by someone with higher privileges—possibly an internal Mang Search staff member. The moderator apologized, saying there was nothing he could do.

Xiao Cheng turned to Professor Dai, who was clearly furious as well. "What happened?"

"It was deleted. I contacted the moderator; it wasn’t them. The person who deleted it has higher management rights—probably someone inside Mang Search."

"Damn it! If they delete it, where else can I post?" The professor was indignant, typing furiously. Soon, a long microblog post was ready. He grabbed his phone and began calling old friends one by one. "Old Zhou! Go online, have you seen my new post on the microblog? It’s about the Math Olympiad. You’ve got lots of followers, help me share it!"

"Little Li, do me a favor—share my microblog post! Yes, you’re online? Even better! Yes, it’s the latest one I posted. What’s it about? Help out your old buddy!"

These old friends were quite loyal!

While Professor Dai made calls, Xiao Cheng was busy reposting the article again. This time, it was even faster: less than a minute after posting, it was deleted, and even the account couldn’t log in! Xiao Cheng tried a secondary account, but the page wouldn’t load at all, showing: "Your IP address is denied access. Please contact the administrator."

Damn it!

Most people would just give up, but Xiao Cheng was different. High intelligence gives one the right to be stubborn.

He stopped trying Mang forum’s local section and instead typed "web programming languages" into the search engine.

The results were numerous: hypertext markup language, extensible markup language, scripting languages, common gateway interface ASP, PHP, Script, and more—most of which he didn’t understand. No matter; Xiao Cheng checked each entry, climbing the web like a spider, following the main thread. Each concept brought new terms, which he continued to decipher. It was difficult at first, but as he progressed, the new terms grew fewer, and his understanding became clearer.

There are many languages for writing web pages. The simplest pages can be built with hypertext markup language. Forget the intimidating idea of programming—it's just telling the browser what the page should look like, how big the text is, its color, format, the spacing between words and lines, which images to insert, which links to include, and so on. Once you grasp the basic format, it becomes easy. Looking at the source code, it’s no longer a mess, but an orderly hypertext structure; Xiao Cheng could directly see the page’s content in the code. It’s not difficult—just a few simple steps of deduction.

So this is programming?

——————

Next chapter: Liu Mang makes his entrance. Guess what Liu Mang is up to, friends? Send some flowers and applause to welcome Liu Mang’s return!

In the review section, a reader said they’d top the charts on the tenth. I suggested waiting until next Monday, since rewarding works in QQ Reading on Mondays helps them the most. But now I wonder, after a Double Eleven, does that friend still have money left to reward anyone?

Let Liu Mang return on Double Eleven—Old Dao really put thought into this...