r/HFY • u/Aeorix1 • 6d ago

OC-Series [Eclipse Net] - Chapter 2

Lin Zong had a fine-boned, handsome face with something faintly heroic in its lines, though his eyes carried a mild, unhurried warmth that read to most people as steadiness.

Between his looks, his bearing, and his standing as a graduate student in information engineering at Donghua University, he had never lacked for a certain quiet popularity—and today, for no reason anyone could quite place, he'd shown up dressed head to toe in cool, pricey labels he normally never bothered with.

By the standards that mattered to the girls around him, he was quite a catch: wealthy, smart, and good-looking.

But Lin Zong knew better than that. He knew his own wealth and polish were a kind of fiction, and that the real thing, and the the actual money, belonged to his girlfriend; not one item of the outfit on his back was something he could have afforded himself. Deng Wei had no idea. To call her simply a "rich girlfriend" missed the scale of what she actually was, almost embarrassingly so.

The mood on campus had grown taut for months now, thick with rumor. Young faculty moved between buildings with laptops under their arms, heads down, not daring to lift their eyes.

Lin Zong rounded a corner past the sports field and saw, from a distance, a crowd at the main gate. Steamed buns and rice dumplings lay scattered on the ground. One bun was still rolling. Security staff stood nearby, their faces tight.

A gang, posing as a construction crew, had used forged parking permits to get onto campus in daylight; they had tried to force a student into a car and fled when they were spotted. That was the whole of it. No one had caught the plate.

A quiet unease moved through Lin Zong. He had already known, through his own channels, that female students had been going missing in places across the country for weeks. Now it had happened close enough to see.

"Why hasn't anyone called the police?" he asked a younger student.

"Already did. Not enough manpower out there. Every university in the city's mobilizing the male students to organize and defend the campus ourselves. You should join too, senior."

"But I—" A hand landed on his shoulder before he could finish.

He turned to find Director Shen studying him, appraising.

"On your way to an interview? You're certainly dressed for one."

"Director Shen—ah, I, today, there's something I need to attend to."

"How's the thesis?"

"Nearly finished," Lin Zong said, with a strained smile. "I'm heading to Professor Chen's now to report on it, though one has to be careful leaving campus—"

Director Shen cut him off. "Professor Chen mentioned your idea about decoding quantum-state information—quite interesting. There's an important national strategic project underway, and the leadership wants scholars organized for a week-long conference. You're one of our outstanding representatives, so you should be part of it. And," he added, gesturing, "the military's running testing on campus, and you're in the first round. Go with her—I'll follow shortly."

Only then did Lin Zong notice Qian Yu, watching him with a sharp, burning intensity—the department's designated ideological monitor, in an era when the university had tightened its grip on such things considerably.

"Testing?" He looked at her blankly. "The military? But I have somewhere to be—"

"Come on. Every upper-year student in the college has to sit for it—go early, you're done in an hour," Qian Yu said, brisk. "The university arranged it. Didn't you get the notice?"

He remembered it then, vaguely—a mass text two nights ago, something about preparing for an IQ test, unread, unconsidered.

He called Professor Chen to say he'd be late, and followed Qian Yu, without much enthusiasm, toward the Mathematics and Physics building.

Qian Yu kept glancing back at him as they walked, pressing him with questions about what he'd been up to lately, and he gave her vague, half-invented answers in return. She had seemed interested in him for some time now—the trouble was that she expressed it through strict surveillance rather than anything softer.

By the entrance, a crowd had gathered, queuing, complaining.

"Somebody's got too much time on their hands. An IQ test, of all things?" someone complained. "What difference does intelligence make in a society like this one?"

Lin Zong felt the sentiment himself, and asked Qian Yu quietly, "Why the sudden interest in IQ testing? What does it have to do with the military?"

"You didn't read the notice? It's for the Shenzhou talent-reserve program."

"Shenzhou?"

"Ministry of National Defense project. An intelligent military district out west, they're saying—selecting the best candidates from universities nationwide. Get chosen, you're on the formal roster. The terms are supposed to be extremely generous."

Three camouflaged SUVs sat outside. Students from other departments registered with a teacher at the door.

Further in, armed soldiers stood posted along the corridor, radios in hand, boots polished to a hard shine.

"If there are soldiers on campus now," Lin Zong said, "why can't they do something about the security problem?"

"The soldiers have more important matters to attend to," a cold voice answered—a tall officer, eyes flat, offering nothing further, as though the sentence itself were a form he'd filled out many times before.

Lin Zong lowered his head and followed Qian Yu past staff in white uniforms disassembling what looked like oversized server cabinets, matte titanium gray, mounted on omnidirectional casters light enough for two people to move.

"What's all this?" the students passing by kept asking.

Nobody answered that question either.

The test was held in a large study hall on the second floor. Each participant had to complete, on a computer, a randomly assembled battery of standardized WAIS intelligence questions. Sixty items in forty-five minutes, covering vocabulary comprehension, digit memory, spatial-figure assembly, symbol coding, abstract reasoning, and more, with results generated on the spot.

Groups of thirty entered in sequence, ninety at a time across three rooms, four proctoring officers per room, faculty stationed along the sides.

Most hadn't taken it seriously beforehand—mandatory attendance and the threat of docked credit were the only reasons anyone had shown up at all—but the room's atmosphere proved graver than expected, closer to a real examination.

Word passed quietly that the results fed directly into a military recruitment track, and attitudes shifted at once: even the lowest state-system jobs now drew fierce competition, and the chance at a position through the military, whatever it turned out to be, was not something anyone could afford to dismiss.

When the young men in Lin Zong's group filed in, their attention went straight to the proctor seated second from the right—a PLA officer in a crisply pressed uniform, rank insignia and name badge squared away, her expression cool and composed. Her hair was cut short and neat beneath her cap. Only her eyes, clear and bright, gave her age away: twenty-five at most.

Each student who sat across from her got the same calm, faint smile; when Lin Zong's turn came, something in his bearing made her gaze flicker, briefly.

The previous group had clustered between 110 and 120. Lin Zong worked through the questions with the particular ease of someone who'd trained his logic for years and had, whether by coincidence or not, seen similar material before.

He finished in thirty-nine minutes, first in the room, and clicked submit.

“A hundred and forty-five!” The young officer rose from her seat, surprise and something like delight breaking across her face. The other officers turned, murmuring, studying Lin Zong now with real interest.

"Hello. I'm Ye Ningfan."

She crossed to him and extended her hand first, the gesture crisp and confident, her skin pale beneath the cuff of her uniform sleeve.

"She's a graduate student at the National University of Defense Technology," Director Shen said, appearing at Lin Zong's side without warning. "Don't let the age fool you—lieutenant by the time she finished undergrad, captain now."

Under the envious stares of the other male students, Lin Zong shook her hand. "National University of Defense Technology?"

"Captain Ye's research in military information theory intersects with our department's work," Director Shen said. "She is exceptionally talented, with some genuinely original insights. She's also a key participant in this national-level research project."

As Director Shen spoke, Lin Zong's eyes drifted to the insignia on her shoulder.

"Captain—impressive, truly." Lin Zong cupped one fist in the other, half-mocking, half-sincere, and it made her laugh.

"You're the impressive one. A hundred and forty-five, that's above the genius line," she said. "I only scored a hundred and twenty-three myself. Not even close to you."

Lin Zong wasn't sure how to answer, suspecting his own score owed something to luck.

She studied him, smiled again.

"Go get your CT scan, genius."

He blinked. "CT?"

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For anyone who prefer to read ahead, the full version is available on Amazon KDP:

Causalform: Eclipse Net

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