A little after 9 p.m., Zhao Yuan finished up and returned to his dorm.
Wu Yan was still out having a good time and hadn't returned. Liu Zhu and Wang Rongfeng were glued to their laptops, playing League of Legends together. From the looks of it, they probably hadn't stopped since they got back to the dorm that afternoon.
After chatting with them for a bit, Zhao Yuan opened Wu Yan's laptop and typed in the address for the university forum.
On the West Hua Medical University forum, there was a dedicated medical section. It was filled with questions from teachers and professors for students to answer. Even some alumni who were now working professionals would post difficult clinical cases for the underclassmen to research.
This section had a massive number of questions, which was exactly what Zhao Yuan was looking for.
After registering an account, Zhao Yuan searched for all the questions related to the Essence and Qi Theory and the Yin Yang Five Elements Theory and began answering them.
At first, Zhao Yuan wasn't particularly fast. However, after answering a few questions and getting his mind warmed up, his speed picked up considerably. Eventually, he only needed to glance at a question for the answer to pop into his head.
Zhao Yuan then went on a question-answering blitz, rapidly posting his solutions in one thread after another.
He even muttered to himself as he worked:
'What is Yin Yang? This one's easy. The Information Leaf has a lengthy discourse on Yin Yang; it's the culmination of Wu Peng's lifelong insights. I'll just pull a passage from it...'
'What is the significance for Traditional Chinese Medicine of classifying things according to the attributes of the Five Elements? Hmm, this is a good question. It's the perfect chance to solidify what I just learned about the Five Elements Theory...'
Caught up in the thrill of answering questions, Zhao Yuan had no idea what an uproar his posting spree would cause on the university forum.
This was peak hour for the university forum. While most people were hanging out in the off-topic section, some would browse the other boards to check for new posts. It wasn't long before someone discovered that in the medical section, the latest replies across several pages were all from the same person. He had even necro-posted in tons of ancient threads.
He was flooding the whole board!
The news spread quickly, and students swarmed over, posting threads to condemn the behavior.
No one believed Zhao Yuan was seriously answering questions. His posting speed was just too fast; it looked like he was just trolling. Moreover, students from other majors hadn't studied Traditional Chinese Medicine, so they couldn't understand his answers. The few posts that tried to defend him were quickly drowned in a sea of condemnation.
However, none of this affected Zhao Yuan. He was completely engrossed in his work and had no time to pay attention to anything else.
Seeing that the spamming continued and that their condemnations had no effect, people started contacting the moderators of the medical section.
Han Xiaoyun, a student in the Health Inspection program, was one of the four moderators. She was singing at a KTV with a few close friends when she got a call from a classmate. "Xiaoyun, get on the university forum, quick! Someone is maliciously flooding the medical board! You're a moderator, go get the situation under control!"
'Flooding our university's forum? Has this guy got a death wish?' Han Xiaoyun frowned. She logged into the forum on her phone to take a look. Sure enough, several consecutive pages of the latest replies were all from the same ID: "A Man Who Wants to Be a Witch Doctor." Only the latest replies in the top few threads were not from this user.
'A Man Who Wants to Be a Witch Doctor? What kind of weird name is that? The witch doctors in video games are all hideously ugly, and this guy wants to be their man? He must have some seriously weird tastes,' Han Xiaoyun snarked, clearly misunderstanding the ID's meaning.
Han Xiaoyun clicked open the top few threads and took a look. It wasn't that "A Man Who Wants to Be a Witch Doctor" hadn't replied in those threads; it was that numerous people had replied after him to condemn his actions.
"Caught a wild spammer! You got a death wish, coming to our university's forum to cause trouble?"
"Where are the mods? Hurry up and ban this guy's account!"
"There was a guy just as cocky as you once. Now the grass on his grave is over three feet tall!"
"If you want to get famous, go spam Baidu Tieba. Don't come here to our university's forum to cause trouble. Otherwise, I, Ye Liangchen, will make you pay!"
After exiting those threads, Han Xiaoyun went into the admin backend to check the profile for "A Man Who Wants to Be a Witch Doctor." Discovering it was a brand-new account, she immediately concluded that the user was just there to cause trouble.
Since it was difficult to manage the forum from outside, Han Xiaoyun quickly called the other three moderators, only to find out they were also out. Resigned, she could only use her phone to ban the "A Man Who Wants to Be a Witch Doctor" ID for now and deal with the rest when she got back.
After banning the account, Han Xiaoyun didn't close the forum and go to sleep right away. Instead, she waited a while to see if the user would register a new account to continue causing trouble.
After several minutes passed with no further activity, she gave a self-satisfied smile. 'Looks like my swift and decisive action intimidated him. Perfect!'
Little did she know, Zhao Yuan hadn't been intimidated by her ban at all; he had simply finished all the questions.
Coincidentally, in the very moment before Han Xiaoyun banned his account, Zhao Yuan had just finished answering the last question on the forum related to the Essence and Qi Theory and the Yin Yang Five Elements Theory.
"Done."
After posting his reply, Zhao Yuan shut down the computer, completely unaware that his account had been banned.
Answering several hundred questions in one go helped Zhao Yuan solidify his grasp of the Essence and Qi Theory and the Yin Yang Five Elements Theory. However, such intense mental exertion left him exhausted. He collapsed onto his bed and was asleep in moments.
A little after eleven, Han Xiaoyun, having sung her fill, returned to her dorm. She turned on her computer, logged into the university forum, and began deleting Zhao Yuan's posts.
She had only deleted a few when her phone rang. Picking it up, she saw it was a call from Fang Yi, another one of the forum's moderators.
Fang Yi was also a teacher at the university.
"Han Xiaoyun, are you deleting posts?" Fang Yi's urgent voice came through the phone the moment she answered.
"I am," Han Xiaoyun replied. "Some clueless guy came to our forum to cause trouble..."
Before she could finish, Fang Yi anxiously cut her off. "Stop deleting them! Stop right now! Don't you dare delete another one! Do you have any idea? Because you were deleting those posts, Elder Liu is absolutely furious! He stormed over to my house, smashing cups and cursing up a storm!"
Han Xiaoyun was stunned. "Which Elder Liu?" she asked.
"How many Elder Lius do we have at this university? It's Elder Liu Mingzhang, of course! The one who's an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, just like Elder Xiao!" Fang Yi snapped.
"Huh?"
Even though she'd had a suspicion, the confirmation still gave Han Xiaoyun a huge shock.
'Why is Elder Liu so angry? Could he have been the one who posted all those replies? No, that's not right. Elder Liu's forum ID is his real name, not "A Man Who Wants to Be a Witch Doctor"... Oh no, don't tell me it's his alt account? But is he really that bored? Coming to the forum in the middle of the night just to spam and flood the boards?'
Fang Yi cut off her wild speculation. "What nonsense are you spouting? Elder Liu doesn't have an alt account. He's angry because those posts you were deleting are of immense value!"
'They were just a few spam posts. How could they possibly be of immense value?'
Han Xiaoyun was completely dumbfounded.