The Nerd Who Conquered The World

Chapter 15

On the day of the graduation, the graduation hall was fully packed.

Every seat taken, the high ceiling above them catching and amplifying the collective noise of hundreds of people in gowns. Family members were in the galleries all waiting. Two local media camera crews at the back of the room.

The ceremony moved through its formal stages. With the songs and administrative announcements. A long address from Dean Xu about the institution's legacy that the front rows listened to attentively and the back rows tolerated politely.

Then Dean Xu adjusted the microphone.

"Knowledge and character have always been the twin pillars of this institution. Today I want to invite someone to this stage who has demonstrated in the three weeks since he graduated what those two pillars can build when they are combined." He looked out across the hall. "Our outstanding graduate. The student who used his knowledge to create a cybersecurity tool that secured a thirty million yuan deal before the ink on his degree was dry. Lin Chen please come and share some words with your fellow graduates."

From somewhere in the middle of the hall a sound erupted that was significantly louder than the polite applause of everyone else.

"WOOOOOO! THAT IS MY FRIEND! LIN CHEN IS MY FRIEND!"

Liang Hao was on his feet in his graduation gown, bouncing, his chubby frame drawing stares and laughs from the twenty rows around him. Someone tried to pull him back into his seat but resisted.

Lin Chen shook his head at that and walked to the podium.

He stood there for a moment and looked out across the hall, taking it all in..

He recognized some faces, the coursemates who had filmed the humiliation video and posted it with laughing captions. The ones who had commented that Su Xiaowan was right to leave. He saw people who had walked past him in corridors for four years without seeing him.

He saw Su Xiaowan in the far corner, sitting in a corner, her eyes finding him immediately and then dropping to the floor. Beside her, trying to be invisible, was Wang Hao.

Lin Chen looked at both of them. Then he looked forward at the rest of the hall, he leaned slightly toward the microphone.

"Most people told me knowledge is useless."

The hall was quiet.

"I heard it more than once. That knowledge can't pay rent. That knowledge can't buy a future. Without wealth, knowledge is just a hobby." He paused. "I'm standing here today as a testimony that those people were wrong."

Some people in the crowd shifted. Some looked at their hands as others looked toward the corner where Su Xiaowan and Wang Hao was sitting with mocking looks.

"Wealth is powerful. I won't tell you it isn't. But wealth alone cannot open every door. There are problems in this world, real problems, complex problems, problems that money throws itself at and cannot solve that only knowledge can unlock. So whatever you know, hold onto it. Every subject you've studied, every skill you've built even if it feels useless today, even if someone tells you it will never amount to anything it compounds. It builds. It connects to things you cannot yet see."

He looked out at the hall one more time. When he spoke again his voice was quieter, less like a speech and more like something he was saying to himself out loud.

"I almost believed them. There was a night, not long ago, when I sat alone and almost believed every word they said about me." A brief pause. "I'm glad I kept reading."

The hall was completely silent for one full second.

Then the applause started slow at first, then rising quickly, then loud enough that the ceiling seemed to press down with it.

Liang Hao was standing before anyone else in the room, yelling something that was no longer words, his graduation gown half off one shoulder, completely unbothered.

In the far corner, Su Xiaowan and Wang Hao stood up quietly. They moved toward the side exit without looking at each other. A few people near them noticed and leaned together to whisper.

Lin Chen watched them go as he said nothing. He felt nothing dramatic about it.

They had simply become irrelevant.

---

After the ceremony the hall filled with movement and noise. Three company representatives who had come specifically to approach Lin Chen in person positioned themselves near the stage exit.

Director Huang from Longfeng Technology Group reached him first. "Mr. Lin Chen, we've been following your work very closely and we would love to discuss a potential partnership"

"Thank you Director Huang," Lin Chen said, still moving. "I'm not taking meetings today."

"Of course, of course, but if you'd just consider"

Lin Chen had already passed him.

The second representative from Xingyun Capital stepped forward. "Mr. Lin, we represent a venture capital with considerable assets under management and we believe your next project"

"Not today."

The third didn't even get a full sentence out. Lin Chen walked through all of them with the same polite immovability and found Liang Hao in the crowd, gown now fully off and carried over one arm, still buzzing.

He took out his phone and typed a message and sent it.

Liang Hao felt his phone buzz. He looked down. Read it.

Now it's time to start the real plan.

He looked up. Lin Chen was already moving toward the exit.

Liang Hao looked at the message one more time. Then he folded the gown over his arm, straightened up genuinely straightened, no comedy in it and followed.