Huo Yao went to the laboratory after she was done with her last class in the afternoon.

She had been absent from the university for over a week, so there was a lot of work waiting for her. Since she was not around to help, her teammates were making slow progress.

“You’re finally back. If you kept this up any longer, we might have lost all our hair by the time you came back.” Wang Jing sighed and spoke dramatically.

Dai Jie nodded and said with a straight face, “She’s absolutely right. We were unable to make any further inroads into the project without you.”

Tang Jun continued typing on the keyboard as they chatted. He finally stopped and looked up at them.

He scolded them jokingly for being such grovelers before he quickly urged them. “Come on guys. We have to move quickly. The deadline is due in a couple of days. If we cannot finish in time, Prof Liu will pounce on the opportunity to stick more members into the team and that’s the last thing we want.”

“That’s true.” Wang Jing pulled out a chair and sat down. She sighed and said, “You have no idea. Mr. Qi has gone to Mr. Liu repeatedly about this. Thankfully, Mr. Liu stayed firm and refused to accept new members.”

Huo Yao raised her brow.

Wang Jing continued complaining about it for some time until she suddenly halted. She turned to look at Huo Yao. “Mr. Liu said Mr. Yuan won’t be joining us in the future.”

“I see. Got it,” acknowledged Huo Yao softly, looking completely unsurprised.

Wang Jing promptly asked. “Did you already know about this?”

Huo Yao nodded with a straight face.

After all, Yuan Huan was thrown into the Ministry of National Security, thanks to her. Even if Yuan Huan could get his backer to bail him out of the ministry, he would probably stay out of the public eye from then on.

Wang Jing did not continue with the subject and moved away her eyes. She simply sent all the data she had been working on recently to Huo Yao’s computer.

Even though Huo Yao was on sick leave for over a week, she had already come up with plans for the AI system. Since she had to deal with Yuan Huan, she had been procrastinating all that time.

When it was 5:30 pm, Huo Yao was done with fine-tuning phase II of the system. She even helped make some changes to Wang Jing and Dai Jie’s part of their work while she was at it.

Huo Yao clicked on the save button after she was done and sent the program to the three of them. She stood up and said, “I have to go. I’ve already sent you my work. Why don’t you take a look at it first and text me if you have any concerns?”

The three of them looked at Huo Yao speechlessly. She had genuinely finished working on the system, so they could only acknowledge her quietly.

After Huo Yao left, the three of them tapped on the program sent by Huo Yao. They had made up their mind to put in extra hours to finish the project.

The moment they were done looking at it, all three of them were dumbstruck.

“Are my eyes playing tricks on me? Did she spend just 1.5 hours to finish the entire system?” asked Dai Jie in disbelief.

Wang Jing rubbed her eyes. “Oh god! This is insane. I seriously suspect she has been acting dumb all this time!”

Tang Jun’s lips twitched. “What do you mean suspect? She definitely did it.”

The three of them glanced at each other before turning off their computers.

They certainly did not have to put in extra hours now. Instead, they could go out and have fun for once!

**

After leaving the campus, Huo Yao went straight to the restaurant to meet Old Mr. Pei.

When she arrived, Old Mr. Pei was already there.

“Hi, Huo Yao.” Old Mr. Pei smiled as he stood up from the seat. His beard was grey, but he looked strong and energetic.