?Chapter 547:


    William stepped out, looking for Paul, but paused when he spotted a crowd gathered downstairs. Right in the middle sat Ste and Nina, side by side, both locked in front of theirputers.


    He narrowed his eyes slightly. “What’s going on?” he asked.


    A nearby researcher quickly exined, “Sylvia and Nina are having apetition. They’re testing whose calction method is faster and more urate.”


    William raised his brows in surprise. Apetition? Ste never liked the spotlight, especially not in a ce like the institute. If she agreed to a public face-off like this, then Nina must’ve provoked her again.


    Frankly, William had never had a good impression of Nina. She’d only been here a few days and was already ying dirty.


    Once this project wrapped up, he nned to pull a few strings to send her right back overseas.


    Still, as he thought about it, his eyes were already drifting back to Ste.


    People always said a man was most attractive when he was focused on his work—but to William, no one looked more captivating than Ste did when she was immersed in hers.


    That quiet,ser-sharp focus of hers—it was a rare kind of brilliance. The kind that never needed an audience.


    At twenty-five minutes and twelve seconds, Ste clicked the timer and pulled her hands away from the keyboard. A string of clean, final data lit up her screen. Sandra’s eyes went wide.


    “Sylvia, you’re so fast!” she burst out, practically bouncing on her feet. The shout startled Nina, who was still typing furiously. Her brows twitched into a scowl.


    Hester snapped, “Can you not? So rude!”


    Sandra flushed, feeling a little awkward, but didn’t say anything back. She could let it go—Ste had already won. No need to stoop to the loser’s level.


    Hester, ring at Ste, who was now calmly sipping her water, couldn’t help sneering, “Speed doesn’t mean uracy. Might wanna wait for the final results before you start celebrating.”


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    Sandra, who’d been keeping it together, finally lost patience. “What are you even talking about? Even if the uracy’s a bit off, it’ll still be a tie. What’s there to be smug about?”


    And she wasn’t wrong. If Nina finished under forty minutes—even if her results were more urate—it would just be a draw.


    But Nina’s brain was in chaos. She’d pushed herself as hard as she could, yet Sylvia’s screen had shed pleted” first. She knew she couldn’t win. The only chance she had left was forcing a draw.


    So she slowed down a bit, went back to double-check her work—anything to make her results airtight. Finally, after a careful review, she hit the stop button. Twenty-nine minutes, fifty seconds.


    With both contestants finished, Hester stepped forward to check Nina’s uracy.


    There was no way to manipte the numbers—this was data from a previous high-level project. All results were archived and traceable.


    Any attempt to cheat would blow up on the spot.


    It didn’t take long for the results toe out. Ste’s uracy was 0.08% higher than Nina’s.


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