From Xiantao to Mount Luojia: The Making of a Programming Legend

Prologue: The Fire Beneath Mount Luojia

In the summer of 1987, the air in Xiantao, Hubei, was as thick and sticky as melted candy. A young Lei Jun, 18 years old, clutched his admission letter to the Computer Science department of Wuhan University. The edges of the paper were already soft with sweat. The congratulations from neighbors and the proud smiles of his parents all seemed distant, as if seen through a fog. He didn't feel the ecstatic joy of his peers, the feeling of having "leapt through the dragon's gate." Instead, he felt a deeper, more urgent longing.

"What does the pinnacle of the world actually look like?"

This question was like a thorn in his heart. He had attended Mianyang Middle School, a provincial key school, so getting into a prestigious university was expected. But it wasn't enough. Not nearly enough. He had a faint sense that a new era was brewing on the other side of the horizon, and the key to decoding this era lay hidden in the mysterious "0s" and "1s" of a computer.

One afternoon before the semester began, Lei Jun chanced upon a book on a friend's shelf. Its cover was already yellowed with age—Fire in the Valley.

As he turned the pages, a whole new world of garages, dreams, code, and disruption opened up before him. Like a bolt of lightning, it split through the stuffy air of his small town and struck him. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Wozniak... these names, these stories, every word was like molten lava pouring into his veins.

That night, he couldn't sleep. He went to the deserted Wuhan University sports ground alone. A late-summer evening breeze, carrying the sweet scent of osmanthus, swept across the track. He walked lap after lap, as if trying to wear a hole in the rubber track. The distant stories from the book were now a raging fire in his chest.

"Why can't it be me?" a voice roared in his mind. "I, Lei Jun, can also found a great company."

This thought, like a seed struck by lightning, was quietly planted under the moonlight of Mount Luojia, waiting for the day it would break through the soil.

Act I: The "Outlier" in the Code

Wuhan University's computer science department was a gathering of geniuses. Lei Jun's somewhat boyish face went unnoticed in the crowd. But he soon turned himself into an "outlier" through a nearly ascetic discipline.

At the time, the university campus, having just been freed from the shackles of the college entrance exams, was filled with a relaxed, even somewhat lazy atmosphere. Lei Jun, however, was like a robot with a built-in precision timer. He set a crazy goal for himself: to complete four years of credits in two.

"Time is too precious to be wasted," he told his worried roommate. This was not a slogan but a strictly executed algorithm. He mentally mapped out all the courses' times, credits, and difficulties to plan the most optimal path. While his classmates were enjoying club activities and weekend dances, Lei Jun could only be found in three places: the classroom, the library, and the computer lab.

The freshman course, "Assembly Language Programming," was a nightmare for many. The instructions were tedious, the register addresses cumbersome—it was like an insurmountable barrier. But Lei Jun dived right in, like a fish returning to water. He not only devoured the textbook but also checked out all the related foreign-language materials from the library. Under the dim light, he would often stay up until the early hours, scribbling on draft paper to find the most optimal way to write a single instruction.

On the final exam, only two students in the entire class got a perfect score. Lei Jun was one of them. The clarity of his logic and the elegance of his code astonished the grading professor. It was even more concise and efficient by a few bytes than the standard answer. The professor photocopied his assignment and distributed it to the next year's class as a "model example."

This was just the beginning. Pascal, C, Data Structures... he "conquered" one hardcore course after another. He never attended the general education classes he considered "low value," preferring to spend his time waiting in the long lines outside the computer lab. In the late 1980s, the computer lab was a sanctuary, and time on the machines had to be exchanged for meal tickets. Lei Jun would often wait for hours with a couple of steamed buns, just to be able to type a few more lines of code than others. The green characters on the monitor were, in his eyes, the most beautiful poetry in the world.

Two years later, as his classmates were just entering their junior year, Lei Jun had quietly completed his graduation project and earned all his credits. He had run a 1,460-day race in 730 days. This won him not just two precious years, but also a powerful confidence in his ability to control his own destiny.

Act II: The Assignment That Made History

If completing his credits in two years proved Lei Jun's extraordinary learning ability, a PASCAL course project in his sophomore year directly led to his "deification" at Wuhan University.

The assignment was simple: write a program. For most students, it was just a task to be completed. But Lei Jun saw it as an opportunity to craft a work of art. He locked himself in his dorm room for two whole weeks, his desk piled high with instant noodle bowls and draft paper.

What he finally submitted was practically a commercial piece of software. On the extremely limited memory and CPU resources of the time, the program ran as smoothly as silk, with a user-friendly interface, tight logic, and almost no bugs.

What shocked the professor even more was his code. It was engineered and modularized to a level far beyond that of a student at the time. The comments were clear, the structure was ingenious, and every line seemed meticulously orchestrated. The professor, in a rare move, spent an entire lecture analyzing Lei Jun's code line by line, concluding, "This is the most perfect student assignment I have seen in my twenty years of teaching."

Later, in the PASCAL Language Programming textbook he authored, the professor not only referenced Lei Jun's design but also included a core segment of his code, verbatim.

For a sophomore, having one's code written into a textbook was an unparalleled honor. From then on, Lei Jun became a legend of Mount Luojia, a "God of Code" walking the campus.

Epilogue: From Legend to Reality

Years later, when Lei Jun stood in the spotlight, calmly announcing Xiaomi's new products, people might have found it hard to connect him with the scruffy young man who used to nibble on steamed buns outside the computer lab.

But Lei Jun himself knew that all the stories began there.

The experience of finishing his degree in two years had etched the words "focus" and "efficiency" into his very bones. The code that was written into a textbook was the starting point of his lifelong obsession with technology. Beneath Mount Luojia, he found not just knowledge, but a way of thinking—a method for breaking down a grand goal into countless executable modules, and then executing every detail to the highest possible standard.

As he told the junior students at Wuhan University years later, "A typical Wuhan University graduate won't be bad. But if you want to be more outstanding, you have to be tough on yourself."

The young man who had stayed up all night, stirred by Fire in the Valley, had lit the first fire within himself, his own way. At first, it was a faint flame, illuminating only a corner of his desk. But eventually, it would spread like a wildfire, lighting up the entire tech landscape of China.

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Key Takeaways

1. Extreme focus and efficiency are key to surpassing peers: Lei Jun completed a four-year program in two, winning himself a precious window of time. This stemmed from his intense focus on his goals and his meticulous time management.
2. Fundamental coding ability is the strongest moat for a tech entrepreneur: The program he wrote being included in a textbook demonstrated a technical depth far beyond his peers. This hardcore skill was the bedrock of his future standing amidst technological waves.
3. University is not just for learning knowledge, but for shaping mindset and building networks: Fire in the Valley ignited his entrepreneurial dream, and the "God of Code" reputation he built on campus laid the foundation for his future team-building.