My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 179 Challenge

half a month later.

Office in the Mathematics Building.

The old HP laser printer in the corner was working continuously, the sheets of white paper in the paper tray were decreasing one by one, and sheets of A4 paper were being ejected from the paper outlet.

The window in the room was half open, but the smell of coffee still lingered. The trash can was piled high with empty instant coffee packets and crumpled drafts.

With a soft click, the printer stopped running.

The last piece of paper was ejected.

Wu Tao stood next to the printer.

His eyes were surrounded by a dark bluish-black ring, and his eyeballs were covered with fine red blood vessels. The stubble on his chin hadn't been shaved for a while, and he looked completely exhausted.

He reached out and picked up the thick stack of papers from the paper dispenser.

Forty pages in total.

The final version of the mathematics document is entirely in English.

Wu Tao walked to the desk, held the stack of papers by the edges with both hands, and gently tapped them a few times on the flat surface.

The sound of the paper edges aligning was particularly crisp in the quiet office.

His movements were slow and steady.

He has hardly returned to his dormitory in the past two weeks.

Aside from meals and short naps, he spent the entire time in this office.

The homology group mapping that Chen Zhuo left on the blackboard that night was just a key. With this key, he consulted hundreds of documents and filled in the forty pages of watertight logical loop line by line with every homology algebra transformation and every boundary condition constraint.

Li Jianming sat in the rattan chair opposite him, holding a teacup in his hand.

Li Jianming watched Wu Tao align the papers without saying a word.

He could see that besides exhaustion, his student's eyes also held a kind of confidence that came from having pushed himself to the limit.

"Teacher, it's printed."

Wu Tao placed the aligned final draft on Li Jianming's desk, then took a black binder clip from the corner of the desk, forcefully pried it open, and firmly clipped the forty pages together.

Li Jianming put down his teacup and his gaze fell on the thick final draft.

"Go wash your face first."

Li Jianming's voice was somewhat hoarse.

"Once Chen Zhuo arrives and has reviewed it, we'll submit our vote."

Wu Tao nodded, said nothing, and turned to leave the office.

The sound of a faucet being turned on came from the corridor, accompanied by the sound of someone splashing cold water on their face.

Not long after, footsteps came from the other end of the corridor.

The office door was pushed open.

Chen Zhuo walked in.

"Teacher Li."

Chen Zhuo walked in and greeted him naturally.

Wu Tao happened to be wiping his face with a tissue when he walked in from outside. When he saw Chen Zhuo, he casually pulled over a chair.

"You're here, have a seat."

Wu Tao's voice had a strong nasal tone.

Li Jianming pushed the forty-page final draft, which was clipped to the table, in front of Chen Zhuo.

"Wu Tao just printed it out," Li Jianming said.

"Go through it once."

Chen Zhuo pulled out a chair and sat down.

He didn't refuse or say anything polite. He reached out, pulled the final draft in front of him, and turned to the first page.

The office fell silent instantly.

The only sound was the rustling of paper being turned over.

Li Jianming picked up his teacup again and slowly sipped his tea.

Wu Tao leaned back on the sofa next to him, his arms crossed over his chest. Although his eyes were half closed, he kept listening to the rhythm of Chen Zhuo turning the pages.

Chen Zhuo watched intently.

Instead of skimming through the text, he followed Wu Tao's reasoning and read line by line.

He flips through routine lemma references quickly, but when he encounters core matrix transformations, his gaze lingers for a few more seconds.

Time passed by, second by second.

ten minutes.

twenty minutes.

When Chen Zhuo turned to the third chapter, he stopped turning the page.

This is the toughest part of the entire paper.

Moving from discrete network nodes to the unfolding of fiber bundles in the topological space is not a simple matter of substituting formulas; it requires extremely strong spatial imagination and rigorous logical connections.

Chen Zhuo's gaze lingered on the second section of Chapter Three.

His gaze slowly moved along the long lines of derivations. After finishing one page, he turned the page and moved on to the next.

I watched it for a full five minutes.

Wu Tao leaned back on the sofa, his eyes, which had been half-closed, were now open. His hands unconsciously gripped the edge of the sofa, and his breathing was much lighter than before.

Those few pages were written after he stayed up for three nights straight.

He overturned the plan twice, and it wasn't until the last time that he felt he had truly stitched the boundary between the continuous and discrete domains together tightly.

Mathematics doesn't lie.

If it works, it works; if it doesn't, it doesn't. In this room, Chen Zhuo is the one who can see through everything at a glance.

Chen Zhuo finished reading that section.

He didn't turn the page immediately, but gently smoothed it out.

Then, he raised his head, shifted his gaze from the final draft, and looked at Wu Tao sitting on the sofa.

Chen Zhuo's eyes were clear, without any condescending scrutiny or deliberate fault-finding.

"Senior Brother Wu."

Chen Zhuo spoke, his tone gentle, carrying a heartfelt sigh.

"The development and transition of the fiber bundle in Chapter 3 is beautifully written."

Chen Zhuo pointed to the manuscript paper in front of him.

"The framework I came up with that night was actually a bit rough in terms of handling boundary conditions. The adjoint functor mapping you added completely welded the entire logic chain shut."

Chen Zhuo looked at Wu Tao with a faint smile on his lips, the kind of pleasure one feels upon seeing a beautiful work of art.

"You've worked hard these past two weeks."

on the sofa.

Upon hearing this, Wu Tao felt like a deflated balloon, his nerves, which had been tense for half a month, completely relaxed at that moment.

He didn't say any polite phrases like "where" or "where".

He let out a long sigh, his back sinking completely into the sofa, and the corners of his mouth involuntarily turned up.

"If you think it's okay, then it's fine."

Wu Tao's voice was very soft, with a relieved hoarseness.

"While writing this, my hair was falling out in clumps. If I can't write anymore, I'll have to consider changing my major."

Chen Zhuo smiled, looked away, and continued flipping through the pages.

More than half an hour later.

Chen Zhuo turned to the last page and saw the symbol that marked the end of the proof.

He closed the thick final draft and readjusted the edges.

"After reading the whole thing, the logic is flawless and there are no loopholes."

Chen Zhuo looked at Li Jianming.

"You can submit it now."

Li Jianming put down his teacup and nodded.

The old professor turned around and faced the computer on his desk.

A Word document is open on the computer screen.

That was a letter of submission to the Princeton Journal of Mathematics, along with the English abstract of the paper.

Li Jianming's fingers hovered over the keyboard, a little hesitant.

"The final draft is fine." Li Jianming stared at the screen, "but I still feel like these few sentences in the introduction and abstract are missing something."

Wu Tao forced himself to sit up from the sofa and went to look at the screen.

Li Jianming typed a few words on the keyboard and deleted a line of text.

"This paper covers a very wide range of topics."

Li Jianming's eyes were fixed on those few lines of English.

"We used the algebraic topology weapon of discrete domains to forcibly deconstruct a traditional analytical problem of continuous domains. When the editorial office of the Princeton Journal of Mathematics received the manuscript, the first thing they did was to match it with reviewers."

If we can't pinpoint the core idea of ​​the continuous-to-discrete transition in the abstract, they'll most likely follow the usual practice and send the manuscript to the old-school scholars doing traditional calculus and analysis for blind review.

Li Jianming sighed.

"If it really falls into the hands of those stubborn analysts, they will definitely use a magnifying glass to nitpick the continuity and use their old system to measure our new rules. At that time, just arguing with them about the underlying logic and theoretical framework will take more than half a year."

Wu Tao frowned as he looked at the English text on the screen.

indeed.

The abstract was written in a very formal and rigorous manner.

But in such high-level academic clashes that transcend different schools of thought, following the rules often means losing the right to speak. What they need is not a bland, conventional introduction, but an uncompromising academic declaration of war.

Chen Zhuo stood up and walked behind Li Jianming.

He glanced at the few paragraphs written by Li Jianming on the screen.

Then, Chen Zhuo turned his head and his gaze fell on a hard copy on the edge of the desk.

He casually took a black ballpoint pen from Li Jianming's pen holder, pulled the hard copy over, and turned to a blank page.

He didn't sit down, but just kept his back slightly bent.

The pen tip landed on the paper almost without any pause.

Fluent English letters quickly take shape on the paper.

Li Jianming and Wu Tao's attention was drawn to Chen Zhuo's actions.

Chen Zhuo did not write any complex mathematical formulas, homology groups, or fiber bundles.

He only wrote three short lines.

The first line points out the inevitable collapse of continuity in infinite-dimensional networks.

The second line presents the philosophical paradox of local chaos and global conservation in discrete topological spaces.

The third line presents the paper's final verdict—the absolute dominance of algebraic invariants over geometric divergences.

Write the period after the last word.

Chen Zhuo closed the pen cap and casually tossed the pen back into the pen holder.

He pushed the hard copy in front of Li Jianming.

"Teacher Li, could you please take a look at these three sentences? They can serve as an introduction."

Li Jianming looked down at the hard copy.

Li Jianming's gaze swept over the three lines of English text.

Once.

Twice.

Li Jianming's eyes slowly brightened.

He didn't speak immediately, but instead stretched out his finger and tapped it heavily on the table twice.

"Spot on."

Li Jianming looked up at Chen Zhuo, his tone revealing undisguised admiration.

"What a powerful concept of absolute dominance! These three sentences, without a single mathematical symbol, have laid bare the entire framework of these forty pages. This isn't a summary; it's a direct challenge to the entire school of analysis!"

Li Jianming turned around, placed his hands back on the keyboard, and his eyes once again radiated the composure and domineering presence befitting an academic giant.

"With these three sentences as the opening, setting the tone, any editor at Princeton who isn't blind will know the magnitude of this paper. Since we've already changed the rules, they'll have to dig three feet into the ground to get those reclusive algebraic topology giants out of retirement to take on our challenge!"

The crisp sound of keyboard typing echoed in the office.

Li Jianming quickly typed those three lines at the beginning of the document.

Followed by.

The cursor moved to the author's signature field at the bottom of the document.

Li Jianming did not pause.

His fingers steadily typed a string of letters on the keyboard.

Zhuo Chen.

First author.

Next is the corresponding author's label, which includes Li Jianming's name and email address.

Finally, there is the second author, TaoWu.

After typing all that, Li Jianming stopped, moved the mouse, and clicked save.

The old professor turned around and looked at Chen Zhuo standing next to his desk.

"This paper has been submitted to Princeton."

Li Jianming's voice was steady, with an undeniable confidence.

"You were the one who gave us the breakthrough in the homology group mapping, and you also set the tone for the introduction that just defined the academic landscape."

Li Jianming pointed to the name that was listed first on the screen.

"Only you deserve this authorship. Wu Tao was responsible for the main derivation and proof, so he's listed as the second author, and I'll be the corresponding author."

Li Jianming looked at Chen Zhuo.

"That's settled then."

Wu Tao leaned against his desk, looking at the order of signatures on the screen, without any objection.

He knew very well that in the world of mathematics, it was only natural for the person who provided the core inspiration to be awarded first authorship.

Chen Zhuo looked at his name on the screen.

Unlike ordinary undergraduates who would tremble with fear and say "no, no, I am unworthy," he did not deliberately try to display a noble indifference to fame and fortune.

Chen Zhuo straightened up slightly, one hand in his trouser pocket.

He looked at Li Jianming, then glanced at Wu Tao.

A calm, even slightly playful smile slowly curved the corners of his lips.

He did not refuse.

"Teacher Li."

Chen Zhuo spoke, his tone calm and composed, revealing a sense of natural ease.

"Since you put it that way, I'll shamelessly accept the first authorship of this 'Annals of Mathematics'."

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He readily accepted the honor.

But then Chen Zhuo changed the subject.

He leaned forward slightly, looking at Li Jianming with a sly glint in his eyes.

"However, we need to make things clear beforehand."

Chen Zhuo pointed to the email address following the corresponding author on the screen.

"The corresponding author left your email address."

Chen Zhuo looked at Li Jianming, his tone carrying a self-righteous and shameless air.

"The challenge has been sent out. From now on, whether it's the peer review comments from Princeton or the tedious emails from those topology experts asking all sorts of tricky questions, it'll all be your and Senior Brother Wu's headaches."

Chen Zhuo shrugged, smiling gently, but what he said was a completely different story.

"I hate trouble. I'll just put my name on the signboard and I won't be responsible for any after-sales service."

There was a two-second silence in the office.

Then.

Li Jianming was so angry at Chen Zhuo's self-righteous and arrogant attitude, as if he had gotten a huge advantage but was afraid of trouble, that he couldn't help but laugh.

Shaking his head, he pointed at Chen Zhuo from a distance with his finger.

"You little rascal..."

""

Li Jianming laughed and cursed.

"This incredible stroke of luck has fallen on your head, but you make it sound like Wu Tao and I are taking advantage of you!"

Li Jianming turned around and faced the computer screen.

"Alright, stop acting all innocent after getting the benefit. You don't need to worry about the review emails. Go back to your quack."

The old professor gripped the mouse and moved the cursor to the Send button in the upper right corner of the email client.

Without hesitation.

Point with your index finger.

The email sending progress bar flashed across the screen rapidly.

"Whoosh"

A crisp email sending success notification sounded in the office.

These forty pages, the result of three people's hard work and countless sleepless nights with dark circles under their eyes, were transformed into a stream of data and flew to Princeton across the ocean.

Upon hearing this notification sound...

Wu Tao's body swayed suddenly.

He seemed to have been drained of the last bit of strength from his bones, and slid down the edge of the desk and into the old sofa next to it.

"It's all done..."

Wu Tao looked up at the yellowish incandescent light bulb on the ceiling, his voice so weak it seemed to float up from underground.

"I want to go back to my dorm. I need to sleep for three days and three nights."

Wu Tao closed his eyes and muttered to himself.

"Even if the sky falls, even if the math building explodes, don't call me."

Li Jianming leaned back in the rattan chair, picked up the cup of tea that had gone a little cold, and slowly took a sip. Li Jianming's face could not hide his fatigue, but his eyes and brows were completely relaxed.

Chen Zhuo straightened up and pushed the chair he had just pulled out back into its original position.

"Teacher Li, I'll be going now."

Li Jianming waved his hand.

"Go."

Chen Zhuo turned around and walked towards the office door.

As Chen Zhuo reached the door, he paused for a moment.

He turned around and looked at Wu Tao, who was slumped on the sofa, his chest rising and falling slightly, as if he could fall asleep at any moment.

Chen Zhuo's delicate eyebrows curved slightly.

He spoke slowly and deliberately, his voice not loud, but just loud enough to reach Wu Tao's ears.

"Senior Brother Wu."

Chen Zhuo's tone was as gentle as a debt-collecting demon.

"Sleeping for three days and three nights is no problem."

"But before you fall into a deep sleep, shouldn't we settle the accounts first?"

Chen Zhuo looked at Wu Tao, whose eyes were tightly closed.

"When are you going to pay me back for those two meat buns you owed me two weeks ago, the morning I stayed up all night?"

on the sofa.

Wu Tao's brows, which were already on the verge of falling asleep, furrowed in pain.

He didn't open his eyes, but simply turned over, buried his face in the sofa cushions, and let out a muffled groan.

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