My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 198 Arrangement

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a sense of temporal and spatial dislocation is unfolding in an extremely quiet way.

Country M, New Jersey.

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

This red brick building is nestled among ivy and several huge oak trees. Although the outside temperature is already quite low, the heating inside the office building is on full blast, making it feel rather warm.

At the end of the third-floor corridor is Pierre's private office.

The office was very large, with two walls lined with bookshelves that reached the ceiling, filled with mathematical journals, monographs, and manuscripts in various languages.

In the center of the room, on a carpet, sat a set of dark brown leather sofas.

Pierre was sitting on a single sofa.

Today he was wearing an extremely well-tailored dark gray tweed suit, without a tie, and his shirt collar was slightly open.

He wore reading glasses and held a stack of A4-sized printed manuscripts in his hand.

The paper, authored by C. Zhuo, was only forty pages long.

On the coffee table sat a cup of black tea, the tea clear and transparent, without any cloudiness from the sugar or milk, and a faint steam was rising from the rim of the cup.

"Knock knock knock".

There was a gentle knock on the walnut door to the office.

"Come in."

Pierre didn't even look up; his gaze remained fixed on the line of formulas that crudely severed continuous topology using discrete matrices.

The door was pushed open.

A white young man in his thirties walked in, dressed in a neat suit and carrying a black leather folder.

This is Arthur, Pierre's personal academic assistant.

"Mr. Pierre."

Arthur walked to the coffee table, stood still, and spoke with great respect.

"I have fully confirmed your trip to Shanghai next week."

Pierre turned a page of the manuscript with a soft rustling sound.

"explain."

Arthur opened the folder in his hand.

"You will be departing from New York's KFC Airport this Sunday evening in first class on American Airlines, and are expected to arrive at Shanghai Pudong International Airport around noon on Monday, China time. The conference organizers have arranged a private car and staff to wait for you in the VIP channel."

Arthur's voice was steady and methodical.

"The opening ceremony of the International Symposium on Topology is scheduled for 9:00 AM on Tuesday. As a special guest, your keynote speech at the opening ceremony is scheduled for 9:30 AM, lasting 45 minutes. I have already reformatted and printed the speech manuscript and put it in your briefcase."

Pierre didn't speak, but simply nodded slightly to indicate that he had heard.

"The conference will last for four days, with the closing ceremony on Friday afternoon. I have already booked your flight back to New York from Shanghai on Saturday morning."

Arthur closed the folder and looked at Pierre.

"That concludes the entire itinerary. Is there anything else that needs to be adjusted?"

The office was silent for a few seconds.

Pierre placed the manuscript on his lap, took off his reading glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He picked up the black tea on the coffee table and took a small sip.

"Arthur".

Pierre put down his teacup and looked up at his assistant.

"Cancel the flight back to New York on Saturday."

Arthur paused for a moment, but being well-trained, he didn't immediately ask why. Instead, he took out a pen to write it down.

"Okay, sir. May I ask which day you'd like to postpone it to? Does the conference organizer have any other private banquet arrangements in Shanghai?"

"No, the organizer's business is finished by Friday, don't let them bother me."

Pierre leaned back in his chair, his hands crossed on the stack of manuscripts on his lap.

"I remember I still have five days of personal vacation left."

Pierre looked at an abstract geometric painting hanging on the wall, his tone calm, but carrying an undeniable determination.

"Go and check the transportation options from Shanghai to Huizhou, China, whether by train or plane, and book me a ticket to Huizhou."

Arthur paused for a moment, his pen still in his hand.

He quickly went through a map of Chinese universities and recent academic activities in his mind.

"Huizhou?"

Arthur frowned, somewhat puzzled.

"Mr. Pierre, as far as I know, although the University of Science and Technology of China is located in Huizhou, they have not held any international mathematics or physics conferences at any level recently, and..."

'

Arthur reminded him.

"Last year, Professor Derian attempted to invite USTC personnel to visit on behalf of the Institute for Advanced Study, but was politely declined by their foreign affairs department. If you go this time without official prior coordination, USTC may not arrange any reception. What is the purpose of your trip there?"

As Pierre listened to his assistant's concerns, a smile suddenly appeared on his lips.

That was the smile of an old-school scholar who, during a long and tedious academic career, suddenly discovered something interesting.

"I don't need their hospitality."

Pierre stretched out his right hand and gently patted the manuscript of the paper on his thigh.

"Arthur, I've been sitting in this chair for far too many years. The manuscripts I've produced in recent years have become more and more meticulous and refined. Everyone is carefully stitching up the wounds of mathematics, afraid of offending any reviewer."

"But this article is different."

He picked up the top page and pointed to the formula on it.

"The person who wrote this article is a complete madman, or rather, a stubborn butcher."

"His method of cutting through continuous fields using discrete algebra is so brutal that it has a unique kind of beauty, like sawing a delicate spring with a rusty saw. But what's most terrifying is that after he saws it open, the underlying logic is so clean that you can't find a single flaw."

Pierre threw the manuscript back onto his lap.

"The person who can write something like this is definitely not a young person who relies on supercomputers to calculate data in a greenhouse. This is definitely an old guy who has experienced countless rough engineering practices and is used to solving problems with the most extreme mathematical tools in resource-scarce environments."

In Pierre's mind, the image of C. Zhuo was already very vivid.

A reclusive old mathematician, dressed in a faded Zhongshan suit, with a full head of silver hair, a bad temper, and stubbornness, who was hidden away in the heart of Huizhou by the Chinese government like a giant panda because of certain classified projects.

"I don't want to meet him through official channels; that would only result in a bunch of boring diplomatic rhetoric."

Pierre stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the early winter scenery of New Jersey.

"I want to wander around the HKUST campus as an ordinary foreign tourist. Maybe I'll run into him in some old classroom full of chalk dust, or in their library."

Pierre turned around and looked at Arthur, his smile carrying the pride unique to someone at the pinnacle of academia.

"I want to meet this savage old man, even if it's just to find a blackboard, point out the ugliness of his cutting method to his face, and have a big argument with him. That would be much more interesting than staying in New York reading those boring papers."

Arthur looked at the light in Pierre's eyes and knew that his boss had made up his mind.

Once such a top scholar gets angry, no one can persuade him otherwise.

"I understand, Mr. Pierre."

Arthur closed the folder.

"I will arrange your trip to Huizhou on Saturday. Since it is a private trip, I will try my best to book the most comfortable transportation and arrange a quiet hotel for you near Huizhou University."

"No need to be too high-profile, keep everything simple."

Pierre waved.

"Okay, sir, then I won't bother you any longer."

2

Arthur bowed slightly, turned and left the office, closing the walnut door behind him.

The office returned to silence.

Pierre walked to his desk, picked up the still-warm cup of black tea, and took a small sip.

His gaze fell once again on the forty-page manuscript.

"C. Zhuo."

Pierre read the pinyin aloud.

He was really looking forward to it.

In this era filled with computer-aided proofs and red tape, to encounter someone who upholds classical, uncompromising virtues is truly a delightful experience worth traveling halfway around the world to keep.

Pierre was already brainstorming in his mind which topological problem of the highest dimension he should use to test the other party's bottom line as his first question after they met.

And at this very moment.

Huizhou, the capital of China, across the ocean.

Chen Zhuo walked to the foot of the building of the School of Physics at the University of Science and Technology of China.

He held the half-eaten roasted sweet potato in his hands, chewing on the sweet, caramelized flesh.

His newly bought Nokia phone sat quietly in his school uniform pocket.

Unbeknownst to him, more than 10,000 kilometers away, a world-renowned mathematical giant, filled with romanticized images of an old hermit with white hair, was eagerly preparing to challenge him to a duel at Mount Hua.

Chen Zhu swallowed the last bite of sweet potato, crumpled the old newspaper into a ball, and accurately threw it into the roadside trash can.

He dusted off his hands.

Let's start living our lives by filling in that dead end that Hodge conjecture.

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