My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 202 Finding People

Eight o'clock in the morning.

The USTC School of Mathematics building is gradually becoming more lively, with students and teachers greeting each other frequently in the corridors.

Li Jianming sat at his desk, on which lay the twenty-two-page draft.

He opened the drawer on his right, rummaged around for a while, and took out a pair of scissors.

He pulled out the most crucial page from the draft and laid it flat on the table.

The scissors opened, aiming at the partial differential equations on the paper that exhibited clear physical fluid characteristics.

"Click."

The paper was cut open, and thin strips fell to the side.

Li Jianming turned the paper around, cut the scissors again, and cut off the last few lines of formulas that led to the complete algebraic cycle closure conclusion.

All that remains is the most abrupt and unreasonable discrete matrix truncation process in the middle.

This is not enough.

Li Jianming knew all too well the sharp eyes of his old buddies back home.

Chen Zhuo's handwriting has a very special consistency, and his derivation habits are also very bold and unrestrained. If it is sent over as is, it is possible that someone will follow the clues and find it in the Yearbook of Mathematics.

He pulled an old-fashioned Hero brand fountain pen from the pen holder and unscrewed the cap.

Taking a blank sheet of stationery, Li Jianming lowered his head and began to rewrite the cut-out fragment of the manuscript, character by character.

He deliberately slowed down and used his own square and rigid handwriting, honed from decades of writing on the blackboard, to cover up Chen Zhuo's deduction.

When copying the two transformation steps in the middle, Li Jianming paused slightly and added two distracting terms that are very common in classical algebra.

These two interference terms do not affect the final calculation result, but they can disguise the entire derivation as a dead end for a traditional old scholar.

After copying the last line, the ink slowly dried on the paper.

Li Jianming took the paper, stood up, and walked out of the office.

He walked through the corridor and came to the confidential room of the executive office.

The clerk in the confidential office was mopping the floor when he saw Li Jianming come in and quickly greeted him.

"Good morning, Professor Li."

"I'll send a few faxes."

Li Jianming nodded.

He walked up to the old-fashioned fax machine and stuffed the letter paper into the paper feeder.

He took out a small notebook from his pocket, and dialed the first long-distance area code from the number listed.

Accompanied by the harsh dialing and scanning sounds of the fax machine, the tattered manuscript was distributed to three different locations.

After sending it out, Li Jianming took out the original manuscript, folded it twice, put it in his pocket, and turned back to his office.

He left the door ajar, sat down in a chair, and brewed himself a strong pot of tea.

The tea leaves are swirling in the boiling water.

10:15 AM.

The landline on my desk rang.

The ringtone sounded somewhat abrupt in the quiet office.

Li Jianming put down the book in his hand and reached for the microphone.

"Feed".

"Old Li, what's with the fax you sent me so early in the morning?"

An aged but strong voice came from the other end of the phone.

This is Academician Zhao from the Institute of Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, a leading figure in the field of classical algebraic geometry in China. He and Li Jianming have been friends for decades, and the two have devoted their lives to scholarship, emphasizing rigor and discipline in mathematics.

"No tricks involved."

Li Jianming leaned back in his chair.

"I just came up with an idea by chance, but I'm stuck. I wanted you to take a look and give me your opinion."

A loud thud came from the other end of the phone.

"Appraise eyes? I can't appraise your eyes!"

Academician Zhao's tone was clearly angry, and you could even hear his rapid breathing due to his excitement.

"Old Li, we both come from pure mathematics backgrounds. The continuity of complex manifolds is the bare minimum. The half-finished thing you sent me, in order to force an integral to close, doesn't even care about continuity. You're just using a discrete matrix to cut it open?"

Academician Zhao's voice grew louder and louder, overflowing from the receiver.

"This is like trying to cleave a topological space with a rusty woodcutter's axe! It's too brutal! It's too ugly! We believe in the natural progression of academic research, what is this? This is utterly fanatical! The person who created this has completely distorted their mathematical foundation!"

Li Jianming held the microphone, listening to his old friend's scathing remarks, his face expressionless.

"Old Zhao, don't worry about whether it's ugly or not, just tell me, can this logic make sense within your department's classical system?" Li Jianming asked.

"Round my ass!"

Academician Zhao retorted without hesitation.

"It's fundamentally heresy. Let me tell you, Lao Li, no matter who wrote it, you need to tell him to pull back from the brink. Going down this path is a dead end, and even a god couldn't save him!"

"Smack."

The other party hung up the phone immediately.

The receiver emitted a busy tone.

Li Jianming slowly placed the microphone back on the landline.

He picked up the teacup and took a big gulp of the strong, somewhat bitter tea.

He was not discouraged; instead, a cold smile appeared on his lips.

Old Zhao represents the most orthodox group in China. The harsher his criticism, the more it proves that Chen Zhuo's stroke hit a blind spot in classical mathematics.

The older generation's thinking is rigid; they can't understand this high-level approach to breaking the deadlock.

Li Jianming's stubborn protective instincts were completely ignited. He was unconvinced; if the classical school couldn't understand it, there would always be someone with a more flexible mind who could.

12:30 PM.

The students in the corridor went to the cafeteria to get their meals, leaving the entire building empty.

The landline rang a second time.

Li Jianming answered the phone.

"Teacher Li, did you take a lunch break?"

The voice on the other end of the phone was that of a middle-aged man, speaking quickly and with barely concealed excitement.

This is Lin, a Yangtze River Scholar from Aurora University.

In his early forties, at the peak of his academic career, he has spent years dealing with complex nonlinear dynamical systems and is a leading figure at the forefront of the intersection of pure mathematics and applied mathematics in China.

"You didn't rest, Xiao Lin. Did you see the fax this morning?" Li Jianming asked.

"After watching it, I didn't even have time to eat lunch."

Professor Lin took a deep breath on the other end of the line.

"Teacher Li, I don't know who wrote this article, but the idea is absolutely brilliant."

Professor Lin's tone carried an obvious fervor.

"Isolating the singularity and forcibly aligning the boundary using dimensionality reduction homomorphism is incredibly efficient in engineering truncation. I just applied it to a fluid model I had on hand. Data that would normally take a supercomputer half a month to process converged in just a few hours using this method."

Hearing this, Li Jianming felt a weight lift from his heart.

The middle generation certainly has good judgment.

"So, how do you think we should pave the way if we want to delve deeper into this method and touch upon those more fundamental algebraic cycles?"

Li Jianming raised the question that he was most concerned about.

There was a sudden silence on the other end of the phone.

The excited pace of his speech vanished instantly, replaced by a long silence.

"Xiaolin?"

Li Jianming urged him on.

"Teacher Li."

Professor Lin's voice came through again, this time tinged with deep helplessness and a bitter smile.

Let me tell you the truth.

"This method looks like the engineering truncation in applied mathematics, but its framework is not. It needs a very deep and very abstract modern pure mathematics theory as its foundation. Without that foundation, this thing is a castle in the air. If you dig a little deeper, it will all collapse."

Professor Lin paused, his tone becoming very sincere.

"My skill level is only good enough to be a user. I can run some data with it, but I can't lay a solid foundation for pure mathematics or be a guide for this theory..."

99

"I can't do it."

"Among those in China who work on interdisciplinary fields, no one can do it. It requires a pure mathematics expert who has truly mastered modern algebraic geometry and is incredibly bold to take on this task."

Li Jianming's hand holding the microphone froze in mid-air.

His fingers slowly tightened.

"Okay, I understand. Thank you, Kobayashi."

Li Jianming hung up the phone.

The office was so quiet you could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall.

He leaned back in his chair, looking at the somewhat blackened fluorescent light tube on the ceiling.

The old academician denounced it as heresy.

The most cutting-edge middle generation admits they can't keep up.

The stubbornness in Li Jianming's heart began to crack.

His pride and joy at being the pinnacle of the domestic academic community seemed so low and powerless in the face of Chen Zhuo's incomplete manuscript.

But he still didn't want to admit defeat.

He opened the drawer and glanced at the last name on the notebook.

Professor Wei, Yenching University.

This person is a genius.

He spent many years studying at various research institutes in Europe before returning to China a few years ago to live a secluded life at Yenching University.

He rarely publishes papers and doesn't mentor many students, but people in the pure mathematics circle in China know that he has the highest vision and is one of the very few people in China who can keep up with the pace of Grothendieck's school of modern algebraic geometry.

Li Jianming pinned all his hopes on this last phone call.

The afternoon light gradually dimmed.

The sun has set, and the sky outside the window has turned a deep gray-blue.

Li Jianming didn't turn on the lights; he just sat alone in the dimly lit office waiting.

Six o'clock in the afternoon.

The red landline rang for the third time.

In the dimly lit room, the ringing sounded rather jarring.

Li Jianming grabbed the microphone.

"Hey, Lao Wei."

The call was connected.

But there was no sound from the other end of the receiver, only a faint breathing sound and the soft rustling of turning over papers.

Li Jianming did not urge him.

He just held the microphone quietly, listening to the other person's silence.

The silence lasted for a full half minute.

Half a minute later, a long sigh came through the receiver.

"Old Li," Professor Wei's voice was a little hoarse, "this thing, you didn't write it, did you?"

"No." Li Jianming didn't beat around the bush. "A friend of mine accidentally created this, got stuck, and is trying to find a way to move forward."

"Your friend?"

Professor Wei chuckled softly on the other end of the line, a laugh tinged with a chilling clarity.

"Stop talking nonsense. All those old guys around you are just honest folks who live by classical algebra. Who would dare to perform such a barbaric operation on topological spaces?"

Li Jianming remained silent, tacitly agreeing.

"I've been staring at this page you sent me all afternoon."

Professor Wei picked up the water glass on the table, took a sip of water, and his voice became serious again.

"Old Li, do you want to hear the truth?"

"explain."

Li Jianming uttered a single word.

"I can't teach it."

Professor Wei delivered the final verdict.

"Not only can I not teach it, but there's no one in the country who can teach it either."

These words were like a heavy hammer, striking Li Jianming directly in the heart.

It shattered his pride, his protectiveness, and his stubbornness.

Why?

Li Jianming's voice was somewhat hoarse.

"Because our land is too safe."

Professor Wei's words were incisive and merciless.

"For decades, our domestic mathematics community has been desperately trying to learn Western rules. In order to catch up with others, everyone is carefully adhering to the bottom line of continuity and smoothness. In this kind of environment, such unorthodox things that dare to poke a hole in the sky cannot grow."

"This approach is too extreme. Without an extremely large and advanced modern algebraic framework to support it, trying it is suicidal."

Li Jianming remained silent for a long time.

"So it's stillborn?"

He asked, unwilling to give up.

Then there was another sound of paper turning on the other end of the phone.

"Old Li, although I can't teach you, this technique looks familiar to me."

Professor Wei slowed down his speech, as if he were recalling something from a long time ago.

Li Jianming's eyes snapped open, and he sat up straight in the darkness.

"You've seen it before?"

"In the early 1990s, when I was studying in Europe, there was a fierce battle among the top algebraic topology community in the West."

Professor Wei's voice carried a sense of history unique to academia.

"At that time, there was a small group of very radical scholars who also advocated using this extremely crude discretization tool to directly cut continuous topological domains. They felt that the classical method was too cumbersome and wanted to reconstruct the toolbox of algebraic geometry from the bottom up."

"And then?" Li Jianming pressed.

"Later, because the underlying logic was too inconsistent and many problems could not be filled, this group of people were denounced as crazy by the orthodox school and gradually disappeared."

Professor Wei paused for a moment.

"But the underlying barbaric framework they built was real."

"Where to look?" Li Jianming's breathing became somewhat rapid.

"Go and look through the original issues of Inventionesmathematicae from around 98 to 0. The pioneer of this discrete truncation method left his mark in those years' issues."

After Professor Wei finished speaking, he added one last sentence.

"Old Li, no matter who produced this piece of paper, if he is still young, let him dig up that history. This may be the only way he can succeed."

"Alright, thank you for your kindness, Lao Wei."

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