My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 205 Intertwined

Shanghai, International Conference Center.

The air conditioning in the venue was so strong that it made people feel a chill down their backs.

On the stage, a professor from a well-known domestic university is giving a report.

He wore a slightly oversized black suit, and held an infrared page-turning pen in his hand, the laser dot flickering slightly on the huge screen.

...Based on the smoothness property of complex manifolds mentioned above, we adopted a conservative boundary approximation strategy when dealing with this homology class.

The professor spoke English with a heavy accent, at a slow pace, emphasizing each word as if afraid his foreign colleagues wouldn't understand.

The audience was very quiet.

A dozen or so top scholars of different skin colors sat in the front row, followed by a dense crowd of domestic professors, researchers, and representatives of sponsors wearing name tags.

Every time the professor on stage turns a slide filled with formulas, a soft rustling of pens taking notes and keyboards clattering can be heard from below.

Pierre sat in the very center of the first row.

On the table in front of him was a bottle of mineral water that had only been taken a sip from, and a gold-embossed place card with his name on it.

The person on stage continued speaking.

"By introducing this continuous homeomorphism, we have successfully avoided divergence at singularities."

'

Pierre looked at the mapping formula on the screen.

smooth.

continuous.

Safety.

Perfectly fitted.

This is the most popular derivation method in mainstream topology.

It's like embroidering on a fine piece of fabric, with every stitch done meticulously and never crossing the line.

When encountering a knot, carefully avoid it, using layer upon layer of auxiliary theorems to cover up the truth.

Pierre leaned back, his back pressed against the leather chair back.

He put his right hand into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

My fingertips touched several folded A4 sheets of paper, the edges of which were already a little frayed from being handled repeatedly over the past few days.

This is the manuscript he brought all the way from Princeton.

The manuscript written by C. Zhuo.

Pierre's fingers gently rubbed against the paper.

The resonance group mapping from Chapter 3 of the manuscript automatically popped into his mind.

There is no smoothness, no continuity, and certainly no bullshit conservative approximation strategy.

That was a fault line created directly by using a discrete matrix.

It is barbaric, brutal, and unreasonable, but in the depths of logic, it is self-consistent.

That was a large-scale, heavy industry.

What they are talking about on stage now is a delicate handicraft.

Pierre's brows slowly furrowed.

He pulled his hand out of his pocket and glanced at the Patek Philippe on his wrist.

10:40 a.m.

There are still twenty minutes left in this report.

There are three more shows this afternoon.

Tomorrow there will be a full day of roundtable discussions and a sponsor dinner.

He turned his head and glanced at the red banners stretched across both sides of the venue, which read "Science and Technology Park" and "Real Estate Group".

During the opening ceremony, several portly businessmen came over and insisted on taking photos with him, the flashes hurting his eyes.

On stage, the professor reached the conclusion, and his voice unconsciously rose a few decibels.

"Therefore, we have fully proved this hypothesis in the continuous domain."

"9

As soon as he finished speaking, enthusiastic applause erupted from below.

A British scholar sitting next to Pierre also clapped and turned to Pierre to whisper something.

"A very robust derivation, isn't it?"

Pierre didn't respond.

He did not applaud.

Amid applause, he braced himself on the edge of the table and stood up abruptly.

The British scholar next to him was stunned and looked up at him in astonishment.

The applause on stage thinned out a bit because of his abrupt action.

Many people turned their gaze towards the front row.

Pierre ignored everyone's gaze.

He strode out of his seat and walked briskly down the aisle between the first row and the stage towards the side door of the venue.

"Professor Pierre?"

A member of the Chinese conference staff standing at the entrance quickly came forward, a nervous smile on his face, and asked in broken English.

"Do you need to use the restroom? This way, please..."

""

Pierre didn't even glance at him, his steps unwavering. He walked past him, pushed open the heavy soundproof door, and entered the backstage corridor.

The corridor was dimly lit and covered with a thick carpet.

"Mr. Pierre!"

Arthur, the assistant who had been waiting outside the door, was startled when he saw his boss suddenly come out. He quickly closed the schedule book in his hand and ran over.

"Did the report end early?" Arthur asked.

"no."

As Pierre walked, he reached out to unbutton his suit jacket.

"Is the air conditioning in the venue too strong? Would you like me to get you a jacket?"

Arthur followed closely behind, a bad feeling rising in his heart as he looked at the boss's gloomy face.

"Arthur".

Pierre suddenly stopped.

Arthur nearly bumped into him and quickly regained his balance.

Where did I put my train ticket to Huizhou?

Pierre stared at him and asked.

"It's in the lining of your black briefcase," Arthur replied. "That's the ticket for Saturday morning."

"Take it out."

Pierre extended his hand.

Arthur was stunned.

"Sir, it's only Tuesday, the meeting is still three days away..."

'

"Go change your ticket."

Pierre interrupted him, his voice not loud, but with an unquestionable commanding tone.

"Change it to today, change it to the nearest train, immediately."

Arthur's mind went blank.

He had worked as Pierre's assistant for three years and knew his boss had an eccentric temper, but he had never seen him flip a table at an international conference of this caliber.

"Mr. Pierre, you can't do this."

Arthur lowered his voice and spoke rapidly.

"There's a special media interview arranged for you this afternoon, and several high-ranking leaders from Shanghai will also be attending the closing ceremony banquet tomorrow night. They specifically requested to see you. You're the final guest of this conference. If you leave now, the organizers will go crazy!"

Pierre looked at Arthur.

He reached out and pinched the blue lanyard around his neck.

Below the hanging rope is a transparent plastic name tag that reads "VIP Special Invitation".

Pierre pulled the lanyard off his neck and tossed it casually onto a sign-in table next to the corridor.

The plastic name tag slammed onto the wooden table with a crisp sound.

"That's their problem, not mine."

Pierre looked away.

"I don't want to stay in this boring circus for another second. Listening to those people on stage spouting safety nonsense is practically murdering me."

"But sir..."

""

Arthur wanted to persuade him further.

"You stay here."

Pierre pointed at Arthur.

"You handle the rest of the speeches, the banquet, and those stupid interviews for me. Just tell them I had a sudden heart attack or that I was suffering from acclimatization issues and went back to China for treatment."

Arthur stared at the boss in astonishment.

"So you're going to Huizhou... really without security or a translator? You can't even speak a word of Chinese."

Pierre turned around and continued walking.

"I'm going to see a mathematician who can cleave topological spaces. Bringing bodyguards to see an old friend would be an insult to him."

Pierre walked down the corridor directly to the hotel's staff back door.

Arthur stood there, watching the stubborn figure disappear around the corner, and sighed heavily.

He turned his head and looked at the tightly closed doors of the venue, already able to imagine the devastated expressions on the organizers' faces upon hearing the news.

Nine o'clock in the evening.

Shanghai Railway Station.

This is a world completely different from international conference centers.

There was no air conditioning, no carpet, and no hushed conversation.

The waiting hall was packed with people.

The air was filled with the smells of sweat, tobacco, and instant noodles.

A loudspeaker broadcasted the arrival information of train after train through a high-pitched female voice.

Some people were carrying huge red and blue woven bags and squeezing through the crowd, while others simply spread out a newspaper and lay down on the ground to sleep.

Pierre, dressed in a well-tailored dark gray suit and carrying a small brown leather suitcase, stood in front of the bustling ticket gate.

He seemed out of place among the group.

But he didn't frown.

He looked at the young worker carrying a woven bag, his brow beaded with sweat, and at the woman next to him arguing loudly with a vendor over a few dollars.

This is the real thing.

Rough, noisy, and full of a wild vitality.

In Pierre's mind, the old man living in Huizhou should be someone who lived in this kind of environment.

If you sit in a sterile laboratory or a carpeted office every day, you can't imagine a discrete cutting tool that looks like a rusty saw.

Only in such chaotic soil, where people struggle for survival every day, can the kind of ruthless, head-on, butcher-like mindset grow.

"Passenger boarding for train K841 has begun..."

'

A flight attendant in a blue uniform next to me shouted something through a megaphone.

The crowd began to surge toward the ticket gate.

Pierre followed the crowd forward. He handed the sleeper ticket, which he had obtained through special channels, to the ticket inspector.

The ticket inspector glanced at his face, then at the sleeper ticket in his hand, and said something in broken English.

Platform three.

Pierre nodded and carried the suitcase down the stairs.

The green train was stopped on the tracks, its carriages somewhat worn and covered with white serial numbers.

He found the sleeper carriage and boarded the train.

There were four berths in the compartment, and luckily, he was the only passenger in the daytime carriage.

The furnishings in the carriage were somewhat old, with white sheets on the floor and a stainless steel thermos and a plastic tray on the small table in the middle.

Pierre stuffed his suitcase under the bed and sat down on the lower bunk.

"Clang!"

The train shuddered slightly, then slowly started moving.

The crowd seeing people off on the platform began to back away, and sunlight streamed in through the slightly yellowed train windows, illuminating Pierre's profile.

He let out a long sigh of relief.

The pent-up frustration from being cooped up in the meeting room for days was gradually dissipated by the wind as the train accelerated.

He reached into his pocket and took out the manuscript.

It was spread out on the small table in the middle.

Pierre looked at the signature above:

C. Zhuo.

He leaned against the car window, watching the scenery of the outskirts of Shanghai rushing past, and couldn't help but smile again.

He even started rehearsing tomorrow's meeting in his mind.

He won't stay in any fancy hotels; he'll take a taxi directly to USTC.

He would wander around the USTC campus, perhaps in a dilapidated office in the mathematics department, or perhaps in a corner of the library filled with old books.

He will find that old man with the worst temper, wearing faded clothes.

Then he would walk over and slam the manuscript on the table.

What should I say as my first sentence?

"Your algebraic closed-chain mapping is as ugly as a lump of mud."

"7

Yes, that's what I'll say.

Pierre could imagine the old man's furious reaction upon hearing those words.

Then they would find a blackboard, pick up chalk, and in this neglected corner of the campus, have a huge argument using the highest-dimensional language of topology.

This is what mathematicians should be doing.

The train left the city and entered the plains of southern China.

The sky gradually darkened.

The sun had sunk below the horizon, and the scenery outside the window turned into a blurry, dark blue.

The dim overhead lights were turned on inside the carriage.

The flight attendant pushed a cart over and filled the teacups on the table with hot water using an aluminum kettle. The steam rose up, blurring the glass of the window.

Pierre picked up his teacup and covered his hand with it.

The train made a rhythmic clattering sound on the tracks.

"Clang, clang."

At the same time.

More than 200 kilometers away from this train.

On another parallel railway track.

A green-skinned hard-seat train traveling from Huizhou to Shanghai is speeding through the night.

This carriage was ten times more crowded than Pierre's sleeper.

The aisle was packed with people, the luggage racks were crammed full, and even the seats were stuffed with woven bags.

The carriage was filled with the aroma of braised beef noodles and sunflower seed shells.

Li Jianming sat in a hard seat by the window.

Opposite him was a couple with a child, who was squirming restlessly in his mother's arms and occasionally letting out sharp cries.

The people next to me are playing cards loudly.

Li Jianming seemed oblivious to the surrounding noise.

He sat there upright, his back ramrod straight, and the top button of his old trench coat was fastened.

One of his hands remained on his chest, pressing tightly against the envelope in his inside pocket through his clothes.

Inside the envelope were two incomplete manuscripts by Chen Zhuo.

Li Jianming looked out the window.

Outside, the night was impenetrable, and his wrinkled, stubble-covered face and bloodshot eyes, made up from staying up all night, were reflected in the glass.

He was actually very tired.

From rummaging through journals in the basement to desperately checking his visa, and then frantically searching through the trash last night, he couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd slept a wink.

But he can't sleep.

I didn't dare to sleep.

He went over his words to Pierre in his mind over and over again.

"I am an ordinary university professor."

"This was written by an old friend of mine in China who wishes to remain anonymous."

"He's stuck and can't figure it out, so he asked me to ask Professor Pierre to take a look."

Li Jianming silently recited it in his heart.

He rehearsed every word, every pause, and even every helpless expression countless times.

He wanted to fool that old madman sitting at the top of the world's mathematics.

He wanted to get Pierre to open up without any reservations and to reveal his modern algebraic logic, which is based on discrete truncation.

All Pierre had to do was write a formula on the blackboard, all he had to do was utter a key guiding word.

Li Jianming was able to follow this line and figure out the whole road.

This is like walking a tightrope.

Once Pierre sensed something was wrong, once he followed the clues and guessed that the thing was made by a young man.

The consequences could be disastrous.

Li Jianming took a deep breath of the stale air in the carriage.

He took his hand off his chest and rubbed his cold cheek.

No matter how difficult it is, he has to do it.

For the sake of USTC, and for the sake of China, this once-in-a-century talent can be preserved.

Even if he were to lose face in the Shanghai conference hall today, and be trampled underfoot by his foreign counterparts, he would still pave the way for Chen Zhuo.

"A train whistle sounded, its sound tearing through the night sky."

Two green trains.

A train heads east, bound for the bustling metropolis of Shanghai.

A train headed west, towards Huizhou in the heart of the region.

On this ordinary early winter night, at a deserted railway intersection.

"boom"

Two trains passed each other in the darkness, accompanied by immense wind pressure and the vibrations of the rails.

In the instant the car windows collided, the lights from both sides traced blurry streaks of light across each other's glass.

Pierre was looking at the manuscript on the table when a violent ripple appeared on the surface of the teacup.

Li Jianming was staring out the window when the headlights of the oncoming train dazzled him, and he instinctively closed his eyes.

In just a few seconds.

The meeting has ended.

The sound of the rails became monotonous again.

Pierre leaned back against the pillows, listening to the fading roar, closed his eyes, his mind filled with the image of that person called C.

The image shows an elderly Chinese man in Zhuo's face, enraged.

Li Jianming opened his eyes, pressed the envelope to his chest again, and his eyes revealed a calculating look that showed he was ready to die.

They were all rushing toward what they believed to be their destination.

Driven by the deepest yearning for truth.

With calculations that were completely contrary to their own.

In the parallel darkness of the night, I walked further and further away.