My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 207 Hurry! To the train station!!!

He fled due to illness.

That old madman named Pierre isn't sick at all.

But if he's not sick, why is he hiding upstairs and refusing to see anyone?

Did he travel all the way to China just to eat steak and drink red wine in his hotel room?

Li Jianming's brain quickly rearranged and recombined all the clues.

What if he's not upstairs?

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Li Jianming felt a chill run down his spine.

If there was no one in the presidential suite at all, and if Arthur ordered two steaks upstairs by himself just to put on a show and deceive others.

Where did Pierre go?

Li Jianming did not return to the sofa in the lobby.

He strode out of the hotel and walked to a public phone booth with IC cards across the street.

He took a business card out of his wallet, picked up the phone, inserted the card, and dialed a number.

The phone rang five or six times before it was answered.

"Hello, who is this?"

A capable middle-aged male voice came from the other end of the phone.

"Jianguo, that's me, Li Jianming."

"Oh dear! Teacher Li!"

The voice on the other end immediately became respectful.

"Why did you suddenly decide to call me? Are you in Shanghai?"

This man is Zhao Jianguo. He was a graduate student that Li Jianming supervised more than ten years ago. After graduating, he returned to Shanghai and is now a section chief in the city's public security entry and exit management system.

"Yes, in Shanghai."

Li Jianming didn't exchange pleasantries.

"Jianguo, I need your help urgently. This can't be done through official channels. Could you investigate it for me privately?"

"You said that as long as it doesn't violate the major principles, I will definitely help you."

"Could you help me find information about a foreigner, a Frenchman named Pierre, who's in Shanghai these days attending that topology conference?"

.

Li Jianming speaks quickly and clearly.

"Please check two things for me. First, check if the city's emergency medical center and several large hospitals with international medical treatment qualifications, such as Ruijin or Huashan, have any emergency dispatch records or prescription records for this person in the past two days."

"Secondly, check the railway or airline systems to see if there are any records of him registering for tickets using his passport in the past two days."

.

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone, followed by the sound of keyboard typing.

"Teacher Li, please wait a moment. First, I'll call a friend at the Health Commission to ask about it. The results should be available in a few minutes. Second, I need to check the system. Please don't hang up."

Li Jianming held the phone, listening to the static on the other end, his eyes fixed on the hotel entrance across the street.

Five minutes later, Zhao Jianguo's voice came through again, tinged with doubt.

"Teacher Li, I checked, and there is no record of this foreign guest being dispatched in the city's emergency medical network. I also asked the foreign medical departments of Ruijin and Huashan Hospitals, and they have never seen this person before, nor have they prescribed any medication."

Li Jianming sneered. Sure enough, he was faking illness.

"What about the ticket purchase record?" he pressed.

"no."

Zhao Jianguo answered very affirmatively.

"There is no record of his passport being used for ticket purchases in the ticketing systems for foreign nationals at the train station and airport. His current status in the system is still that he is staying at that five-star hotel."

Li Jianming was stunned for a moment.

Didn't buy a ticket? Didn't leave Shanghai?

Could it be that the old man was simply bored during the meeting and refused to come downstairs from his hotel room?

"Okay, I understand. Thank you, Jianguo. I'll treat you to dinner another day."

"You're too kind, Teacher Li. Please feel free to contact me anytime if you need anything."

After hanging up the phone, Li Jianming took out his IC card.

He stood in the phone booth and lit a cigarette.

The lighter flame flickered in the wind, igniting a cigarette. He took a deep drag, the pungent smoke filling his lungs and clearing his groggy mind a little.

No ticket purchase record.

Pierre is still in Shanghai.

This conclusion brought Li Jianming a slight sense of relief.

As long as he's still in Shanghai, he'll stay here for a week, even if it means keeping that old madman locked up in his room.

However, as Li Jianming smoked his cigarette, he felt that something was amiss.

Arthur's overly relaxed figure kept replaying in his mind.

If he were simply faking illness and hiding upstairs, it would be a major scandal in the international academic community if the organizers forced their way in and exposed him.

No matter how arrogant Pierre was, his assistant wouldn't be completely unguarded.

Unless, as Arthur was certain, no matter who investigated, they would not be able to find Pierre's whereabouts in this city.

Li Jianming's fingers, which were holding a cigarette, suddenly froze.

He overlooked a most fatal blind spot of the times.

It is now 2004.

An elderly foreign man who can't speak a word of Chinese, or a foreign assistant who doesn't understand Chinese.

How could they possibly go to the train station and buy tickets with their passports?

The ticket seller at the ticket window couldn't understand English, and most of the signs at the train station were only in pinyin. If Pierre really wanted to leave, he would never go to buy a ticket himself.

He needed to find a middleman who understood Chinese, knew the rules, and could buy tickets on his behalf.

For the sake of convenience, this middleman is highly unlikely to use the foreign guest's passport to register and buy a regular train ticket under their real name. Instead, they will use their internal connections or directly use their own ID card to buy an anonymous sleeper ticket!

No wonder Zhao Jianguo couldn't find Pierre's passport ticket purchase record in his system!

Li Jianming threw his half-smoked cigarette on the ground and stomped it out.

He turned and strode across the road, not returning to the hotel lobby, but heading straight for the adjacent international conference center.

Two o'clock in the afternoon.

The conference affairs team's backstage area on the first floor of the conference center was in complete chaos.

Everywhere there were piles of mineral water boxes, unfinished conference manuals, and several staff members making phone calls to confirm the agenda for tomorrow's closing ceremony.

Li Jianming, with a cold face, pushed open the half-closed back door and went inside.

His gaze swept across the room and landed on a young man sitting at a corner table, scratching his head and looking exhausted.

Li Jianming recognized him.

This is the male conference staff member who stopped me at the lobby entrance yesterday; he's the dedicated liaison officer assigned by the organizing committee to the foreign guests.

Li Jianming strode over.

With a snap.

Li Jianming slammed his work ID card heavily on the table covered with documents.

The young liaison officer was startled and looked up abruptly.

"You...Professor Li?"

He glanced at the documents on the table.

"How did you get backstage? This isn't allowed."

"7

"Shut up."

Li Jianming's voice wasn't loud, but it was extremely imposing.

He pulled up a chair, sat down directly opposite the liaison officer, leaned forward, and stared intently into the officer's eyes.

"Young man, let me ask you, who is responsible for the foreign affairs security of your organizing committee this time?"

The liaison officer was bewildered by his accusatory attitude and stammered.

"Yes, it was led by leaders from the Municipal Foreign Affairs Office and the Organizing Committee... What happened, Professor Li? What kind of safety incident occurred?"

"A major accident has occurred!"

Li Jianming slammed his hand on the table.

"A 65-year-old foreign guest, a Fields Medal winner, suffered a serious heart attack right under your noses, and instead of going to the hospital and keeping a medical record, you just listened to a foreign assistant and abandoned him in his hotel suite without any care?!"

Li Jianming exuded the absolute aura he possessed when he lectured students on the podium after thirty years as a full professor.

"If someone dies in the hotel tonight, do you understand how huge an international dispute that would be? Do you think a mere liaison officer like you can shoulder that responsibility?!"

The liaison officer's face turned pale instantly.

"Professor Li, don't scare me... Yesterday, Mr. Arthur was very adamant, refusing to let us see it, and even made us sign a waiver..."

'

"Disclaimer is worthless!"

Li Jianming interrupted him directly, his eyes becoming extremely sharp.

"He dared to sign it, and you believe him? I just checked with the city's emergency medical center, and there's absolutely no record of him being dispatched. What does that mean? It means he wasn't even at the hotel!"

"No, not at the hotel? Where could we be?"

The liaison officer panicked and stood up to leave.

"No, I have to report to my supervisor and force the door open to confirm..."

","stop."

Li Jianming grabbed his arm.

At this point, you absolutely cannot let him go to the leaders. Once the organizing committee gets involved, the matter will be completely out of control.

Li Jianming stared into the liaison officer's panicked eyes and used his most cunning trick.

"Don't you know where you went?"

Li Jianming's voice was very low, carrying a coldness as if he already had all the evidence.

"Has that assistant named Arthur asked you for help these past couple of days?"

The liaison officer was stunned.

"Well... he did contact me..."

Ji Jianming's heart skipped a beat, but his face remained expressionless.

"What does he want from you? Does he want you to use your connections on the organizing committee to buy train tickets for him?!"

Li Jianming pressed on relentlessly.

"Let me tell you, the ticket registration at train stations for foreign nationals is easily checked. If you bought the ticket and secretly escorted the foreign guest away from his/her residence, that's a serious dereliction of duty and a breach of confidentiality! I can call the Municipal Public Security Bureau's Exit-Entry Administration Department right now!"

These words were like heavy blows, directly shattering the young liaison officer's psychological defenses.

He was just an ordinary college student cadre who was seconded here to help out. He had never seen such a scene before. When he heard that the Municipal Bureau was going to be involved, his legs went weak.

"Professor Li! Please don't! I'll tell you! I'll tell you everything!"

The liaison officer's voice was choked with sobs.

"It has nothing to do with me! The day before yesterday afternoon, right after the meeting ended, Arthur came to me backstage and gave me five hundred dollars."

The liaison officer took an envelope from the drawer and pushed it in front of Li Jianming with trembling hands.

"He forced me to use the priority ticketing rights of the Chinese conference organizing committee to buy a ticket for someone at the train station..."

""

Li Jianming felt his breath stop for a moment.

"Where to buy tickets?"

His throat was a little dry.

He said Mr. Pierre was very interested in traditional Chinese culture and wanted to take advantage of his illness to travel around... He asked me to buy a soft sleeper ticket to Huizhou yesterday.

""

The liaison officer was still explaining something behind him, but Li Jianming could no longer hear him at all.

"Huizhou".

These two words were like a bombshell, exploding directly in Li Jianming's mind.

There is no illness.

There is no medical isolation.

Pierre had already left everyone behind and boarded the train to Huizhou the day before yesterday, the very day the conference opened.

What traditional culture did he go to Huizhou to see? What kind of traditional culture does Huizhou have that could attract a Fields Medal winner!

The line in Li Jianming's mind instantly connected perfectly.

Annual Review of Mathematics.

That submission contained one-third engineering derivations and the rest were entirely illogical mathematical truncations.

Corresponding author: Jianming Li, Huaguo University of Science and Technology.

Address: Huizhou.

Pierre not only read the manuscript, but he couldn't wait to read it.

He didn't even want to attend the meeting in Shanghai, and went directly to the old headquarters of Duan Ke University through the submission address!

Li Jianming sat in the chair, his whole body ice-cold.

He traveled all the way to Shanghai and spent two nights in the hotel lobby.

Drinking bitter tea and chewing dry biscuits, all he could do was stuff two scraps of manuscript under someone's door, hoping to get a few free pointers.

The results of it?

They don't care about your incomplete manuscript at all.

They bypassed him, that old fox, and went straight to his hometown to dig up that peerless genius who could write such outrageous succincts!

Calculate the time.

If Pierre boarded the train the day before yesterday, he would have arrived in Huizhou yesterday morning.

Given that old madman's temper, he would definitely head straight for the School of Mathematics at USTC.

Chen Zhuo, that unsuspecting thirteen-year-old junior who used to wander around the Physics Department every day and then come to the Mathematics Department to solve problems in front of the blackboard in the afternoon, is now like a piece of fresh meat exuding the smell of blood, laid bare in front of a top foreign shark!

"Professor Li... what do you think about this?"

""

The liaison officer was still asking cautiously.

Li Jianming suddenly stood up.

The movement was so forceful that it knocked the chair behind him to the ground with a loud bang.

Without saying a word, without even taking his work badge from the table, he smashed open the conference office door and rushed out like a mad old lion.

He rushed through the corridor and out of the glass doors of the international conference center.

The cold November wind blew through his old trench coat, but he was oblivious, his mind filled with only one wildly beating thought.

Go back quickly! Go back quickly and stop that old madman! We absolutely cannot let him take Chen Zhuo away!

Li Jianming rushed to the roadside, ran straight to a taxi that had just stopped, and yanked open the door to get in.

The driver was startled.

"Hey sir, where are you going?"

Li Jianming's eyes were bloodshot and his hands were gripping the back of the seat in front of him tightly.

He was breathing heavily, his voice hoarse as if he were roaring: "To the train station!"

"Quick! To the train station!!!"

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