My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 220 Senior Brother is So Cool!

The security department of USTC has demonstrated remarkable efficiency in the past few days.

Additional staff have been deployed to the main gate and several side gates of the school. No one is allowed to enter the school without a faculty or student ID.

Those who had been loitering around the dormitory building with cameras and recorders were all politely but without any room for negotiation asked to leave.

What the newspapers outside write is their business.

Once you're inside this red brick wall, you have to follow the rules set by USTC.

Dormitory 215 has returned to its former slightly dull and quiet state.

Chen Zhuo sat at his desk, his pen still in his hand.

There were no textbooks on the table, only a stack of white draft paper.

The top few sheets of paper were covered with countless black dots.

These points are unconnected and arranged in square arrays, accompanied by lines of concise algebraic expressions.

Chen Zhuo was twirling a pen in his hand.

The pen tip circles around the fingertip, falls back into the web of the hand, and is then flicked by the finger again, continuing to spin.

The derivation got stuck.

A few days ago, he successfully used discrete grids to break down continuous topology in the rational number field and found those singularities that could not fit perfectly.

In algebraic geometry, those things are called torsion parts.

This is a problem that the entire Hodge conjecture is bound to collapse.

He needs to establish an absolute boundary condition for these scattered singularities.

This is like having thousands of irregularly scattered sand pits on a boundless playground.

He not only had to mark the location of each sandpit, but also had to use a line to enclose all the sandpits within a reasonable framework.

When continuity is broken and becomes countless isolated discrete points, the algebraic matrix that needs to be processed exhibits an explosive growth.

If we use purely algebraic methods to calculate it, the amount of computation becomes ridiculously large.

The logical chain is tangled up in this place.

I spent two days calculating, using half a dozen sheets of scratch paper. The matrix kept getting longer and longer, until it couldn't fit on a single line and I had to start a new line.

The logical chain began to become bloated.

That's not right.

The beauty of mathematics lies in its simplicity.

If a proof process becomes a jumbled mess, it means that the initial approach was flawed.

Chen Zhuo stopped twirling his pen.

He looked at the scattered black dots on the paper.

They fight their own battles, with no discernible pattern.

He needs a rope to connect all these points.

But he still hasn't figured out what the rope is.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor.

Wang Dayong pushed open the door and walked in, carrying a plastic bag containing two apples and a few oranges.

"It's been washed."

Wang Dayong put the plastic bag on the table and pulled out a chair to sit down.

"It's finally been peaceful these past few days."

Wang Dayong picked up an apple, took a bite, and mumbled something indistinctly.

"I ran into the dorm supervisor when I was shopping. He said he hadn't seen a single suspicious person all morning."

7

Chen Zhuo picked up an orange and slowly peeled it.

"The security department works really hard too."

"you do not say."

Wang Dayong chewed on an apple.

"I heard the school gave the security team a bonus, and now these security guards look at everyone like a reporter."

Chen Zhuo didn't reply. He broke the peeled orange in half and put it in his mouth.

The orange is a bit sour.

He frowned slightly and placed the remaining half on the corner of the table.

"How's your drawing coming along?"

Wang Dayong glanced at the draft paper on Chen Zhuo's desk.

"These past few days I've seen you drawing dots on paper every day, like you're playing Connect Four."

"It's stuck."

Chen Zhuo said frankly.

"Oh, even you get stuck sometimes."

Wang Dayong was delighted.

"I thought you had a computer in your head, that you could answer any question just by looking at it."

Chen Zhuo pulled out a tissue and wiped his hands.

"I can't figure it out."

Chen Zhuo looked at the papers.

"There's too much data; it's scattered and can't be gathered together."

Wang Dayong knew nothing about the mathematics that Chen Zhuo was studying.

"If they're scattered, just put them in a frame."

Wang Dayong casually said that he threw the leftover apple core into the trash can.

"The tiny parts we have in the lab are all stored in a big metal tray, otherwise they'd be impossible to find if they fell on the ground."

Chen Zhuo smiled.

That's the logic.

Just then, there was a knock on the dormitory door.

Two thuds, the force was very even.

Wang Dayong turned his head and called out.

"The door isn't locked, come in."

The door was pushed open.

Wu Tao stood at the door.

Wang Dayong was stunned for a moment, and almost choked on the half-eaten apple in his mouth.

Chen Zhuo also turned his head and looked at Wu Tao at the door, raising his eyebrows slightly.

Wu Tao today is completely different from usual.

He wasn't wearing his usual gray jacket, nor was he wearing a hooded sweatshirt.

He was wearing a black suit.

The suit fabric looked a bit stiff, and the shoulders were slightly wide, so it didn't fit very well, but it was ironed very flat without a single wrinkle.

He was wearing a white shirt underneath, without a tie, and one button at the collar was undone.

What's most eye-catching is his hair.

My hair, which is usually messy and looks like a bird's nest, was combed neatly today, falling back and glistening with moisture, as if I had used hairspray or it was just freshly washed and still damp.

He exuded a sense of seriousness.

"Are you going on a blind date?"

Wang Dayong looked Wu Tao up and down and couldn't help but laugh.

Wu Tao walked in, closed the door behind him, and glared at Wang Dayong.

"Why go on a blind date? I have my dissertation defense tomorrow afternoon."

He walked to Chen Zhuo's desk and put down a thick file bag he was holding.

"Rented?"

Wang Dayong pointed to Wu Tao's suit.

"Bought."

Wu Tao tugged at the hem of his suit jacket.

"Three hundred yuan, it's on sale at that men's clothing store on the pedestrian street, how about it, looks alright, right?"

"Like an insurance salesman."

Wang Dayong spoke the truth.

Wu Tao ignored him and turned to look at Chen Zhuo.

"Xiao Zhuo, my doctoral dissertation defense is tomorrow at 2:30 pm in Room 302 of the Mathematics Department."

Chen Zhuo looked at Wu Tao.

Wu Tao still had dark circles under his eyes from staying up all night, but his eyes were very bright, almost frighteningly so.

It's the kind of sharpness that comes from having all your cards ready, just waiting to be played and unleashed.

Chen Zhuo reached out and opened the file bag on the table.

Inside was a bound thesis.

The cover follows the standard format of USTC, with the thesis title in the middle, the name of the supervisor Li Jianming below, and the name of the candidate Wu Tao below.

It's very thick.

It feels heavy in my hand.

Chen Zhuo opened the title page, where one page contained a description of the paper's findings.

Above that paper on large network topologies, several names were clearly printed.

That was the article published in the Annals of Mathematics.

Wu Tao pulled over a chair and sat down, placing his hands on his knees as he looked at Chen Zhuo.

"It's printed. It's over 130 pages long. It's my doctoral dissertation."

Chen Zhuo closed the paper and pushed the notebook back in front of Wu Tao.

"That's impressive. Congratulations on your PhD graduation in advance!"

You have to come tomorrow.

Wu Tao's tone was not one of discussion, but rather of notification.

"Old Li told me that the defense committee this time is of a very high standard. In addition to several professors from our institute, he also invited several academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University to review our article in the annual journal as the benchmark for the Chinese Academy of Sciences this year."

Wang Dayong listened from the side, clicking his tongue in amazement.

"Goodness gracious, an academician is coming to listen to your dissertation defense? Aren't your legs shaking?"

"What are you trembling about?"

Wu Tao raised his chin and chuckled.

"I wrote this article myself, word by word. Why would I be afraid of them?"

He turned his head and looked at Chen Zhuo.

"But you have to be there. The core underlying mathematical logic in this article was developed by you. If you're not sitting in the audience tomorrow, I'll feel like my doctoral graduation is missing a witness."

Chen Zhuo looked at Wu Tao's proud face and nodded.

"Okay, I'll go tomorrow."

Wu Tao breathed a sigh of relief, and his previously tense shoulders relaxed a little.

"That's fine. I've already found you a seat, a quiet one in the back by the window, where no one will bother you."

Chen Zhuo glanced at Wu Tao's slightly tense suit collar and made a gentle joke.

"Okay, I'll go tomorrow. But senior, you can't let this support go to waste. After you pass your defense with all A's tomorrow, how are you planning to treat me to this graduation dinner?"

Upon hearing this, Wu Tao's nerves, which had been slightly tense due to the defense, completely relaxed. He laughed heartily and waved his hand, "Is that even a question? It ends tomorrow afternoon, so you can choose any restaurant outside the school! Whether you want stir-fries or barbecue, it's all you can eat."

Chen Zhuo smiled and pushed the draft paper aside.

"It's settled then. You can speak a little faster on stage tomorrow. I'll eat less at lunch and save room for this good meal in the afternoon."

.

The atmosphere in the dormitory was very relaxed.

Wu Tao did not stay long.

He needs to go back and review tomorrow's PowerPoint presentation again.

Before leaving, he straightened his suit collar, pushed open the door, and walked out.

His back was straight and upright.

Chen Zhuo watched the door close and then turned his gaze back to the draft paper on the table.

The scattered black dots on the paper remained quietly there.

He picked up a pen and casually drew a few lines connecting the dots.

But soon, he crossed out the line.

Iron plates are easy to find in real life.

What does a metal plate in pure mathematics actually look like?

The next afternoon.

2:15.

The corridor on the third floor of the Mathematics Building was twice as crowded as usual.

Not only were there graduate students from our own institute, but also quite a few undergraduates who had come after hearing the news.

People gathered in twos and threes in the corridor, chatting in hushed tones.

.

"Have you heard? The paper being defended today is the one that was published in the 'Annals of Mathematics' last month."

"Of course, otherwise why would so many people come?"

"I heard that Chen Zhuo was also involved in that article, is that true?"

The door to conference room 302 was open.

This is a tiered conference room with a podium at the front and several rows of fixed wooden chairs at the back.

By this time, the back row of chairs was already full, and some students who arrived late had to stand against the back wall.

Several windows were open in the conference room, letting in the afternoon sun at an angle, and tiny dust particles could be seen dancing in the air.

The projector on the ceiling hummed, and the fan blew hot air out.

On the backdrop of the front stage, the first page of Wu Tao's defense presentation was displayed.

The judges' panel was located in the first row.

There were several nameplates and bottles of mineral water on the table.

Li Jianming sat in the leftmost position on the judges' panel.

Today he was wearing a clean light blue shirt, holding his ever-present thermos, and talking quietly with an elderly man with gray hair next to him, a smile on his face.

2:20.

Chen Zhuo walked in through the back door of the conference room.

It went unnoticed by anyone.

He walked through the crowd standing in the back row and found the spot Wu Tao had mentioned.

The second to last row, the empty seat closest to the window.

He sat down.

The people in front of him blocked most of his body, and from the podium, it was hard to see that there was a thirteen-year-old boy sitting there.

Chen Zhuo leaned back in his chair, looking at the podium in front of him.

Wu Tao was standing next to the podium, holding a page-turning pen in his hand.

He wore the same suit he wore yesterday very neatly today, with the collar buttoned up. He was taking his last deep breaths, his eyes fixed on the curtain.

2:30.

Time's up.

The chairman of the dissertation defense committee, the elderly academician with gray hair from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, cleared his throat and said something into the microphone.

"It's almost time, everyone please be quiet."

The buzzing in the conference room disappeared instantly.

All that could be heard was the sound of the projector's cooling fan.

The old academician opened the materials in his hand and glanced at them.

"This afternoon, we will be holding the dissertation defense for Wu Tao, a doctoral student in the Department of Mathematics, under the supervision of Professor Li Jianming. Now, please begin your presentation, Wu Tao."

Wu Tao took a step forward and stood in the center of the podium.

He did not look down at his speech notes.

He slightly raised the hand holding the page turner and pressed the next page button with his thumb.

Good afternoon, teachers and students.

Wu Tao's voice was steady, carried throughout the entire meeting through the microphone, without any tremor or nervousness.

"The topic of my defense today is 'Topology Mapping and Application Model Construction of Large and Complex Networks under Extreme Conditions'."

Slideshow transition.

An extremely complex network structure diagram appeared on the screen.

Countless nodes are connected together by thin lines, forming a huge, spider web-like three-dimensional structure.

Wu Tao began his narration.

He started with the most basic graph theory background and talked about the limitations of existing network models when dealing with multiple variables.

He spoke at a moderate pace and enunciated clearly.

When he gets to a crucial point, he uses his laser pointer to draw circles on the screen, guiding the judges' attention.

Some of the experts in the audience were looking at copies of the papers in their hands, while others were looking up at the screen, occasionally jotting down a few notes on paper.

Chen Zhuo sat in the back row, listening quietly.

Wu Tao translated the cold, abstract algebraic topological matrices that Chen Zhuo had written on paper into the language of physical networks in applied mathematics.

The dimensionality reduction matrix that Chen Zhuo originally calculated was described by Wu Tao as a flood discharge channel for handling data congestion in large communication networks.

The process of transforming pure mathematics into applied models is itself a highly aesthetic endeavor.

Chen Zhuo nodded to himself.

My senior brother is indeed very capable.

Time passed second by second.

Wu Tao's performance on stage is getting better and better.

He completely got into his own rhythm, and his body movements became natural.

He even made a small professional joke while explaining a minor data anomaly, which made several professors in the audience smile slightly.

Forty minutes later.

Wu Tao pressed the final page turn.

The words "Thank you" appeared on the screen.

"This concludes the entire presentation of my thesis. Thank you for listening."

Wu Tao bowed slightly, straightened up, and waited for the next segment.

Sparse applause broke out in the conference room, then quickly fell silent.

Everyone knows that the real test is just beginning.

Q&A session.

The elderly academician picked up the microphone.

He looked at the materials in his hand and pondered for a moment.

"Wu Tao, I've carefully read your paper, or rather, the article you published in the yearbook, three times."

The old academician's voice was slow, carrying a sense of the weight of time.

"The application model construction in the first half is very solid, and the algebraic topology matrix used for dimensionality reduction in the middle is extremely ingenious. This purely mathematical approach is bold and effective."

Wu Tao stood on the stage and nodded slightly.

"but."

The old academician then changed the subject.

The atmosphere in the conference room instantly tensed up, and several graduate students standing in the back row subconsciously held their breath.

Li Jianming also put down his thermos and leaned forward slightly.

"Models built using applied mathematics will ultimately have to face the test of extreme situations."

The old academician raised his head and stared sharply at Wu Tao.

"Mathematics can extend infinitely on paper, but the carrying capacity of a real network is limited. In your model, this complex network topology is continuous and stable."

"I have a purely theoretical hypothetical problem."

"If the extreme external pressure exceeds the critical value, it will cause your continuous network topology to break. It will no longer be a complete network, but will be broken into hundreds or thousands of isolated, discrete communication nodes."

The elderly academician put down his pen.

"In that situation, wouldn't the algebraic matrices in your article, which were originally based on continuous manifolds, become completely invalid? Wouldn't the model collapse?"

The meeting room was deathly silent.

That's a really tricky question.

It bypasses all the existing conclusions in Wu Tao's paper and attacks the fatal flaw of this model in extreme undefined states.

It has even stepped halfway out of the realm of applied mathematics and into the blind spots of pure algebraic geometry.

The graduate students in the back row exchanged glances, and they all saw shock in each other's eyes.

This isn't a question for testing doctoral students; it's more like testing a seasoned scholar.

All eyes were on Wu Tao.

Wu Tao stood on the podium.

His hands hung at his sides, his fingers slightly clenched into fists.

He did not answer immediately.

He first glanced at his mentor, Li Jianming, sitting below the stage.

Li Jianming gave him no hints, but simply looked at him calmly.

Then, Wu Tao turned around.

He didn't look at the slides, nor did he look through the memo in his hand.

He walked to the whiteboard next to the podium and picked up a black whiteboard marker.

Remove the pen cap.

Wu Tao turned around to face the judges' panel.

"Academician, the hypothesis you just proposed is extremely extreme."

Wu Tao spoke, his voice still steady, but with a greater sense of calm than when he had just made his statement.

"In that case, the network will indeed break down, the nodes will become discrete, and the traditional continuous matrix will indeed fail."

The old academician looked at him without saying a word, waiting for him to continue.

Wu Tao turned around to face the whiteboard.

He did not write out the mathematical formulas.

He drew a dozen or so small, unconnected dots on the whiteboard, which were scattered across the board like a handful of beans on a table.

"This is what you meant by the discrete nodes after the break."

Wu Tao used a whiteboard marker to dot these circles.

"If we were to use the underlying pure mathematical matrix to calculate the breakage error between each node, the computational load would be endless, and the model would indeed collapse."

Then, Wu Tao took a step back.

He raised his hand and, with a whiteboard marker, drew a large, closed circle around the dozen or so scattered dots.

This huge circle encloses all the discrete nodes.

"But in applied graph theory, we don't need to get bogged down in every single local fragment."

Wu Tao turned around, his eyes bright.

"No matter how fragmented they become internally, the overall data loss and topological variations they generate will not escape the macroscopic graph theory boundaries initially set by the system."

He tapped the huge outer circle with the tip of his pen.

"We don't need to modify the underlying mathematical matrices to adapt to discreteness; we only need to build a macroscopic topological wrapping loop for these discrete nodes at the application model level."

"As long as the boundary of this enclosed loop is not breached, any discrete fragments within it can be considered normal redundancy within the system."

"Therefore, the model doesn't crash; it just exists in a different form."

Wu Tao threw the whiteboard marker on the podium with a soft thud.

That's my answer.

There was a two-second silence in the conference room.

The old academician looked at the huge package circle on the whiteboard, and then at Wu Tao standing on the stage.

Suddenly, the old academician laughed.

He picked up the pen and signed his name heavily on the review form in front of him.

"The macroscopic intuition of applied mathematics is sometimes more useful than rote calculations in pure algebra, which is excellent."

The old academician leaned back in his chair and nodded.

"I'm fine now."

Li Jianming picked up his thermos, unscrewed the lid, took a big gulp of water, and let out a long sigh of relief.

The graduate students in the back row were stunned for a moment, and then, someone started to applaud.

Applause quickly spread and filled the entire conference room.

That was the purest recognition of a brilliant defense.

Chen Zhuo sat in the corner by the window in the back row.

He didn't discuss it as excitedly as the others, but he raised his hand and clapped it gently.

He was genuinely happy for Wu Tao.

His senior brother really looks handsome today.

His gaze passed over the densely packed heads in the front row, across the podium, and landed on the whiteboard.

The huge circle that Wu Tao casually drew completely enclosed the dozen or so scattered dots inside.

In this mathematical conference room, there is a wrapper around a macroscopic network model.

Chen Zhuo's clapping hand suddenly stopped in mid-air.

His gaze was fixed on the whiteboard, and he couldn't look away.

The enthusiastic applause around us seemed to vanish instantly, shut out by an invisible vacuum.

In his mind, the scattered black dots on the draft paper in dormitory 215 last night, which had been giving him a headache and were impossible to unify, flashed through his mind.

The scratching part.

Singularity.

An endless algebraic misalignment.

He had previously tried to use purely algebraic methods to calculate the characteristics of each singularity and to find the internal patterns between them.

That was a dead end.

Because scattered sand cannot be picked up with a needle.

But now, he's looking at that circle on the whiteboard.

The macroscopic intuition of applied mathematics is sometimes more useful than the rote calculations of pure algebra.

The old academician's words echoed in my ears.

Chen Zhuo's pupils contracted slightly.

Why is it necessary to calculate the internal patterns?

Since it has been confirmed that continuous manifolds will inevitably produce torsion in discrete meshes, why bother to worry about the size and direction of each torsion?

He could easily use macroscopic thinking from applied mathematics to establish a huge, absolute boundary for all the torsion parts within the dimension of algebraic geometry!

If it can be proven that the whole Hodge conjecture holds true outside this macroscopic topological wrapper.

Within the envelope, those inevitable singularities are the forbidden zones where conjectures collapse.

Use a wrapper to encompass all the problems!

Click.

Like a rusty lock, once the right key is inserted, a gentle twist causes the lock cylinder to turn and spring open.

The last piece of the puzzle that had been troubling him for several days was quietly and perfectly put together during his senior's dissertation defense.

Chen Zhuo sat in a chair.

He clasped his hands together again and continued to applaud along with the crowd.

He wore a gentle smile as he looked at Wu Tao on stage, who was bowing to the judges in gratitude.

My senior today is incredibly handsome!