My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 231 Beautiful

The innermost single room on the third floor of the old library.

The window wasn't closed tightly, leaving a crack, through which the early spring wind blew in, carrying the smell of rain mixed with the earth.

The room was very quiet.

A huge whiteboard occupied most of the wall.

The whiteboard was covered with algebraic equations.

Starting from the top left corner and extending all the way to the bottom right corner, there is almost no blank space.

The formulas are connected by arrows and auxiliary lines, like a huge spider web trying to trap some kind of behemoth.

Chen Zhuo stood in front of the whiteboard.

He didn't move, his gaze fixed on the area in the very center of the whiteboard.

That's a topological fault left by Pierre.

Pierre's method was brutal, completely disregarding the continuity of spatial structure, directly cleaving a hole in the topological space, leaving behind a bottomless algebraic singularity.

It took Chen Zhuo three days to sew up the wound.

He took two steps back to take in the overall structure of the whiteboard.

Following the logical chain, he used the tools of homological algebra.

This is a method that is considered very safe and even flawless in the academic community.

It's like building a suspension bridge on both sides of a cliff. To ensure a smooth transition of the bridge deck, he had to set up a large number of transition matrices.

With each step of the derivation, an additional prerequisite condition is added.

The equation grew larger and larger, like a snowball rolling downhill.

Chen Zhuo turned around and walked to the table by the window.

On the left was a stack of brand-new A4 printing paper, and on the right was a stack of drafts already filled with calculations.

He pulled out a sheet of white paper, picked up a pen, and ran the last section of the closing logic in the lower right corner of the whiteboard on the paper again.

Ten minutes later.

Chen Zhuo put down his pen.

The calculation results are correct.

The logic is closed-loop, and the smooth transition of homological algebra did indeed work, forcibly stitching up that fault line.

If this solution were compiled into a paper and published, it would be enough to occupy a decent space in a core mathematics journal in the second quartile.

For many, this is already a tremendous achievement that would enhance their resume.

But Chen Zhuo's brows did not relax. He picked up the water glass on the table and took a sip of water.

He then turned to look at the whiteboard.

It looks terrible.

Mathematics has an aesthetic aspect.

A good derivation should be like a knife: crisp, sharp, and to the core, without any unnecessary embellishment.

The things on his whiteboard now, while correct, are too bloated.

To fill the gaps left by Pierre, he used three huge submatrices as buffers, which made the entire algebraic structure top-heavy.

It's like a piece of exquisite porcelain that should have had smooth lines, but a piece of clay was forcibly added to the edge of the chip.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor.

The footsteps stopped at the door of the private room.

The door wasn't locked and was pushed open.

Li Jianming walked in, carrying a lunchbox in his hand.

"It's time to eat."

Li Jianming placed the lunchbox on the edge of the desk.

"Your mother, Comrade Liu Xiuying, called my office a couple of days ago and repeatedly told me to make sure you eat on time. If you get thin from hunger while I'm here, I won't be able to explain it to Zeyang."

Chen Zhuo smiled and put down his water glass.

"Thank you, teacher."

He walked over and opened the lunchbox.

Inside were stir-fried green peppers with pork slices and scrambled eggs with tomatoes, all from the cafeteria. The rice was packed tightly and still steaming hot.

Li Jianming didn't sit still. He walked to the whiteboard, looked up, and gazed at the wall full of formulas.

After watching for a while, he took out a cigarette case from his jacket pocket, took one out, smelled it under his nose, but didn't light it.

The old library had a rule that this area on the third floor, filled with old books and paper archives, was absolutely off-limits to open flames, so Li Jianming could only indulge his smoking habit.

"Is this road now open?"

Li Jianming stared at the bottom right corner of the whiteboard and asked.

"I've figured it out."

Chen Zhuo sat at his desk and swallowed a mouthful of rice.

"Did you use homological algebra?"

"Um."

Li Jianming turned around and looked at the boy who was eating with his head down.

You don't look very happy.

Li Jianming put the cigarette back in the cigarette pack and pulled over a chair to sit down.

"What's wrong? Feeling like you're putting in too much effort?"

"It's not strenuous."

Chen Zhuo put down his chopsticks.

He stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and pointed to the particularly dense transition matrix area in the middle.

"Pierre left too big an opening there; he was unreasonable and directly severed the continuity of the topological space."

"I used homological algebra to make a direct connection. Just to make this smooth transition, I used three substructures. The chain was too long, and the amount of computation in the later stages increased exponentially."

Li Jianming looked in the direction he was pointing and pondered for a while.

"It is a bit cumbersome."

Li Jianming nodded.

"But as long as the logic is complete, that's fine. Pierre was a crazy man who didn't play by the rules. It's already quite an achievement if you can connect to his framework. Mathematical derivation sometimes has to compromise with reality."

Li Jianming paused for a moment, his tone becoming somewhat earnest.

"Xiao Zhuo, academic research is not always black and white. A method that can solve a problem is a good method. I think your deduction is very logically rigorous and can definitely stand up to scrutiny."

Chen Zhuo remained silent.

He walked back to his desk, picked up his lunchbox, and slowly finished the rest of his food.

Put the lid on the lunchbox.

He took out a tissue and carefully wiped his hands.

"teacher."

Chen Zhuo looked at Li Jianming.

"This is Hodge's conjecture."

Li Jianming was stunned.

Chen Zhuo turned around and walked to the lower right corner of the whiteboard, picking up the whiteboard eraser from the side.

He didn't pause at all.

Raise your arm and start erasing downwards from the top left corner of the whiteboard, beginning with the initial derivation.

Li Jianming suddenly stood up, the chair legs scraping against the floor with a screeching sound.

"What are you doing?"

Li Jianming subconsciously took a step forward, raising his voice by eight octaves.

"Are you crazy? This data took several days to close!"

Chen Zhuo didn't stop what he was doing, and he didn't even turn his head.

"It shouldn't be like this."

As the whiteboard eraser moved quickly, those bloated, cumbersome, and massive transition matrices that existed to fill topological gaps were cleanly wiped away.

The whiteboard once again revealed its clean base.

Chen Zhuo wiped it very carefully, not even missing some discarded calculations in the corners, leaving no trace whatsoever.

In just a few minutes.

The painstaking effort put into half a wall has vanished completely.

Chen Zhuo tossed the whiteboard eraser aside.

He turned his head and looked at Li Jianming, whose face was full of astonishment and even a little heartache.

"I thought about it, and since my teacher has been so bold, I feel like I'd be letting down his reputation if I were to remain timid and hesitant."

Chen Zhuo stared at the empty whiteboard.

"I can just cut the part he split open directly."

Li Jianming stared at Chen Zhuo for a long time.

"OK."

Li Jianming didn't try to persuade him any further. He stepped forward and picked up the empty lunchboxes on the table.

I won't bother you. Take care and get some rest.

"it is good."

The door was closed.

Chen Zhuo was left alone in the room again.

The rain outside seemed to be getting heavier, and the raindrops hit the glass with a dull pattering sound.

Chen Zhuo walked to the desk.

He gathered up the sheets of draft paper that he had just written down the calculation process of homological algebra.

Instead of tearing it up, I simply crumpled it into a ball and accurately tossed it into the wastepaper basket in the corner.

Then, he pulled out a brand new blank A4 sheet of paper.

He picked up his pen and sat down again in the chair.

A smooth transition is not required.

A gentle edge is not needed.

Since homological algebra doesn't work, let's try another approach.

Chen Zhuo's gaze became completely calm.

The sounds of rain and wind all faded away at that moment.

His pen tip landed on the white paper.

Black ink spread across the paper.

He abandoned all previous conservative ideas and redefined a set of singular matrices.

This is an extremely rare set of algebraic structures.

It has no prototype in regular university textbooks and even violates some basic visual intuition.

It eliminated all the gentle parts that existed for the sake of continuity, retaining only the core and the hardest skeleton.

He finished writing on one page, then immediately turned the page, his movements swift and decisive, without any pause or pause for thought.

What appears on the paper is no longer a continuous, gradual deduction, but a brutal, one-size-fits-all cut.

When encountering variable conflicts, he neither backs down nor takes detours, but directly uses high-dimensional mapping to forcibly offset the variables.

This is a completely illogical way of solving problems.

Time passed little by little.

The sky outside the window had completely darkened.

Chen Zhuo did not get up to turn on the light, but continued to write on the paper in the dim light coming in from the corridor.

Until the very last stroke was written.

He stopped writing.

Leaning back in my chair, I looked at the three sheets of paper spread out in front of me.

He doesn't need to recalculate.

This purely algebraic structure is like a gear that has been perfectly polished to have sharp edges.

It has barbs, and an undeniable toughness.

But when Chen Zhuo mentally inserted this gear into the ending left by Pierre.

Click.

Perfectly fitted.

There is no excess fat, and no redundant chains.

Clean, efficient, violent, beautiful.

Chen Zhuo picked up his water glass and took a sip.

I stood up and turned on the room light.

The fax machine sat quietly to one side in the corner.

It was connected to a long telephone line that extended all the way outside the corridor.

The next afternoon.

The rain in Huizhou finally stopped, and the heavy clouds slowly dispersed, letting in a little sunshine.

Chen Zhuo stood in front of the whiteboard, picked out the core part of the strange matrix he had derived on paper last night, and went through it again on the whiteboard, sorting out the underlying logical structure.

Just then.

The fax machine in the corner suddenly rang.

The piercing reception sound was particularly jarring in the quiet private room.

Immediately following was the sound of the roller slowly turning and the paper being pushed forward by friction.

Chen Zhuo stopped writing and turned around.

A sheet of printing paper was slowly ejected by the machine.

Chen Zhuo walked over and tore the paper off.

He glanced down at it.

I couldn't help but chuckle softly.

There were no greetings or lengthy explanations on that piece of paper.

There is only half a fragment of the French formula.

That was the node that Pierre got stuck on when he tried to forcibly consolidate the front-end topology framework at Princeton.

I stopped writing the formula halfway through.

At the break, a huge question mark that takes up almost half the sheet of paper is drawn.

"?"

That stroke was drawn very heavily.

The ink even left a noticeable black stain on the back of the paper, penetrating deep into the paper.

Chen Zhuo stared at the question mark.

He could almost picture his cheap mentor across the ocean sitting behind a solid wood desk covered in draft paper, slamming his pen on the table in a fit of rage, and then roughly shoving the paper into the fax machine.

The old man grew anxious.

Chen Zhuo took the fax paper, walked to the desk, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

He laid the paper flat on the table and used his palm to flatten the slight curling at the edges caused by the heat.

He removed the cap from the black ballpoint pen.

Looking at the question mark that exuded a sense of irritation, Chen Zhuo's lips curled up slightly.

He doesn't intend to write a single pointless word.

He found a relatively clean, empty area next to the huge question mark.

Put pen to paper.

He wrote down the three most crucial lines of equations from the set of singular matrices he had constructed yesterday.

There are no prerequisite conditions.

No further explanation is needed.

There wasn't even a single arrow indicating the cause-and-effect relationship.

It's the answer that's stripped bare of all the outer packaging.

You cleaved a crack, and I'll throw in an equally violent stone.

Figure out the rest yourself.

After writing these three lines.

Chen Zhuo put down his pen.

He picked up the paper, one half of which was a question mark and the other half contained three lines of calculations.

Go back to the fax machine.

Insert the paper into the paper feed slot.

Pick up the receiver, press the dial button, and skillfully enter the long string of international dialing codes and the number of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Press the send button.

"Buzz"

The paper was smoothly swallowed by the machine, which emitted an extremely slow scanning sound.

After a while, the paper came out from below as it was.

Sending complete.

Chen Zhuo did not unplug the power, leaving the machine in standby mode.

He walked back to the whiteboard and continued copying the draft he hadn't finished.

Time slowly passed.

If you calculate the time difference, it should be the middle of the night on the East Coast of the United States right now.

Pierre, that old man with an extremely irregular schedule, is most likely still holed up in his office, working himself to the bone.

Chen Zhuo was not in a hurry.

He finished his work on the whiteboard, threw the pen into the box, and went to the water room at the end of the corridor to wash his face.

The tap water in the pipes was very cool, and splashing it on my face made me feel refreshed.

By the time he dried his face with a towel and returned to his private room, it was already getting dark.

It was evening.

The door was pushed open again.

Li Jianming walked in.

This time he didn't bring a lunchbox, but instead held a white porcelain teacup with the words "USTC Anniversary" printed on it.

"How's it going? Has the new approach to re-cutting it come together successfully?"

Li Jianming asked casually, peeking at the whiteboard.

The whiteboard had far fewer formulas than yesterday, making it appear much emptier.

He only glanced at it a few times before his hand holding the teacup froze in mid-air, and he stopped in his tracks.

"You..."

""

Li Jianming took two steps forward, narrowed his eyes slightly, and stared intently at the few rows of matrices in the center of the whiteboard.

"This matrix structure is too unconventional."

Li Jianming gasped.

Chen Zhuo leaned against the wooden lattice window, not responding.

"You've completely abandoned continuity? You're just cutting straight in?"

Li Jianming turned to look at him, his face full of disbelief.

"This logic jumps so far, and there's not even a buffer submatrix in between?"

Chen Zhuo walked to the desk, picked up the original copy of the manuscript that had just been faxed, and handed it to Li Jianming.

"Sent."

Li Jianming switched the white porcelain teacup to his left hand and took the paper with his right.

He immediately noticed the huge question mark that took up half the page, and his lips twitched involuntarily.

Immediately afterwards, he saw the three lines of equations that Chen Zhuo had written next to the question mark.

"You only sent these three lines?"

Li Jianming raised his head.

"Um.

""

"Not even a single explanation?"

No explanation needed.

Chen Zhuo looked out the window at the gradually darkening sky.

"He can understand it."

Li Jianming held the paper, speechless for a long time.

These two men are a tyrant sitting on the throne of Princeton and a young man sitting on the third floor of the old library.

Their communication style was like two lunatics meeting in the street using coded language, completely disregarding conventional academic rigor.

Just as Li Jianming was about to put the paper down.

The fax machine in the corner suddenly lit up with a green indicator light.

The piercing receiver beeped again.

"One drop"

The rollers rotate.

Li Jianming suddenly turned around and stared at the paper dispenser.

Chen Zhuo also turned his head and looked over.

The white paper slid out slowly.

It's still the same piece of paper as the base.

It was a long transoceanic journey from Huizhou to Princeton and back again.

The ink on the paper appeared somewhat messy and blurry due to repeated scanning and faxing.

Li Jianming strode over and, before the machine had finished spitting out the fax paper, ripped it off.

He looked down.

Next to that half-incomplete formula.

Next to that huge question mark that exudes irritation.

Next to the three lines of algebraic equations written by Chen Zhuo.

There's an extra huge symbol.

An exclamation mark drawn with a thick pen.

"!"

""

The strokes were extremely heavy, even leaving a slight indentation on the paper, as if they could penetrate the back of the paper, allowing the reader to feel the writer's momentary pleasure.

Below the exclamation mark, there is a line of somewhat messy French cursive.

Li Jianming understands French.

He stared at the word, his lips trembling slightly.

Chen Zhuo walked over.

"What did you write?" Chen Zhuo asked.

Li Jianming raised his head, looked at the calm-looking boy in front of him, and swallowed hard.

"Magnifique."

Li Jianming's voice was much lower than usual, with a hint of suppressed emotion.

He handed the paper to Chen Zhuo.

"pretty."

Chen Zhuo took the fax paper.

His gaze fell on the illegible French word, then followed the strokes to the huge exclamation mark above it.

The old man understood.

He not only understood it, but also completely endorsed this violent approach.

There were no pleasantries, no probing questions.

Two minds separated by thousands of miles, in this instant, completed the deepest level of connection through these three lines of illogical equations.

"That's it?"

Li Jianming watched as Chen Zhuo casually slipped the fax paper into an English mathematics journal on the table, and asked in disbelief.

"That's the solution?"

Chen Zhuo closed the journal.

He turned his head, looked at Li Jianming, and gently shook his head.

"It's not over yet."

Chen Zhuo's gaze fell on the whiteboard.

"It's just a knife. Pierre said it was beautiful because he thought it was sharp enough to cut the gash he had made."

Chen Zhuo walked to the basin and washed his hands.

"The real trouble has just begun. The outer shell of the singularity has been smashed, but inside are hundreds and thousands of extremely complex sub-variables. Over the next few months, I will have to take this knife and remove those redundant variables one by one."

He picked up a towel and dried his hands.

"That piece of paper was just the first step in Hodge's conjecture."

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