My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 276 Landing

The slight turbulence in the cabin lasted for about ten seconds. As the engine thrust decreased in the opposite direction, the Gulfstream taxied smoothly on the runway at Boston Logan International Airport and eventually came to a stop on the dedicated apron.

The professors who were still writing equations and flipping through documents during the flight all put down their pen caps.

Pierre sat by the window, folded the half-read newspaper in his hand, and placed it on the small table in front of him.

Across the aisle, Professor Arthur was taking off his glasses and wiping the lenses with an eye cloth.

Chen Zhuo sat in the seat behind Pierre.

He gathered up the few sheets of draft paper on the small table in front of him.

He had only written half of the equation when he stopped in his tracks. Instead of finishing it, he capped his pen and stuffed it, along with the draft paper, into his backpack.

He zipped up his backpack, grabbed the strap, and stood up.

The cabin door was pushed open by the flight attendant.

The moment the door opened, a gust of cold air, carrying the salty, damp scent of the Atlantic Ocean, rushed into the cabin.

Late September in Boston is much colder than in Princeton.

The wind didn't carry the fermenting scent of leaves typical of New Jersey; instead, it carried the cold, hard feel of a northern coastal city.

As the gangway was lowered, more than a dozen leading figures, professors, and invited scholars from the Princeton Mathematics Department stood up one after another and walked out along the aisle.

The once quiet cabin was filled with the sounds of people putting on coats, pulling luggage, and talking in hushed tones.

Professor Arthur had just reached the hatch when the cold wind made him shrink back.

"God, autumn in Boston always comes so irrationally."

Arthur grumbled, turned up the collar of his jacket, and stepped down the gangway.

Pierre followed behind.

He paused by the cabin door and took out the wool scarf that Matilda had given him that morning from his bag.

He wrapped the wool around his neck twice, tucked his chin into the soft wool, and then took the handrail of the gangway to descend.

Chen Zhuo walked last.

The cold wind blowing on my face made me feel a sharp drop in temperature.

He did not complain about the weather.

He carried the backpack on one shoulder and zipped up his windproof jacket all the way to the top, just covering his neck.

He put his hands in his jacket pockets and walked down the metal steps from the plane.

Four black full-size Ford vans were neatly lined up at the edge of the tarmac.

To welcome the Gulfstream charter plane packed with top scholars, Harvard's mathematics department dispatched a dedicated convoy of vehicles to pick it up.

The Princeton professors greeted each other in the wind as they disembarked from the plane, and were then guided by several Harvard administrative staff to different business vehicles.

The driver's side door of the second Ford minivan was open, and a young man wearing a black woolen coat was standing next to the front of the vehicle.

He held a printed list of bicycle riders with only three names in his hand, facing the wind as he watched the crowd descend the gangway.

He looked to be about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, wearing thin black-rimmed glasses, and holding an unopened black long-handled umbrella in his other hand. He was lightly tapping his toes on the ground, seemingly trying to ward off the chill with the slightest movement.

Upon seeing the person descending the gangway, the young man immediately straightened up and strode quickly towards them, braving the wind.

"Professor Arthur."

The young man approached and first extended his hand to Arthur, who was walking at the front, with obvious respect in his tone.

"You're in the math department at Harvard?"

Arthur reached out and shook his hand.

"Yes, I'm Daniel, a third-year PhD student."

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The young man nodded and introduced himself.

"The department sent me to pick up everyone from Princeton."

Arthur released his grip and stepped aside.

Daniel's gaze naturally shifted to Pierre, who was following behind.

"Professor Pierre, hello, you must be tired from your journey."

Daniel bent slightly at the waist and grasped Pierre's outstretched hands. Facing this titan of algebraic geometry, his movements appeared particularly reserved.

"Thank you for picking us up, Daniel."

Pierre nodded gently.

After letting go, Daniel's gaze went past Pierre's shoulder and landed on the person walking at the very back.

According to the exclusive airport pick-up list in his hand, the last passenger in this car was named Chen Zhuo.

Daniel's gaze fell on Chen Zhuo.

He wore a dark gray windproof jacket, ordinary sneakers, and a black backpack without any logo slung over one shoulder. His hair was slightly messy from the Boston sea breeze.

This is a clean-cut, gentle-looking Asian boy.

From any perspective, this is just a child who is still in middle school, perhaps traveling with his elders on the weekend.

However, Daniel knew the name of the third person on that list very well.

He had seen that name countless times in Harvard's internal emails, and he had also seen the complex matrices and homology group derivations associated with that name on his advisor's blackboard.

That was a few months ago, when the game-changer shattered the Hodge conjecture and broke through part of the higher-dimensional barrier.

That's the name that the entire algebraic geometry community can't avoid this year.

Daniel's breath caught in his throat for a moment.

He knew that geniuses were often young, but seeing the number fourteen on paper and seeing a fourteen-year-old boy standing alive in front of him were two completely different physical shocks.

Daniel's right hand, which he had just pulled back, froze in mid-air.

He looked into Chen Zhuo's eyes, which were calm and devoid of any arrogance or defensiveness.

Daniel swallowed hard.

His mind was racing, trying to find a suitable term in this extremely brief moment of interaction.

Is he called "Professor Chen"?

Strictly speaking, the other party hasn't even graduated from university yet, let alone holds a teaching position, so this title is clearly inappropriate.

Should I call him "little friend" or just call him by his name "Chen"?

Daniel dared not.

The algebraic fingerprints written on the blackboard by the boy in front of him were something that even he, a third-year doctoral student, could only understand superficially after staying up for several nights.

In the world of mathematics, ability is the absolute class.

Daniel's fingers, which were frozen in mid-air, twitched slightly.

He ultimately chose the most conservative, yet most respectful, form of address.

"Mr. Chen."

Daniel's voice was slightly hoarse from nervousness. He stretched his hands forward and unconsciously straightened his back.

Chen Zhuo looked at the doctoral student in front of him, who was clearly more than a decade older than him.

He did not show any impatience because the other party was stuck.

Chen Zhuo took his right hand out of his pocket, held it against the wind, and shook hands with Daniel.

Just call me Chen Zhuo.

Chen Zhuo's voice was steady, with a natural gentleness.

His palms were warm, and the pressure of his handshake was just right—neither deliberately forceful nor perfunctory.

It was just a normal handshake when we first met.

These simple words made Daniel's tense shoulders relax a little.

After letting go, Daniel's gaze immediately fell on the black backpack that Chen Zhuo was carrying on one shoulder.

As a receptionist, it is only natural to help guests with their luggage.

But Daniel looked at the bag with extreme caution.

Instead of reaching directly for the bag strap, he bent down slightly and placed his hands loosely under the backpack.

"Let me put your bag in the trunk for you."

Daniel asked softly, his tone revealing a caution as if he were dealing with some fragile national treasure.

Chen Zhuo noticed his actions.

He didn't hand over the bag.

"No need to trouble yourself."

Chen Zhuo shook his head, a faint smile playing on his lips, a gesture of polite reassurance.

"There's only a laptop and some draft paper in the bag, it's not heavy, I can carry it myself, thank you."

Daniel looked at Chen Zhuo's gentle expression and, after confirming that he wasn't just being polite, slowly withdrew his hand.

"OK."

Daniel nodded.

"Let's get in the car first."

Professor Arthur rubbed his hands together, interrupting the small talk on the tarmac.

"The wind here is so strong it could blow your bones apart."

"Of course, the car is right here."

Daniel immediately turned around, walked to the black Ford minivan, and opened the back door.

Professor Arthur was the first to go inside, followed closely by Pierre.

Chen Zhuo walked last.

He stepped onto the side step of the vehicle, bent down and sat in the passenger compartment, then closed the door behind him.

The sound of the car door closing was somewhat muffled.

The moment the door closed, the cold Boston wind and the noise from the tarmac were instantly shut out of the car.

The heating in the carriage was on full blast, making it even slightly hot.

The air was filled with the scent of car air freshener mixed with the smell of leather seats.

Chen Zhuo took his backpack off his shoulder and placed it on the carpet beside his feet. He unzipped his jacket and pulled it down a bit to let his neck breathe.

Pierre also took off the wool scarf from his neck, folded it neatly, and placed it on his knees.

The driver's side door opened, and Daniel got in.

He pulled on his seatbelt, fastened it, and glanced at the back seat.

"Everyone, is the temperature alright? Should we turn it up a bit?" Daniel asked.

"No need, this is just right."

Professor Arthur leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh of relief.

"I'm finally alive."

Daniel nodded and reached for the gearshift.

The van started smoothly, drove off the tarmac, and headed towards the highway outside the airport.

The car drove onto the highway.

The sky outside the window remained overcast, and the distant skyscrapers appeared somewhat blurry under the gray clouds. The traffic on the road began to increase, with red taillights stretching out in a continuous line.

Professor Arthur, sitting in the middle row, broke the silence in the car by looking at the back of the seat in front of him.

"Daniel," Arthur called out.

"Yes, Professor Arthur."

Daniel answered while keeping an eye on the road ahead.

What's the situation in Cambridge right now?

Arthur tapped his knee twice with his hand.

"Has the science center building been taken over by those topology guys?"

Daniel gave a slight wry smile when he heard the question.

"The word 'occupy' might not be the most accurate, but it's close enough."

Daniel looked in the rearview mirror.

"The printers in the mathematics department have been running almost non-stop these past few days, and the department head specially had two new high-speed printers moved to the lounge."

"Is it all just printing those 300 pages of proof details?"

Pierre asked a question.

"Yes, Professor Pierre."

Daniel answered.

"Everyone is starting to print double-sided PDFs of 328 pages. The boxes of copy paper are piled up to half a person's height in the corridor. The cleaning staff have to make several trips a day just to empty the wastepaper baskets."

Chen Zhuo leaned against the back window of the car, listening quietly.

He watched the streetlights receding into the distance outside the window.

"What about Professor Qiu?" Arthur continued to ask.

As the key driving force behind this Harvard lecture series, Shing-Tung Yau was naturally the main figure on stage.

It was also he who invited Zhu Xiping and Cao Huaidong to Harvard to make the details of this completely sealed proof public to the world.

"Professor Qiu has been in the department these past few days."

Daniel's voice became somewhat solemn.

"His office light was on until 3 a.m. last night, and I saw him at the coffee machine in the department building again at 6 a.m. this morning."

"He must be under a lot of pressure."

Pierre sighed.

"It is no easy task to organize a seminar that will bring a final conclusion to a century-old conjecture. The eyes of the world are on Harvard's blackboard."

Arthur nodded.

"Did you notice?"

Arthur changed the subject.

"That stubborn old man who first proposed using Ricci flow to solve the Poincaré conjecture."

"Professor Hamilton arrived yesterday afternoon," Daniel said.

Richard Hamilton.

The name flashed through Chen Zhuo's mind.

As early as 1982, Hamilton first introduced the Ricci flow equation in an attempt to smooth the curvature of three-dimensional manifolds.

He can be considered the true founder of the entire proof of the Poincaré conjecture. However, he later got stuck on the singularity problem of Ricci flow, and remained stuck for more than a decade.

"Richard went straight to the seminar room as soon as he arrived yesterday."

Daniel continued to report on the situation.

"He stood in front of the blackboard for the entire afternoon, ignoring everyone, staring intently at the few pages of lemmas about surgical procedures that Professor Zhu and the others had sent him."

"Of course he has to see it."

Arthur chuckled.

"That was the singularity that had been holding him back for over a decade. Now that someone has bypassed it, he'll definitely have to examine it symbol by symbol with a magnifying glass."

The van changed lanes in the traffic.

A green road sign appeared ahead, indicating the distance to Cambridge in miles.

"Besides Richard, who else has come?"

Arthur leaned back in his chair, as if reviewing a battle roster.

Daniel paused for a moment, seemingly trying to recall the names he had received over the past few days.

"Kleiner and Lott from the University of Michigan just landed this morning. They took a taxi and went straight to their booked hotel."

"Professor John Morgan of Columbia University and Professor Gang Tian of MIT had dinner together last night, sitting in a pizzeria next to the school reading manuscripts."

Daniel rattled off one name after another.

The air in the carriage seemed to grow slightly heavier as these names were mentioned.

Each of these names, taken individually, represents a leading figure in the international field of geometric analysis and topology.

Over the past three years, they have formed several core teams, working day and night to study Perelman's three enigmatic papers.

They are all trying to fill in the logical gaps.

They are colleagues, but also competitors.

Now, Zhu Xiping and Cao Huaidong have taken the lead in submitting a complete answer sheet, which is more than 300 pages long, and have come to the podium at Harvard.

This group of people traveled from all over the United States to Boston, not to attend lectures, but to find problems. They brought with them countless manuscripts derived over the past three years, looking for any tiny flaw that might exist in these three hundred pages of proof.

"It seems that everyone who can understand Ricci style is here."

Professor Arthur stroked his chin.

He looked at the windshield ahead, as if he remembered something, and casually asked a question in a joking tone.

"That Russian who was hiding in the forests of St. Petersburg picking mushrooms still hasn't shown up, has he?"

The carriage was silent for two seconds.

Grigory Perelman.

This mathematical prodigy, who published three papers and then completely disappeared in Russia, was the true epicenter of this century's storm.

Daniel looked at the road and shook his head with a wry smile.

"No, the people at the Clay Mathematics Institute sent him countless emails and even sent someone to St. Petersburg, but Dr. Perelman didn't respond at all. He seems completely uninterested in what's about to happen here."

"That's very much in line with his style."

Pierre commented.

"Since he's not coming, then we'll have to be the ones to erase the blackboard for the next six months."

Arthur shrugged.

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