My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 278 See you

A convoy of black Ford vans slowed down along the internal roads of Harvard University.

The dark red brick walls on both sides of the road looked somewhat old under the gray sky, and a few withered leaves were swept by the wind and flew past the car window.

The first car came to a smooth stop in the open space in front of the Harvard Science Center, and then the following cars also came to a stop in turn.

Daniel, in the driver's seat, pulled the handbrake and unbuckled his seatbelt.

"We've arrived, everyone."

Daniel turned around.

Chen Zhuo reached out and pushed open the car door.

The cold air from Boston rushed in the moment the car door opened, dissipating the warmth that had accumulated in the carriage throughout the journey.

Chen Zhuo stepped out of the car, his feet landing on the stone-paved ground. He turned around and waited for Pierre and Professor Arthur to get out of the car before closing the door behind him.

The doors of several vans opened one after another, and more than a dozen professors and scholars from the Princeton Mathematics Department got out.

Chen Zhuo pulled the straps of his backpack up and put it on properly.

He looked at the somewhat rugged, modern building in front of him.

The glass doors of the science center were closed, but bright lights could be seen shining through from inside.

"Let's go."

Professor Arthur put his hands in his coat pockets and led the way toward the door.

"My veins are filled with ice water right now, and I desperately need a cup of hot coffee to wake them up."

Pierre pulled his scarf up a little and walked side by side with Chen Zhuo up the steps in front of the gate.

Daniel walked quickly ahead and reached out to open the glass door of the science center.

The moment the door was opened, a wave of heat, a mixture of warmth, coffee, and the distinctive smell of printing paper, rushed out.

Along with the heatwave came a tremendous roar.

Chen Zhuo walked into the hall.

This is not a quiet academic setting.

The lobby lounge, the edges of the corridors, and even the steps of the stairs leading to the basement were all packed with people.

Groups of mathematicians gathered together, almost each holding a thick stack of A4 paper.

"No! Hamilton proved in his 93 paper that the positivity of the curvature tensor is preserved under Ricci flow!"

On the left, next to a coffee shop, an elderly man with gray hair was pointing heavily at a piece of paper on the table and shouting loudly to his companion across from him.

"But he didn't solve the singularity! Perelman's surgical procedure here is a leap, and Cao and Zhu are adding this metric here..."

The middle-aged man opposite also raised his voice and drew a large circle on the paper with a red pen.

English, Russian, and English with a heavy French accent were intertwined.

The air was filled with the smell of chalk dust and the tension of academic debate.

Chen Zhuo raised an eyebrow at the sight, then turned his head and smiled at Pierre beside him.

"It seems that even the low temperatures in Boston can't quell the fiery temper here," Chen Zhuo said.

Pierre untied his scarf and nodded.

"This is what the mathematics community should be like."

Pierre looked at the arguing crowd.

"It's better to argue heatedly over a symbol than to sit in the office staring blankly at the ceiling."

Professor Arthur stood in front of them, tiptoeing towards the coffee bar in the corner of the hall.

"Good heavens, the line for coffee is longer than the airport security line," Arthur sighed.

Just then, two people carrying paper cups walked over from the coffee bar.

The person walking in front was wearing a khaki suit with a trench coat draped over his wrist.

He took a sip of coffee, then looked up and his eyes met those of Pierre and Arthur standing at the entrance of the hall.

The man stopped in his tracks.

"Pierre?"

He walked over with a coffee cup in his hand, a surprised smile on his face.

"I was betting with them yesterday whether those arrogant guys from Princeton would charter a plane over, and it looks like I won ten dollars."

"Long time no see, Thomas."

Pierre extended his hand and shook hands with the other person.

"Arthur, you've come too."

Thomas turned and nodded to Arthur.

"Amoxibustion tickets must be hard to buy, right?"

"Thomas, if you're here to brag about arriving two days early, then you can shut up."

Arthur shrugged.

Thomas is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University and a heavyweight in the field of geometric analysis.

The man following Thomas also came over. He was tall, wore frameless glasses, and was carrying a thick folder.

"Professor Pierre."

The tall man greeted him.

"Hello, Miller," Pierre replied.

Thomas finished the last sip of coffee in his cup and casually tossed the empty paper cup into the nearby trash can.

"Did you just land?" Thomas asked.

"Less than an hour," Pierre said.

Thomas's gaze swept over Pierre and Arthur, then naturally landed on Chen Zhuo, who was standing next to Pierre.

He saw Chen Zhuo's young face, his ordinary windproof jacket, and the backpack he was carrying on one shoulder.

"Is this your new student?"

Thomas looked at Chen Zhuo and casually asked Pierre.

"Should we bring him here to experience the atmosphere? But the atmosphere here might be a bit too oppressive for young people."

Miller glanced at Chen Zhuo, gave a polite smile, and didn't seem to care much.

Pierre looked at Thomas.

"Not a student."

Pierre's voice was steady, without any deliberate raising of his voice or any exaggerated intonation.

He stepped aside, making Chen Zhuo completely the center of Thomas's line of sight.

"This is Chen."

Pierre explained.

"Chen Zhuo, our colleague at Princeton."

The arguing in the hall was still very loud.

A few steps away, someone was complaining in frustration because their printer was jammed.

But the air around Thomas seemed to pause for an extremely brief moment.

Thomas looked at Pierre and blinked.

Then he turned his head and his gaze fell on Chen Zhuo's face again.

This time, his gaze was no longer that of someone casually looking at a junior, but rather carried a weight that was almost tangible.

"List?"

Thomas's voice changed; his tone unconsciously dropped a little.

Miller tightened his grip on the folder, took a small step forward, and stared intently at Chen Zhuo.

"Hodge's conjecture?" Miller blurted out.

Chen Zhuo stood there.

He didn't show any smugness at the other person's surprise, nor did he awkwardly lower his head.

He looked at the two Columbia University professors, a gentle smile playing on his lips, and nodded slightly.

"it's me."

Chen Zhuo spoke, his voice clear and steady.

"Professor Thomas, Professor Miller, hello."

Thomas took a deep breath.

He had been in academia for decades and had seen all sorts of geniuses, but when the person who had used ingenious algebraic tools to tear open the gaps in high-dimensional manifolds in his papers actually stood in front of him in the physical form of a fourteen-year-old boy, the contrast still left him speechless.

Thomas extended his hand.

"Hello, Chen."

Thomas gripped Chen Zhuo's hand, much more firmly than when he had shaken hands with Pierre earlier.

"I read your paper. When dealing with the torsion element distribution, the cross section you constructed was like a precise scalpel. A few of us old guys from Columbia University discussed it for a whole week."

"Just lucky."

Chen Zhuo smiled and released his grip.

"We've just found a suitable entry point into algebra."

"There is no luck in mathematics, only skill."

Miller said from the side, and he also reached out and shook hands with Chen Zhuo.

"Chen, it's so great to see you here."

Miller spoke as he began rummaging through his pockets.

He searched through the pockets of his coat and trousers, finally frowning as he looked at Thomas.

"Do you have a pen?" Miller asked.

Thomas also started patting his pockets, then pulled a black pen from the lining of his suit and handed it to Miller.

Miller took the pen and immediately opened the thick folder he was holding, which contained three hundred pages of details of Poincaré's proof.

He flipped directly to the back of the last page, which was a completely blank sheet of paper.

"List."

Miller held his pen and looked at Chen Zhuo.

"Your intuition in algebraic geometry will be very useful for our upcoming discussion. We have encountered some algebraic obstacles under certain high-dimensional boundary conditions of Ricci flow. I would like to add your email address so that I can email you anytime if I have any questions."

Chen Zhuo did not refuse.

"Of course." Chen Zhuo nodded.

He took the backpack off his shoulder, carried it with one hand, and then took the pen Miller handed him with the other.

Instead of looking for his notebook, Chen Zhuo wrote his name and a work email address ending in Princeton on the back of the 300-page paper Miller had opened.

After he finished writing, he returned the pen to Miller.

"If there's anything I can do to help, feel free to contact me anytime," Chen Zhuo said.

Thomas, who was watching from the side, also took back his pen.

"Write one for me too," Thomas said.

"Or you could leave me your office landline number too. I prefer arguing on the phone to email."

Chen Zhuo smiled.

It was a very vivid laugh, with the cheerfulness unique to young people.

"no problem."

Chen Zhuo took the pen again and wrote another line of numbers below Miller's paper.

Professor Arthur stood to the side, watching the group of people.

"You Columbia students really don't even let a moment for small talk."

Arthur shook his head.

"He just got off the plane, and you've already started reserving his brain cells."

"This is the Harvard Science Center, Arthur."

Thomas put the pen away.

"There's no small talk here, only math."

Just as they were speaking.

Several people walked out from the corridor on the other side of the hall.

Those were several Asian faces.

They were dressed in ordinary jackets and shirts, and were also carrying stacks of printed papers.

Leading the way was a middle-aged man in his fifties with thinning hair, wearing half-rimmed glasses.

He was looking down at the paper in his hand when a slightly younger man next to him nudged his arm and pointed in the direction of the entrance.

The middle-aged man looked up and saw Pierre.

He rolled up the paper in his hand and walked over quickly.

"Professor Pierre."

The middle-aged man greeted him in fluent English.

"You've arrived."

Pierre turned his head.

Hello, Zhou.

Pierre responded with a smile.

This is Professor Zhou from the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University, one of the leading figures in the field of geometric analysis in China.

The two people following him were top scholars from Tsinghua University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

They were specifically invited to Harvard to participate in a seminar on the Poincaré conjecture.

After exchanging brief greetings with Pierre and Arthur, Professor Zhou's gaze naturally swept over Chen Zhuo, who was standing next to him.

At first, he didn't pay much attention.

But after his gaze lingered on the Asian boy's face for a second, he suddenly stopped.

Professor Zhou's eyes widened slightly, as if he were confirming something.

He turned his head and glanced at his two companions, who both had the same expression on their faces.

Although they had never met Chen Zhuo in person, his name and background were already well-known in Chinese academic circles.

Moreover, the fact that such a young Asian face is in Princeton's core team makes the answer almost obvious.

Professor Zhou handed the rolled-up printing paper to his left hand, took a step forward, and walked up to Chen Zhuo.

He looked at Chen Zhuo, but didn't utter the English he had prepared.

He spoke in very fluent Chinese, with a slight northern accent.

"You are... Chen Zhuo?"

Chen Zhuo looked at the professor from China in front of him.

Upon hearing his familiar mother tongue, his gaze softened.

"It's me, Professor Zhou."

Chen Zhuo answered in Chinese.

Upon hearing this confirmation, Professor Zhou breathed a long sigh of relief.

He reached out his right hand and grasped Chen Zhuo's hand tightly.

Professor Zhou looked Chen Zhuo up and down, noticing his thin shoulders and youthful face.

"have a look."

Professor Zhou shook his head, a smile tinged with self-deprecation and感慨 appearing on his lips.

He turned to his two domestic colleagues and said.

"When we were looking at that paper at Peking University, Lao Wang even made a bet with me, saying that the person who could write such sophisticated algebraic derivations must be a sixty-year-old man who had been hiding in Princeton for half his life, or at least a bald postdoctoral fellow."

The professor from Tsinghua University next to him also laughed.

"And the result?"

Professor Zhou turned around and looked at Chen Zhuo, his tone full of pure appreciation and warmth.

"Seeing a living person today, we old bones should really submit our retirement applications as a group."

Chen Zhuo's smile deepened as he listened to the teasing tone tinged with local accent.

Instead of responding with polite words, he followed Professor Zhou's words and made a gentle joke.

"If you retire, there will be no one to teach geometric analysis in China."

Chen Zhuo said in a relaxed tone.

"Besides, I lost a lot of hair working on that paper, it's just not noticeable yet."

Professor Zhou burst into laughter at his words and patted Chen Zhuo's shoulder forcefully.

"Good lad."

Professor Zhou's eyes were shining.

"Really, good lad, the Chinese mathematics community is now very proud of you. The step you've taken in algebraic geometry has brought immense honor to the Chinese people."

Chen Zhuo nodded and readily accepted the praise from his elder.

"Professors, you flatter me," Chen Zhuo said.

He paused briefly, his gaze sweeping over Professor Zhou and the others, before asking the question that concerned him most.

"Excuse me, did Professor Li Jianming from Huazhong University of Science and Technology come this time?"

Upon hearing this name, Professor Zhou laughed even louder.

"Old Li? How could he not come!"

Professor Zhou pointed to the corridor deep inside the science center's lobby.

"He's been crazier than any of us these past few days."

"Is he inside?" Chen Zhuo asked.

"It's inside."

The professor from Tsinghua University next to him chimed in.

"We finally managed to get together, and last night he took a copy of your paper and knocked on each of our hotel room doors, showing off that it was a student he had mentored. This morning, he went into the seminar room again and is now struggling with the partial differential equations on the blackboard."

Chen Zhuo breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing about his teacher's recent situation.

"Alright, stop standing in the lobby."

Professor Zhou grabbed Chen Zhuo's arm.

"It's windy in the lobby, let's go inside."

He turned to Pierre and Arthur and said something.

"Professor Pierre, Professor Arthur, let's go inside first."

Pierre nodded.

Professor Zhou pulled Chen Zhuo along, continuing to talk to him as they walked deeper into the corridor.

"Old Li is inside, and Professor Qiu is inside too."

Professor Zhou walked very fast.

"Professor Qiu was talking about you yesterday. He said that since Princeton brought you here, he must meet this algebra genius who came from our own country."

Chen Zhuo followed Professor Zhou.

The walls on both sides of the corridor were covered with posters for various lectures.

Harvard students carrying books would occasionally hurry by, watching the group of mathematicians chatting as they walked with curious eyes.

"Is Professor Qiu free right now?" Chen Zhuo asked.

"Whether I'm free or not, I'll have time once I see you," Professor Zhou said with a smile.

"Everyone's been working themselves to the bone on those 300 pages of details these past few days, their brains are about to explode. Your arrival is a good opportunity to give them a mental break."