My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 279 The Weight of Proof

Professor Zhou's hand rested on the doorknob of Seminar D at the Harvard Science Center.

In the corridor, there were still groups of scholars chatting with paper cups of coffee. Some were arguing about the topological properties of manifolds at an extremely fast pace, their English mixed with various heavy accents.

Chen Zhuo followed Professor Zhou and stepped into the seminar room.

This is a fairly spacious rectangular room.

Along one side of the wall were six huge blackboards, covered with densely packed equations.

On the far left of the blackboard is a highly irregular three-dimensional manifold cross section, followed by a long series of partial differential equations about the curvature evolution of Ricci flow.

The blackboards in the middle are purely derivation processes, with several key convergence conditions heavily circled in red chalk, marked with question marks, and then crossed out further down.

The writing was slightly blurred, as if it had been written several days ago, with no signs of being erased.

It seems that the most intense and anxious phase of the simulation has long passed.

A huge conference table was placed in the very center of the room.

In the very center of the table, three large stacks of printed manuscripts were neatly arranged.

Each stack was as thick as a brick, with a few lines of simple bold English titles printed on the top page of white paper.

Scattered around the manuscript were several pens with their caps closed, two transparent plastic rulers, and several different styles of mugs scattered on the table.

Three people were sitting at the conference table.

No one stood up, and no one picked up a pen to write or draw on paper.

They simply leaned back casually in their chairs.

After more than three years of relentless work day and night, the more than 300 pages of detailed proof have been disassembled, reassembled, and cross-checked countless times, and the logical loop has been completely closed.

They exuded a weariness that seemed to seep into their very bones after a long battle, yet at the same time, they carried an extremely calm and resolute air.

Li Jianming sat at the end of the long table closest to the door.

He was holding a thermos in his hand, looking down at a piece of draft paper scattered on the table.

Hearing the door open, he turned his head, his gaze passing over Professor Zhou's shoulder and landing on Chen Zhuo.

Li Jianming was stunned for a moment.

He placed the thermos on the table, then pulled out a chair and stood up.

Li Jianming walked up to Chen Zhuo, habitually stretched out his right hand, and pinched Chen Zhuo's left shoulder. Then, he ran his fingers down the shoulder and pressed twice on Chen Zhuo's arm.

"He seems to have grown taller."

Li Jianming withdrew his hand, looked at Chen Zhuo, and frowned slightly.

"Why are you still all skin and bones? Does the Princeton cafeteria not serve meat?"

Chen Zhuo looked at his teacher, his brows and eyes naturally relaxed, and a gentle smile appeared on his face.

"There's plenty of meat, but the cooking method is a bit different from what we have in China."

Chen Zhuo's voice was gentle as he casually cracked a joke.

"Every meal is cheese and butter. I guess I'm still not used to American food. It's not as nourishing as the food in our USTC cafeteria."

Li Jianming smiled and pointed at him.

"The sorcerer was chatting with me in the office just last month."

Li Jianming turned around and gestured for Chen Zhuo to go inside.

"I was thinking about whether you could get used to the food here. I told you you're in Princeton, not some remote mountain village where you're working in the countryside. You won't go hungry."

"That old alchemist is destined to be a worrywart."

Chen Zhuo scratched his head as he followed them inside.

"Your relationship with Teacher Fang is still as good as ever."

"Good my ass. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't even bother with him."

Li Jianming rolled his eyes dramatically.

The three people at the conference table turned their gazes when they heard the noise.

Yau Shing-Tung leaned back in a chair at the head of the table, a schedule in his hand. He raised his eyelids and glanced at Chen Zhuo who was walking over.

Zhu Xiping and Cao Huaidong also stopped their conversation.

Professor Zhou walked ahead and pointed at Chen Zhuo.

"The person has been brought over."

Li Jianming stopped at the table and slightly turned his body towards the three people at the table, letting Chen Zhuo move to the front.

"This is Chen Zhuo," Li Jianming said.

Zhu Xiping picked up a pair of glasses placed in front of him, put them on, and carefully examined Chen Zhuo.

The room light fell on Chen Zhuo's young face.

Although everyone present was a top scholar who was used to seeing geniuses, there was still a very brief pause in the air when they were actually facing a fourteen-year-old boy.

Zhu Xiping smiled first.

He shook his head, his tone carrying a strong southern accent, yet very gentle.

"When I read your paper on cutting out the scratch in China, the algebraic construction step by step was very sophisticated. Cao and I even joked in private that we wondered if Pierre had a Russian PhD in his thirties writing it for us. Today we finally see the real thing."

Chen Zhuo lowered his head slightly and smiled politely.

"The derivation of that paper did indeed borrow a lot of tools from predecessors, and it took quite a long time to refine."

Cao Huaidong sat opposite Zhu Xiping, his hands folded on the table as he looked at Chen Zhuo.

"You don't need to be modest. Being able to use discrete lattice points in that kind of way isn't something you can achieve by just grinding away at it; it's a real skill," Cao Huaidong said with a smile.

"Let me think about it in the lobby. By now, word should be out that Princeton has brought the person who solved the Hodge conjecture. This should be your first public appearance in the international mathematics community, right?"

"I guess so," Chen Zhuo nodded.

"When the meeting officially starts tomorrow, those people outside will probably be just as curious about you as they are about Poincaré."

Cao Huaidong leaned back in his chair and made a relaxed joke.

Yau Shing-Tung placed the schedule in his hand on the table.

He picked up a cup in front of him, took a sip of water, and looked at Chen Zhuo with interest.

"It's not easy for a country to develop its own route."

Yau Shing-Tung's voice isn't loud, but his enunciation is very clear.

"Sit down and let's talk."

He pointed to an empty chair on the side of the conference table.

"Thank you, Professor Qiu."

Chen Zhuo walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

He took off the bag from his back, took out a notebook and a pen, and placed them neatly on the table in front of him.

His movements were natural and unhurried, just like he did every day in the library or Pierre's office.

Li Jianming pulled up a chair next to Chen Zhuo and sat down again, while tightening the lid of his thermos.

After Chen Zhuo sat down, his gaze naturally fell on the center of the table.

Those three thick stacks of manuscripts were really too conspicuous.

Even without opening it, you can feel the weight it carries.

This is the culmination of three years of hard work by the domestic geometric analysis team, and it is also their most impressive achievement on the international top mathematical stage.

Zhu Xiping noticed Chen Zhuo's gaze.

He reached out and gently patted the cover of the top stack of manuscripts twice.

"Want to see it?"

Zhu Xiping asked with a smile.

"I really want to."

Chen Zhuo answered frankly.

"While partial differential equations and Ricci flow are not my primary tools, your approach to handling singularities, particularly the geometric construction methods you employ, is very appealing."

"The copier has been running non-stop these past few days, printing several sets as backups."

Zhu Xiping pointed to a cardboard box in the corner.

"When you leave later, have Lao Li give you a set, 328 pages. Take your time reading it. We revised it countless times. Lao Cao can even remember which page has a spelling error in the footnotes."

Cao Huaidong picked up the cup of cold coffee across from him and took a sip.

"That's right."

Cao Huaidong sighed, his tone conveying a sense of relief and ease.

"The night before last, a few of us stayed up until 3 a.m. at this table to check the convergence coefficient of a metric tensor on page 124. In the end, we found that it was a mistyped subscript. This job is really inhuman."

"Perelman left too many gaps."

Zhu Xiping rubbed his sore neck.

"His intuition is too jumpy; he often jumps to a conclusion and then runs away. Hamilton laid the pipes back then, and Perelman turned on the tap, and the pipe burst at the singularity. For the past three years, we've been repairing that burst pipe bit by bit, welding the gap shut."

Chen Zhuo listened quietly.

He didn't interrupt.

He could understand the mathematical essence behind these metaphors, which involved an extremely large and tedious amount of calculation, requiring great patience and absolute control over the evolution of geometric flow.

"The first report will be tomorrow morning."

Li Jianming glanced at his watch and steered the conversation back on track.

"Morgan and Tsuyoshi will definitely target Hamilton's singularity model; they were stuck on that for a long time before."

Zhu Xiping lowered his hand, the weariness on his face lessening slightly, replaced by a sharp confidence.

"Let them ask."

Zhu Xiping spoke calmly.

"In the manuscript, from page 120 to page 150, we dedicated a chapter to dealing with this singularity. The convergence has been written out, and the boundary conditions have been strictly defined. As long as they follow the evolution of the flow, there will be no logical loopholes."

Cao Huaidong nodded as well.

"We perform surgery at the singularity within a finite timeframe, clearly explaining the metric changes after the operation."

Cao Huaidong took a pen and drew a cut on the table.

"As long as they acknowledge the evolutionary logic of the Ricci flow, they won't find fault with this."

Chen Zhuo looked at the two professors.

The confidence that comes from over three hundred pages, hundreds of thousands of characters, and formulas cannot be replaced by any flowery language.

Shing-Tung Yau remained silent.

He listened quietly to Zhu Xiping and Cao Huaidong's discussion, tapping his fingers lightly twice on the table.

"There's no need to waste time arguing with them."

Yau Shing-Tung spoke, his voice deep and resonant.

"When you're on stage tomorrow, don't waste time talking nonsense. Just put the equations directly on the blackboard and deduce them step by step. If they ask you any questions, just do the derivation."

Shing-Tung Yau looked at the manuscript on the table.

"No matter how noisy it is outside, and no matter who is right or wrong."

Yau Shing-Tung paused for a moment.

"Mathematics doesn't lie. These three hundred-plus pages are right here; it's either right or wrong."